Post Type: Land Rights Champion Feature

This interview with Patricia Malasha, USAID/REFS, is part of USAID’s Land and Resource Governance Division’s Women’s Land Rights Champions series, which profiles staff across USAID Missions and operating units who are working to advance women’s land rights.

Tell us about yourself

My name is Patricia Malasha, and I am a Gender Specialist whose focus for the past 30 years has been on working with women and men to advance gender equality and ensure women have access to land rights and land ownership. I am currently the Country Coordinator for the USAID-funded Integrated Land and Resource Governance Program II (ILRG II) in Zambia, which supports inclusive natural resources management and women’s access to and control of land. I also served as a gender specialist on USAID’s ILRG activity from 2018-2023. My project supports land documentation in customary areas that host 90 percent of land in Zambia, and engages with stakeholders to support inclusive land tenure and resource governance systems.

Why are women’s land rights and resource governance important to your work? And to other USAID development work?

A majority of Zambian women depend on agriculture for their livelihood, and yet less than 22 percent of them own land and property in their country. Despite women having the legal right to own land, systemic challenges and cultural biases deny them the opportunity to enjoy the social and economic benefits associated with land ownership. Through ILRG, USAID has advanced gender equality in Zambia, breaking through structural and cultural barriers so that women gain the power to own land and make decisions about the use of their land. Through our programming, we speak to women and men, hear their views, and leverage their perspectives to design the right interventions for promoting women’s land rights. As a result, 50 percent of women that we work with have their names included on a land certificate. Through this work, we are changing the perceptions and realities for women, making them owners or co-owners of the land rather than just workers on it. This positively changes their social and economic status and gives them the confidence to reshape their role in their familial and community development.

What are some of the biggest challenges in helping women secure land rights and what are some things being done to overcome them?

In Zambia, cultural rules dictate that land belongs to men. These norms and rules are hard to shift away from, and challenging these norms often leads to social rejection or gender-based violence for women. Helping women to understand the importance of being included on land certificates and convincing men to accept women as landholders takes a lot of time and resources. Under ILRG I and now ILRG II, we ride on the local context, using positive influence to achieve success. A traditional saying we often use: “umucele ukufina baumfwa kubausendapo,” means that “the weight of salt is known only to those who have carried it.” We apply this to our work by talking to men and women to help them understand harmful norms, their meaning, as well as what we can change and the impact our interventions can have on individual lives. As a first step, we hold dialogues with traditional leaders (as influencers) and families to increase the acceptability of women as land holders. We then identify and work with women and men within the communities to become role models to champion the benefits of women’s land ownership. Eventually, communities realize these benefits, and more people join in the efforts to include women on the land ownership certificates.

What are some of USAID’s successes in the area of women’s land rights?

Using a holistic and transformative approach to promote women’s land rights ensures that USAID’s approaches are informed by a complete analysis of the barriers, norms, and the power dynamics in land documentation. ILRG II’s approach also helps to build an understanding of the risks and devise mitigation measures. As a result, USAID succeeded in documenting 40,000 parcels in nine customary areas for 170,000 people, 41 percent of which included women as newly registered landholders. In addition, 50 percent contained names of women on the land certificate as joint landholders.

Is there anything else you’d like to share?

ILRG II has developed tools and documents on the work to support women’s land rights. We share our stories to motivate others to learn and build on these efforts.

Our resources are available at: https://www.land-links.org/project/integrated-land-and-resource-governance-ilrg-ii/

 

This interview with Aslihan Kes, USAID/REFS, is part of USAID’s Land and Resource Governance Division’s Women’s Land Rights Champions series, which profiles staff across USAID Missions and operating units who are working to advance women’s land rights.

Tell us about yourself

I am a Senior Gender Advisor with the USAID Bureau for Resilience, Environment and Food Security (REFS). I have been with USAID for about 6 years. Before joining the Agency, for over a decade, I worked at the International Center for Research on Women, last as a Senior Economist.  That is where I first started working on women’s land and property rights as a key priority not only for increasing women’s economic security and wellbeing, but also for increasing their empowerment across many spheres of their lives. One of the first research projects I worked on explored the linkages between women’s land tenure security, access to housing, and human health and well-being in South Africa and Uganda. In this work, we explored the impact of secure land and property on women’s ability to protect themselves from HIV and reduce gender-based violence (GBV). Together with colleagues, I also developed one of the early survey instruments to better understand and measure women’s rights to land and assets. The tool helped analyze relationships between different types of land ownership and women’s perceptions of longer-term security of their land and assets and ability to make decisions over their land and assets. Finally, I had the privilege to work with grassroots organizations across East Africa and support the development of paralegal programs that raised awareness about women’s land rights, supported community-level conflict resolution, and enhanced women’s access to justice.

Why are women’s land rights and resource governance important to your work? And to other USAID development work?

At USAID, REFS coordinates the Agency’s efforts to promote food security and improved nutrition, access to safe water, a healthy environment, and improved livelihoods for all. We can achieve these goals only with women at the center of our efforts; when women have the tools to succeed and when they are empowered to chart a course for themselves and their families. And women’s land rights and resource governance are fundamental for driving equity and empowering women.

The latest (2023) FAO report on the Status of Women in Agrifood Systems synthesizes the most recent gender data and evidence from the agricultural sector and reinforces a key message that there are significant economic and social costs to persistent gender inequities in agrifood systems—a sector in which women contribute significant labor and rely more heavily on for their livelihoods.

One of the key inequities the report underscores is land ownership. Despite progress in some areas, women’s tenure security over agricultural land continues to lag behind that of men. All the while we have an ever-growing evidence base that clearly lays out the case for secure rights over land because they incentivize women—and men—to invest in their land to make it more productive and to be more resilient. Land as collateral remains the more common way for women and men to access financing for their investments both on and off the farm. In fact, the ImpAct Review that was done by the USAID Office of Chief Economist last year lists formalizing women’s land rights and expanding co-titling as meaningful interventions for increasing women’s agricultural income. And finally, as summarized in the same FAO report, there is a large body of evidence that highlights the positive linkages between women’s land rights and improved bargaining power, human capital investment and intergenerational transfers, just to name a few. In other words, the ripple effects of securing women’s land rights can set a foundation for generating positive outcomes from much of the work that we do at USAID.  

At this point, the question is not “why” it is important to ensure that women have tenure security over land and a voice in their natural resource governance, but “how” to advance these through programs and policies.

What are some of the biggest challenges in helping women secure land rights and what are some things being done to overcome them?

While it is encouraging to see that more countries have undertaken legal and policy reforms that promote and protect women’s equal rights to land, there continue to be significant implementation and enforcement challenges. This has to do with the limited capacity and resources of institutions to effectively implement policies but also with the tension that often exists between the laws on the one hand and social norms governing land ownership on the other.

I think the way we can tackle this complex challenge is through programs that pursue multi-pronged approaches that address both demand and supply. For example, it is important to build the capacity of institutions to design and implement gender responsive land policies, raise awareness about women’s legal land rights, and engage with men and community leaders in meaningful dialogue to tackle long standing norms that might prevent equitable and inclusive land ownership.

For the last couple of years, through the U.S. Government’s Gender Equity and Equality Action (GEEA) Fund, managed by USAID’s Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Hub (GenDev) and implemented by USAID and the Department of State, USAID has been supporting African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) to implement the Gender Responsive Agriculture Systems Policy (GRASP) fellowship program. GRASP invests in building the leadership of women in food systems policy in Africa and is currently working with about 100 women fellows from 12 countries across the African continent. These fellows and the mentors and mentees they work with—300 changemakers in total—are working to ensure agricultural policies and their implementation, including around land and natural resource management, are more gender responsive. I think this is a great example of how we can make inroads to transforming agrifood systems with women as leaders driving the change.

As a donor, it is also important that we set clear targets and direct resources toward programs that will help us achieve those targets. Last year, USAID announced Generating Resilience and Opportunities for Women (GROW), which is a commitment to more than double USAID’s investments in Fiscal Year 2023 funds to advance gender priorities in agrifood, water, and climate adaptation programming to reach $335 million. Today, some 17 months later, USAID has actually exceeded the GROW commitment by $114 million to reach a total of $449 million in investment.  

GROW is enabling USAID to deepen and scale the impact of our programs that support women on and off their farms. One of the targets that USAID has set under GROW is that 150,000 women will be provided with legally recognized and documented tenure rights to land or marine areas by FY 2025.  

This target will help us stay the course and stay accountable to this important priority.

What are some of USAID’s successes in the area of women’s land rights?

There are some successes in this space achieved through awareness raising and capacity building as well as innovative models such as the Mapping Approaches for Securing Tenure (MAST), which USAID and partners use to support local communities to document, manage and secure their land and resource rights.

There are also some promising results that came out of intentionally embedding women’s access to land and tenure security as a priority within USAID’s agricultural value chain activities. For example, the Advance II activity in Northern Ghana tapped into the existing outgrower business networks to promote women farmers’ access to land. With support from the Activity, the outgrower business owners, who saw a strong business case for working with women farmers, organized community sensitization meetings with male landlords, chiefs, husbands and women leaders in the community and advocated for land access for women farmers. At the same time, the Activity supported locally led research that helped them more effectively advocate on this critical issue. The research revealed the significant productivity losses that are caused by women farmers’ lack of easy access to land, and helped secure commitments from traditional leaders and landowners to extend land tenure rights to women; rights that were documented through a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU).

This interview with Emile Ako, USAID/Côte d’Ivoire, is part of the REFS/CNE/LRG Women’s Land Rights Champions series, which profiles staff across USAID Missions and operating units who are working to advance women’s land rights.

Tell us about yourself.

I am a Project Management Specialist in USAID’s Democracy, Rights, Governance and Conflict Prevention office in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. I joined USAID in September 2021; however, my commitment to the Agency goes back nearly 10 years. Previously, I was involved as a consultant and later as an awardee under the USAID Office of Transition Initiatives, where I helped rebuild broken intercommunal relations after the 2011 post-electoral crisis. During this time, USAID produced a short film about my work. Subsequently, I was one of the 12 Young Ivorians selected to participate in former President Obama’s Flagship program, the Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders Initiative (MWF-YALI) in 2015. My career in the international development sector started in 2016 when I joined the American NGO Search for Common Ground as a Project Manager in western Côte d’Ivoire. In addition to working in Côte d’Ivoire, I have worked in Ghana, Liberia, and in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).  

In Côte d’Ivoire and in the DRC, local land-related conflicts have exacerbated tensions between communities. My efforts helped to broker peace between communities and resolve land conflicts in both countries. In western Côte d’Ivoire, I led the mediation process that resulted in the reconciliation and land agreement between the previously opposed Baoulé and the Guéré ethnic groups in the town of Kaade. In the DRC, as a Project Manager with Search for Common Ground, I contributed to securing grouped land titles for several thousands of small farmers, including the Twa/Batwa community in the Luberizi Groupement of the South Kivu Province.

Why are women’s land rights and resource governance important to your work? And to other USAID development work?

Equitable and unobstructed access to land for women has a direct impact on poverty reduction, reduces the propensity of violent conflicts, and decreases gender-based violence in the long-run.  According to the FAO, while women produce between 60 and 80 percent of subsistence crops in developing countries, they face incredible challenges in gaining access to land and resources, like funds to fertilize their soil or increase their production.¹ The situation is no different in Côte d’Ivoire. The recent 2021 Demographic and Health Survey in Côte d’Ivoire revealed that the percentage of women aged 15 to 49 who reported that they do not possess land has increased from 75 percent in 2011 to 88 percent in 2021.² Moreover, land and resource-related conflicts are frequently identified as a leading cause of conflicts and violence.³ Securing land ownership and access for women is a key contribution that USAID can support to reduce poverty, remove women from abusive and toxic subordination, and make it possible for them to fully participate in the market-based economy. Elevating the status of women also holds a great potential for women’s political participation; as their economic power increases, they become better equipped to challenge regressive social norms and increase their leadership in their communities. 

What are some of the biggest challenges in helping women secure land rights and what are some things being done to overcome them?

A political economy analysis conducted as part of the USAID-funded Improving Land Access for Women (ILAW) activity revealed that social norms, traditional practices, and patriarchal beliefs constitute major challenges to women’s access and ownership of land. Other assessments have revealed that, as women are empowered and become economically independent, male patriarchal norms and practices are perceived as threatened, so women are therefore prevented in some traditional societies from having full access and control of land and resources. 

In addition to traditional norms, the length and cost of procedures to establish legal land documentation and/or pursue litigation in case of conflict prevent many women from attempting to seek legal or administrative protection for their land. The process of establishing land ownership for rural and urban lands in Côte d’Ivoire has several stages, each with their own costs, long time delays, and specialized procedures. The whole process requires multiple visits to multiple administrations and excessive time and money, so gaining legal land rights can last several months or even years. These challenges can disincentivize rural women, who typically have less income, often lack formal education and have more pressing daily domestic demands. Furthermore, the absence of qualified lawyers in remote areas that can provide legal assistance to these women adds an additional layer of difficulty. 

To address some of these challenges, ILAW piloted a multilayered approach that combined awareness, social dialogue, behavior change communication, land mediation and direct legal and organizational support to women and communities. The project initiated educational campaigns to raise awareness about recent positive changes in Ivorian property rights and inheritance laws and behavior change communication campaigns by a local theater group. In addition, the project provided direct livelihood assistance through the introduction of the Gender Action Learning System (GALS),⁴ which allowed about 500 community members to define their collective vision for a more viable and inclusive future for women and girls. The project also provided legal assistance for women to facilitate legal access to land. 

What are some of USAID’s successes in the area of women’s land rights?

ILAW is a three-year pilot activity, but even after two years of work, community partners have reported tangible changes at both the individual and collective levels. Below are a few anecdotal successes:

• The village chief from the village of Kapounon on the border with Burkina Faso decided to double the amount of land reserved for women’s agricultural activities following his participation in social dialogue and GALS sessions, despite his initial reluctance.
• Another farmer in northern Côte d’Ivoire reported the following: “Before going to the (GALS) training, I used to work alone, I did not inform my wife and my children of what I earned. But now I bring them together, we talk, and we budget our expenses. It is not a common practice for men and women (husband and wife) to have open communication in our culture. But now I have understood that it’s when we talk to each other, and we get along, that we can give each other new ideas to move forward, and everyone is happy. So, I talk, I discuss, and now they are no longer afraid to come and talk to me.”
• A village chief in western Côte d’Ivoire was quoted saying: “After being village chief for 32 years, I can say that this project has completely transformed my village.” He then described how the training and awareness-raising events led him to divide his land equally between his children, legally marry his wife, and integrate three women into his council of elders. 
• The National Rural Land Agency (AFOR), impressed by the GALs tool, initiated dialogue with other international donors to integrate the tool in potential future projects.
• Moreover, AFOR recently partnered with ILAW to pilot a new village land registry. There are also fruitful conversations occurring between the World Bank (WB) and ILAW to share lessons learned for future WB programming in Côte d’Ivoire. 

These success stories reveal the transformative power of increasing access to land for women and communities. ILAW has increased communities’ understanding of land regulations, improved the collective bargaining power of rural women, and provided opportunities for women to secure land across target project communities. To date, USAID has reached 6,214 community members in rural western and northern Côte d’Ivoire. 

 Is there anything else you’d like to share?

Land access for women is an area where USAID can make a sustainable, positive impact in Côte d’Ivoire. However, the success of ILAW remains localized to pilot communities, while land issues are widespread. Consolidating the gains and creating connections with the private sector, linking the women supported under ILAW with microfinance institutions, and facilitating their access to markets in urban areas are a few examples of high impact actions for USAID to pursue in the future. 

 

---

¹ FAO. 1984. Women in Food Production and Food Security in Africa. Report of the Government Consultation held in Harare, Zimbabwe, 10-13 July 1984, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, Italy.

² Jean Chrésus, Côte d’Ivoire: Niellé, un litige foncier au centre de violents affrontements entre les populations fait des morts et des blessés in Koaci.com (retrieved on 10/19/2023).

³ https://www.koaci.com/article/2022/03/04/cote-divoire/societe/cote-divoire-nielle-un-litige-foncier-au-centre-de-violents-affrontements-entre-les-populations-fait-des-morts-et-des-blesses_158149.html.

⁴ https://gender.cgiar.org/tools-methods-manuals/gender-action-learning-system-gals

This interview with Altaf Afridi, USAID/Pakistan, is part of USAID’s Land and Resource Governance Division’s Women’s Land Rights Champions series, which profiles staff across USAID Missions and operating units who are working to advance women’s land rights.

Tell us about yourself.

My name is Altaf Afridi. I work as a Development Assistance Specialist at USAID/Pakistan. Currently, I manage the Land Registration in Merged Areas (LRMA) project. I am a governance specialist and have designed and managed governance projects throughout my career. In addition to managing LRMA, I also supervise another USAID governance project called Merged Areas Governance Program implemented by UNDP. Prior to my role at USAID, I worked as a Governance Officer at the Pakistan Resident Mission of the Asian Development Bank (ADB). At ADB, I managed the implementation of a large loan program called Decentralization Support Program and implemented a number of supporting technical assistance projects.

Why are women’s land rights and resource governance important to your work? And to other USAID development work?

Pakistan ranks among the world’s lowest in gender equality and women’s rights. This is especially true for the tribal regions, which recently merged into the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Province. Here, as per the tribal code, land is owned collectively by tribes, sub-tribes, and clans. Women do not have any role in decision making in this patriarchal and conservative society. Therefore, they have virtually no control over land. To address this, USAID/Pakistan is assisting the provincial government of KP in establishing a land registration system with special emphasis on women’s access and control over assets. 

What are some of the biggest challenges in helping women secure land rights and what are some things being done to overcome them?

In 2018, the Parliament of Pakistan passed a constitutional amendment to merge the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border into the neighboring Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Province. This region is now known as Merged Areas (or Merged Districts) and is part of KP Province. Historically, this particular region was governed through uncodified tribal traditions and was not under the legal jurisdiction of Pakistan law.

The cultural norms and traditions prevailing in Pakistan in general, and in Merged Areas in particular, pose the biggest challenge in helping women secure land rights. Although the Government of Pakistan has legislated extensively to ensure clear inheritance and land rights pathways for women, local men and women are mostly unaware of these laws. The government has lacked the capacity to raise sufficient awareness to effectively implement the new laws.  

USAID/Pakistan, through LRMA, is helping the Government of Pakistan bolster communications about the land laws and provide community outreach that educates local communities about the importance of women’s land rights. Because literacy is low, LRMA is developing and disseminating easy-to-understand communication products like thematic songs, radio programs, Public Service Announcements, illustrations, instructional videos, and live sessions featuring youth from Merged Areas. 

LRMA is also building capacity within the Government of Pakistan to support implementation of the new legislation. LRMA has been conducting a review of the relevant laws, regulations, and policies, and has been recommending relevant amendments to help increase uptake and effectiveness of the laws. LRMA has also been designing and delivering trainings and developing materials like manuals and posters to help raise awareness among government staff, as well as providing equipment and hardware where required.

What are some of USAID’s successes in the area of women’s land rights?

LRMA is USAID/Pakistan’s first and only activity on land rights and there have been several successes. LRMA has conducted capacity building activities for relevant government officials as well as sessions with community leaders to raise awareness of women’s land rights. 

In addition, the project also recently signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the KP Province Ombudesperson, who is entitled to take action when women’s land rights are denied. As a result, LRMA  has set up a legal library in the Ombudsperson’s office to support the capacity of the pro bono lawyers working there. To fill the information gap and inform the public about the new role of the Ombudsperson, LRMA has provided ten “knowledge corner” kiosks to showcase printed information, education, and communications materials on women’s land rights, including inheritance rights. 

LRMA has also developed a video documentary that features two case studies about women litigants who have experienced barriers in registering their property. The documentary will be widely disseminated through two Pashto language satellite/cable TV channels (with wide outreach in Merged Areas) and through various social media platforms.  

Is there anything else you’d like to share?

The project is still new. We look forward to sharing more substantial results down the road.

This series features Women’s Land Rights Champions within USAID to learn more about their work. We’re pleased to share this interview with Corinne Hart, USAID’s Senior Gender Advisor for Energy, Environment, and Climate.

Tell us about yourself

I am the Senior Gender Advisor for Energy, Environment, and Climate in USAID’s Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Hub within the Development, Democracy, and Innovation (DDI) Bureau. I lead a team of gender advisors tasked with providing technical assistance across the Agency to support gender integration in a range of environmental sectors, including land and resource governance. I also oversee Gender Equity and Equality Action (GEEA) Fund resources available to advance women’s land rights in partnership with the Land and Resource Governance division in DDI. 

Why are women’s land rights and resource governance important to your work? And to other USAID development work?

As one of the Agency’s advisors responsible for gender integration in environment and climate sectors, I’ve seen firsthand that women’s land rights and their secure land tenure is a critical component to achieving the Agency’s overall goals on gender equality, women’s empowerment, climate change, the environment, and natural resource management. When women have secure rights to land, including by law and in customary systems, they have a critical asset that they can rely on for their livelihoods, and it can increase their decision-making power and agency. 

What are some of the biggest challenges in helping women secure land rights and what are some things being done to overcome them?

While there is a strong body of evidence connecting women’s secure land rights to many different development outcomes, such as food security, climate change, and natural resource management, it is still necessary to make the case to a range of stakeholders that advancing women’s land rights must be a key part of their approaches. Partnering with governments at the local and national levels, private sector actors, local implementing partners, and women and men in communities is one strategy that we use to ensure that women’s land rights interventions are woven into a range of sectors and approaches, including in policies, customary tenure arrangements, agriculture, and economic growth. USAID has also created the Resilient, Inclusive, Sustainable Environments (RISE) Challenge to provide small grants to environment, gender, and development organizations to address gender-based violence (GBV) related to natural resource management, including land. These grants enable our partners to apply best practices in GBV mitigation and response related to women’s land rights and to share the learnings across a large network of practitioners through the USAID-funded GBV-Environment Linkages Center hosted by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Together with our partners from all sectors around the world, we are building the evidence, testing promising practices, providing technical assistance, and working directly with communities to ensure that women are able to access and control the land that is so critical for their overall health, wellbeing, and economic stability. 

What are some of USAID’s successes in the area of women’s land rights?

USAID is on the forefront of implementing gender-transformative women’s land rights programs that are addressing a wide range of issues that can impede equal rights to land. For example, our activities not only focus on land laws, but they also work to increase women’s meaningful participation and leadership in community natural resource management bodies, address gender-based violence concerns connected to land rights, change harmful gender norms, engage men and boys as gender equality champions, and increase women’s personal agency and empowerment. This robust approach ensures that USAID’s women’s land rights activities tackle the broad range of challenges that women face when accessing and controlling land. 

 

This series features Women’s Land Rights Champions within USAID to learn more about their work.

Serge Ramanantsoa, USAID/Madagascar

August 2023 – Women’s Land Rights Champion: Serge Ramanantsoa

May 2023 – Women’s Land Rights Champion: Semaly Kisamo

May 2022 – Women’s Land Rights Champion: Corinne Hart

 

February 2022 – Women’s Land Rights Champion: Paula Pimentel

January 2022 – Women’s Land Rights Champion: F. Mulbah Zig Forkpa, Jr.

December 2021 – Women’s Land Rights Champion: Marcela Chaves

November 2021 – Women’s Land Rights Champion: Catherine Tembo, Ph.D.

 

 

This series features Women’s Land Rights Champions within USAID to learn more about their work. This month’s Champion is Paula Pimentel of USAID/Mozambique.

Tell us about yourself

I am a senior agricultural specialist at USAID/Mozambique with more than 30 years of experience in agricultural development, including land rights and resource governance. I have an MSc in Animal Production from the University of Pretoria and an Honors degree in Veterinary Medicine from Eduardo Mondlane University. 

Why are women’s land rights and resource governance important to your work? And to other USAID development work?

In Mozambique and other African countries, land and natural resources are the most valuable economic asset for rural women. Being able to access and control land-related assets is critical for women’s self-reliance and a pathway to economic growth. Strengthening women’s rights to land, and women’s ability to influence resource governance, leads to better agricultural productivity and resource management. This, in turn, contributes to many USAID development goals like improved food security and climate change mitigation and adaptation.

What are some of the biggest challenges in helping women secure land rights and what are some things being done to overcome them?

A main challenge is a lack of gender equality in land legislation or weak implementation of laws and policies. But even when the legal and policy framework provides for women’s land rights, women face many other challenges like lack of knowledge about their rights and land registration processes, unequal inheritance practices, biased dispute resolution mechanisms, restrictive social norms, and vulnerability to gender-based violence. USAID  supports consultations and data analysis to improve inclusiveness in the land policy reform process in Mozambique. We are supporting programs that work directly with women, communities, and gender champions to increase women’s access to information and participation in community land governance and to shift restrictive social norms. USAID is also partnering with the private sector so that rural women in Mozambique can have secure land rights and turn these rights into concrete opportunities for economic security.

What are some of USAID’s successes in the area of women’s land rights?

USAID is partnering with one of Mozambique’s largest agroforestry companies to develop innovative business models that benefit companies and smallholder farmers. Over the past year, around 4,000 people’s land access and land use rights were formalized through the program, enabling those individuals to  engage in economically viable use of the land. Over 67 percent of those farmers are women, who are now able to access and control sustainable livelihoods.

Anything else you want to share?

Land documentation and inclusive community land governance are transformative for smallholder farmers and communities as a whole, decreasing conflict and increasing investment and overall economic growth in rural areas. The USAID Mozambique Mission is keen to pursue a pathway that will continue to support and improve the country’s land policy environment, aiming at a more gender equitable and prosperous use of land by Mozambican women. 

I have personally learned a lot by working with the USAID-funded ILRG Activity and I thank Thais Silveira Bessa, the activity’s Gender Specialist, for sharing  key field assessments with a strong gender lens on women’s land rights in  Mozambican rural communities.

This series features Women’s Land Rights Champions within USAID to learn more about their work. We’re pleased to share this interview with F. Mulbah Zig Forkpa, Jr., the Land Governance Specialist at USAID/Liberia.

Tell us about yourself.

My name is F. Mulbah Zig Forkpa, Jr. I am currently the Land Governance Specialist at USAID/Liberia. I have served in this capacity for five years, helping to implement the Mission’s land and resource governance programs-first the Land Governance Support Activity, a  $15.6 million activity which ended in August 2020, and now the Land Management Support Activities, a $9.4 million activity which continues until 2025. I also serve as one of the focal persons on gender in the Mission’s Office of Democracy, Rights, and Governance. I am a proud graduate of USAID’s inaugural Land Advisors Program. I hold both BA and LLB degrees from the University of Liberia. I am finalizing my LLM in Transnational Criminal Justice. Throughout my LLM studies, I have endeavored to explore the linkages between land reform and transitional justice, as well as how land reform can sustain peace and prevent the recurrence of conflicts that were primarily provoked by land disagreements.

Why are women’s land rights and resource governance important to your work? And to other USAID development work?

Liberia has a predominantly rural population that primarily derives its livelihood from land. This means that land is placed at the center of everything that matters, including social and economic security. Where insecure land and resource governance affect an entire population, women tend to suffer the most because of the critical role they play in farming and caring for the family. There is an important relationship between improved women’s land rights and a better society. Since the essence of USAID’s work is to ensure an improved and more secure society, the obvious choice must be made to enhance women’s secure access to land and resources.

What are some of the biggest challenges in helping women secure land rights and what are some things being done to overcome them?

To the best of my knowledge, all women’s land rights assessments have shown that despite the central role women play in agricultural production, their rights and access to land are often hindered. In a male-dominated society like Liberia, these hindrances have long roots and have evolved as an acceptable social norm. In most cases, discriminatory social norms are supported by existing legal frameworks that relegate women’s land and natural resource rights to a status that is less important than those of men. In instances where discriminatory gender norms are outlawed through formal laws, the entrenched adherence to those norms, as well as powerful men’s unwillingness to lose their control over land resources makes it extremely difficult to enforce new reform laws. To offset these challenges, we have ensured that gender issues are constantly highlighted in policies and regulatory formulations, in order to streamline and amplify the gender equality provisions of the 2018 Land Rights Act of Liberia. Our land and resource governance programs have constantly embarked on strong behavioral change education and publicity campaigns. In these endeavors, we have collaborated with, and empowered, influential stakeholders including traditional leaders who are now championing the fight for gender empowerment. These strategies must become sustainable and live on even after donor support ends. In that regard, the USAID supported the establishment of a Gender Unit within the Liberia Land Authority (LLA), the central land regulatory agency in Liberia. The Gender Unit is driving the gender empowerment agenda of the LLA.

What are some of USAID’s successes in the area of land rights?

USAID has supported the enactment, establishment, and operationalization of the LLA. Initially, land services were scattered across different government entities and also marked by huge bureaucracy. The LLA has now become the single one-stop-center to access land services. USAID has ensured that the LLA has the proper tools to oversee the implementation of the Land Rights Act adopted in 2018 as the country’s primary land reform agenda. To do so, a USAID-supported consultant worked with the LLA in 2019 to create an implementation strategy for the Land Rights Act. The strategy has been effective, making it possible for stakeholders to avoid duplication in programming aimed at safeguarding rights. I firmly believe the most significant provisions of the Land Right Act are those that require the formalization of customary land. These provisions restored customary land rights, which were denied for over 100 years, and placed women’s rights  on par with those of men, both in terms of land access and management. These customary land formalization provisions have been piloted by USAID in communities across three of Liberia’s 15 counties, and lessons learned are being rolled out.

Anything else you want to share?

Let me take the moment to talk briefly about the USAID/Liberia Land Management Activity, awarded in July 2021 with the intent to support at least 100 communities to own and manage their customary land efficiently. It is a continuation of USAID’s investment in the Liberian land space and has a component that places exclusive emphasis on empowering women and minority groups to participate in decision-making around land by getting elected to governance bodies. The program encourages different donors to co-locate and leverage efforts. Because of these opportunities, the communities who will secure their land rights through USAID’s activity will likely utilize their titles for various private sector commercial engagements.