Making Equal Rights Real

1. Making Equal Rights Real Translating Formal Land Rights into Reality Renee Giovarelli and Elisa Scalise

2. Overview • Why Land • Rights to Land • Who is vulnerable to unequal land rights • What is required to ensure secure land rights for all

3. Why Land? • Economic Access • Agricultural production • Income from rental or sale • Collateral • Social Access • Household decision-making • Community governance (status)

4. Formal Legal Rights to Land • Right to occupy, use, and receive benefit from land • Public takings with notice and compensation • Regularize rights of informal occupants • Eliminate discrimination against socially disadvantaged groups • Access to credit using land as security

5. Customary Rights to Land • Critically important to understand interplay between customary rights and formal legal rights • Land rights have to be both legally and socially enforceable • Customary rights vary from country to country and within countries or regions of countries

6. Who is Vulnerable to Inequality? • Discriminated against within customary or formal land tenure regimes (widows and orphans) and have difficulty accessing dispute resolution systems • Rely on common property regimes (indigenous populations, pastoralist groups) when reforms individualize ownership and/or challenge local land institutions • Forcibly dislocated from places of origin (natural disasters or violent conflict)

7. How to effectuate legal rightsto land? • Requires a continuum of action: • Legal Reform • Legal awareness • Legal information • Legal capacity

8. (1) Legal Reform • Legislation must explicitly recognize equal rights • Regulations matter: • What rights will be recognized • Documents required (proof of marriage? Identification cards?) • Who is responsible for non-discriminatory implementation (Bolivia)

9. (2) Legal Awareness • General and broad knowledge of rights and obligations • Communication campaigns • Political advocacy • Social movements • Materials customized for geographic zone, local language, and cultural norms

10. (3) Legal Information • Beyond awareness: ongoing communication between provider and receiver of information • Information kiosks • Land rights information centers • Legal promoters (Kyrgyzstan)

11. Positive legal and cultural conditions for recognizing women’s rights Only men participated in community information meetings Language of form (household head) Cultural practice of deferring to men in public situations Prior documentation mostly handled by men Lao PDR Photo by Sue Nichols

12. Intervention • Lao Women’s Union took an active role • Information dissemination • Education about rights and responsibilities of land rights • Meetings with village women only (timing important) Photo by Sue Nichols

13. (4) Legal Capacity • Information plus access to formal and informal institutions • Community mobilization (Uganda) • Direct legal assistance • Paralegals (Rwanda)

14. Global Lessons • Vulnerable Groups must participate in all stages of effort • Incentives for broad stakeholder support and involvement • Gain legitimacy via support from local leaders

15. Global Lessons, cont. • Customary law matters • Work with traditional dispute resolution actors • Regulations Matter • Pilot models which can be replicated