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April 12th, 2016

Developing gender‐equitable legal frameworks for land tenure: A legal assessment tool

Published by FAO,

This legal paper (PDF) from the FAO argues that effective policy and legal advice requires a clear understanding of the gaps and discrepancies in the policies and legislation pertaining to gender and land. It aims to deepen the understanding on women’s access to land and to analyse how adjustments in the legal framework regulating women’s land tenure can promote their economic empowerment and ultimately generate more productive agricultural systems. The paper introduces a Legal Assessment Tool (LAT) for gender-equitable land tenure, developed under the Gender and Land Rights Database of the FAO. Its purpose is to provide prompt, targeted and effective policy and legal advice to countries working towards gender-equitable land tenure. It describes the main features of a tool specifically designed to measure the extent to which the legal framework fosters gender-equitable land tenure and provides the results from the application of the LAT to three African countries – Sierra Leone, Madagascar and Morocco. It further reflects on the added value of such a tool in the broader context of rural development and poverty alleviation, with a special focus on the implementation of the voluntary guidelines.

Curated from fao.org