Nepal has stepped into yet another and very important milestone in guaranteeing security of tenure and access to land for all. Following the promulgation of the new Constitution in September 2015, the Government of Nepal amended the Lands Act of 1964 through enacting a Lands (Seventh Amendment) Act in 2018 which provided a legal framework for implementation of Article 40 (5) of the Constitution on the provision of land to landless Dalits.

Located about 50 kilometres from the Noordoewer border post that separates Namibia from neighbouring South Africa, Aussenkehr has vast vineyards that stretch as far as the eye can see.

The Quezon City government has bought a property in Barangay Bagong Silangan and Payatas  to house some 3,000 informal settlers. 

Mayor Joy Belmonte has signed the deeds of sale of 214,057 square meter property.

After 30 years of independence, the “land question” is at a critical point in Namibia. Regarding rural land reform, a compromised “willing buyer, willing seller” approach and resettlement-based processes have yielded little success. Not only have they been expensive, inefficient, and often benefitting elites, but today some of those lower-income households that were selected for resettlement wish they had not “benefitted” given the precarious situation in which they find themselves.

We should recognise that people in informal settlements have the same right to share the city with the same dignity and equality as other residents. Without the active participation of informal settlement residents in upgrading projects, any upgrading plans proposed are destined to flop. Post the pandemic, we (Namibian planning practitioners, donors and private sector) should look towards the inclusion of people in informal settlements communities in planning and upgrading of the informal settlements. 

THE Municipality of Otjiwarongo has started profiling its informal settlements to better plan and upgrade the areas for their residents.

According to Adelheid Shilongo, the Otjiwarongo local authority's public relations officer, the profiling is important because it will provide the municipality with crucial and accurate data on the informal settlements' demographics, which in turn would enable better planning and the upgrading of the areas.

Nairobi, 14 May 2020 – As COVID-19 spreads around the world, billions of people have been told to stay at home, practice physical distancing, wash their hands regularly and wear masks. However, these simple preventive public health measures are almost impossible to follow for those who are homeless, or who live in unsafe or overcrowded conditions.

Human rights groups want a moratorium on demolitions and forced evictions of informal settlements under COVID-19

NAIROBI/ADDIS ABABA, April 29 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Scores of Ethiopian families are at risk of contracting the new coronavirus after authorities demolished their makeshift houses and left them homeless, human rights groups said on Wednesday.

Authorities in the capital began destroying the informal settlements near Bole International Airport in February.

Urban land

Our urban land pages have been filled with the struggles of people living in townships and informal settlements during the pandemic. One of the controversial state responses to Covid 19 has been to propose the ‘thinning’ of densely settled areas in a bid to slow the speed of community viral transmission. These plans have been met with scepticism by residents of informal settlements who argued that such measures, taken without adequate consultation, would meet with resistance and be destined for failure.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (April 2nd, 2020)—The first round of Cadasta Foundation’s Data Accelerator Grant has been released to three African organizations to advance land rights and tenure security for vulnerable populations. 

Imagine a community of 200,000. Convivial, walkable, six times the density of Manhattan but with a smaller ecological footprint. It provides low-cost services and affordable housing mixed with productive uses such as recycling, farming and trading. It’s a city within a city.

But the streets aren’t wide enough to allow cars. The houses seem makeshift and the drains need work. The adaptations make it look like a place under perpetual construction.