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A capacity building strategy is guiding budding professionals towards careers in land administration

When the Colombian government and USAID teamed up to formalize more than 3,000 parcels in the municipality of Ovejas, sourcing qualified professionals figured high on the list of challenges. Unable to fill vacant positions from the local workforce, the campaign had to field more than 50 professionals from around the country to support the endeavor.

Positions included land surveyors, legal experts, knowledge management specialists, and social workers with a unique set of skills related to land rights. Ten teams made up of four diverse professionals used their skills and tools to reach rural communities, effectively communicate, formalize a property, and register a land title. The pilot employed some 60 qualified professionals, but only 6 of them were actually from Ovejas.

The lessons are manifold. In a region with an already weak land market, students and young professionals do not consider careers in land administration. In places like Ovejas, the national cadaster—the plot map of land ownership—is out of date and does not reflect the reality of who is occupying what parcel. Instead of registering land titles and paying property taxes, land is bought and sold informally with a paper receipt and a handshake. Few, if any, land titles exist.

Thanks to these lessons gained through the Ovejas land formalization campaign, the USAID-funded Land for Prosperity Activity is targeting young professionals in rural municipalities with the skills and knowledge to select career paths related to land formalization, restitution, and administration.

In its first two years of implementation, Land for Prosperity has held over 200 workshops and trained more than 8,000 people on skills and knowledge related to land formalization. Among them are 80 law students in their final year at the Corporación Universitaria Remington, located in Montería, Córdoba.

Under the USAID partnership, the law students have reviewed academic material about Colombia’s land policies and land formalization processes. The students then have the option to select an internship at the regional offices of land entities, like the National Registry Superintendence–SNR, the land cadaster entity IGAC, or they can work with municipal administrations at one of the USAID-supported municipal land offices. In Córdoba, there are currently three Municipal Land Offices in the towns of Puerto Libertador, Tierralta, and Valencia. The internship is a requirement for graduation and must be related to legal services for their communities.

“In Southern Córdoba the public sector is in need of skilled workers and funding. We need more social workers and lawyers,” explains María Angélica Sakr, coordinator of Remington University’s legal clinic in Montería. “USAID is filling a need by creating a skilled workforce and motivating professionals towards these niche areas.”

Community Mediator

Andris Salgado, 38, plans to graduate with a law degree from Remington next year. He’s currently fulfilling his internship duties at the legal clinic in his hometown of Puerto Libertador. Since 2015, Salgado has worked as a community mediator and conciliator with support from USAID’s Access to Justice Program and the Ministry of Justice. This year, he participated in USAID-supported land administration workshops to learn more about current land policies and goals related to the 2016 Peace Accords.

“Knowing Colombia’s land laws can support rural communities with all kinds of services, from land conflicts to assigning parcels to farmers who have been in possession of their farms for over ten years,” says Salgado.

A legal expert with experience moderating many types of conflicts among families and neighbors, Salgado can now provide the people of Puerto Libertador with counsel and legal advice related to land formalization and access to land.

Following graduation, Salgado hopes to continue working with vulnerable populations as an advocate.

“There are lawyers in Puerto Libertador, but none have this kind of experience. I have always wanted to help the community and aimed my support at young people who cannot afford higher education.”

Land Market = Job Market

By this time next year, there will be two major massive land formalization campaigns underway in the Montes de María region, located just over 100 kilometers north of Córdoba. The two campaigns, which are taking place in San Jacinto and Carmen de Bolívar, will create at least 100 skilled jobs for legal land experts, social workers, and land surveyors.

In one of the regional capitals, Sincelejo, USAID is partnering with the Corporación Universitaria del Caribe, known as CECAR. Over the last 6 months, the program has reached more than 200 law students and 80 future social workers with workshops related to land policies and land formalization and restitution processes. All the students are in their final years of university.

“The learning spaces created by USAID are enriching for students who don’t have much experience with topics on land. They have generated curiosity and motivation for students to continue with these topics. Students benefit, the region benefits, and the university benefits,” explains Ana Claudia Castro, the workshop coordinator, who runs the CECAR’s Victim’s Justice Center in Sincelejo.

Over the next year, each semester the academic partnership will provide the students with new material. Topics include formalizing urban parcels in the name of the municipality, legal analysis of land parcels, land restitution policies, and conflict mediation related to land ownership.

The land formalization campaigns and the local land offices represent a significant part of USAID’s strategy to help the government untangle land conflicts that persisted for several generations.

In the Caribbean departments of Córdoba, Sucre, and Bolívar, thousands of victims of the conflict will benefit from land formalization services. If enough new professionals are trained, the jobs of land administration will be in the hands of the next generation.

USAID is supporting 11 municipal-wide land titling campaigns across Colombia. Each campaign depends on a variety of factors and is expected to require an average of two years to complete implementation. By 2025, the government will have updated more than 115,000 parcels in the national cadaster with the possibility of delivering up to 40,000 land titles.

Q&A with Patricia Castro, Tumaco’s Secretary of Women’s Affairs

In January 2021, the municipal administration of Tumaco created its first Secretary of Women and Gender Equality. The entity represents a new view of equality and the strengthening of women’s rights. In this interview the Secretary, Patricia Castro, talks about the entity’s strategy and the challenges that women in Tumaco face when accessing property due to gender violence.

Secure land rights for women are a crucial part of a USAID gender responsive strategy to strengthen land tenure, and is making an impact on promoting gender equality and protecting one’s patrimony.

Tumaco, whose population is overwhelmingly Afro-Colombian, is one of Colombia’s most dangerous areas with high levels of gender-based violence (GBV). Due to a complex web of narco mafia groups in its territory and deep-seated, toxic gender norms, Tumaco is often the municipality with the highest number of crimes against sexual integrity, many of which target young women, according to Colombia’s Victims’ Registry.

Before the onset of the pandemic, GBV—including crimes of rape and sexual abuse—was on the rise in the department of Nariño, where Tumaco is located. And then in 2020 the number of cases dropped sharply, but so did the government services to assist victims.

In 2021, the number of GBV cases in Nariño again increased by 51% compared to 2020, reaching more than 2,000 cases in one year, according to Colombian human rights advocate, Fundapaz. Tumaco registered 260 cases, or 13% of the total.

The Secretary of Women’s Affairs was created in January 2021 to take gender-based violence head on, and represents a bold step put forward by Tumaco’s first woman mayor. Patricia Castro’s job as the Secretary leader is to move women’s initiatives into the forefront.

In reality, the Secretary is helping to do the work of the Mesa de la Mujer, or Women’s Committee, which is a Tumaco-based victim’s advocate group that has worked over 10 years to raise awareness around gender equality and promote Afro-Colombian culture.

USAID supports women leaders towards gender equality and women’s empowerment in land tenure, resource governance, and agroforestry value chains

By: Sarah Lowery, USAID LRG/DDI and Corinne Hart, USAID GenDev/DDI

In many countries men control who gets to use, own, and make decisions about land.

“We used to stay in a corner, quiet. If someone came to take our land or exploit our forests, we did not have the courage to try to stop them.” These words from a woman in Mecoburi, Mozambique reflect how women across the world often feel powerless to defend their rights to land and natural resources. For rural communities, land means everything, from the ability to produce crops for food and income to leveraging financial assets.

Although women play critical roles in agriculture and food production, they are less likely to access agricultural inputs and other productive resources and have fewer opportunities to engage in commercial agroforestry value chains. Even when laws and policy provide for gender equality, women face many other barriers to secure land rights, including weak implementation, gender norms that prevent women from owning property, unequal inheritance practices, limited knowledge about their land rights, time constraints to participate in land registration and governance activities, and increased vulnerability to gender-based violence.

Empowering women in land and natural resources

Since 2018, the USAID Integrated Land and Resource Governance (ILRG) program has been implementing innovative and ambitious partnerships with communities, governments, traditional leaders, civil society organizations, and the private sector to promote gender equality and women’s economic empowerment by improving land tenure, resource governance, and making agroforestry value chains more inclusive across six countries. The program has impacted the lives of over 143,000 women who have benefited from documented land rights, participation in land and natural resource governance, and access to related benefits such as credit, agricultural extension, and livelihoods opportunities. Across Ghana, India, Liberia, Malawi, Mozambique, and Zambia, USAID supports the adoption of laws and policies that strengthen women’s land rights; ensures women’s participation in systematic land documentation processes; increases women’s participation in value chains; promotes changes in discriminatory gender norms; and minimizes risk of gender-based violence. In each of these countries, women have overcome harmful gender biases, stereotypes, and discrimination and are leading their communities toward more inclusive, environmentally sustainable land and natural resource management that brings economic benefits to all.

Meet the Groundbreakers

In Liberia, community land development and management committees are responsible for making decisions about the administration and use of customary land. In five communities surrounding the Blei Community Forest, USAID is raising awareness about customary land tenure rights. The project uses gender-balanced facilitation teams to teach the importance of women’s participation in the committees and provides women with technical knowledge on land governance. In the pilot communities, today women account for 43 percent of committee members, and many have been nominated to serve in leadership positions. Patricia Geh was elected vice-president of the Zor Yolowee Committee in a region with important forest resources, which are managed by the community. Because of this work, she explained, women now understand their rights and are actively participating in meetings, making decisions alongside men and elders. Patricia feels confident that she can help lead the community to use the resources in a sustainable way, saying, “We will ‘use some and keep some,’ so the future generations can enjoy them too.”

Similarly, customary land committees are responsible for documenting and administering land in Malawi. Despite laws that ensure women’s representation in the committees, many women have little to no information about their land rights, including their right to run for leadership positions. USAID is working with the Ministry of Lands in Malawi to document customary land in the Traditional Area of Mwansambo in Nkhotakota district and raise awareness about the importance of women’s participation in the documentation process, which aims to benefit at least 10,000 people by 2023. Deribe Kanjauke says that because of USAID’s gender equality efforts in her community, she is eager to actively participate and lead land governance initiatives in her community. Although at first people doubted that women could fulfill this important role, she was determined to overcome this barrier and represent women’s voices. Now elected to her village committee, Deribe said, “I want to see that the land documentation process goes according to the law, the way it is supposed to be. I want to make sure that women are not discriminated against or get their land grabbed and that when parents die, neither boys nor girls lose their land.”

In Zambia, USAID is working with 16 governmental and non-governmental organizations to increase awareness about women’s role in the sustainable and transparent management of natural resources that are critical to the livelihoods of rural communities. Nancy Mutemba, 26, works as a Community Liaison Assistant with USAID partner Frankfurt Zoological Society. She received USAID-funded training on women’s leadership and empowerment in natural resource governance, and explained that the training opened her eyes about her own abilities and the prevalence of deep-rooted gender norms that prevent most women in her community from controlling critical resources. “I understood that poverty was so real because our important resources and sources of income were being mismanaged and women had no say nor benefit. I decided to start including messages on women’s participation in decision-making at household and community levels during my community facilitation work.” Working with community facilitators like Nancy, USAID has helped increase women’s participation in wildlife law enforcement and in community governance. In Mukungule Chiefdom, where Nancy works, women’s representation in community resource boards increased from 25 percent in 2016 to 62 percent in 2020.

Secure land tenure is pivotal for rural women’s economic empowerment, leading to greater influence in household decision-making and the ability to enter and benefit from commercial value chains. In India, USAID is partnering with PepsiCo to increase women’s participation in PepsiCo’s supply chains. Since 2019, over 1,000 women have benefitted from training to learn the technical skills needed to enter the PepsiCo potato supply chain. In addition, these women farmers are guiding their farming families and communities to adopt sustainable farming practices that both increase productivity and meet climate change mitigation and adaptation goals. Sujata Pramanick is a 34-year-old potato farmer and women’s group leader from Barasat in West Bengal. Although she manages all activities on the family’s small farm that supplies potatoes to PepsiCo, only her husband’s name is listed on their land title and therefore his is the only name included on PepsiCo’s suppliers’ list. Over the past two years, however, Sujata attended several trainings on women’s empowerment and agricultural practices and was selected as a part-time Community Agronomist, responsible for disseminating information and supporting other farmers in her village. Receiving targeted technical knowledge for the first time enabled her to increase production on her family farm and encourage others to wear protective equipment and manage waste responsibly, so farmers and the environment are healthier. She feels valued not only in the community, but also in her household: she now actively participates in decision-making about household investments and expenditures, and this year Sujata’s husband asked PepsiCo to list her name as the PepsiCo supplier.

USAID is working with private sector partner Grupo Madal in Mozambique to solve potential land conflicts with communities in ways that benefit both smallholder farmers and the company. Due to scarce arable land and a growing population, farmers have encroached upon Madal’s lands for subsistence farming, creating conflict not only with Madal, but between farming families. Rather than evicting them, Madal worked with USAID to create a program that allows 1,300 farmers – 85 percent of whom are women – to secure long term use rights to the land. With these rights, the farmers can grow crops to feed their families and for profit in partnership with Madal. Odete Pereira, a 54-year-old mother of six, is one of the farmers working with Madal under this new program. She was recently elected president of her local producers’ club, a group of 20 women who work together to organize their production and engagement with the company and other potential buyers. The delimitation of land for smallholders under the USAID-Madal partnership decreased conflict between communities and the company and within communities. Farmers feel safer and more confident to use the land and engage in commercial value chains that can significantly improve their income-earning potential. USAID also supported trainings for the newly formed producers’ clubs, including a 12-week women’s empowerment and leadership training. Odete said the trainings changed how women see themselves and taught them to understand and recognize gender norms within their households. “I never knew women were allowed to participate in decisions with men. I saw a difference in my relationship with my husband. He realized I deserve respect. He used to go out and leave me with all the housework. Now he is back home when I need to attend training or meetings. Before, if we earned 100 meticais [USD 1.50] he said it was all his, even though I was the one who worked the land. Now we plan things together, and we know we need to save 20 meticais to make repairs in our house and spend 80 to buy food and school uniforms for the children,” she said.

Women like Patricia, Delibe, Nancy, Sujata, and Odete are paving the way toward equal land and natural resource rights, leading to social, economic, and environmental benefits for their families, communities, and other stakeholders. With greater participation by women in land and natural resource governance, women and their families are able to access a wider variety of income opportunities and overcome traditional barriers that prevent women from having equal rights to land. In addition, expanding leadership opportunities for women in land and natural resource governance gives women greater recognition and stature in their households and communities, which can lead to more responsible and equitable household expenditures, greater food security, more sustainable management of natural resources, and increased adoption of farming practices that mitigate climate change risks.

USAID is working to build the capacity of women leaders in developing countries by strengthening women’s land and resource rights, helping women run for elected bodies, and training them to meaningfully contribute to community governance. Increasing rural women’s access to land and natural resources is a core element in advancing gender equality, as land is the main asset of the rural poor. This International Women’s Day, USAID invites other organizations working towards gender equality to join them in advocating for women’s land and resource rights in developing countries, to help equip and empower the women leaders in other communities to be agents of change.

Balancing successful wildlife protection and expanding human populations leads to reduced human-wildlife conflict in Zambia’s North Luangwa Ecosystem

As the global community wakes up to the deepening biodiversity crisis, many of Africa’s wild spaces are under threat, not from guns and poachers, but from the shovels and agricultural fields of smallholder farmers trying to make a living. While a family growing corn or cotton may seem less ominous than a man holding a gun and poached ivory, the negative impact on wildlife can be equally devastating.

Each year, rural communities broaden their search for increasingly-scarce arable land and encroach on wildlife habitat. While this move makes sense from the farmer’s standpoint, this expansion intensifies human-wildlife conflict, often resulting in deadly human-animal confrontation, crop destruction, and attacks on livestock. Forests and wetlands converted to fields may never revert back to habitat for elephants, leopards, lions, antelope, and other key species that help to sustain a balanced ecosystem. This loss of habitat and change of land use represents a generational change.

To combat this growing trend, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Frankfurt Zoological Society are partnering with local communities in the North Luangwa Ecosystem of Zambia to strengthen the land and resource rights of rural communities, in the hopes of improving long-term land use planning to prevent encroachment into wildlife habitats, protect individuals’ rights to their land, and support sustainable livelihoods.

The Luangwa Valley is the oldest section of the Great Rift valley, a landscape along Africa’s largest undammed river that blooms with the rains from November to March. At the heart of the valley are the North and South Luangwa National Parks, bordered by an escarpment on one side and the Luangwa River on the other. The area’s abundant elephant populations were decimated by poaching in the 1980s, and rhinos were poached to local extinction. Since that time, large investments have helped to return a healthy population of elephants and other species to the area.

The valley is also home to 70,000 people and over 4,500 settlements in five customary chiefdoms, a population that has tripled over the past forty years. The chiefdoms are located in areas known as Game Management Areas, buffer zones to the national parks designed with the dual objectives that both wildlife and communities flourish. But these buffers are being pressured both by increasing wildlife populations, due in part to successful conservation efforts, and farmers. Each year, farmers prepare new tracts for agriculture, cutting deeper into habitats, within the current ranges and prime habitats of elephants and hippos, as well as predators.

Clarifying Land Rights and Usage

In Zambia’s customary settings, land ownership and conflicts are managed by chiefs and village headpersons, who typically allocate property by telling families that they can expand their plot from one edge to a tree some distance away. Unfortunately, these verbal records are easily forgotten and open to interpretation. In addition, headpersons are often open to influence and bias, and as a result may allow some farmers with connections or influence to expand farmland outside of planned agricultural areas as fertility declines on well-established fields.

“We spend most of our time resolving conflicts between households every agriculture season. It is tiring. I know generally where people have lived, but I am asked to make decisions with very little information,” remarks a headperson from Kafoteka Village Action Group in Chifunda Chiefdom.

Working with chiefs and local community resource management groups, USAID and Frankfurt Zoological Society are supporting land use planning and documentation of households’ land and implementation of inclusive and transparent land governance across these landscapes of hundreds of thousands of hectares. With more secure land rights, communities can better manage their land and designate areas for agricultural expansion that do not create conflict with wildlife.

With USAID support, community enumerators are now documenting customary land with GPS-enabled smartphones and large-scale maps. After holding sensitization sessions with communities about the customary land documentation process, enumerators walk each and every field boundary and record the names of landholders and potential beneficiaries, paying special attention to the rights of women and children. This leads to the production of a community map for validation, which is ultimately approved by the community and signed by the chief. The chief then distributes land documents, proving an individual’s rights to a particular piece of land, which not only decreases conflict but can lead to better long-term land use planning.

Preparing for the future is an urgent task. Using these community maps, the traditional leaders and community members then develop long-term land use plans that cater to human and wildlife needs.

“We know the elephants will not respect the boundaries of our fields or our land certificates. But if we can use land planning to decide where we should not allocate new fields, we may be able to live in peace,” explains Chief Chikwa. “With FZS [Frankfurt Zoological Society], we’ve done land use plans and identified the areas for conservation, agriculture, and expansion. These household field maps will feed into the bigger plan.”

The future of Zambia’s wildlife landscapes and those around the world will be determined by what happens in the multi-use zones surrounding national parks. Mapping customary land holdings and engaging in long-term land use planning is critical to reducing human-wildlife conflict. It can help communities strategically decide where to expand in order to reduce encroachment on animals’ habitats, and better balance community needs and conservation imperatives. Local communities must be active participants in this effort, helping to both secure their rights and ensure that Zambia’s rich biodiversity is protected for the next generation.