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	Land Rights: Intangible Assets bring Tangible Benefits by Landesa, WRI, Skoll Forum, agencies   Land Rights: Intangible Assets bring Tangible Benefits, writes Tim Hanstad, Director of Landesa.   When we think about global development, we generally picture tangible improvements like bridges, hospitals, and schools. When it comes to agriculture, people think of improved seeds, fertilizer, and irrigation.   But just as much as they need fertilizers and seeds, farmers need secure land rights.   Renowned academics and authors like Douglass North, Joe Studwell, and Hernando de Soto agree that the intangible institution of land rights can spark true development breakthroughs. Yet we still struggle to convince people to see land rights as a fundamental tool for global development.   It is easy to overlook something that is complex, technical, and intangible. But we do so at our peril.   Too often land rights are incomplete, not legally recognized and protected, or fail to incorporate the interests of marginalized groups. The World Bank estimates, for example, that 90 percent of rural land in sub-Saharan Africa is undocumented.   But the problem of insecure land rights for the poor extends far beyond Africa. Landesa estimates that at least 250 million rural men and 400 million rural women around the world lack secure legal rights to land on which they depend for their livelihoods.   As is all too common, women fare the worst. Women’s access, ownership, or inheritance of land is impeded, by laws or practices, in more than half of the countries on the planet.   Developing the intangible systems of land rights is not easy. But it is possible. Where governments have invested in strengthening the land rights of the poor, rural communities thrive.   China is perhaps the best example in modern history. In China, the largest and most successful poverty alleviation program in history was built on the foundation of land rights reform that turned communes into family farms and eventually endowed those family farm households with 30-year, transferable rights to land. These ongoing rural land reforms in China have helped lift millions of Chinese out of poverty. (There have been significant problems with corruption cases involving developers and local officials in recent years, forced evictions and inadequate protections under the rule of law to gain redress, environmental pollution from rapid development has had negative impacts for some rural communities).   As the experience of China shows, broad-based and determined efforts to strengthen land rights for the poor can bolster entire economies. And when women share in those land rights, the impacts are even greater. When women have strong land rights, they earn more and save more, their children are healthier, and their families spend more on education.   Other government-led efforts demonstrate what is possible. Rwanda has led the way in Africa, embarking on a sweeping land rights reform. It began with key constitutional and legislative reforms and a gender-inclusive, nationwide land rights “titling” process in 2011-2013. The results include improved livelihoods, reduced conflict, and better agricultural management and growth.   State governments in India are also advancing progressive land rights reforms, including many aimed at women. From West Bengal’s micro-plot program to Women’s Support Centers in Odisha, India’s women farmers are accessing government support services and investing in their land to improve their harvests.   A great deal of scholarly research documents both the significance of strong land rights for the rural poor and the positive impact that women’s land rights have on family nutrition, educational attainment, and health. And yet it is difficult to raise awareness and understanding of these links.   Further, a land title or other documentation of legal rights to land is not an end in itself. It is often just the beginning—an intangible tool to help access other rights and benefits. To bring this intangible tool to life, and to show its impact on individuals and communities, Landesa has turned to storytelling through video. This is “data with soul.”   We worked with the Sundance Institute to create two films. Elders Speak: A New Dawn for Women in Kenya shows how Landesa’s Justice Project has helped tribal elders become strong advocates for women’s land rights as codified in the country’s 2010 Constitution.   Collisions, part of the Sundance Institute’s 2016 Stories of Change Initiative and supported by the Skoll Foundation, brought to life the story of a community of aboriginals in Australia who are struggling to protect their land.   These short films communicate the significance of land rights, and bring to life an intangible asset that empowers individuals and communities.   These films ask us to look beyond the obvious and tangible when addressing the most stubborn challenges of our time. For what good are seeds and fertilizers for farmers who lack secure rights to the land they cultivate?   It takes more than a law to ensure equal land rights for women: Thomson Reuters Foundation   Laws giving men and women equal rights to land are not enough to ensure equality if they are not accompanied by efforts to empower and educate women, said the head of an organisation working to put the power of the law into people''s hands.   In more than half of all countries, laws or customs hinder women''s ownership or access to land, undermining development and the fight against poverty, studies have shown.   "Our starting point is the law but it has to be an approach in which you can take the power of the law and put it in the hands of people," said Vivek Maru, chief executive of Namati, which trains and deploys grassroots legal advocates to work with disadvantaged communities.   Maru, who spoke to the Thomson Reuters Foundation before being awarded the $1.25 million Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship at a conference in Oxford, cited Myanmar as an example where women are at risk of being left behind even though a new land law does not discriminate against them.   Land ownership is a complex issue in the Southeast Asian country as it emerges from decades of military rule. Fighting between ethnic insurgents and the army, which flared up in Kachin state in the north after a ceasefire fractured, has weakened communities rights and driven more than 100,000 civilians from their homes.   Many worry whether they will still be able to access their farmland when peace returns and have accused the army of seizing swathes of land.   Fresh land disputes were fuelled by the semi-civilian government of former President Thein Sein whose liberalisation policies drove up land prices and attracted foreign and domestic investment, according to analysts.   Women in Myanmar have benefitted far less from land registration efforts - 80 percent of more than 2,000 applications came from men, Namati said in a report published this month.   "It is crucial to take steps to help communities to understand the laws and how to go through a process to claim tenure, otherwise you risk leaving the most vulnerable behind and that usually means women," Maru said.   Almost all the government officials dealing with land registration in Myanmar are male, Namati''s report said.   Only 42 out of 16,758 village administrators are women and there is no female administrator in the country''s 330 townships, the report found.   Namati, founded in 2011, has trained hundreds of community paralegals in eight countries, including Uganda, the Philippines, Mozambique and India.   Sometimes referred to as "barefoot lawyers", Namati''s advocates have helped 5,000 stateless people in Kenya and Bangladesh to get legal identity documents and with Mozambique''s government to increase awareness of health policies and how to seek redress in case of grievances.   "There are more than four billion people without the protection of the law," said Maru, a lawyer who started working with local communities in Sierra Leone in 2003, a year after a decade-long civil war ended.   "With the grassroots local knowledge deployed, you can fix a lot of things, even broken systems," he said.   http://www.landesa.org/resources/property-not-poverty/ http://namati.org/ http://skoll.org/2016/03/17/land-rights-intangible-assets-bring-tangible-benefits/ http://www.landesa.org/resources/land-rights-matter/ http://www.wri.org/blog/2016/04/3-reasons-why-community-land-rights-are-not-legally-secure-many-countries http://www.wri.org/blog/2016/04/restoring-africas-degraded-lands-improving-farmers-rights http://www.landcoalition.org/en/news/ilc-launches-report-oxfam-and-rri-common-ground-securing-land-rights-and-safeguarding-earth http://www.iied.org/protecting-land-community-resources-africa#.Vt_6z365Gek.twitter http://www.fidh.org/en/issues/globalisation-human-rights/communities-first-new-training-manual-to-empower-people-affected-by http://business-humanrights.org/en/ http://www.ipsnews.net/2016/04/land-tenure-still-a-challenge-for-women-in-latin-america/ http://solidgroundcampaign.org/ http://bit.ly/2bWlefL http://skoll.org/2016/04/11/skoll-foundation-announces-skoll-awards-for-social-entrepreneurship/ http://business-humanrights.org/en/community-action-platform
	17 million people struggling to feed themselves in Yemen by WFP, Unicef, FAO, agencies   Feb. 2017   The number of food insecure people in Yemen has risen by three million in seven months, with an estimated 17.1 million people now struggling to feed themselves, according to a joint assessment by three UN agencies.   Of the 17.1 million food insecure people, about 7.3 million are considered to be in need of emergency food assistance.   The preliminary results of the Emergency Food Security and Nutrition Assessment (EFSNA) show that food security and nutrition conditions are deteriorating rapidly due to the ongoing conflict.   More than two-thirds of Yemen’s population of 27.4 million people now lack access to food and consume an inadequate diet.   The EFSNA is a joint survey conducted by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Food Programme (WFP) in cooperation with the authorities in Yemen. It is the first national, household-level assessment conducted in the country since the escalation of the conflict in mid-March 2015.   Rates of acute malnutrition were found to have passed the “critical” threshold in four governorates, while agricultural production is falling across the country.   "The speed at which the situation is deteriorating and the huge jump in food insecure people is extremely worrying,” said Salah Hajj Hassan, FAO Representative in Yemen. “Bearing in mind that agriculture is the main source of livelihood for the majority of the population, FAO is urgently calling for funds to scale up its agricultural livelihoods support to farmers, herders and fishing communities to improve their access to food in 2017 and prevent the dire food and livelihood security situation from deteriorating further.”   “We are witnessing some of the highest numbers of malnutrition amongst children in Yemen in recent times. Children who are severely and acutely malnourished are 11 times more at risk of death as compared to their healthy peers, if not treated on time. Even if they survive, these children risk not fulfilling their developmental potentials, posing a serious threat to an entire generation in Yemen and keeping the country mired in the vicious cycle of poverty and under development,” said Dr Meritxell Relano, UNICEF Representative in Yemen.   “The current level of hunger in Yemen is unprecedented, which is translating into severe hardship and negative humanitarian consequences for millions of Yemenis, particularly affecting vulnerable groups,” said Stephen Anderson, WFP Country Director in Yemen.   “Tragically, we see more and more families skipping meals or going to bed hungry, while children and mothers are slipping away with little to sustain themselves. WFP is urgently calling for support to provide food for the seven million people who are severely food insecure and may not survive this situation for much longer.”   The severe food insecurity situation in the country has worsened sharply in recent months, with an estimated 65 percent of households now food insecure.   In addition, three-quarters of all households indicate that their economic situation is worse now than before the crisis. Incomes have fallen and many public-sector workers have gone for months without being paid. As a result, 80 percent of Yemenis are in now in debt, and more than half of all households have had to buy food on credit.   Many households – 60 percent – have resorted to negative coping mechanisms such as eating less preferred foods, reducing portions or skipping meals altogether.   The EFSNA results show that over two million children are acutely malnourished.   In four governorates – Abyan, Al Hudaydah, Hadramaut, and Taizz, – malnutrition rates have passed the “emergency” threshold, meaning an acute malnutrition rate of more than 15 percent. In seven governorates rates now exceed the “serious” threshold, which indicates an acute malnutrition rate of more than ten percent.   http://www.wfp.org/news/news-release/yemen-food-crisis-deteriorates-un-agencies-appeal-urgent-assistance-avert-catastro http://www.nrc.no/news/2017/february/yemen-war-causing-worlds-worst-food-crisis/ http://uni.cf/2dQfDK9 http://bit.ly/2k4vKqw http://bit.ly/2iBsa6m   Jan. 2016   Improved humanitarian access and trade support needed to limit Famine risk in Yemen   Conflict in Yemen is the primary driver of the largest food security emergency in the world, with 7 to 10 million people in Crisis (IPC Phase 3), or worse, and in need of urgent humanitarian assistance. Of this total, at least two million people are in Emergency (IPC Phase 4) and face an increased risk of mortality.   In addition to the impact of conflict on household livelihoods, market functioning, and humanitarian access, the deteriorating macroeconomic situation is affecting the private sector’s ability to import food.   In a worst-case scenario, where food imports drop substantially for a sustained period of time or where conflict persistently prevents the flow of food to local markets, Famine (IPC Phase 5) is possible. To prevent this worse-case scenario, appropriate action is necessary to ensure that commercial food trade continues given that the country’s high import dependency significantly limits the degree to which humanitarian response can ensure local food availability. Additionally, improved humanitarian access is needed so food, health, WASH, and nutrition assistance can continue and increase.   Levels of acute malnutrition also remain very concerning. The prevalence of acute malnutrition is persistently high in Yemen and recent surveys do not indicate any major deterioration in the prevalence of global acute malnutrition (GAM) compared to pre-conflict levels (with the exception of lowland areas of Ta’izz). However, the coverage of these surveys has been limited and both admissions data from nutrition treatment programs and key informant reports indicate a sharp increase in the number of children identified as severely malnourished in some areas compared to pre-conflict levels.   For example, the number of children with severe acute malnutrition (SAM) admitted to treatment programs in Al Hudaydah has increased by roughly 40 percent compared to 2014 and 2015 levels. Similarly, WFP’s surveys suggest deteriorating food security outcomes in this governorate.   Based on an assessment of the limited available evidence, FEWS NET estimates that 5 to 8 million people face Crisis (IPC Phase 3) and at least two million people face Emergency (IPC Phase 4). Large-scale food assistance, including WFP’s assistance to an average of 3.5 million beneficiaries per month during the months of September and October 2016, is playing an important role in mitigating food insecurity in many areas.   However, it is not sufficient to meet Yemen’s current needs. Should conflict, commercial import levels, and humanitarian and market access continue at current levels, the size and severity of the current emergency is expected to persist during 2017.   In a worst-case scenario, commercial traders will be unable to access the credit and hard currency required to maintain large-scale wheat imports. Food availability would therefore decline sharply and already poor food consumption and nutritional outcomes would deteriorate further.   In this scenario, Famine (IPC Phase 5), and the associated levels of excess mortality, would be possible. Given that imports by humanitarian actors currently make up only 5 – 15 percent of total formal food imports into Yemen, it is very unlikely that the humanitarian community would have the capacity to fill the very large import gaps which would exist in this scenario.   Given the severity of current food security outcomes, Famine (IPC Phase 5) could also occur if conflict cuts off populations from trade and humanitarian assistance for an extended period of time.   To mitigate severe, ongoing food insecurity and prevent Famine over the coming year, the international community and local actors must protect the ability of private traders to import staple food. In addition, more resources are needed to support the continuation and expansion of humanitarian response.   Finally, continued access to conflict zones for traders and humanitarian actors is essential to ensure that food and assistance that reaches Yemen can move from points of entry to local communities.   http://reliefweb.int/report/yemen/under-secretary-general-humanitarian-affairs-and-emergency-relief-coordinator-11 http://www.unhcr.org/en-au/news/latest/2016/12/5858eb774.html http://www.fews.net/east-africa/yemen/alert/january-4-2017 http://bit.ly/2hxaNm0 http://bit.ly/2gKWh9k
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