As indigenous campaigner Alessandra Munduruku wins the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, she says the Amazon is 'crying for help

SAO PAULO, Oct 22 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Alessandra Munduruku, a leader of Brazil's Munduruku indigenous community, has seen her home broken into and been threatened over her work defending her people and their Amazon land from illegal miners and loggers, hydropower plants and other threats.

The Dutch LAND-at-scale program was launched in March last year and since then, two rounds for land intervention ideas have been released. The program seeks ideas that contribute to improving land governance in developing countries, and that ultimately support better food and nutrition security, economic development, peace and stability in these countries. At this moment, projects for 16 countries are actively being formulated in close collaboration with embassies and other in country stakeholders.

Lesotho and IFAD joint project to improve livelihoods of vulnerable small farmers

A new financing project in Lesotho is to benefit 160, 000 poor rural households. It will boost food security and nutrition, mitigate the impact of climate change and strengthen livelihoods for greater income. Women, who typically have limited access to land and finance, will make up 50 per cent of the project’s participants. About 35 per cent will be young people who face high rates of unemployment.

Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth (ERA/FoEN) and other stakeholders have said practice of gender inequality in land governance has increased poverty and deprivation among women in the society.
 
The Executive Director, ERA/FoEN, Dr. Godwin Ojo, who was represented by a lecturer at the University of Calabar (UNICAL), Dr. Ralph Offiong, said this at the weekend, during a validation workshop on review of Land Use Act 1978, yesterday, in Calabar, the Cross River State capital.

Revised Botswana Land Policy of 2019 now gives married women right to apply for land ownership, says President Masisi

For the first time married women in Botswana will be able to own land, the president of the Southern African country has announced.

“The Revised Botswana Land Policy of 2019 now gives married women the right to apply for land,” President Mokgweetsi Masisi tweeted Thursday, announcing the end of discriminatory treatment under older legislation.

In the six months since the coronavirus began its global spread, more than 15 million people have been diagnosed with COVID-19 and more than 600,000 have perished. Governments around the world have instituted lockdowns and shut down businesses. Entire industries have been devastated, notably travel, hospitality, and entertainment in the formal sector, and day labor and street and market vendors in the informal sector. Overall, hundreds of millions of people worldwide have lost their livelihoods.

‘WOLTS Team Perspectives’ is a new series of blogs launched in February 2020 by the global WOLTS team. In this series, field team members share their views about the impacts of the project’s action-research on gender, land and mining among pastoralist communities in Tanzania and Mongolia.

From forced displacement to conflict over resources, the coronavirus pandemic has created a “perfect storm” for land rights abuses - and the situation is likely to worsen, researchers and activists warned on Thursday.

The migration of men to rural areas due to lockdowns and job losses has increased competition over land, with a disproportionate impact on woman, said organisers of a land rights webinar.

Nearly 100 families living on a public sidewalk in Boeung Keng Kang district’s Tomnop Teuk commune in Phnom Penh were recently given plots of land by the government in Khasch Kandal district’s Vihear Suor commune in Kandal province to encourage them to move.

Eng Phearith, 24, moved from the sidewalk to one of the plots and told The Post on Sunday that it was a win-win solution for citizens and the administration orchestrated by Prime Minister Hun Sen.

CHRDA recognizes and applauds the efforts made by the lawmakers in drafting a specific code that enunciates the rights of persons and the family. The code stands as a contemporary legislative document that seeks to promote the fundamental rights of persons and the family. The much-advocated change in the nationality law is reflective in the document as the recent code now recognizes dual nationality in section 81 of the code.

Executive Director of the Centre for Women in Agriculture and Nutrition (C-WAN), Emmanuel Wullingdool, has appealed to the government to create agricultural land banks to enable the vulnerable groups in society to have access to fertile land for farming purposes.

He said the vulnerable groups, including women, could register with the government at the district levels to acquire those productive lands to farm.