It’s no longer time to justify Women’s Land Rights, but to implement it
We’re recapping the key themes from the Africa Land Forum 2021 this week, with a focus on how it is trying to build partnerships for advancing the SDGs through people-centred land governance.
Missed the highlights from Day 1? You can find them here.
Below are the highlights from Day 2:
1. All the speakers at plenary echoed these words in one way or another: It’s no longer the time to justify Women’s Land Rights, but to implement it.
2. Uneven Ground published by ILC has papers on Women’s Land Rights that contain indicators on how to measure progress in this area: 1, right of use (of everything relating to land); 2, right to change (from one use to another and decision on how land is used); 3, right to profit (securely put in the hands of women); 4, right to transfer and transact (enabling women to undertake a permanent sale or use as collateral); 5, future right (right to inherit and bequeath to the next generation).
It’s no longer the time to justify Women’s Land Rights, but to implement it
3. IGAD, like ILC, is rolling out strategies that focus on building Women’s Land Rights using bottom-up approaches, focusing on multi-year responses to strengthening agency, generating data (see this report by LANDex on Senegal—what gets measured, gets managed), experience-sharing at the national level, legal frameworks to ensure gender equality, a firm response to culture and religion, and much more.
4. We’ve done enough talking, it’s time our gatherings demonstrated solutions. One of such solutions today came from Participatory Rangelands Management, piloted in Kenya and Tanzania, and Regreening Africa that aims to bring under restoration one million hectares of degraded land, impact 500,000 households living on dry and humid landscapes.
We’ve done enough talking, it’s time our gatherings demonstrated solutions
4. Use the power of socially and politically accepted norms. Socially and politically accepted norms and practices incite changes from within, and continuous gender sensitive projects shift narratives on women and youth land rights.
5. Art is amazing and has the power to inspire social change and better land governance, especially among African youth. Most work on art—painting, sculpture, literary, dance, etc.—has land as its core setting. The forthcoming Conference on Land Policy in Africa, mostly virtual, is set to bring this to life.
It’s a youthful continent, and land governance cannot be fully realized without Africa’s youth
6. It’s a youthful continent, and land governance cannot be fully realized without Africa’s youth. Accelerate SDG implementation with youth at the center. Strengthen youth voices though a multi-disciplinary approach so that it answers to questions of climate change mitigation, food security, decent work and partnerships can be realized through use of technology, social media and networks.
A theme across today was giving women and youth access to and control of land, and the focus on solutions to speed that up, combined with a sense of urgency for coordinated concrete actions—in the months and years to come.