Last Friday in Rome, members of the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS) unanimously endorsed the Voluntary Guidelines for Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security. As chair for the negotiations that drafted the text of the Guidelines and Chief of USAID’s Land Tenure Division, […]
I’ve long known that land titles mean empowerment for urban and rural poor, especially women, in developing countries. Indeed, a paragraph in my “stump speech” notes that if women farmers could use their land as collateral to gain access to credit at the same rate as men, there would be a 30 percent increase in […]
The kebele of Debeso, a majority Muslim community in southern Ethiopia, faces many of the same challenges one encounters across the country. Scarce water resources, near exclusive economic dependence on agriculture, and a government that owns all land in the country, create feelings of insecurity and hardship among rural Ethiopians, who represent about 85% of […]
In a December 6, 2011 story in the Asia Times, Dr. Rafiullah Bidar, the Jalalabad program manager of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, made a striking comment: “It is part of our culture that people kill each other over two issues. . . . One is for land, and the second is women.” Improving […]
The U.S. is chairing the UN FAO Committee for Food Security’s intergovernmental negotiations on Voluntary Guidelines for the Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests (VG). To date, these negotiations have included over 70 countries, the private sector, multilateral institutions and some 50 civil society organizations (CSO). By the end of October 2011 approximately 70% of […]
