Scott Drimie Human Sciences Research Council, Pretoria Dan Mullins Oxfam GB Regional Management Centre, Pretoria

1. HIV/AIDS and Land: Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi & South AfricaSocial Aspects of HIV/AIDS Research Alliance Conference1 – 4 September, Pretoria, South Africa 2002 Scott Drimie Human Sciences Research Council, Pretoria Dan Mullins Oxfam GB Regional Management Centre, Pretoria

2. Background to the Study Empirical data on links between land and AIDS • FAO: Kenya, Lesotho, South Africa • HSRC: coordination; South Africa • Oxfam GB: Malawi “If we do not explicitly factor in the impacts and trends of HIV/AIDS as a central feature of how to do land reform . . . We are being professionally negligent, misusing resources for poverty reduction, and are unlikely to achieved our objectives.”

3. Land policy encompasses three main dimensions • Land use • Land rights • Land administration

4. Two-Way Influence: HIV/AIDS and Land HIV transmission, progression to AIDS, impacts of AIDS Land use, land rights, and land administration

5. HIV/AIDS and Land: Profound Challenge Management challenge for those involved in land reform and rural development Affects both: • people whom land policy is intended to benefit • people staffing the institutions that support the policy implementation

6. Household with stronger safety net Household with weaker safety net Vulnerability line Early stages Frequent hospital visits Bedridden Death and burial Care for orphans The effect of HIV/AIDS on households/livelihood strategies

7. Findings from the Studies

8. Impacts on Land Use • Change land use • Lower productivity • Less labour intensive uses • Leave land fallow • Different users • In the home: shift to young, elderly, widows • Rent or lease out land • Enter into sharecropping or other contractual arrangements • Lend land to others • Lose land • Sell land formally or informally • Abandon land • Others forcibly take land way – from widows, orphans

9. Impacts on Land Use: Examples • Gender and age: key influences everywhere • Most sites: reduced agricultural yields • Reduced labour due to illness, shift to increased caring demands • Sale of productive assets: seeds, cattle • Responsibility shifts to young and old • Less experience and skills  multi-generational impacts • Changing amounts of land under use ? • Kenya: significant reduction in cultivated land but • Southern Malawi: high density, so land taken by new users

10. Poverty, Inequality, Crisis New HIV Infection; Rapid Progression from HIV to AIDS Food Insecurity Malnutrition Land Use affects HIV/AIDS • Weakened livelihoods increase risks of HIV/AIDS • new HIV transmission: women and girls engaging in sex work • poverty and poor nutrition speed progress from HIV to AIDS

11. Impacts on Land Rights • Vulnerable people under increased pressure • Gender and age: both affect ability to enjoy rights • Affects ability of widows, orphans, youth & children to: • Access: participation in land reform / resettlement • Use: for homestead, burial grounds, livelihoods activities • Transact: inheritance by children, renting out by widows etc • Exclude others: land grabbing and inheritance, control over decision-making (power taken by older people, especially men) • Enforcement: legal and administrative system may not protect

12. Impacts on Land Rights: Examples Land-grabbing from widows in general: common but usually illegal Widows in KwaZulu Natal: increasingly resisted pressure to either relinquish their land or marry back into the husband's family Affected HHs in Lesotho: customary & formal law differ on fallow land • Some chiefs allow affected households to retain fallow land for future • Formal law seeks to keep land productive Children in Kenya: most affected through dispossession by ‘guardians’ Youth-headed HHsin South Africa: vulnerable, not qualified to hold communal land

13. Impacts on Land Administration Increasing illness & death of extension and land officials • Productivity declines: • staff absenteeism, illness, low morale, • growing inefficiency • Human resources affected: • staff turnover, increasing competition for new staff, multiple recruitments • declining levels of experience and quality • Financial costs increase: • medical care, funerals, induction and training • actual survival of some organisations in question

14. Impacts on Land Administration: Examples • Malawi: deaths of key personnel, recurrent illnesses of others have increased absenteeism, decreased performance • Kenya: illness and death of land officials and chiefs stalled adjudication processes, and resulted in loss of institutional memory

15. Current Land Policy Framework All 4 countries are reviewing land policy None are actively considering current and future impacts of AIDS, on either: • potential users • implementing agencies

16. Recommendations Put two-way links at centre of land policy and programmes: HIV/AIDS  land use, land rights, and land administration Collaboration between land and HIV/AIDS specialists: build on complementary skills to minimise HIV transmission and impacts Understand heterogeneity: Seek to support diverse household types that result from HIV/AIDS impacts – influences of gender and age Galvanise research, policy and implementation: to understand links between land and AIDS in a co-ordinated manner

17. Recommendations Facilitate wider land use options: for both agricultural and non-farm activities, to be relevant to particularly vulnerable people (widows, orphans, youth and children, elderly); eg: • develop land rental markets • increase access to water for gardening purposes Support rights of vulnerable people: Ensure needs of weaker individuals and households (gender, age, social situation) are addressed in land administration; eg land registration systems Protect institutional capacity: Evaluate long-term capacity of land administration systems in light of HIV/AIDS among staff