In Ghana, land is an indispensable asset. It’s a source of livelihood and social identity, and men and women should have equal opportunities to benefit from it. But when entrenched patriarchy tips the power scales, and corruption reinforces cultural norms, the impact on women can be devastating.

A recent survey reveals that one in three Ghanaians have been asked to pay a bribe for land-related services in recent years. The study was done by the Ghana Integrity Initiative, the local chapter of Transparency International in Ghana.

Today Land Portal is launching a new qualitative dataset and infographic which shows how national laws measure up against the international standards on expropriation, compensation, and resettlement as established in Section 16 of the UN Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (VGGTs).

• Keynote speaker: Professor Hanoch Dagan (Tel-Aviv University):
  • Professor Dagan dedicated keynote address to Professor Dr.

SESSION 4: FACTORS OF COMPENSATION; VALUE OF LAND

Dr Shai Stern (Dr. Shai Stern (Professor of Law, Bar-Ilan University)

Restoring Justice in Expropriation Law

• There is general agreement on the concept of fair or just market value for compensation, yet this concept is based on different ideas of justice
• A Restorative conception of justice provides a coherent and circumstances’ attentive normative framework to address the most significant challenges related to compensation

By Marian Amissah-Ocran

First, Maame Kraba was diagnosed with HIV. Shortly thereafter, her husband died of the disease. For Maame, a young mother of two children living in Western Region, Ghana, her husband’s death marked an abrupt change in her family’s circumstances, one that would put her rights to land in jeopardy.

The Rethinking Expropriation Law initiative hosted a Conference on Compensation for Expropriation in Cape Town, South Africa on December 7-9, 2016. The final session of the Conference took place on December 9 and aimed at discussing the development of a protocol on fair compensation.

For  the final session in Cape Town, scholars, judges, activists, and government officials from around the world sat together to provide input on what guidance and principles should be included in the protocol on fair compensation.

Despite the fact that land is intrinsically fixed in space, a new transnational market for land is born. Indeed, data from the Land Matrix suggests that in the last 16 years 77.5 million hectares of land – a surface slightly smaller than the entire Mozambique – have been transferred to international investors or are currently under negotiation. More than 140 countries are involved in this international market for land either as investor country, or as target country, or both.

Everyone was energised by the trek of 29 women from 22 African countries up and down Kilimanjaro this month to raise awareness of women’s land rights, producing a charter of 15 demands on how to protect and enhance these rights.  A powerful  statement and great mobilising a

By Paul van der Molen, emeritus professor, ITC, University of Twente

From November 28 to December 23, 2016, Land Portal hosted a successful Land Debate on land valuation and fair compensation. The debate focused on the question of what is fair compensation for land in cases of land tenure changes (e.g. expropriations and voluntary land transfers), and what measures are sufficient to ensure the livelihoods of affected landholders are restored.

Conservationists and environmental advocacy groups have warned that the nature, pace and scale of Chinese-funded infrastructure projects in the developing world may lead to unintended environmental consequences, especially in so-called “ecological hotspots.” Until now, there has been no systematic, large-scale evidence that confronts the causal claim that Chinese-funded developm