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Land and livelihoods making land rights real for India’s rural poor











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    Improving Tenure Security for the Rural Poor: Rwanda – Country Case Study 2006
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    Most of the world’s poor work in the “informal economy” – outside of recognized and enforceable rules. Thus, even though most have assets of some kind, they have no way to document their possessions because they lack formal access to legally recognized tools such as deeds, contracts and permits. The Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor (CLEP) is the first global anti-poverty initiative focusing on the link between exclusion, poverty and law, looking for practical solutions to the cha llenges of poverty. CLEP aims to make legal protection and economic opportunity the right of all, not the privilege of the few. (see http://legalempowerment.undp.org/) FAO, with donor funding from Norway, has undertaken a set of activities for “Improving tenure security of the rural poor” in order to meet the needs of FAO member countries and, in turn, support the CLEP. This work falls within the FAO corporate strategy on “Sustainable rural livelihoods and more equitable access to resources ”. Recognizing that secure access to land and other natural resources (forests, water, fisheries, pastures, etc.) is a crucial factor for eradication of food insecurity and rural poverty, FAO’s cross-departmental and cross-disciplinary work focused 2005-2006 activities on sub-Saharan Africa which has the world’s highest percentage of poor and hungry people.
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    Statutory recognition of customary land rights in Africa
    An investigation into the best practices for lawmaking and implementation
    2010
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    Given the recent trend of granting vast areas of African land to foreign investors, the urgency of placing real ownership in the hands of the people living and making their livelihood upon lands held according to custom cannot be overstated. This study provides guidance on how best to recognize and protect the land rights of the rural poor. Protecting and enforcing the land rights of rural Africans may be best done by passing laws that elevate existing customary land rights up into nations ' formal legal frameworks thereby making customary land rights equal to documented land claims. This publication investigates the various over-arching issues related to the statutory recognition of customary land rights. Three case studies of land laws in Botswana, Tanzania and Mozambique are analysed extensively in content and implementation, concluding with recommendations and practical considerations on how to write a land law that recognizes and formalizes customary land rights. It cautions lawmakers that even excellent laws may, in their implementation, fall prey to political manipulation and suggests various oversight and accountability mechanisms that may be established to ensure that the law is properly implemented, the land claims of rural communities are protected, and the legislative intent of the law is realized.
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    Improving tenure security for the poor in Africa: Mozambique - Country Case Study 2007
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    The paper looks at land tenure in Mozambique, where ever since independence in 1975, property in land has been vested in the state, and despite the political and economic shift to a multiparty system and market economy, this underlying principle has remained in place: no land may be sold, mortgaged, or otherwise encumbered or alienated. Local traditional land management systems meanwhile have retained a robust role as the de facto land management system of Mozambique. These systems – and the rights they attribute to rural people – were formally recognized in the 1995 National Land Policy and subsequent 1997 Land Law. While the new law had to respect basic constitutional principles, the legislators also had to develop a law appropriate for a market economy. The land policy therefore seeks to protect existing rights, while also promoting private investment and, to this end, seeks to provide secure land rights for investors as an essential condition for this.

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