It’s time we break down the barriers to women’s access to land and protect women’s rights while the pandemic places them in a precarious situation

Not only is the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) having serious health impacts around the world, it also has the potential to significantly affect the housing, land, and property (HLP) of women and girls, particularly in low and middle-income countries. 

Women at a disadvantage

Informal workers and desperate journeys 

 ‘Corona lockdown’ led to one of the biggest migrations in India’s modern history. Hungry, thirsty and hapless- millions of migrant workers who form the backbone of our glittering megacities- took to the road, on desperate journeys home.

The current Covid 19 pandemic is likely to spread in the next few weeks and months to the South and in particular South Asia and Sub Saharan Africa. The impact may well be of a greater scale than that currently experienced in the North; India was the region with the highest loss of live in the 1918-1919 Spanish flu Pandemic. The experience and historical experience suggests that urban areas will be disproportionately affected.

Increasingly, governments and citizens in developing countries as well as development agencies are using information technology to improve governance, shape government-citizen relations, and reduce corruption. Despite this, we continue to be at the first phases of understanding how to best use these new data sources in anti-corruption work, as well as appreciating the challenges and limitations inherent in them.  

For the first time, women from informal settlements in the Municipality of Bonito, State of Pernambuco, Brazil will be granted with land titles in which they have lived in for decades

Knowing the "where" is important for so many companies and projects today. A business might want to know what path you take to work to send you targeted ads about coffee shops you pass. Augmented reality platforms might map out interior spaces of your home and offices to create a dancing critter in your living room. Self driving cars need to map their environment, and satellites map out the Earth below.

Conservation, said Aldo Leopold, is harmony between (wo)men and land. Land should justifiably figure not only into the conservation, but also in development debates, policy and discourses. Missing land rights and land tenure security can be costly for states, communities as well as local and global development.

This week,the 11^thsession of the Working Party on Land Administration convenes in Geneva, Switzerland. The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) hosts the event and it will discuss the megatrends impactingland administration, such as, new business ecosystems, urbanization, climate change, disruptive technology, migration, etc.

OUR CITY: WHY WE WORK WHERE WE WORK

‘Chicoco’ means mud, the black, fibrous mud that people living in Port Harcourt’s waterfront communities cut from the mangroves and throw down on the river’s edge to reclaim land from the creeks. They build their homes on this mud.