New report shows inconsistent domestic progress on tenure rights for Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendant Peoples, and local communities
There are 13,318 villages in Tanzania, and of them, only 34% have a Village Land Use Plan (VLUP). A VLUP is a crucial prerequisite for obtaining a Certificate of Customary Right of Occupancy—the equivalent of securing land tenure. This can be especially important for women, who are often marginalized in land inheritance, lack access to credit services, and have little voice in disputes. Since 2021, the Ukijani project has helped issue more than 1,700 Certificates in villages throughout the country.
The secretary of the Board of Directors of the Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Jungle (AIDESEP) shares the challenges she had to overcome to become an Indigenous woman leader.
Community Forest User Groups play an important role in protecting the forests on Chandragiri Hill in Nepal, but they didn’t begin to make significant progress in this quest until the women of these communities were allowed to join.
Decades after the world adopted what continues to be the most comprehensive roadmap for women’s rights, RRI’s latest report highlights enduring challenges in securing the rights of Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and local community women.
This is the story of the president of the Association of Afro-descendant Women of Northern Cauca, Colombia, who faced the threats of armed conflict to fight for the rights of Afro-descendant women.
A new study examining the state of global financing for Afro-descendant, Indigenous, and local community women launched at the UN CBD COP16 addresses a crucial lack of data on gender equity-focused funding and was launched by the Rights and Resources Initiative and the Women in Global South Alliance.
This op-ed by Omayra Casamá and Sara Omi was originally published in Spanish in El País. A sustainable future is one where the voices of Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and local community women are not only heard but are integral to the implementation of meaningful conservation and climate change actions.
The Women in Global South Alliance (WiGSA) hosted its second strategic meeting in Kathmandu, Nepal from April 30–May 2, 2024. Armed with a feeling of sisterhood and common purpose, women leaders from 11 countries across Asia, Africa, and Latin America overcame jet lag to meet in person to discuss strategies on how best to support the women and girls they represent.
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, RRI is thrilled to announce that it will carry the LandWise Law Library on through its next chapter.
RRI collaborators are celebrating two big victories for Indonesia’s agrarian reform movement this October. The Consortium for Agrarian Reform’s years-long advocacy with peasant and smallholder farmers has led to redistribution of two agrarian reform priority locations by the Indonesian Government, transferring their control to peasant and their union who have long reclaiming and managing these lands.
More than 100 participants from 11 countries gathered in Arusha, Tanzania, this week for the 4th Conference of National Land Institutions in Africa, working to secure community land rights.
Rights and Resources Group has acquired the LandWise Law Library, a crucial digital compilation of articles, and research on women’s land rights and tenure.
Women leaders from Africa, Asia, and North and South America gather in Brazzaville to strengthen the global solidarity movement for women-led initiatives to protect biodiversity and build climate resilience.
Members of the new network agree to create more documentation on land rights and governance processes for Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and local community women; call for strengthening advocacy capacity.
November 14 marks Gender Day and Water Day at CoP27 in Sharm-El-Sheikh, Egypt. We must take a moment to recognize how Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and local community women and girls are leaders in climate change mitigation and adaptation and integral to attaining the UN's 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda.
On November 11 at CoP27, 41 grassroots women’s organizations from Asia, Africa, and Latin America launched a new advocacy network called the Women in Global South Alliance for Tenure and Climate.
Long-time RRI collaborator Social Entrepreneurs for Sustainable Development (SESDev) examines how Liberia’s Land Rights Law has impacted women’s land rights and livelihoods since 2018.
To forge women’s empowerment worldwide, governments and donors must take action for gender justice and urgently make funding available and accessible to Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and local community women’s organizations in countries in the Global South that have been historically under-supported and under-funded.
In Nawalpur district, 197 km southwest of Kathmandu, women from the Tharu and Kumal tribes in Madyavindu Municipality worked together throughout the 2021 monsoon season finding ways to adapt and support their communities while adhering to pandemic safety guidelines, demonstrating their inspiring resilience and socio-economic prowess.
In welcome news for India’s forest communities, the state of Odisha has approved 14 Community Rights and Community Forest Resource Rights titles for 24 villages in its Nayagarh district, under the country’s 2006 Forest Rights Act. The government’s move to grant these titles is praiseworthy for one key reason: they recognize women’s critical role in protecting community forests.
Secure rights to land are fundamental to enable Indigenous Peoples, and in particular, Indigenous women, to continue their effective stewardship of forests.
Não há empoderamento político sem empoderamento econômico. Esse foi o princípio por trás de uma estratégia de 2019 da Coalizão da América Latina da RRI [Iniciativa de Direitos e Recursos] para analisar sistemas econômicos com base nos próprios conceitos de desenvolvimento das comunidades dentro de seus sistemas de propriedade comum.
There is no political empowerment without economic empowerment. That was the principle behind a 2019 strategy by RRI’s Latin America coalition to analyze economic systems based on communities' own concepts of development within their collective tenure systems.