By Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Chairman of the Advisory Board of CCSI, University Professor at Columbia University, and Director of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network

Women play important roles in all smallholder farming systems. Advocates for women farmers often claim that “women produce 60-80% of the world’s food.” Occasionally, we are told that this statistic refers to food produced in developing countries, or food crops in sub-Saharan Africa; the reference point is vague. But the idea is clear – women produce more food than men.

A relatively obscure and technical determination earlier this week by a relatively little-known international body could mean a sea change in economic and social empowerment prospects for hundreds of millions of women and their families.  Insecure rights to land constrain opportunity for over 2 billion people living in urban and rural informality.  And women fare the worst. 

As part of the recent peace accords, Colombia is returning land to the victims of a 50-year internal armed conflict. This includes the protection of women's fundamental rights, which is especially important because the violence and forced displacement had a higher impact on rural women. 

Around the world, rural women are a major provider of food and food security.

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.

Land in Tanzania is a scarce resource without which life cannot be sustained (FAO, 2007), and it is “increasingly recognized as an important governance issue” around the global (Palmer et al., 2009, p.1).  Hundreds of millions of people including farmers, herders, forest dwellers and agro-industries all rely on land resources for their survival.

By Patricia Chaves, Jolyne Sanjak and Malcolm Childress

By Gayle Tzemach Lemmon and Becky Allen, Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)

By Elisa Mandelli and Andrea Wyers, with contributions from Everlyne Nairesiae (GLII-GLTN)

By Jamal Browne

Since the adoption of the global indicator framework by the UN Statistical Commission (UNSC) back in March 2016, significant progress has been made on a set of tenure-related indicators – familiarly referred to as the ‘land indicators’ – primarily through the efforts of the Global Land Indicators Initiative (GLII).

By Madhu Sarin, Fellow of the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI)

Q: What is required to strengthen women’s land and community forest rights in practice in India?