Overview

Around the world rights to land are understood and acknowledged as a vital ingredient for sustainable economic and social empowerment that leaves no one behind. In 2015, under the Sustainable Development Goals, UN member nations committed to achieving secure land rights for all—all women and all men—in order to eradicate poverty, eliminate hunger and ensure gender equality globally by 2030. These ambitious and highly publicized commitments will be closely monitored through agreed upon indicators.

The explicit inclusion of land rights under the SDGs will be transformative: it raises the profile of land rights as a foundational and cross-cutting development tool; it mandates governments to take action; it emphasizes the need to secure rights in an inclusive way; and, it promotes the creation of globally comparable data on land rights.  Aware of the immense driving force of the SDGs, starting in 2012, Landesa co-led a global coalition of non-government organizations, members of civil society, and multi-lateral institutions to advocate for the inclusion of women’s and men’s land rights under the SDGs. These efforts resulted in three SDG targets and three SDG indicators that expressly refer to secure land rights. Landesa is now focused on supporting the implementation and tracking of these commitments.

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