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Last week, we shared an example of an innovative participatory project design in Kenya. This week, our example of an innovative participatory project design comes from Kosovo.

In Kosovo, the gap between formal legal protection of women’s property rights and actual practice remains large. To address this gap and help support women’s claims to land and other property, USAID is using participatory approaches in the design of a strategic social and behavior change communication campaign. The campaign aims to shift attitudes and actions around women’s land rights and increase women’s ability to access and own property. Although formal laws and clear enforcement procedures protect women’s rights to land and other property, behavioral barriers—including strong cultural pressures for women to renounce family inheritances—prevent women from acquiring property in practice. To better understand the experiences of those affected and to create behavior change communication interventions that will resonate with the public, the design of USAID’s campaign includes target audiences, women’s organizations, and other key players in the property rights space—giving voice to marginalized groups and building local ownership and sustainability of the program.

During the initial phase of the project, USAID convened a participatory consultation workshop with key stakeholders to listen to local experience, segment and prioritize audiences, analyze needed changes in knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors, and identify key messages that will help reduce pressures on women to renounce their family inheritance. The workshop was also an opportunity for participants to share communications lessons learned and research results, and identify broad gaps in knowledge. Feedback from participants informed the design of a Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices Survey targeting key campaign audiences, which, when launched, will be used to further understand audience experiences, barriers to change, and behavioral incentives—all critical information that will enable the program to bring audiences toward the “tipping point” for change.

USAID will be working across the country with a broad network of community-based civil society and non-governmental organizations to build their capacity to design, lead, and implement this important campaign to better ensure local ownership, sustainability, and the accuracy, relatability, and effectiveness of messaging.

Last week, we featured an innovative participatory approach that uses technology to record land rights in Tanzania. This week, we have an example of an innovative participatory project design from Kenya.

In 2010, Kenya’s Constitution gave women new legal rights to own property. The Constitution also looked to traditional local leaders, such as elders and traditional authorities, to play a more formal role in dispute resolution. The Enhancing Customary Justice Systems in the Mau Forest, also known as the Kenya Justice project (KJP), brings these two threads together by teaching women, men, and children about the Constitution, women’s rights to property, and the role elders play in upholding these rights.

The project piloted a new approach for improving women’s access to justice, particularly related to women’s land rights, by concentrating on teaching male elders the importance of women’s access to justice and women’s land rights. This participatory approach was adapted with an aim to increase sensitivity to, and respect for, women’s land rights through traditional justice systems – such as dispute resolution systems governed by village elders. The project delivered legal literacy trainings to – and facilitated dialogues with – chiefs, elders, women, and youth. An impact evaluation found that the pilot led to increased legal awareness, particularly women’s legal knowledge and men’s knowledge of women’s rights, as well as women’s familiarity with the local justice system and alternative dispute resolution. Further, the project led to an increase in women’s confidence in both the fairness and outcomes of the local justice system, respect for women’s rights by men in the community, an increase in women’s access to land, and most notably, the election of several women to elder positions, for the first time in the Maasai and Kalenjin communities.

Following the inital success, additional funding was allocated in 2014 to produce an implementation guide to make the model replicable across Kenya. The improvement in women’s access to justice and land rights seen in the pilot community of Ol Pusimoru could be spread throughout Kenya through the broader implementation of the project model.

Check back next week to learn how USAID is using participatory approaches to influence attitudes and behaviors around women’s land rights in Kosovo.

Guest commentary by Dr. Cynthia M. Caron, Assistant Professor of International Development and Social Change, Clark University.

On Human Rights Day (December 10), civil society organizations around the world wrapped up the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence campaign. This annual campaign focuses on gender-based violence as a rights’ violation, draws attention to forms of institutionalized inequality and discrimination, and gives us a chance to ask what we’ve learned about the causes of violence against women and what strategies work to reduce it. One takeaway for the development community should be that when we create programs to strengthen women’s land rights, we should also think about how control of land affects gender relations and how empowering women with land rights affects men and boys.

One way to think about gender is as a relationship between men and women. And one critical element in this relationship, no matter where, is the control of valuable assets. Who controls what matters a great deal in a relationship. It can affect how a husband treats a wife, but it can also affect how a husband, father, son understands his own identity—and this may be particularly important when it comes to control of land.

Land inheritance laws and practice provide a good example. Women and increasingly girl-focused development programming often focus on educating women and girls about their legal rights and develop their leadership and social networks to do so, but too often men are excluded from these activities. When boys and men are included, it is typically to “educate” about the benefits of empowering women and girls. But, how do these efforts—which hope to change the traditional status quo—influence the way men and boys think about their masculine identity or what it “means to be a man?”

That men and boys are not asked these questions is, unfortunately, not surprising; development programs often employ the ‘win-win’ rhetoric. In the case of land rights, a ‘win’ of a land transfer from a brother to a sister should not be seen as a loss for the brother; it should be seen as a ‘win’ for the family or for society on the whole. But we must ask whether men and boys are able to see this as a ‘win-win’ situation or whether changes in inheritance practice are seen as redistributing land from men to women.

This is important because threats to masculinity can become excuses for committing acts of violence. And so, recognizing that men’s very sense of what it means to be a man might be directly tied to land ownership and control of this asset needs to be carefully integrated in our development efforts. Sustainable programming aimed at empowering women and girls with land rights needs to ask new and unexpected questions of and from men in order to move forward our collective understanding about men’s relationships with land. Development professionals need to know how men and boys engage with messages of gender equality, the extent to which they try to act on new knowledge, and if they choose not to try, why not.

A recent evaluation of gender equality programming with boys in Bolivia demonstrates how boys struggle to use new knowledge about equal rights for girls when it directly contradicts what they are learning about what it “means to be a man” from how their own fathers. A November 2014 ICRW report shows how notions of masculinity figure into the desire for sons and how this desire may be greater in agricultural rural-based economies due to boys’ potential to inherit land (55).

What this suggests is that the development community needs to think much more carefully about how control of land affects gender relations and how to creatively include men and boys as active participants in programming that empowers women with land rights. This means contemplating how women’s empowerment programming affects men’s identities and also supporting men through potential identity shifts. Adopting this perspective may help programming better achieve longer term goals and limit potential harms to women.

By thinking more strategically about gender relations and including both men and women in programming and planning we can help ensure that our activism around gender-based violence extends far beyond 16 days.

Dr. Cynthia Caron is a Gender Specialist for the Cloudburst Consulting Group, and also an Assistant Professor of International Development and Social Change at Clark University in Massachusetts. On December 9, she presented “Gender & Land Rights: Don’t Forget Men & Boys,” a webinar co-hosted by USAID’s Offices of Land Tenure and Resource Management, and Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment as part of the #16Days of Activism Against Gender Violence.

From negotiations over responsible agricultural investment in Rome to new research on gender equality in Rwanda to important steps in legal reform in Tajikistan, land rights continued to be a priority issue for the global community in 2014. Here are some of our favorite pieces on land rights from USAID and our partners from the past year.

1. Investing in Smallholder Farmers to Feed the Future
   By Tim Fella (Devex)
    
2. Progress Report: USAID Support for the Voluntary Guidelines
    
3. Improving Donor Coordination to Amplify Impact
   By Gregory Myers (The Guardian)
    
4. To Strengthen Women’s Land Rights, Don’t Forget Boys and Men
   By Cynthia Caron
    
5. Video: Assessment of Rwanda’s Gendered Land Rights Informs New Approach
   By Anna Knox
    
6. Issue Brief: Land Tenure & Disasters
    
7. Issue Brief: Land Tenure in Urban Environments
    
8. Does Devolving Rights to Communities Improve Forest Conditions?
   By Matt Sommerville
    
9. Climate Change Impacts Felt By Poorest Communities
   By Robert Primmer
    
10. Harmonizing Land Tenure in National Protected Areas in Honduras
    By Christopher Seeley
     
11. Tajikistan: Legal Aid Boosts Food Security & Agricultural Investment
    By Tiernan Mennen
     
12. Property Rights for Every Woman and Man
    By Gregory Myers (The Chicago Council’s Global Food for Thought Blog)
     
13. Grading Donors on Land Rights – Voluntary Guidelines, RAI
    By Gregory Myers (The Guardian)
     
14. Aerial Mapping of Diamond Sites Aims to Reduce Conflict, Benefit Miners – Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire, and Central African Republic
     

Guest commentary by Christopher Seeley, Chief of Party of the USAID Honduras ProParque project.

One of the most vexing challenges in biodiversity conser/project/proparque-hondurasvation in developing countries is reconciling land tenure and land use issues that emerge when previously unprotected or unregulated ecosystems are placed under state control as part of a national protected areas system.

Communities and resources that were once unencumbered by land use policies and regulations—for better or worse—are placed under a new paradigm with the stroke of a pen. New national protected area boundaries are often created with altruistic conservation objectives, but with little local stakeholder input. These boundaries define, and in many cases, constrain local household livelihood options, place restrictions on the ability of existing communities to access traditionally available and locally controlled natural resources, and legally exclude communities from social and economic development opportunities that communities outside of these “special areas” have a right to pursue.

USAID’s ProParque project in Honduras takes a different approach; it has developed a collaborative method to define boundary limits and legalize the community’s use of park land. The above video describes the project’s participatory approach and key activities, which includes:

1. identifying weaknesses in protected area boundary delineation criteria;
2. replacing inadequate criteria with groupings that more holistically optimized social, cultural, economic and biodiversity/natural resource management conservation parameters;
3. forming inclusive working groups comprised of community participants, protected area managers, municipal leaders and government representatives, to analyze the land tenure and land use implications of the new boundary delineation criteria;
4. defining community and protected area boundaries with cadastral and legal precision using the agreed upon criteria; and
5. providing legal protection and transparency for all parties through land and usufruct titling.

The Census, Mapping and Land Regularization approach (“Censo, Medición y Regularización de Tierras” in Spanish) developed under ProParque was first piloted in Western Honduras, in the Celaque National Park. Created in 1987, during a “boom” of national park decrees, the core zone of the park (a cloud forest containing the headwaters of nine rivers) was created in the home territories of numerous indigenous Lenca communities. These communities faced a near total prohibition on resource utilization and were denied access to most government-sponsored social and economic development initiatives. The park was an ideal pilot site for the new approach given the magnitude of the affected population (several hundred households), the sensitivity of their location (deep within the core protected area), and the willingness of both the communities and local leaders to resolve the long-standing conundrum.

The pilot was completed in two phases over eighteen months, financed by the ProParque Small Grants Fund and implemented by the park’s co-management organization MAPANCE. The first phase consisted of community engagement and the creation of a comprehensive census that provided an in-depth portrait of each community’s livelihood assets and on-the-ground reality, and cadastral work at a level of detail adequate for land and usufruct title purposes. The second phase began with a secondary round of community and governmental dialogue to resolve any differences of opinion or position regarding the results of the census and land mapping work.

There have been two important results to date. First, the Government of Honduras has adopted the approach as the standard for resolving land use conflicts and boundary delineation within the national protected areas system. As part of a wider strategy for the rationalization of Honduras’ overly complex protected areas system of categorization, the approach is now being applied to five additional parks.

Second, significant impacts at the initial pilot site in Celaque National Park have been observed. Four hundred and fifty-three families in eight communities have been granted legal title to their lands and usufruct rights to related resources, the core protected area of the park has been redefined using priority conservation target criteria, and the adoption of collaboratively defined zoning for the park is paving the way for a wide variety of initiatives—including carbon- and water-based payment for environmental services agreements, public-private ecotourism partnerships, and the expanded adoption of environmentally friendly coffee certifications by smallholders.

The “Censo, Medición y Regularización de Tierras” approach adopted by ProParque addresses the natural conflict that exists between allowing communities to access natural resources and protecting biodiversity. As a result, the project aligns with USAID’s development objectives related to biodiversity and global climate change. This participatory effort, which engages with communities from the outset and actively seeks mutually beneficial solutions, provides a strong model for future programming in these important sectors.

Read more about USAID’s ProParque project.

In Kenya’s Ol Pusimoru community, twenty-two women were elected as community elders in 2013, up from 14 in 2012, and zero three years ago.

In Kenya’s traditional, patriarchal Maasai society, women are gaining a new voice and increasingly, seeing their rights to land being recognized and upheld. Twenty-two women were elected as community elders in 2013, up from 14 in 2012, and zero three years ago. This transformation was made possible thanks to a USAID-supported pilot project, Enhancing Customary Justice Systems in the Mau Forest, also known as the Kenya Justice Project (KJP). KJP started during a unique window of opportunity that opened following violent post-election conflict in 2007/8. The violence led to the adoption of a new progressive constitution in 2010. This new constitution enshrines women’s equal rights to property and formalizes the role of traditional leaders as local dispute resolvers.

KJP focused on educating key stakeholder groups through legal literacy and skills trainings, peer sessions, community conversations, and public information activities to increase legal knowledge around constitutional rights and traditional leaders’ responsibilities related to land. The project also demonstrated to Kenyan and U.S. government officials that land is the number one issue of concern for rural communities. While the pilot was designed specifically for the Mau Forest, it could be adapted in other regions. To help replicate the success of the KJP model across Kenya, additional funding was allocated in 2014 for a second phase of KJP to produce a new draft implementation guide to make the model replicable.

The implementation guide outlines KJP’s underlying principles, and the steps, resources and time needed to prepare for and launch similar efforts in new communities. Although the pilot had little funding across phases—only $490,000 to date—it secured buy-in from key players in the Kenyan government, including the Deputy Chief Justice. Importantly, it implemented education and behavior change activities at a comfortable pace using trainers who were respected members of the local community. Awareness raising activities continue to be targeted toward the government and NGOs in order to promote the project and encourage a gender-sensitive approach to the integration of the formal and informal justice systems.

Education and high-level buy-in were the keys to the success of this unique pilot project. Within the community, education was targeted at all levels and groups—from traditional elders and chiefs, to youth and children, and women. Each group learned about and discussed their rights under the constitution. Traditional leaders came to see the important role they play under this new constitution: they are responsible for upholding women’s rights to land. At the same time, they came to see the important role that women play in the community and the benefits that all families could experience by securing women’s rights to land. With this different perspective, traditional leaders invited women to become elders and sit with them to decide local cases. Women and men became confident that they could claim their rights through a more impartial legal process instead of using violence or extra-judicial means. USAID’s Senior Rule of Law Advisor, Ms. Achieng Akumu observed, “People are hungry for this – they have seen the improvement in their lives and are ready for it with the constitution’s devolution of rights.”

According to KJP’s implementing partner, Landesa, “With broader implementation, the transformation that has taken place in the pilot community of Ol Pusimoru can take hold across Kenya, enhancing women’s rights and economic opportunities for all.” With additional funding for training-the-trainer activities and field tests of the model in additional rural communities, the KJP pilot can be sustainably handed off for host-country ownership and scaled across Kenya.