FAO Miscellaneous Land Tenure Documents

A joint IIED- FAO- IFAD publication. The first detailed study of large scale land acquisitions in Africa analyses the modalities and likely impacts. The study highlights the possible opportunities (investments, rising agricultural productivity and rural incomes), if things are managed well and warns about the risks (uncompensated loss of land rights for the rural poor) if contracts are not properly negotiated and enforced. It makes recommendations to the main stakeholders to make this new trend useful for food security and rural development.

This Handbook is intended to practically assist a variety of actors and institutions, including headquarters and field staff, to secure protection and durable solutions for refugees and other displaced persons through the application of the Principles on Housing and Property Restitution to various situations of displacement. The document was prepared jointly by OCHA/IDD, UN HABITAT, UNHCR, FAO, OHCHR and the Norwegian Refugee Council and the NRC Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre.

This joint FAO-World Bank publication aims to draw attention to the negative impacts of weak governance in land administration and to point out the manifold benefits of good governance in the protection of property rights and the development of efficient land and property markets. It provides positive examples of good practices from around the world, as well as an overview of principles and key questions to be applied in any country for the evaluation of governance in land administration.

Planning at the micro-regional level can be an effective instrument in efforts to promote rural and regional development in Central and Eastern Europe. Integrated rural development projects and programmes are needed to tackle the problems of deteriorating conditions in the rural areas. This paper serves as a practical introduction on how planning at the micro-regional level may be addressed. It is intended as a briefing for field people involved in the process, many of whom may be drawn from different technical and professional backgrounds.

Hunger and poverty are, in general, consequences of inadequate and restricted access to land and other resources, such as capital, inputs and technology; being women among those with less access to land, while accounting for a large share in small-scale food production. Over the past few decades, governments and civil society have been attempting to implement land regulations that seek to improve women's land rights. Nevertheless, most initiatives developed to promote land reform programmes continue to underestimate the implications that gender asymmetric land policies entail for agriculture and food security. Most modern institutional arrangements for land tenure tend to maintain existing gender and social inequities. Political changes are required to revisit existing institutional mechanisms to ensure that rights to land are acknowledged as basic human rights and that women's equal rights are effectively incorporated into land policy and tenure programmes. This compendium has been put together to provide an improved understanding of the complex issues concerning gender and land.