Project implementers and their partners in government and civil society are benefiting from the ideas and activities of teams in other countries as they collaborate to improve the governance of land tenure within the framework of the Voluntary Guidelines.

Sharing experiences and learning from each other at regular meetings enables the project teams to enhance their own activities in areas such as the holding of meaningful stakeholder consultations, processes for recognising customary tenure rights and the use of information technology to improve governance of tenure. The experiences are also shared through a knowledge management platform.

The initiative includes 18 projects funded by the European Union through its Land Governance Programme, which is implemented in the following countries:

Africa: Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Niger, Guinea Bissau, Somalia, South Sudan, Swaziland, Uganda

Asia: Pakistan

Latin America: Brazil, Colombia

The interaction between the projects is facilitated by FAO with financial support from the European Union. This “transversal support” links the individual projects and strengthens their capacity to achieve their objectives within the framework of the Voluntary Guidelines. For projects in Africa, the activities are also consistent with the Framework and Guidelines for Land Policy in Africa and are conducted in collaboration with the Land Policy Initiative, a joint programme of the African Union, African Development Bank and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa.

The transversal support includes technical guidance from FAO drawn from experiences in other countries of supporting the improvement of governance of tenure and the use of the Voluntary Guidelines in areas such as comprehensive assessments of policy and legal frameworks, facilitating multi-stakeholder platforms and using open-source software.