BONN, Germany, 30 Dec 2016 — According to Dr. Richard Byron-Cox, his admiration for the late President of Burkina Faso, Captain Thomas Sankara, strengthens his role as the Action Program Alignment and Capacity Building Officer at the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) based in Germany.

As one of the founding fathers of the concept of Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN), he believes this can help countries suffering from floods, droughts, etc. be self-sufficient.

By Andy White, Coordinator of the Rights and Resources Initiative

By Frank Pichel, Interim CEO & Chief Programs Officer, Cadasta Foundation

Across the continent, insecure rights to land are robbing millions of financial stability and long-term prosperity. While new technology is giving people the tools to define what’s theirs, governments must recognize that certainty of ownership is a prerequisite of sustainable development.

October 2017: In 2012, the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) endorsed Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure, forests, and fisheries (VGGT, or the Voluntary Guidelines) to, inter alia, promote food security and sustainable development by improving secure access to land, fisheries, and forests.

The 16^th of October marks World Food Day, a reminder to the international community of the criticality of treating food security as a 21^st Century priority if sustainable development, peace and security and the realisation of human rights are to be achieved.

The Namati team in Sierra Leone is engaged in an ongoing effort to discover sustainable measures for community ownership, management, and administration of land and natural resources throughout the country. To this end, we have taken on a new project: the application of a legal empowerment approach to community land protection.

The 6th meeting of the Inter-Agency and Expert Group on the Sustainable Development Goal Indicators (IAEG-SDGs), is very important.

Ask a land rights defender if there is a human right to land, and she will likely say “Yes, without a doubt.” For people around the world, land is a source of food, shelter, and livelihoods; it’s an economic asset, a crucial safety net, a link with culture and social identity, even a living relative or ancestor. Given their importance, land rights are surely human rights.

From 11-14 November in Bahrain, decisions are being made that will influence priorities of governments around the world.

In September 2015, at a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, 193 countries endorsed the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals – known as the SDGs or Global Goals. This collection of 17 ambitious goals and 169 targets form a framework to address the global challenge of eradicating poverty. 

On 12^th November 2017, the 6^th meeting of the Inter-agency and Expert Group on Sustainable Development Goal Indicators (IAEG-SDGs) reached a major decision to reclassify tenure security Indicator 1.4.2 from Tier III to II in Manama, Kingdom of Bahrain. This decision marks the beginning of a global journey to monitor tenure security for all, using comparable land indicators for globally comparable data.