Global Land Tool Network Gltn Phase 3 Programme 2019-2023

Main tenure security issues Despite the improvement in global awareness that secure tenure is important for achieving poverty reduction, food security, gender equality, sustainable urban development, human rights and efforts to tackle key challenges, significant challenges remain. Millions of people around the world still face difficulties related to the land where they live, work, grow crops, tend animals and run businesses. Even though they or their families may have lived on the land for many years, it is a serious obstacle that they have no formal relationship to it (UN-Habitat and GLTN 2012). Insecure land tenure condemns the poor and vulnerable to the margins of society and economies, fuels conflicts, drives unsustainable land-use patterns and destroys the livelihoods of those in most need. Weak land governance enables continued inequality and corrupt governance. About 1.3 billion extremely poor people in the world struggle to survive on less than USD 1.25 a day. About 70 per cent of them live in the rural areas of developing countries; 25 per cent and 66 per cent are from sub-Saharan Africa and Asia respectively. In 2016, the number of chronically undernourished people in the world was estimated to be 815 million (FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO, 2017). Significant numbers of urban populations live in slums: an estimated 61.7 per cent of urban people in Africa, 30 per cent in Asia and in Latin America at least 24 per cent (UN-Habitat 2013, quoted in Habitat III Issue Paper 22, 2015). The number of forcefully displaced people reached 65.5 million in 2017 and tenure security is one of their key challenges. For all this, land offers a way for the poor to mobilize their own power to chart their development destiny. In developing countries, conventional ways to manage and administer land have a history of failing to deliver what is expected of them, that is, secure tenure, fairness and broad coverage at a price that is affordable for both landholders and governments. There are several factors that affect tenure insecurity. Firstly, in some contexts, it is too expensive to obtain an official paper that documents the claims of different segments of populations. Less than half of the global population has any access to formal systems to register and safeguard their land rights. Secondly, existing technical solutions are too expensive, they are inappropriate for the range of tenure found in developing countries, they are financially unsustainable, and they are unfeasible given the available capacity to manage them. Thirdly, legal frameworks (e.g. inheritance laws) in some countries do not even allow certain segments of population to claim any land and property rights, therefore women and youth face even stronger barriers. Women and young people are particularly affected by these challenges. Socially prescribed gender roles, unequal power dynamics, discriminatory family practices, unequal access to institutions and land administration processes, traditional norms and local tenure relationships frequently deny women the chance to adequately access land. The statistics speak for themselves: women are responsible for the production of 60 to 80 per cent of food in developing countries, yet they rarely own the land they work, they have little tenure security, limited decision-making power and little control over how to use the land or its outputs. The laws or customary practices of 102 countries still deny women the same rights to access land as men. Gender inequality in relation to land and other productive resources is intimately related to women’s poverty and exclusion. “Youth” is a highly significant demographic category and with 1.2 billion individuals aged between 15 and 24 years, young people constitute a substantial proportion of the world’s population. Furthermore, 87 per cent of youth live in developing countries. With 61 per cent of the population in sub-Saharan Africa and 70 per cent in West and Central Africa being younger than 35, these regions have the youngest population in the world. At the same time, this is the population group that is least likely to have adequate access to land, financial resources and other productive assets, which drives the high rates of youth unemployment and, in turn, influences rural-urban migration, cross-border migration, and even social unrest and conflict in many countries in the region. To slow down and control this flow, access to land and decision-making roles related to the use of land are particularly important to the land-related employment of youth, especially agriculture, to unlock both domestic and international investments. However, there is still a lot of room for improvement in understanding the relationships of young people to land and how they address land issues. It is clear that the scale of land governance problems is vast. Furthermore, all the stresses and deprivations are made worse by climate change. The linkages between issues of climate change and variability and land tenure are multiple, complex and indirect. However, the effects of climate change and variability are seen in changes in natural ecosystems, land capability and land-use systems. Increasingly, these changes will put diminishing supplies of land under greater pressure from both productive use and human settlement. As a result, land issues and policies are key considerations for adaptation planning, which will need to strengthen land tenure and management arrangements in at-risk environments, and secure supplies and access arrangements for land for resettlement and changing livelihood demands. Achieving secure land tenure and property rights is fundamental to shelter and livelihoods, and for the realization of human rights, food security, poverty reduction, economic prosperity, peace, stability and sustainable development, as is recognized in several of the major international frameworks mentioned above. Secure land rights are particularly important to address gender discrimination and the disadvantages faced by the poor, indigenous peoples and other vulnerable groups linked to inequitable and insecure access and tenure to land. Promoting secure tenure to land and housing for the poor and vulnerable is an essential requirement for equitable land and housing rights, and contributes to the elimination of discrimination against women, the vulnerable, indigenous groups and other minorities, especially with the challenges related to rapid urbanization. Many countries have introduced new land policies, especially in Asia and Africa, but it is often not possible for these countries to implement sound land policies because the underlying tools, capacity and practices do not exist, or have not been sufficiently documented and disseminated. Since the 1990s, some organizations and individuals have been trying to address this issue but have struggled with the scale of the challenge both geographically and conceptually. In essence, as mentioned above, most developing countries use conventional land administration systems which cover less than 30 per cent of the country, leaving up to 70 per cent of their citizens looking to informal and/or customary approaches for their tenure security. This leaves the countries grappling with the challenges of tenure insecurity for vast numbers of people, which creates a bottleneck for economic development and has a grave impact on peace, stability and social cohesion.