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Realizing women’s rights to land in the law

A guide for reporting on SDG indicator 5.a.2












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    Brochure, flyer, fact-sheet
    Realizing women’s rights to land in the law
    Information note on SDG Indicator 5.a.2
    2018
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    Goal 5 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) “Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls” recognizes the fundamental role of women in achieving poverty reduction, food security and nutrition. Target 5.a aims to “Undertake reforms to give women equal rights to economic resources, as well as access to ownership and control over land and other forms of property, financial services, inheritance and natural resources, in accordance with national laws”. As the designated custodian for Target 5a, FAO has developed a methodology to support countries in monitoring and reporting on progress in the status of women’s land rights protection. Progress in Target 5.a is measured through two indicators that focus on ownership and/or control over land.
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    Book (stand-alone)
    Women’s land rights and agrarian change: Evidence from indigenous communities in Cambodia 2019
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    Current changes in land tenure in Cambodia are reshaping indigenous communities agrarian and socio-economic systems. Customary laws that have determined land usage and rights, are now undergoing profound transformations. The commodification of land, influenced by processes of dispossession and alienation, is reshaping communities’ norms and customs. Land, before freely available to users, is now substantially a private asset and as such transferred from one generation to the next one like other assets. Customary laws derive their legitimacy from social systems that are context specific and change with time. This determines their ambiguous character as instruments for resistance and self-determination as well as generators of unequal social relations in rural communities. The experiences from other continents and countries have shown the contradictory and often conflicting linkage between customary land rights and women’s rights to own land. This study analysis the customary inheritance system of indigenous groups in Northern Cambodia, prevalently centred around matrilineal or bilateral kinship, where women used to inherit and own the principal family assets. The research questions focus on indigenous women’s inheritance and property rights as they apply to land, in the context of increasing land commoditization and scarcity. The aim of the enquiry is to contribute to the understanding of the gender implications of these changes, by gaining insight about women’s position vis-à-vis land property, inheritance and transfer to new generations. The changes in land tenure that have occurred in Ratanakiri province during the last decades have resulted in a substantial alienation of land and resources formerly available to indigenous people. Consequently, the area farmed under shifting cultivation has significantly decreased and been replaced by permanent commercial crops, while the increasing monetization of communities’ economy has triggered new processes of social differentiation. Little support has been given to indigenous farmers in order to manage this transition and adapt their farming system while maintaining its sustainability. The legal instruments deriving from the Land Law, which in theory should have contributed to provide formal legal protecting to indigenous land and allow communities to continue using land according to their traditional tenure system were impaired by delays and the obstacles in the practical implementation of the law. External actors, institutional as well as non-governmental, have been actively promoting agricultural practices centred on rapid gains, unsustainable exploitation of land and forest, carpet introduction of monocultures without creating the conditions for the establishment of favourable value chains and market conditions. The changes that have taken place have important implications in terms of women’s role and status within communities: not only because of the farming system transition, but also as a consequence of the increasing influence of the mainstream culture, in which gender norms are more hierarchical and constrictive then the ones in use among the indigenous peoples targeted by this study. Following the evidence presented here, strengthening indigenous women land rights may result from a multipurpose approach that embraces different areas of interventions and actors, detailed in the recommendations provided.
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    Document
    Report on FAO, UNIFEM and National AIDS CouncilJoint National Workshop on HIV and AIDS, Women's Property Rights and Livelihoods in Zimbabwe
    An Event To Commemorate The World Aids Day and 16 Days Activism against Violence against Women
    2004
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    Two important resolutions for women were adopted by the United Nations last year. One was the UNHABITAT Resolution on “Women's Role and Rights in Human Settlements Development and Slum Upgrading” and the other was the Commission on Human Rights Resolution on “Women's Equal Ownership, Access to, and Control over Land and the Equal Rights to Own Property and to Adequate Housing”. These resolutions recognised the violation of women's property rights as a violation of fundamental hum an rights and the UN's commitment to stop such violations. In 2003, the UN Secretary General commissioned a Special Committee on Women, Girls, and the HIV & AIDS in Southern Africa, recognising that women and girls were the most negatively affected by the HIV & AIDS pandemic. Under this committee, seven key issues were selected for investigation. One of them was HIV & AIDS and property rights of women and girls.

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