Lessons learned

Topic:	Grassroots women’s participation and the Global Land Tool Network.
Author:	Britta Uhlig, UN-HABITAT, Nairobi (Kenya) Clarissa Ruggieri, FAO, Rome (Italy)
Background document:	GLTN, Grassroots and Land Tool Development Brief, 2010. GLTN, Gender evaluation criteria for large-scale land tools, 2009 Saskia Ruijsink, GLTN Roundtable on Gender Evaluation Criteria on 25 March 2010 at the World Urban Forum 5 in Rio, GLTN, 2010 GLTN, Scaling-up community-led initiatives as part of the “Grassroots Mechanism”, Conceptual framework for Documentation, GLTN Working Paper
Applied Participatory Approaches:	GLTN Grassroots Mechanism  GLTN Gender evaluation criteria for large-scale land tools

 

1. Introduction

Women are often amongst the majority and in many circumstances the most severely affected group by poverty and food insecurity in the developing countries. When they live in grassroots circumstances, women often lack security of tenure or otherwise face problems with lack of land reform and proper land management and administration, which leads to their poverty and disadvantage. In developing countries it is estimated that only 30% of the land is administrated and 70% is not. Only 3% of women hold documents that provide secure tenure of land.

In rural areas grassroots women include small farmers (tenants, freehold, informal), small and nomadic pastoralists, landless labourers, farm workers, indigenous peoples, forest dwellers, coastal dwellers, people living in informal settlements, refuges and internally displaced people. Among these groups, but also in the urban areas, women represent the most vulnerable segment for a number of reasons such as patriarchal attitudes, cultural practices favouring men, discrimination and injustice under various guises.

The Global Land Tool Network (GLTN) originates from a request made by Member States and local communities worldwide to UN Habitat and was established in 2006 as a global partnership of key international actors working together to address land tenure and land reforms issues. The Network aims to help attain the MDGs on poverty alleviation, improved land management and security of tenure. Since its establishment, the GLTN coalition has expanded to 42 partners. These include professional groups, multilateral and bilateral organizations. The number of partners is growing continuously.
To reach the overall goal of poverty alleviation through land reform, improved land management and security of tenure, GLTN's Partners have identified 18 key land tools (practical ways of implementing land policies) which need to be addressed in order to deal with poverty and land issues at the country level, across all regions. The Partners of GLTN believe that the lack of these tools has hindered the large scale implementation of land policies worldwide. These 18 tools are grouped into 5 overarching themes:

1. land rights, records and registration;
2. land use planning;
3. land management, administration and information;
4. land law and enforcement; and
5. land value capture.

But these tools cannot be addressed in technical isolation. Therefore, 8 cross-cutting issues have also been identified which need to be associated with tool development, documentation and dissemination:

1. land governance;
2. tenure security indicators for the MDGs;
3. capacity building mechanism;
4. Islamic mechanism;
5. post conflict/natural disaster;
6. environment mechanism;
7. gender mechanism; and
8. grassroots mechanism.

Gender responsiveness is one of the core values of GLTN. As such every land tool, existing or under development, needs to be evaluated for its gender responsiveness. In developing large scale tools, GLTN partners will be encouraged and supported in undertaking an approach to their work which consistently considers gender dimensions.
The crosscutting issue the ‘Gender Mechanism’ proposes a multi-stage, multi-stakeholder approach for systematically gendering land tools and engages with tools relating to women’s and men’s land, property and housing rights in both the urban and rural sector. Land tools have often been designed to serve male interests and priorities. To be effective, these tools need to be developed to also incorporate women’s experiences, needs and participation. This means recognizing that tools may impact differently on men and women. It also requires that women and men are actively involved in the design of the tool, implementation and evaluation processes. In addition, the diversity of women has to be recognized, with special attention given to, for example, female heads of households, widows and refugees.

In many countries, there exist potentially progressive laws and policies on land administration and reform, housing and planning. The challenge is often one of implementation: how to turn these into realities on the ground in a way that is affordable and large scale.  Many answers to this challenge are being developed “from below”. Grassroots organisations and the civil society organisations that work with them are pioneering innovative ways to make implementation happen. These approaches tend to have one thing in common; instead of seeing communities as passive recipients of government intervention, they are based on the mobilisation of communities as active partners in implementation. Yet grassroots organisations often face challenges in moving from pilot activities to implementation at scale. These include:

• maintaining the quality of grassroots participation when an approach is replicated at scale, in new locations, and when there is not only a bottom-up, but also a top-down demand for replication;
• the need to communicate to others how to replicate the approach, including a critical understanding of the opportunities and pitfalls involved, and of how they can be addressed;
• the need to work in a partnership with government agencies at the regional and national level; and
• the need to mobilise larger-scale donor support.

GLTN through its grassroots partners works within its crosscutting issue ‘Grassroots Mechanism’ to help grassroots organisations to take these opportunities and overcome these challenges. It focuses on enabling a process of learning and communication to take place, to allow grassroots solutions to make the leap from innovative pilot initiatives to large scale impact.

While some tools demand high levels of participation (e.g. co-management approaches), even other seemingly technical tools (e.g. land tax, regional land use planning) have clear roles for grassroots participation, either in implementation or design. Furthermore, even if there are many models of participation, the key issue for success is not what, but how the participatory process is designed and used in a particular process, with the groups targeted.

Many lessons have been learned by GLTN through a wide range of grassroots participation experiences in the area of land, involving both men and women . This article presents some recent experiences from (1) piloting a GLTN tool for evaluating the gender responsiveness of large scale land interventions and (2) Scaling up community-ledinitiatives. Specific lessons are suggested: they provide general and gender-related evidence and recommendations for effective participation at grassroots level.

 

2. GLTN tool for evaluating the gender responsiveness of large scale land interventions

The Gender Evaluation Criteria is one of the important land tools of the Global Land Tool Network. It provides a matrix for carrying out a gender land evaluation based on a set of criteria and questions to judge whether a large scale land tool is responsive to both women and men's needs. It helps to understand if a land project is working on the ground and guides on how to assure gender responsiveness becomes part of a land tool. In this respect it goes beyond saying how important gender is but shows how gender can and should be integrated in land projects - and therewith makes the important step from policy development to implementation.

In 2009 and early 2010 the matrix was tested in cooperation with Huairou Commission in Ghana, Brazil and Nepal. The findings presented at the World Urban Forum 5 in Rio de Janeiro (March 2010), are summarized below.

In Brazil the Gender Evaluation Criteria have been used to raise awareness and assess the gender responsiveness of the Master Planning approach which has been applied under the City Statute in Recife. Espaço Feminista, a grassroots women’s organisation based in Recife, supported grassroots women leaders in using the matrix to interview government officials and other stakeholders in regard to the gender responsiveness of the Master Plans, specifically looking at a community called Santo Amaro. The piloting exercise focused on building the capacity of grassroots women, enabling them to hold the authorities accountable, and on increasing gender sensitivity. The criteria and questions therefore had to be adapted to the national context and translated into the national language. The following lessons learned can be highlighted

• Lessons learned – engagement: The support of the Global Land Tool Network was crucial to bring different actors to the process and to help build partnerships. Equal partnerships have proven to be key to make the process work; partnering with different stakeholders was essential, including land professionals, researchers and policy makers. The pilot team had a process of learning by doing and working together and learned from each other the true value of partnerships and that women, including grassroots women, can influence institutions.
• Lessons learned – empowerment: Using the criteria matrix to evaluate a land tool represented a unique experience for grassroots women; its role for women’s empowerment is very evident. Looking back on the experience it would have been possible to answer the questions in a much simpler manner, less time consuming. But then it would not have made a difference on women’s knowledge and awareness around land tools. Eventually the capacity building process was very important and probably the time investment was crucial for this.
• Lessons learned – accountability: The pilot team concludes that engagement in land tool development and implementation processes increases women’s empowerment. It allows land processes to be influenced by women’s lived experiences and cater better for their needs. Carrying out a bottom-up evaluation, using gender sensitive indicators, can be very powerful to hold governments accountable; the matrix is an advocacy tool for grassroots women.
  

Through the pilot project, women and the grassroots organisation Espaço Feminsita have become empowered and have gained the knowledge and confidence to negotiate with the government . As a result the government announced at the World Urban Forum in Rio de Janeiro that after 40 years of struggle, about 8,500 families comprising the four communities of Ponte Do Madoro of Santo Amoro will not be evicted but regularised. GLTN will continue partnering with Huairou Commission in supporting Espaço Feminista throughout the regularization process of Santo Amaro to ensure that the process really takes women’s, as well as men’s, interests into consideration.

In Ghana the Gender Evaluation Criteria have been used to assess the gender responsiveness of the Land Administration Programme (LAP). The grassroots organization Ghana Sisterhood Foundation, focussing on women’s empowerment in the rural and patriarchal north of Ghana, has decided to focus piloting only on one of the criteria, which relates to social and cultural considerations in regard to women’s and men’s access to land. In the frame of implementing the LAP “Customary Land Secretariats” have been established around Ghana, which aim to take advantage of the customary system in administering land, and integrating it into the formal. The testing included community-led research to gauge or measure women's understanding of the land reforms through focus group discussions, interviews, seminars etc., in other word it aimed to reveal the communities’ understanding of the LAP and compiling an overview and mapping of institutions and others who are engaged in LAP.

The challenges met during the Project implementation include the inadequate knowledge and understanding of the tool among stakeholders. Furthermore the project operates in a large geographical spread and with little resources and time constrains (a short period of testing). Language barriers in translating the criteria - it was tested in a region with varied languages and dialects - added
to this problem.

It would be useful to tailor more resources (information, financial and human) towards building and growing the knowledge levels of women, allowing them that they will make the right choices and decisions. To meet the global aspirations of women and those vulnerable to land, shelter and self dignity, more resources need to be tailored to programmes that will ensure women’s capacity to compete favourably in the rising land market.

On the other hand, valuable strengths can be highlighted. The piloting has helped to built understanding of grassroots women, youth and traditional leaders, organizations, and communities of the land tool and of the functions of the Customary Land Secretariat. The process developed a strategic alliance and resulted in advanced advocacy on repeal of traditional and customary practices of land administration, concerning the inheritance of land and other valuable property and the positioning of women in traditional chiefdom to control land. The process strengthened women’s capacity to resist land and property grabbing and gentrification and increased space and voice for women’s participation in land administration and management, eventually leading to increased ownership through titling and documentation.

In Nepal the Gender Evaluation Criteria have been used to assess the degree to which the land management process adopts a gender equitable approach, as well as the functioning of the High
Level Scientific Land Reform Commission (HLSLRC) and the Ministry of Land Reform and Management (MOLRM). Lumanti, a women’s empowerment organization focussing on shelter and housing rights, used the pilot to build a relationship with a number of key land players, including the Land Reform Ministry. While carrying out the land evaluation, for example, they had a number of meetings with the Land Reform Commission, engaged the media and conducted a sensitization event around the need to include women’s needs and issues into land reform, but also, to ensure women are on the Commission. They were successful in their lobby – one grassroots woman now sits on the Squatters Commission.  

LUMANTI spent a lot of time to convince government to gain their confidence, explaining that the gender criteria would help rather than hinder (or criticize) them. The series of meetings held with government paid off, as the government became keen to understand and work with the process, and specifically to localize it in the Nepalese context.

Contributions of piloting mainly consist in capacity building: grassroots people are more aware and confident to push the agenda. The process provided a common platform for the government, community and other stakeholders to discuss and agree on promotion of gender equality. Trust has been built and linkages have been strengthened with different stakeholders.

To sum up through the pilots, women and grassroots organisations from three countries, Brazil, Ghana and Nepal, have become empowered and have gained the knowledge and confidence to negotiate with the government as what transpired in Brazil. The lessons gathered form the above mentioned experiences can be summarized as follows:

• The Gender Evaluation Criteria are a useful tool for analysing the gender-responsiveness of land tools, however, it still need to be worked on developing and managing knowledge on gender responsive land tools. In order to do so the matrix with the criteria need to be simplified and a guide on how to use and interpret it need to be developed.
• The matrix has proven to be very helpful for advocacy and awareness and facilitated capacity building. All actors involved were forced to dig into/ explore the land tools that affect them, to learn more about the land tools and to look at them critically and eventually conclude on the gender responsiveness. This was a process of learning by doing, which eventually is the way to learn. However, providing training and guidance, developing training material and rolling out a short training programme, can improve performance and shorten the learning by doing process. This should result in more efficient land and gender analysis.
• Capacity of a variety of actors involved in gender and land analysis, however, need to be built and awareness need to be raised at all levels concerning the importance of developing and implementing gender responsive land tools and policies.
• The pilot teams have identified most opportunities for tool improvement focusing on participation. The pilot shows us that improving participatory decision making and building capacity of mainly women and men who are impacted by the land tools can have a big impact and will be a good starting point for tool improvement.

 

3. Scaling up community-led initiatives

The “Grassroots Mechanism”, described in the Introduction, is currently being developed in particular by four Global Land Tool Network (GLTN) Partners: Hakijamii Trust, Huairou Commission, International Land Coalition (ILC) and Slum/Shack Dwellers International (SDI). It is a cross-cutting strategy that responds to the need for grassroots participation in land tool design and development and comprises 4 functions:

• Ensuring grassroots participation in large-scale land tool development;
• Scaling up community-led initiatives;
• Strengthening the capacity of the grassroots to engage in land administration and land management;
• Promoting grassroots participation approaches amongst GLTN partners.

A workshop in Nov. 2009 focused on the second function – scaling-up community-led initiatives
– as a first step in implementing the Grassroots Mechanism strategy. This has led to the support of 4 projects in 2010, implemented by grassroots organisations affiliated to one of the GLTN partners in India, Peru, Tanzania and the Philippines. The assistance GLTN and partners are giving to these grassroots projects is intended to enable a process of learning and communication to take place, to allow grassroots solutions to make the leap from pilots to large scale impact. It enables experimental replication in new locations as a basis for learning, as well as critical and objective evaluation and documentation.

The pilots are still at an early stage of implementation and lessons learnt cannot be drawn yet. However, the conceptual framework of the initiative describes the mayor challenges for up-scaling grassroots approaches.

Given that grassroots land tools envisage the mobilisation of communities as active partners in policy implementation, and given that such community mobilisation is the basis of the very substantial added value that the grassroots can bring to land policy implementation, it is clear that scaling-up community-led land tool initiatives must involve establishing a working relationship between, on the one hand, communities and their organisations, and on the other, the policy implementation apparatus of the state at city, regional and national levels.

Scaling-up community-led initiatives may involve challenges in lots of areas, such as in community mobilising, mapping or surveying technologies or public service management and governance. Yet these challenges are not particular to the processes of scaling-up discussed here. The challenges that are uniquely posed by scaling-up community-led initiatives are those concerned with establishing a working relationship between communities and the state.

These challenges can be further grouped as:

• Reconciling top-down and bottom-up organisational approaches:  Within the state apparatus, policy objectives and corresponding implementation targets are set at the highest level, in contrast, community-level organisations and institutions such as savings groups,  women's groups and other community fora are likely to have a variety of interests and priorities of community members. Thus state actors might tend to instrumentalise participation as a way of furthering the achievement of policy goals. Community participation may be instrumentalised, not only from above, but also from below. Community members may seek to “game” a participatory initiative by responding tactically in an attempt to influence decision-making. For example, community members may withhold or distort information, or they may tactically adjust their demands and perspectives (e.g. “telling them what they want to hear”). Again, such instrumentalisation can lead to the failure of a collaborative initiative between communities and the state. 

• Reconciling competing interests: Collaboration between grassroots communities and the state can only be effective when community members feel that they have a stake in the process and its outcomes. Scaling-up community-led initiatives must thus reflect the interests of communities and can be expected to encounter resistance from competing interests. In many cases, the competition between the interests of poor communities (and of women and of other marginalised groups such as indigenous peoples, pastoralists and other customary rightsholders, tenants and landless workers, etc.) and economically and politically powerful interest groups, may be such that no scaling-up of community-led initiatives is possible at the present time. There is always a need to attain and maintain political support, particularly through networking and alliance-building. Communities may seek links with political representatives and parties, they may seek to strengthen horizontal links between communities to build social movement organisations, and they may seek to build alliances with other political and social actors such as NGOs, religious institutions, academia, media, international organisations and donors.

• Reconciling local and technical knowledge: One of the great assets of local communities is the knowledge or data that they can offer to any pro-poor reform process. This includes social, economic and demographic data generated through participatory enumerations, spatial data generated through participatory mapping, or other local knowledge, for example about existing customary tenure institutions.

At the same time, the formal system produces information that the grassroots may need. This includes survey data, and the texts of laws and regulations, or other technical requirements of the implementation process (e.g. technical requirements for resource management planning or plans for settlement up-grading). From the grassroots perspective, this information may not meet their standards of comprehensibility (that for example could be met by using non-specialist language, being in a local language, or in an oral form for the illiterate). Without receiving such information in an appropriate form, it can be very difficult for communities to play an active role in policy implementation, particularly in which the principle of informed consent is met.
Communication between the formal government system and communities is therefore a key challenge. Intermediaries such as federations of grassroots organisations, NGOs and professional bodies may often play a key role in facilitating this communication, translating technical information into forms usable by the grassroots, and assisting the grassroots in using technology and appropriate technical methods like participatory mapping to put their knowledge in a form usable by the state. Bridging the gap between local and technical knowledge is also likely to involve building the confidence of technical specialists in the value of local knowledge and information, and building the confidence of communities in the value of putting their knowledge in a more technical form.

 

4. Conclusion

Land and gender is a complex field to work in. In order to address the challenges it is important to make an impact for gender equality in access to land at scale.
The Gender Evaluation Criteria is one of the important land tools of the Global Land Tool Network. It goes beyond saying how important gender is but shows how gender can and should be integrated in land interventions. The piloting process has been a crucial step in gathering lessons learned on this process. Through the pilots, women and grassroots organisations from three countries, Brazil, Ghana and Nepal have become empowered and have gained the knowledge and confidence to negotiate with the government.
Further, the pilot shows us that improving participatory decision making and building capacity of women and men who are impacted by the land tools can have a big impact and will be a good starting point for tool improvement. Thus capacity of a variety of actors involved in gender and land analysis need to be built and awareness need to be raised at all levels concerning the importance of developing and implementing gender responsive land tools and policies.
The scaling up of community–led pilot initiatives has further highlighted a communication gap between the formal government and the communities, responsible for lack of confidence and collaboration between the two systems. Bridging the gap between local and technical knowledge is likely to involve building a reciprocal confidence between the technical specialist and the communities. Such confidence is a fundamental prerequisite for effective knowledge sharing and consensus building, to ensure a concrete stake in a process characterized by competing interests. 
The piloting is still ongoing. GLTN will further investigate the complex aspects of grassroots women’s participation in land issues and continue developing gender responsive and pro-poor land tools; final outcomes and findings as well as new tools will be circulated through reports, guides, trainings and other publications which can be downloaded from the GLTN website at www.gltn.net .