Whether you have used this resource in the past or are discovering the Library for the first time, we invite you to share your thoughts and ideas for the future development of the LandWise Law Library by responding to this short survey.

For more than 10 years, the LandWise Law Library has grown into an essential resource on family, land, and natural resource rights under the care of Landesa and Resource Equity. As Resource Equity closes its doors, the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) is thrilled to announce that it will carry the LandWise Law Library on through its next chapter.

Identifying that no publicly accessible legal databases provided centralized access to full-text laws on women’s land and property rights around the world, the Landesa Center for Women’s Land Rights saw an opportunity to develop a database that would contribute to filling this critical gap. Specifically, Family Laws related to marriage, divorce, and inheritance—all critical to women’s land and resource rights—were difficult to find in their latest version, if at all.

The Library was designed and developed from the ground up under the guidance of Jen Chang, and populated by staff and a multitude of volunteers. Guides were developed related to what questions a practitioner should ask of the laws to best understand women’s land and resource rights. The LandWise Law Library also provides access to related secondary research.

The Library moved to Resource Equity in 2015, and since that time, has been further developed by drawing on vast documentation that the nonprofit collected while providing critical technical assistance in the drafting of new legislation and on implementing projects to secure women’s land rights.

RRI has similarly amassed an expansive collection of national laws, regulations, and policy documents through the legal analyses its Tenure Tracking Program has conducted on the status of Indigenous Peoples’, Afro-descendant Peoples’, local communities’, and the women within those communities’ tenure rights in more than 80 countries over the past two decades.

By bringing together these two complementary collections, RRI will expand the coverage of the LandWise Law Library to strengthen its coverage of laws and regulations protecting communities’ territorial, land, forest, and freshwater tenure rights as well as those impacting women’s land and natural resource rights.

In doing so, the Library will be reinvigorated as a crucial resource for practitioners, rightsholders, academics, lawyers, policymakers, donors, and activists seeking to better understand and support women’s and Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and local communities’ tenure rights.

The LandWise Law Library will also complement RRI’s Tenure Tool, which showcases global, regional, and national-level data on the strength and extent of communities’ and community women’s legally recognized forest tenure rights. Through both the Tenure Tool and the acquisition of the LandWise Law Library, RRI aims to improve access to crucial, reliable, and regularly updated information to inform research, community-led activism, and policymaking.

Whether you have used this resource in the past or are discovering the Library for the first time, we invite you to share your thoughts and ideas for the future development of the LandWise Law Library by responding to this short survey.

For comments or questions: Contact Chloe Ginsburg, RRI’s Senior Tenure Analyst.

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