parcels restored to 3,075 rightful landholders
Introduction
Women and vulnerable groups face a myriad of barriers to protecting their land rights. These stem from interrelated factors such as cultural norms and perceptions, illiteracy, lack of awareness of their rights, and weak standing in power dynamics with elites who undermine their access to and control of their land. As a result, they are at risk of becoming targets for fraud, discrimination, deception – even violence – in the process of claiming their land rights, which can be violated in the following ways.
| Violation | Frequently Affected |
|---|---|
| Border encroachment Neighbours push boundaries and farm on adjacent land, then try to register the encroached areas as their own. |
Female-headed households, elderly |
| Land takeover A relative or guardian takes control of land, often while serving as caretaker for the landholder, then attempts to register the land as their own. |
Orphaned children, elderly, female-headed households |
| Manipulating rental and sharecropping agreements Informal, verbal rental or sharecropping agreements are used as entry points to gain access and make claims to land. |
Elderly, destitute households |
| Illegal transfer of land as a “gift” or sale A household head may give or sell land to a specific family member to ensure that others cannot claim or inherit it. |
Women in male-headed households |
| Denial of inheritance Traditionally, female children do not inherit land, in part because it is customary for girls to move in with their husbands’ families upon marriage. |
Girls and widows |
| Denial of share of land Non-favoured wives in polygamous marriages may be excluded from signing the title certificate, in part because polygamy is not legally recognised. |
Women in polygamous households, widows |
Ensuring land tenure rights for all
LIFT aimed to focus on addressing the barriers women and vulnerable groups face in ensuring their land rights are secure. It undertook the following initiatives to ensure that no one is left behind and that the gender gap and levels of vulnerability among different social and economic groups were reduced.
Social development officer initiative
To ensure women and vulnerable groups could overcome the barriers and challenges they faced in securing their land rights during the SLLC process, LIFT established the specific role of social development officer within each woreda undergoing SLLC. Their role was to ensure the participation of women and vulnerable groups in the SLLC process, and to ensure that LIFT’s procedures were inclusive and were followed correctly. This included:
- Delivering sensitisation training to make LIFT’s stakeholders aware of the needs and additional support that women and vulnerable groups required during the demarcation process.
- Conducting community mapping of landholders who were at risk of losing their land tenure security, to ensure that the field teams could provide additional support to individuals during demarcation.
- Organising women-only public meetings to ensure that women were aware of LIFT and engaged in the SLLC process.
- Ensuring that if a land parcel was disputed, that this was directed to the formal dispute resolution processes and that the relevant institutions resolved the situation.
Policy
LIFT recognised that although SLLC is a key step towards ensuring that the land rights of women and vulnerable groups are maintained, it is also important that the policy and regulatory environment, as well as policy implementation, maintain the land rights of women and vulnerable groups. To this end LIFT undertook research to inform policy in the following areas:
- The impact of Social Development Officers on inclusion of women and vulnerable groups in SLLC.
- The legal framework for registering polygamous households to ensure that the land rights of polygamous wives are maintained.
- The constraints vulnerable groups face in accessing legal assistance during land disputes.
- The potential challenges of ensuring the land tenure rights of internally displaced people through SLLC and mitigation measures.
Impact
As a result of these measures, nearly 90% of land certificates in Ethiopia now have a woman named as a joint or individual landholder. Women and vulnerable groups are more frequently inheriting land titles and more women in polygamous households now have recognised land rights. Some women and marginalised individuals are bringing their land dispute cases to local officials, the police and the courts, demonstrating their sense of agency and desire to seek justice.