GLTN Newsletter Issue #4

NEWSLETTER ISSUE#4 |2013

In this issue

UN-Habitat wheels in hope for urban poor in Bangladesh PAGE 2 Uganda

The trouble with perceived ownership Uganda Land Alliance’s Executive Director talks to GLTN about the impact the Gender Evaluation Criteria has had in the country In Uganda, as in many parts of the world, land translates to livelihoods. It is the ground upon which agriculture, employment, culture, identity and power, all trace their roots. Inequitable access to land therefore is no small issue. Women, who in the circuit of culture or otherwise, fall victim to circumstances. And as is the case in parts of Uganda, women tend to access land mainly through men.

“Ordinarily married women feel more secure in marriage. They imagine that they are co-owners of the family land and that keeps them working towards developing it,” says Esther Obaikol, executive director, Uganda Land Alliance (ULA).

For a season

That perceived ownership plants a sense of pride, security, permanency, guaranteed access and use rights among the women, but only for a season.

“We found that in Northern Uganda, separation in marriages and malnutrition among children is highest during harvest time because the man wants to sell this harvest,” Obaikol reports.

For many of these women, their perceived ownership stops at production. They plough, pamper and package their produce until reality hits home on payday.

Their husbands cash in and decide how the proceeds will be used. In some cases the only women smiling at this time will be new brides whose families are appeased by the fruits of the first wife’s labour. Like a plant stifled by pestilence, the women give up the fight, but once again, just for a season.

Perhaps out of a sense of hopelessness, they return from their ‘strike mode’ to plough for the next season.

Continued on page 3

Securing Land and Property Rights for All

FIG takes note of Participatory and Inclusive Land Readjustment Back page PLUS New Publications out now!

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UN-Habitat advances efforts to support urban poor in Bangladesh Close to three million urban poor in the People’s Republic of Bangladesh will continue to benefit from the support of UN-Habitat through the Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (ROAP) in a program set to improve the livelihoods and living conditions of the urban poor, especially women and girls.

In close partnership with United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Government of Bangladesh, UN-Habitat is co-implementing the country’s largest urban poverty programme called Urban Partnerships for Poverty Reduction (UPPR) particularly on improving the living environments of poor settlements, mobilising urban poor communities and promoting tenure security.

The Global Land Tool Network (GLTN) Secretariat, facilitated by the UN-Habitat, joins the team in a bid to accelerate project’s efforts to improve tenure security.

“We have already made recommendations of various interventions derived from close consultation with project stakeholders,

Hands up for the proposal to formalise rent agreements. Savar, Bangladesh. Photo UN-Habitat/Danilo Antonio

including the visited poor communities, to promote security of tenure of the urban poor in the short to medium term. Some of them include working with strategic partners to support the anti-forced eviction legislation pending in the Parliament and supporting pilot activities to strengthen tenant-landlord relationships,” reports GLTN Secretariat staff, Danilo Antonio. As a result, the Secretariat in collaboration with the Project

Management and UN-Habitat/ROAP has fielded a mission to Dhaka.

Meanwhile, GLTN continues to explore how pro-poor and gender sensitive land tools can also be used and applied within the country context particularly to support the preparation of the next phase of the programme and the establishment of a UN-Habitat country office.

Land administration tool attains global standard The recent approval of Land Administration Domain Model (LADM) as a global standard for land administration and land information by ISO/TC 211 members marks a milestone in the development of land administration systems.

Now, information generated from Social Tenure Domain Model (STDM) a pro-poor land rights recording system and a specialization of LADM known as can be easily shared, transferred and operated in various systems and information protocols.

With this global standard in place, open source communities, commercial developers and database programmers can now develop land administration and information systems that can be easily shared to allow more user-friendly and efficient data exchanges. As a result, All

forms of tenure rights including informal and customary, can be seamlessly integrated into one system for easier access.

“We would like to congratulate the Federation of International Surveyors (FIG) and University of Twente, Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC) and other key partners for taking the leadership in the development and promotion of the Land Administration Domain Model. This is indeed a landmark triumph for the land sector,” said GLTN lead, Clarissa Augustinus.

UN-Habitat through the Global Land Tool Network (GLTN) has been supporting the development of LADM since its inception alongside the development of STDM. Related Publication: The Social Tenure Domain Model - A Pro-Poor Land Tool (Eng - 2010)

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For more resources go to www.gltn.net

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Criteria helps communities reflect on gender and land continued from page 1

But Uganda Land Alliance refuses to sit back as a large fraction of society is rendered powerless. By infusing a tool known as Gender Evaluation Criteria, this 17-year-old Alliance is breaking the cycle.

The Gender Evaluation Criteria, developed in consultation with GLTN partners (Huairou Commission, International Federation of Surveyors, University of East London and UN-Habitat), promotes gender responsiveness in approaches to land. The Criteria, Obaikol attests, is a mirror held up to communities. Previously piloted in Brazil, Ghana and Nepal, this set of 22 questions “deals with live situations and that allows both men and women to see the gender issues with their own eyes and identify what needs to change in their own contexts.”

Gender blindness While engaging communities in the tool, ULA observes as the community realiseson its own- what they are supposed to do to curb their gender-blindness.

“At the end of the day, all we have to do is majestically point out that the constitution expects them to do that which they knew that they ought to do.”

The way this lawyer sees it, the Gender Evaluation Criteria allows ULA to reach people in a simpler way so that the organisation didn’t have to think about translating laws to touch people’s lives.

She believes that the Criteria unearthered the issues and helped traditional, religious and local leaders start thinking through how to restore the status quo.

The next step engaged participants in drawing action plans. They had to identify what baby steps they are willing to take and what capacity development is needed to start making change happen.

Obaikol uses words like “powerful”, “reflective” and “personal” to describe

Ms Obaikol , left, consults with a participant during a past Gender Evaluation Criteria training.

PHOTO: UN-Habitat

the criteria that is now facilitating change from within Uganda. She first interacted with the Criteria while attending a GLTN training on the tool and its application.

The Alliance’s women land rights program became the perfect platform to build sensitization among women about their rights to land. Today, the program accommodates 50 land rights advocates in five districts in Uganda.

So, does it create fear or opposition in Ugandan men? Obaikol would be the first to say that it doesn’t. In fact, she observes that men engage with it better because it does not approach it as a woman’s thing. The criteria “says” unpack society, what is working for men, and what works for women and becomes a safe space to engage for everyone, whether you are a religious leader, a government leader.

“

Today, it is not uncommon to see teams of religious, traditional and local government leaders sensitising their people on land issues and facilitating dispute resolutions”

-Esther Obaikol, Executive Director, ULA

The Uganda Land Alliance is amazed that from its first year of the evaluation, they have already received action plans and

commitments from some of the districts to make change. On one end are local governments committing to do bylaws to ensure that there is co-ownership on family land, on the other, traditional leaders training their own on the importance of women having ownership as opposed to mere access to land.

Today, it is not uncommon to see teams of religious, traditional and local government leaders going out to sensitise their people on land issues and facilitating dispute relations.

And because children on many occasions have had drop out of school as a result of lack of fees, ULA has heard of women using the criteria to have the head teachers address issues of women and land at parent teacher meetings.

That is how the Gender Evaluation Criteria becomes a community process, taking a life of its own to make the necessary change.

RELATED PUBLICATIONS: • A training package Improving gender equality and grassroots participation through good land governance (Eng - 2010) • Gender Evaluation Criteria For large scale land Tools (Eng - 2009) • Gendering Land Tools: Achieving secure tenure for women and men (Eng - 2008) COVER PHOTO:A participant during a training organised by Uganda Land Alliance. PHOTO: ULA

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FIG takes note of Participatory and Inclusive Land Readjustment The International Federation of Surveyors (FIG) recently held its eighth regional conference in Montevideo, Uruguay which acknowledged Participatory and Inclusive Land Readjustment (PILaR) as a governance tool to reduce slums and promote orderly extension.

The approach, which FIG lead Teo CheeHai underlined as overdue, has been a point of cooperation between FIG and GLTN/ UN-Habitat.

While making reference to the work UN-Habitat’s two-year program on land readjustment, GLTN’s Solomon Haile also highlighted the need to have efficient information systems in place.

“We introduced the Social Tenure Domain Model (STDM), a pro-poor land information system developed by GLTN partners, to the

surveyors who were quite intrigued by the innovation,” reports Haile. The system, already piloted in Mbale, Uganda, services the land information needs of the poor and undocumented.

Presentations on PILaR took into account the critical role surveyors, as land managers, play in sensitising expert stakeholders as a lead in into the FIG’s Working Week in 2013 which will take place in Abuja, Nigeria.

The three-day meeting further allowed the Young Surveyors Network to engage GLTN’s youth focal point, Toril Iren, in looking at youth responsiveness in the land sector with particular interest in sustainability ahead of the UN-Habitat’s Youth Fund meeting Morocco. The meeting, which hosted Youth Fund winners bringing to the

FIG’s Teo CheeHai at a past function. PHOTO: UN-Habitat

table both technical and non-technical contributors to deliberate on, among others, issues of youth and land.

The International Federation of Surveyors (FIG) leads the International professional bodies cluster under the Global Land Tool Network of partners.

For more details log on to www.fig.net

G L O BA L L A N D TO O L N E T WO R K

Secure land and property rights for all Secure land rights for all Ensure equitable access to land and property rights

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There can be no sustainable development without secure land rights

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Better land management to reduce land conflicts

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Good land governance for poverty reduction

For more information, please contact: GLTN Secretariat, P.O. Box 30030 Nairobi, Kenya. Tel: +254 20 762 5199 Email: gltn@unhabitat.org Visit our site: www.gltn.net and follow us on Twitter @GLTNnews

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