1. Introduction 3 Understanding women’s economic and social rights 10
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3.7 Land and propertyW Summary of Global Trends The World Bank has highlighted that many countries have changed their land and property laws to guarantee women’s equal property and inheritance rights. Most Latin American nations, for example, have removed discriminatory clauses in codes applying to family and inheritance. Similar movements to reform legislation have occurred in Africa and Asia. However, not all progress has been uniform and even when legal equality exists there is too often an implementation gap in the area of land and property rights when it comes to women. In recent years, secure rights to land have been made even more critical for women because globally land resources are increasingly contested. Land-grabbing, or the practice of large scale land acquisition, has at times resulted in farmers being kicked off of their land, making it in particular more difficult for women whose rights to land are often already insecure. In addition, in some countries, land degradation as a result of desertification and climate change has drastically changed the availability of fertile land for farming, a trend which is only predicted to worsen in the future. Biofuel production has also led to greater competition for fertile land and in particular places increased pressures on marginal lands, often the very same lands which are allocated to women for farming. Because of these combined land pressures researchers have foretold that women’s land rights are likely to become increasingly important over time. ___ Sources: The World Bank, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, and International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), The Gender in Agriculture Sourcebook, Module 4, October 2008, pp. 125-171. Bina Agarwal, ‘Gender and Land Rights Revisited: Exploring New Prospects via the State, Family and Market,’ Journal of Agrarian Change, Vol. 3, Issue 1-2, January 2003, pp. 184–224. See also: UN-Women/OHCHR, ‘Realizing women’s rights to land and other productive resources,’ 2013. omen’s access to and control over land and property is essential to women’s equality and well-being. These resources help to ensure that women are able to provide for the essential needs of themselves and their families, and help women to weather economic shocks.325 The Swedish International Development Agency has noted that “In many parts of the world, women’s poorer command over productive resources, including land, technology, and credit, translates into lower earnings, fewer options, and greater vulnerability compared to men. This is especially true during economic crises and recessions.”326 According to the OECD’s Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI), on average, women hold only 15 per cent of land titles for countries where data is available, and that 86 out of 121 countries scored in the 2012 SIGI have discriminatory inheritance laws or practices.327 Land is of course also closely connected to food security and the right to food (please see Sub-Section 3.6 above). Women play a critical role in agriculture, and represent most of the world’s small farmers of irrigated crops. At least half of the world’s food is grown by women farmers, and in African countries that figure rises to 80 per cent.328 Yet, while African women increasingly assume a vital role in agriculture – and are the backbone of food security on the Continent – they remain among the most disadvantaged. African women, like women in other parts of the world, very often lack formal rights to the land which they farm, making their access to land tenuous at best. Globally, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that if women had the same access to productive resources as men, they could increase yields on their farms by 20–30 per cent.329 These gains in agricultural production could lift some 100–150 million people out of hunger.330 FAO also added: [T]he potential production gains calculated by this method are based on the existing distribution of land. This implies that countries where women control proportionately more land could achieve the greatest potential gains. It may be the case, however, that the overall gender gap in access to agricultural resources is, in fact, wider where women control less land. The actual gains from closing the gender gap in access to resources would be greater in countries where the gender gap is wider. Increasing women’s access to land as well as complementary inputs in that case would generate broader socio-economic benefits than those captured in this analysis.331 A recent study from the United Nations Human Rights Council Advisory Committee on discrimination in the context of the right to food found that women’s access to control and ownership of land or property is crucial to the strengthening of their security and livelihoods:332 It is important to understand the multiple factors – laws, inheritance, marital status and agrarian reform policies – that impede women’s equal access to land and the way these affect women by virtue of their gender at the individual, community and national levels. FAO [The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization] estimates that de facto female-headed households account for around 25 per cent of all rural households, reflecting the multiplicity of women, from single parents, widows and wives of migrant workers to women migrant workers. Despite representing the majority of the agricultural workforce and production, women are estimated to have access to or control 5 per cent of land globally. … The right to control, have access to and manage land is tied to a woman’s right to exercise financial independence, earn a livelihood and subsequently provide a livelihood for herself and her household. Agrarian reform policies that are “gender-blind” continue to exclude women from entitlements to land. States undergoing agrarian reform or land redistribution schemes must uphold the equal right of women to land, regardless of marital status.333 UN-Women and the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights also recently released a Handbook on Effective Strategies to Realize Women’s Rights to Land and Other Productive Resources.334 The Handbook provides a summary of the international human rights standards which have been articulated protecting these rights, as well as multiple examples of good practices adopted by States in this area.335 Good practice examples centered around overarching issues and strategies; security of tenure and prohibition of forced eviction; legal systems and access to justice; marriage and family; land law, policy and programming; institutional implementation; awareness raising and training; and particular groups of women, including Indigenous women, women affected by HIV and displaced women.336 Despite the good laws, policies and practices which have been adopted by States, the greatest challenges in implementation, particularly in terms of ensuring gender equality, often arise at the local level in the context of regulation of land use, management and administration. While States are sometimes reluctant to address the gender-bias inherent in many customary systems of land allocation, women’s human rights advocates highlight that gender equality in access to and control over land, has to be argued from the point of view of women’s interests and not that of citizens or the family. 337 Lessons from various land reform processes demonstrate that women are often excluded as beneficiaries of agrarian land reform. For various reasons often related to gender-based assumptions about land ownership and access (or rather, failure to account for gender-based realities of land ownership and access), land reform legislation thus fails to address issues of equal access and representation for women. Notwithstanding the increasing number and proportion of female-headed households, land reform often targets generic ‘heads of households’ that are assumed to be men. The continuous disregard for joint ownership, as well as single female heads of households, contributes to the under-representation of women as beneficiaries of agrarian land reform. To reverse this trend, programs targeting women should include direct proactive inclusion measures such as mandatory joint titling. Moreover, proactive measures must consider gender equality as a specific and central objective of land reform. Women’s rights to land and property with a focus on economic crisis One of the results of the economic crisis and of rising food and fuel prices has been an increase in large scale land acquisitions or ‘land grabs.’ Land grabs themselves tend to be quite controversial, and have been defined as the purchase or lease of vast tracts of land by wealthier, food-insecure nations and private investors from mostly poor, developing countries in order to produce crops for export.338 Today’s food and financial crises have, in tandem, triggered a new global land grab. On the one hand, ‘food insecure’ governments that rely on imports to feed their people are snatching up vast areas of farmland abroad for their own offshore food production. On the other hand, food corporations and private investors, hungry for profits in the midst of the deepening financial crisis, see investment in foreign farmland as an important new source of revenue. As a result, fertile agricultural land is becoming increasingly privatised and concentrated. If left unchecked, this global land grab could spell the end of small-scale farming, and rural livelihoods, in numerous places around the world.339 Oxfam reports that, to date, at least 33 million hectares of land deals have been identified since 2001 – an area 8 times the size of the Netherlands.340 Because women are the majority of the world’s small farmers, this situation has special implications for them. And, because women already have tenuous rights over land, due to gender discrimination in land allocation and rights, land grabbing can make their situation more even precarious by further depriving them of access to land, either entirely or by pushing them to more and more marginal land for farming. It should also be said that much of the land purchased in this manner is not intended for food production at all, but rather for biofuel production. While biofuels have been hailed as ‘green’ energy alternatives to fossil fuels, FAO warns that there is no guaranteed outcome. Rather, “[t]he impact depends on how biofuels are produced – both in terms of how crops are grown and of how conversion takes place – as well as on how they are brought to the market. The global impact is more likely to be negative if large tracts of additional land are brought under agricultural cultivation.”341 When no food is grown on land used to produce biofuel crops, food security for local populations can deteriorate and displacement of communities due to forced eviction can have further detrimental impacts on food production and access to land, particularly for women. FAO has specifically highlighted that risks associated with the development of biofuels include worsening income distribution and a deterioration of women’s status: “[e]xpansion of biofuel production will, in many cases, lead to greater competition for land. For smallholder farmers, women farmers and/or pastoralists, who may have weak land-tenure rights, this could lead to displacement. The emphasis on exploiting marginal lands for biofuel crop production may also work against female farmers.”342 This, of course, also has negative implications in terms of food security, as agricultural land gets converted from growing food crops to growing biofuel crops. On this last point, FAO also reports that: The conversion of these [marginal] lands to plantations for biofuels production might therefore cause the partial or total displacement of women’s agricultural activities towards increasingly marginal lands, with negative repercussions for women’s ability to meet household obligations, including traditional food provision and food security. Furthermore, if land traditionally used by women switches to energy crop plantations, the roles men and women play in decision-making concerning household agricultural activities may be altered. In particular, women’s ability to participate in land-use decision-making may be reduced as the amount of land they control will decline.343 The Special Rapporteur on the right to food, (Olivier De Schutter), in his proposed Core Human Rights Principles Applicable to Large-Scale Land Acquisitions or Leases advocates for the inclusion of sex-disaggregated data in undertaking impact assessments.344 Other positive steps include the African Union Declaration on Land Issues and Challenges in Africa, in which African States have resolved to “strengthen security of land tenure for women which require special attention.” 345 In addition, the Nairobi Action Plan on Large Scale Land-Based Investments in Africa also highlights the need to “maximize opportunities for Africa’s farmers, with special attention to smallholders [n.b. the majority of whom are women] and minimize the potential negative impacts of large-scale land acquisitions, such as land dispossession and environmental degradation, in order to achieve an equitable and sustainable agricultural and economic transformation that will ensure food security and development.” 346 |