Letter

Securing rights to land brings food, security, power, opportunity, and a stake in the future.

Watch this short video, which captures the excitement in the field as 50,000 families each receive secure rights to a micro-plot of land

DEAR COLLEAGUES AND FRIENDS,

Land is the starting point.

It is where we live, where we grow. It is our most important asset.

It is the starting point for so many of the largest, most stubborn problems facing the world today.

War, environmental destruction, hunger, displacement.

Likewise, it is the starting point for solutions to these same problems.

That’s why over the last four decades Landesa has used a land-centered approach to help the world’s poorest. Because we know that the promise of secure rights to land is much greater than the mere acreage it provides.

Securing rights to land brings food, security, power, opportunity, a stake in the future.

This year, Landesa has worked with partners around the world to bring those benefits to millions:

In China, Landesa’s top policy recommendations were incorporated into the this year’s “No. 1 Document ” — the most important annual policy document in the country. This was the first major modern Chinese policy document to highlight the need for improving women’s rights to rural land. Propelled by the document, provinces have moved forward with plans to include both men's and women’s names in new provincial land registries. Up to 100 million women stand to benefit.

In Rwanda, Landesa and local partners designed and are implementing a program to train hundreds of community legal aid workers on basic land tenure laws — especially on women’s rights to own and inherit land — and conflict resolution. The new legal aid workers have already met with 746 women and men to help resolve land disputes and improve awareness of women’s land rights in rural communities.

In West Bengal, India, more than 40,000 girls are learning gardening skills and their rights to land. Thanks to a partnership between Landesa and the state government of West Bengal, these girls are able to participate in a program that aims to keep girls in school, reduce childhood marriage, and position them to gain secure land rights as women.

There are dozens of other accomplishments we could share. From Ghana to Odisha, India, from the halls of Kenya’s capital to the halls of the U.N., Landesa’s partnerships have led to change around the world. In this report, we’d like to focus on the impact of just one remarkable project.

During a single week in February of this year, an extraordinary joint effort between the West Bengal government and Landesa resulted in more than 50,000 women and their families gaining legal rights to their own plot of land.

In the pages of this annual report, you’ll follow a few of these 50,000 new landowners as they use their new property to build a more prosperous, secure, and just future for themselves, their families, and their communities. Their stories are unique, but not unusual. They illustrate just what secure land rights can do.

All they needed was the security and opportunity that accompany legal rights to land. They did the rest by the sweat of their brow. They’ve built permanent homes. They’ve planted trees and terraced fields. They’ve invested their savings in improved fertilizer and their labor in improved irrigation. And they’ve used the proceeds to better feed and educate their children.

Likewise, the government of West Bengal has seized this opportunity to provide these now permanent communities of former migrants and squatters with toilets, electricity, and wells with clean drinking water.

The portraits of hope in the following pages illustrate the kind of impact your support for Landesa has helped generate. Please continue to share with others the Landesa story that starts with the transformative power of secure rights to a small plot of land.

Thanks to your support, we’ve had a remarkable year. With your partnership, we’re looking forward to more.

Sincerely,

Tim Hanstad
Landesa President and CEO

Chris Grumm
Board Chair