Landesa Center for Women’s Land Rights

The Landesa Center for Women’s Land Rights champions women’s secure access to land by providing resources and training that connects policymakers, researchers, and practitioners around the world. We pilot innovative solutions to secure women’s land rights and educate development experts about the gap between customary and institutional law. Our program goal is to build capacity to promote approaches that strengthen and secure women’s land rights through:

  • Strengthening women’s property rights in law and in practice in countries where we work, while closing the gap between customary and formal law.
  • Creating LandWise: A Women & Land Library (coming soon) that provides laws and other resources affecting women’s rights.
  • Growing a two-year fellowship program that trains and mentors new legal professionals on securing property rights for women.
  • Engaging professionals from the developing world to improve their ability to work on women’s land rights.

Why women’s land rights?

When women have secure rights to their land, they are better able to provide for their family’s needs – especially those of their children. Studies show the linkages when women have secure rights to land:

  • Family nutrition and health improves;
  • Women become less vulnerable to contracting HIV/AIDS;
  • HIV-positive women may be better able to cope with the consequences of AIDS;
  • Women may be less likely to be victims of domestic violence;
  • Children are more likely to receive an education and stay in school longer;
  • Women may have better access to micro-credit;
  • Women’s participation in household decision-making increases.

Women produce nearly half of the food grown in the developing world. Often, they do not have secure rights to the land they farm and are denied equal rights to access, inherit, or own it. As a result, these women are at an increased risk of losing their source of food, income, and shelter should they lose their only link to the land they till:  husbands, fathers, or brothers taken by illness, violence, or migration.

From Our Blog

Deborah Espinosa

A Letter to Mothers in the Developing World

Posted on May 13, 2012 by Deborah Espinosa

A Letter to Mothers in the Developing World, On this Mother’s Day, Landesa salutes mothers in the developing world – our partners. We advocate for your land rights not just because it is a good idea – but because it …
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Amanda Richardson

Women’s land rights and nutrition

Posted on May 1, 2012 by Amanda Richardson

While there is no silver bullet to solve global hunger, discussion at the Global Conference of Women in Agriculture (GCWA), held in New Delhi from March 13th to 15th, 2012, pointed to a piece of the solution. In a breakout …
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Tim Hanstad

How women can help solve the global food security problem

Posted on April 9, 2012 by Tim Hanstad

This blog originally appeared on the ONE Campaign blog. Four years ago, Asira Nzamwitaakuze, a Rwandan farmer and mother of four young children, more than doubled her harvest when she gained a powerful tool not normally kept in a barn …
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