Modern land registration systems are usually compulsory. Countries must be able to keep track of land, ownership and land use. This is important for planning, real estate sales and urbanization. When land is properly and legally registered, it should protect landowners.

The National Land Policy (NLP) will seek to ensure that a staggered, accessible and affordable process of compulsory registration is enforced after the ratification of the policy.

Namibia will launch the baseline study that was conducted in 2016 by the University of Namibia which was aimed at investigating the status of women’s land use, ownership and rights under customary land tenure system, at an event on Thursday in Ongwediva, northern Namibia.

The study was prepared for the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS), a German political foundation, through the special initiative, ‘One World- No Hunger: strengthening Women’s land use and land ownership in Sub-Sahara Africa’.

Land governance disputes dominate civil and criminal cases in India

Many cash-strapped Maasai have become landless after subdividing and selling swathes of land to the south of Nairobi

NAIROBI, June 20 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Kenya's opposition leader has raised tensions weeks ahead of elections by criticising the Maasai community's sale of ancestral land to other ethnic groups in an area hit by political violence in the 1990s, land rights experts said.

With detailed field studies from Kenya, Cameroon, Uganda and Namibia, a new report sheds light on the consequences of extractive industries on land rights and indigenous peoples in Africa. “Worrying that so little is done to protect the environment and the indigenous peoples,” says the report.

 

Environmental degradation, cultural ethnocide and gross human rights violations: For indigenous peoples these are some of the consequences of the current global race for natural resources and raw materials.

The Civil Society Organization Working Group on Land Reform on Monday told the Legislature that they remain optimistic that the land reform bill, when passed into law, will empower rural communities through the recognition of customary land rights and other issues across the country.

The CSO working group said the passage of the land rights act will also support communities to self-identify and manage their land in line with the new law, going as far as providing legal assistance where needed.

Colombia’s Association of Indigenous Councils of Northern Cauca, ACIN, announced in a press release on Tuesday that recent police aggression involving a firearm resulted in one death and two injuries. 

ACIN claims three police trucks approached a “Liberation of Mother Earth” action in Corinto, dedicated to promoting environmentalism and Indigenous people’s rights to their ancestral lands, and opened fire. 

Dr. Othello Brandy, chairman of the Liberia Land Authority (LLA), on Tuesday told a gathering of civil society organization (CSOs) that the country may likely go revert to serious crises if the Draft Land Rights Act is not passed by the current lawmakers before the end of their tenures.

“If the act is not passed, it means only a few people will continue to have rights over your land, including the right to say what they do and not do with the land, because the tribal title that you hold for your land does not give any legitimate ownership right to you,” Brandy warned.

Monrovia - Amid the prolonged delay in the passage of the Land Rights Act into law, the Civil Society Working Group on land rights in collaboration with its partners are doing everything possible to ensure the passage of the act.

The group, in collaboration with the Rights and Rice Foundation on Monday, May 2, held a one-day national consultation dialogue with many organizations on the passage of the draft Land Rights Act.

ADDIS ABABA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Aworar Meka had been living and working at the Reppi rubbish dump in Addis Ababa for only one month when tragedy struck.

A giant landslide at the 50-year-old dump, the Ethiopian capital's only landfill site, hit his neighborhood on March 11, destroying dozens of homes and killing at least 115 people.

Shortly after a visit from an EU delegation last week, Kenya Forest Service (KFS) guards based at Tangul, Kipsitono and Maron KFS camps carried out intensive evictions according to Sengwer witnesses, with KFS allegedly having since burnt down over 90 Sengwer homes and destroyed their property.