ResourcesLandesa Reports

Many challenges, such as deforestation, water management, land conflicts, labor rights, and smallholder support require collective action to address them in a meaningful way. This resource offers guidance for planners and implementers of landscape initiatives and suggests practical approaches to ensuring IPLC participation in, or ownership of, decisions in landscape initiatives at various key steps.

Landesa researchers reveal a brutal system of abuse and torture that deters tribal women from accessing their rights to land. The women in the tribal communities are particularly disadvantaged, as the customary practices do not support their land rights and the law of the state accepts customary practices of the tribal communities to be legal. While the research area focuses on the state of Jharkhand, similar trends are observable in India’s other tribal areas.

With the common aim of supporting the development of a protective, pro-poor legal framework, that will empower farmers to use the law, make informed decisions about their land, and maintain secure land tenure – ultimately leading to poverty alleviation for poor, rural women and men – Namati and Landesa have teamed up to prepare this report.

In 2010, Kenya adopted a new Constitution that guarantees equal rights for women and men and recognizes the role of traditional justice actors in resolving disputes, to the extent those actors comply with the principles enshrined in the Constitution. The following year Landesa designed and piloted the USAID-supported project, Enhancing Customary Justice Systems in the Mau Forest, Kenya, also known as the Kenya Justice Project (KJP).