Land Rights

Citation:

Holden, Stein T., Klaus Deininger, and Hosaena Ghebru. 2011. “Tenure Insecurity, Gender, Low-Cost Land Certification and Land Rental Market Participation in Ethiopia.” Journal of Development Studies 47 (1): 31–47. doi:10.1080/00220381003706460.

Authors: Stein T. Holden , Klaus Deininger, Hosaena Ghebru

Abstract:

There is a renewed interest in whether land reforms can contribute to market development and poverty reduction in Africa. This paper assesses effects on the allocative efficiency of the land rental market of the low-cost approach to land registration and certification of restricted property rights that was implemented in Ethiopia in the late 1990s. Four rounds of a balanced household panel from 16 villages in northern Ethiopia are analysed, showing that land certification initially enhanced land rental market participation of (potential) tenant and landlord households, especially those that are headed by females.

Annotation:

Quotes:

“An important policy issue is whether land reforms can contribute to enhancing the allocative efficiency and therefore augment the productivity and poverty reduction effects of land rental markets (Otsuka, 2007; de Janvry et al., 2001; Holden et al., 2008). Besley (1995) and Brasselle et al. (2002) identified three main types of effects that could contribute to enhanced investments, land productivity and land market activity related to land reforms. These are the assurance (tenure security), realisability (gains from trade) and collateralisation effects. The main novel contribution of this paper is to provide a rigorous assessment of the impact of the recent low-cost land registration and certification reform in the Tigray region in Ethiopia on land rental market activity. In Ethiopia, we may ignore the collateralisation effect as land sales and mortgaging of land remain illegal, but the first two effects may be important given that past policies created tenure insecurity and suppressed land transfers. About 50 per cent of the households in our baseline survey in 1998 feared they would lose land in redistributions they expected would occur in the future.” (32)

“Female heads of household (widows, divorced and single women) also received certificates in their name for land in their possession. Traditionally, women move to the home of the husband upon marriage, the husband is in charge of land management and only men can cultivate with oxen. Female-headed households therefore face problems with land management and therefore commonly rent out much of their land (Ghebru and Holden, 2008). Their relatively weak position makes their tenure more insecure because of their limited ability to till the land (drawing on a ‘land to the tiller’ philosophy) and the demand for land by (male) in-laws and blood relatives. The receipt of land certificates is likely to have strengthened the position and ability of female land possessors to rent out land without risking the loss of possession. We develop a theoretical model which shows that asset poverty enhances and tenure insecurity suppresses female landlord households’ land renting, but that land certification strengthens tenure security and should enhance such activity.” (32)

“The Ethiopian land reform in 1975 made all land state land, eliminated the wealthy rural landlord elite, and prohibited land sales and rentals and hiring of labour (Rahmato, 1984). Based on a ‘land to the tiller’ ideology, communities (peasant associations established by the new regime) distributed land to households based on their family size (their need and ability to cultivate), creating an egalitarian land distribution that required follow-up redistributions to maintain the egalitarian distribution and provide land to new households. However, such redistributions created tenure insecurity which was thought to undermine investment incentives (Alemu, 1999; Holden and Yohannes, 2002; Deininger and Jin, 2006). Households that rented out their land feared losing it in the next redistribution.” (33)

“After a long civil war, the military government was overthrown and a new government was formed in 1991. Eritrea succeeded in achieving independence and a more market-friendly policy was introduced in Ethiopia. Some political and administrative authority was devolved from the federal to the regional governments; in the case of land policies, a new federal land proclamation was introduced in 1995 and regional land proclamations were made at times subsequently allowing some local variation in land laws (provided they did not violate the federal land law).” (33)

“Even though the 1975 land reform in Ethiopia contributed to an egalitarian land distribution, land rental markets have been very active and are dominated by sharecropping arrangements (Teklu and Lemi, 2004; Holden and Ghebru, 2006; Bezabih and Holden, 2006; Pender and Fafchamps, 2006; Deininger et al., 2008b; Tadesse et al., 2008). Ghebru and Holden (2008) found the land rental market in Tigray to be characterised by substantial transaction costs and asymmetries in market access due to the rationing of tenants by landlords. Many actual and potential tenants failed to rent in as much land as they wanted to (Ghebru and Holden, 2008). A large share of the contracts was among kin and kinship relations, appearing to improve access to rentable land (Holden and Ghebru, 2006). In the Amhara region of Ethiopia, Deininger et al. (2008b) also found evidence of high transaction costs in the land rental market, as did Tikabo et al. (2007) in Eritrea. 

In this context, whether registration and certification has contributed to increased tenure security, especially for the poor, including women, are important policy concerns. Anecdotal evidence from Tigray (Haile et al., 2005; MUT, 2003) suggests that women think differently than men about their land certificates as their tenure rights have been less secure; this may imply that certificates have a greater welfare- enhancing effect on women. Furthermore, cultural rules constraining women’s ability to cultivate their land means that single women need to depend on assistance from men, or they must rent out their land. This cultural taboo means that female- headed households in Tigray are often landlords because they are poor in non-land resources (MUT, 2003). Certification may have strengthened the bargaining power of female-headed households in the land rental market, reducing their poverty.” (34)

Topics: Economies, Poverty, Gender, Land Tenure, Governance, Households, Rights, Land Rights Regions: Africa, East Africa Countries: Ethiopia

Year: 2011

Citation:

Hatcher, Jeffrey, Laura Meggiolare, and Catia-Isabel Santonico Ferrer. 2005. Cultivating Women’s Rights for Access to Land. Rome: Action Aid International.

Authors: Jeffrey Hatcher, Laura Meggiolare, Catia-Isabel Santonico Ferrer

Abstract:

This desk study provides an analysis of the constraints and discriminations that women face with respect to access to rural land with the hope of informing future policy and civil society interventions. The country studies presented below investigate statutory and customary discriminations, and they attempt to place the theme of women’s access to land into a larger socio-cultural frame of reference. Conceptualized as a desk study, this report offers a unique review of existing literature on women’s land rights issues providing analysis and recommendations for selected developing countries where most population depends on agriculture for sustenance. The choice of the countries covered was based on the needs of the European Union funded International Food Security Network (IFSN) project currently implemented by ActionAid and partners.  Being a desk study, the authors faced considerable challenges in reaching an in-depth understanding of women’s own view on the land rights question. The aim of this study is not to substitute for a detailed country level analysis but rather to highlight the need for reflection on the work that is already being undertaken and build upon it.

Topics: Civil Society, Gender, Women, International Organizations, Rights, Land Rights, Women's Rights

Year: 2005

Citation:

Hall, Ruth, and Ben Cousins. 2013. “Livestock and the Rangeland Commons in South Africa’s Land and Agrarian Reform.” African Journal of Range & Forage Science 30 (1-2): 11–15. doi:10.2989/10220119.2013.768704.

Authors: Ruth Hall, Ben Cousins

Abstract:

Land and agrarian reform has the potential to expand South Africa's rangeland commons and enhance their contribution to the livelihoods of the rural poor, yet to a large extent this has been an opportunity missed. Shifting policy agendas have prioritised private land rights and commercial land uses, seeking to dismantle the racial divide between the white commercial farming areas and the ex-Bantustans by allocating former white farms to black farmers. These agendas and planning models reflect class and gender bias and a poor understanding of common property. If reform policies are to contribute to the reduction of high levels of rural poverty and inequality, then greater recognition of the potential role of livestock production on the commons must inform policy and planning.

Keywords: communal rangelands, land reform, livestock, natural resource management, South Africa

Topics: Class, Economies, Economic Inequality, Poverty, Gender, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Households, Livelihoods, Political Economies, Race, Rights, Land Rights, Property Rights Regions: Africa, Southern Africa Countries: South Africa

Year: 2013

Citation:

Gray, Leslie, and Michael Kevane. 1999. “Diminished Access, Diverted Exclusion: Women and Land Tenure in Sub-Saharan Africa.” African Studies Review 42 (2): 15-39. doi:10.2307/525363.

Authors: Leslie Gray, Michael Kevane

Abstract:

Increasing commercialization, population growth and concurrent increases in land value have affected women’s land rights in Africa. Most of the literature concentrates on how these changes have led to an erosion of women’s rights. This paper examines some of the processes by which women’s rights to land are diminishing. First, we examine cases where rights previously utilized have become less important; that is, the incidence of exercising rights has decreased. Second, we investigate how women’s rights to land decrease as the public meanings underlying the social interpretation and enforcement of rights are. Third, we examine women’s diminishing access to land when the actual rules of access change. While this situation may sound grim, the paper also explores how women have responded to reductions in access to land. They have mounted both legal and customary challenges to inheritance laws, made use of anonymous land markets, organized formal cooperative groups to gain tenure rights, and manipulated customary rules using woman-to-woman marriages and mother-son partnerships. These actions have caused women to create new routes of access to land and in some cases new rights.

Topics: Economies, Gender, Women, Land Tenure, Rights, Land Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Africa

Year: 1999

Citation:

Goebel, Allison. 2005. Gender and Land Reform: The Zimbabwe Experience. Montreal, Canada: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Author: Allison Goebel

Abstract:

Zimbabwe's nationalist and post-colonial ambitions have been largely defined by land reform. Allison Goebel assesses Zimbabwe's successes and failures in incorporating gender issues into the broader project of land redistribution. Based on fieldwork in the Sengezi resettlement area in east central Zimbabwe in the late 1990s and 2002, Gender and Land Reform situates gender within the larger issues of race, class, and international political economy. Goebel examines the social forces and effects of the resettlement process, including state policy and legislation, customary norms and practices, local institutions, and ideologies and cosmologies. Her study emphasizes the strategic choices women make in new institutional and household contexts and considers the interests of poor women who have been marginalized within the land reform process. (Abstract from book description)

Annotation:

Quotes:

“However, as this article will show, the hotly debated negotiations of women’s status and gender relations are part and parcel of current debates and practices regarding land reform, both at the level of state discourse, laws and policies, and at the level of communities and households in rural areas. Further, negotiations of gender parallel and are linked with other post-colonial negotiations of power along race and class lines.” (146)

“Women, particularly rural peasant women, form another group subject to certain types of exclusion, which have been accompanied by gender-specific discursive justification. This paper attempts to unravel the nature of this exclusion by examining the implications for rural women and gender in the evolving land reform process. I look specifically at (1) the emerging opportunities and constraints for small-scale women farmers of ‘fast track’ and beyond particularly as represented by state policy and practice, (2) the role of traditional authorities and the re-emergence of ‘culture’ in land allocation and administration and (3) the inter-relationships between these two. I apply a feminist materialist perspective, but as informed by post-structuralist feminist analysis to these interrelationships. This analysis interrogates the nature and role of the state as agent of gender transformation, the importance of discourses and flows of power at and between the locations of households, communities and the state and its local agents, while at the same time flagging the crucial material underpinnings of rural women’s position and opportunities, especially as they relate to arable land. Through this analysis, important contours of cultural transformation in a case of post-colonial economic and political change are revealed. First, however, details of the land crisis are outlined.” (147)

“Zimbabwe’s land reform process has so far had contradictory effects for women.” (152)

“The tenuousness of women’s relationship to resettlement land must also be understood through the lens of culture and ritual, particularly through the ways in which ‘tradition’ is being deployed in the resettlement context. Chiefs have no formal authority in the resettlement areas of the 1980s and 1990s and these areas do not have local institutions associated with tradition, such as headmen. Also, resettlement villages are not arranged according to lineage groups. Nevertheless, aspects of traditional culture such as family ancestor appeasement and bringing home the dead (kurova gova) are commonly practised. These practices enact and express a cosmology that understands the environs as populated by and under the care of ancestral spirits. The practices also reinforce patrilineal control of land and hence distance women from the possibility of controlling land in their own right.” (153)

“The promotion of women’s rights to land therefore cannot be only a political project of the state (e.g. a question of resettlement policy and laws), but must incorporate the insight that such a promotion is a profound challenge to a living cultural tradition that understands land and the environment as a key element of hegemonic masculinity and patriarchy. “ (154)

“Regrettably, there is little fieldwork-based evidence to draw on to tell us about the experience of women since 1998.” (156)

“The Zimbabwean experience indicates the centrality of the conflict between African customary practice and a modern rights-based legal framework in relation to women’s land rights. While the Zimbabwean government clearly has not been as committed to the inclusion of equality rights for women as the South African state appears to be, both states face a similar post-colonial challenge. They are both attempting to forge a nationalist land reform process from within a colonial legacy of a dual legal system and historical race-based injustice, in a contemporary context within which ‘tradition’ and ‘culture’ play central roles in how many men struggle for identity and power. Meanwhile, many women demand equal rights and opportunities, utilizing a modern understanding of equality rights.” (159)

Topics: Class, Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Economies, Poverty, Gender, Women, Governance, Households, Livelihoods, Political Economies, Race, Rights, Land Rights, Property Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Africa, Southern Africa Countries: Zimbabwe

Year: 2005

Citation:

Goodnow, Jacqueline J., and Jeanette A. Lawrence. 2010. “Inheritance Norms for Distributions of Money, Land, and Things in Families.” Family Science 1 (2): 73–82. doi:10.1080/19424620.2010.536411.

Authors: Jacqueline J. Goodnow, Jeanette A. Lawrence

Abstract:

Inheritance events provide a window onto family relationships, especially across generations. This review brings together analyses of the expected distribution of money, land, and personal possessions, outlining for each the choices faced, the competing norms that come into play, and the concerns that may tip the balance between these. Brought out are points of difference in what is thought should happen with money, land, and things, together with common themes (e.g., concerns with continuity and with not treating family transfers as if they were market exchanges). Brought out also are several directions for further research and for conceptual links to analyses of close relationships.

Keywords: inheritance arrangements, distribution norms, money, land, personal possessions

Topics: Economies, Gender, Households, Rights, Land Rights

Year: 2010

Citation:

Authors: Guro Glavin, Kristian Stokke, Henrik Wiig

Abstract:

This article analyses how civil society organisations (CSOs) influenced the implementation of the National Land Titling Project (PETT) in Peru. Land titling projects such as PETT raise a number of questions about the social implications of formalisation. Women often are disadvantaged when it comes to land titling, due to several factors such as lack of legal documentation, illiteracy and the predominant gender division of labour. However, evaluations of the formalisation process in Peru show that there has been an increase in the incidence of joint ownership from the first phase of the implementation process to the second, even though the joint titling of land to couples was never adopted as official policy. Heavy criticism was raised towards PETT by feminist non-governmental organisations and social movements in the late nineties, promoting equal land rights. At the time of implementation, political changes were occurring in Peru, creating space for new actors, and a change in the extent of repression of collective actors. These changes seem to have created a good environment for action. Researchers mention the mobilisation as a possible explanation for the increase in joint ownership, suggesting that the activism of CSOs led the implementing agency to favour joint ownership between spouses. Uncovering the impacts of collective action requires close attention to the dynamic interplay between the capacities and strategies of CSOs and the political spaces for their claims and campaigns.

Keywords: civil society, mobilization, social movements, impact, gender equality, land rights, collective action

Topics: Civil Society, Feminisms, Gender, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Governance, International Organizations, NGOs, Political Economies, Rights, Land Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Americas, South America Countries: Peru

Year: 2013

Citation:

Fitzpatrick, Daniel. 2012. “Land Policy in Post-Conflict Circumstances: Some Lessons from East Timor.” Journal of Humanitarian Assistance, Forthcoming, online

Author: Daniel Fitzpatrick

Abstract:

In the wake of adverse assessments of UN peace-building missions in Kosovo and Sierra Leone, the Report of the Panel on UN Peace Operations ("the Brahimi Report") was commissioned to consider UN peacekeeping and related field operations. Its recommendations range widely from the structure and role of various UN agencies, including the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, to the importance of "clear, credible and achievable" mandates. Most relevantly, for our purposes, the Brahimi Report recommends development of "peace-building strategies" (para. 2 (c)), including pre-selecting collegiate "rule of law" teams consisting inter alia of judicial and human rights specialists (para. 10).

Although little further detail is given, the assumption underlying these last recommendations is that, despite the variety of circumstances in which there will be UN peace-building missions, it is possible to develop in advance certain strategies, and pre-select specialist rule of law teams, so that future peace-building efforts may be facilitated. This article considers this assumption in relation to land policy in post-conflict circumstances. It does so by analysing UNTAET’s land policy in the immediate aftermath of the conflict in East Timor; and it argues, in particular, that lessons from the successes and failures of this policy may be applied to generate certain recommendations for template land strategies in other peace-building and post-conflict environments.

Keywords: land, title, East Timor, post-conflict, land policy

Topics: Development, Humanitarian Assistance, International Organizations, Peacebuilding, Peacekeeping, Post-Conflict, Post-Conflict Reconstruction, Rights, Human Rights, Land Rights Regions: Oceania Countries: Timor-Leste

Year: 2012

Citation:

Farha, Leilani. 2000. “Women’s Rights to Land, Property and Housing.” Forced Migration Review 7: 23–6.

Author: Leilani Farha

Abstract:

For many women, rights to land, property and housing are essential to their livelihood and survival, particularly in the aftermath of war and conflict. However, many women in countries across the world are prohibited from owning or inheriting land from husbands who have died in the conflict. They are therefore left, stranded, without means of subsistence or ways of providing for their families. This short article explores the Kigali Conference that took place in Kigali, Rwanda in the aftermath of the Rwandan conflict. The conference was dedicated exclusively to this issue which has been rarely addressed. The article is a brief summary of the objectives of the Conference, the obstacles facing women in their quest to own property, stories of success in which women have been able to obtain rights to land and property, and where to go from here in continuing to further those objectives.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Gender, Women, International Organizations, Livelihoods, Post-Conflict, Post-Conflict Reconstruction, Rights, Land Rights, Property Rights, Women's Rights

Year: 2000

Relevant Links: http://www.fmreview.org/issues/copyright

Citation:

Chapoto, Antony, T. S. Jayne, and Nicole M. Mason. 2011. “Widows’ Land Security in the Era of HIV/AIDS: Panel Survey Evidence from Zambia.” Economic Development and Cultural Change 59 (3): 511–47. doi:10.1086/658346.

Authors: Antony Chapoto, T. S. Jayne, Nicole M. Mason

Abstract:

In areas of Africa hard hit by HIV/AIDS, there are growing concerns that many women lose access to land after the death of their husbands. However, there remains a dearth of quantitative evidence on the proportion of widows who lose access to their deceased husbands’ land, whether they lose all or part of that land, and whether there are factors specific to the widow, her family, or the broader community that influence her ability to maintain rights to land. This study examines these issues using average treatment effects models with propensity score matching applied to nationally-representative panel data of 5,342 rural households surveyed in 2001 and 2004. Results are highly variable, with roughly a third of households incurring the death of a male household head controlling less than 50 percent of the land they had prior to their husband’s death, while over a quarter actually controlled as much or even more land than while their husbands were alive. Widows who were in relatively wealthy households prior to their husband’s death lose proportionately more land than widows in households that were relatively poor. Older widows and widows related to the local headman enjoy greater land security. Women in matrilineal inheritance areas were no less likely to lose land than women in patrilineal areas.

Topics: Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Health, HIV/AIDS, Households, Rights, Land Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Africa, Southern Africa Countries: Zambia

Year: 2011