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Arab Land Initiative: Women and Land

Women’s housing, land and property rights are catalyst to ensure the social and economic development of communities and increase food security. They contribute to the realisation and enjoyment of a broad range of human rights such as the right to adequate standard of living, adequate housing, health, work and education. Housing, land and property rights increase women’s empowerment and participation in decision making within the household and in the public life. They help protecting women from gender-based violence and other health hazards, and they enable women to play an active role in the stabilization of societies affected by crisis and conflict.

The challenges women face in relation to the access and enjoyment of their housing, land and property rights is part of the broader gender inequalities that reflect many aspects of the Arab society. The Women and Land Campaign promoted by UN-Habitat, the Global Land Tool Network and the Arab Land Initiative aims at raising awareness on how to overcome such challenges and at empowering women to improve their housing, land and property rights while drawing the public’s attention to this important theme.
The Campaign is promoted by UN-Habitat, as part of its mandate to achieve a better urban future for all, and by the partners of the Stand for Her Land Campaign, including the World Bank, the International Land Coalition, Landesa, and Habitat for Humanity.

Visit the website of this campaign here!

LANDac Discussion Starter UN FSS: “Centering Women’s Land Rights for Equitable Food Systems Transformation”

Centering Women’s Land Rights for Equitable Food Systems Transformation: A discussion starter on UN FSS Action Track 1: Safe and nutritious food for all

As part of the Decade of Action, the United Nations Food Systems Summit 2021 (UN FSS) focuses on ‘bold new actions, solutions and strategies’ to transform food production and consumption and progress on all 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This is because the success of each SDG relies, to varying degrees, on healthy diets and sustainable and equitable food systems. The COVID-19 crisis shows that transformative change and nutritional resilience are more urgent than ever, especially for the most marginalized. With slow and unequal progress on malnutrition, and with hunger and obesity on the rise, food systems must become nutritious and efficient, but also equitable and inclusive so that no one is left behind.

This discussion starter, written by Michelle McLinden Nuijen, poses that the governance of tenure—or the ways society manages access to, control over, and use of land and natural resources —is a fundamental pillar of any food system. Women’s land rights especially are fundamental to the long-term sustainability of the food system as a whole as well as to reaching progress on all SDGs.

Download the full discussion starter for the UN FSS here.

OPINION: Why are tribal women in India still robbed of their land rights?

Shipra Deo is Landesa’s director of women’s land rights in India, explores in this opinion piece in Thomson Reuters why tribal women in India are robbed of their land rights.

When it comes to land ownership, India’s culture and practices have always been discriminatory to women, but women in tribal society are doubly disadvantaged, first as women and second as tribal women.  Widowhood only compounds these problems. Inheritance rules for tribal communities are governed by customary laws, not by statutory rules that apply in non-tribal areas.

Why is this so? The lawful ‘owners in waiting’ who are men by default, see a single woman – whether a widow, sister or mother – as a barrier to the full control over and enjoyment of their rights.  They perpetrate all kinds of violence – physical, verbal, emotional, sexual – to evict women from the land or the property that they are waiting to own. 

Read the full opinion piece by Shipra Deo here.

Studentship opportunity: PhD scholarship on The Housing ‘Trilemma’: Geographies of Precarity in Rural Scotland

Deadline for applications: 31st March 2021

This PhD studentship seeks to understand how precarity is produced, experienced and resisted in relation to housing in rural Scotland, in order to develop a novel ‘housing trilemma’ approach. Discussions of precarity might include, for instance, ideas surrounding housing security, affordability, quality and access, but also broader relations with income (in)security, work, migration and social dimensions such as family connections.
The new ‘housing trilemma’ will explore the relative importance of different dimensions of precarity, contributing to contemporary debates in Geography and Housing Studies. It will also be used to identify tensions and trade-offs informing future government policy concerning rural and island housing in Scotland. There will therefore be conceptual and policy outcomes gained from the studentship, which although focused on Scotland, will have relevance for many countries where housing in rural areas is under pressure.

Information on the project, eligibility and how to apply on GradHub is available on the Scottish Graduate School of Social Science webpage.

For more information, visit the website here.

Opening of 2 PhD positions at VUB and KU Leuven in the field of housing and neighborhood studies

Deadline for application: 3rd May 2021

For a new project on ‘Reconceptualizing the right to housing from a personal and neighborhood perspective’ Cosmopolis Centre of Urban Research of Vrije Universiteit Brussel and OSA Urbanism & Architecture of KU Leuven are jointly recruiting two PhD researchers. Reconceptualizing the right to housing from a personal and neighborhood perspective. Public housing systems are under pressure due to the limited offer, declining social cohesion and increasing shifts towards private provision and middle-income target groups. In response to a permanent housing crisis and declining public housing systems, civil society, activist groups and housing movements are setting up new housing initiatives. We are interested to understand how the right to housing is guaranteed or reclaimed in the new bottom-up initiatives and in the public housing strategies that aim to provide affordable housing solutions. In deprived or low-income neighborhoods the spatial expression of the housing crisis becomes apparent in substandard housing conditions, affordable housing shortage and processes of social exclusion and gentrification. On the personal level, poor and insecure housing conditions produce residential alienation. Based on a mapping of affordable housing solutions and in-depth interviews with residents of these new initiatives and public housing projects in two neighborhoods in Brussels and Antwerp, we aim to contribute to a new theoretical understanding of the right to housing. By reconceptualizing the right to housing from a personal and neighborhood perspective, we contribute to a better understanding of the legitimacy of affordable housing solutions, whether they are public or bottom-up initiatives or combinations of both.

Offer
We offer two full-time PhD fellowships for 48 months starting inSeptember 2021under the joint supervision of profs. Ryckewaert, d’Auria and Aernouts.The PhD candidates will be hired at Cosmopolis VUB or OSA KU Leuven respectively, and will spendtheir research time in both research units. The candidates will enroll as PhD students at VUB and KU Leuven and will obtain a joint-PhD degree from both institutions.

For more information and how to apply, click here.

Land MDPI Special Issue “Land Perspectives: People, Tenure, Planning, Tools, Space, and Health”

Efficient land (including water and forest) administration practices are required to achieve many global development agendas—e.g., land degradation neutrality, New Urban Agenda, COP21, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and COVID-19 or Coronavirus pandemic challenges. It also helps to create a peaceful environment by eliminating social conflicts caused by poor land administration practices. Achieving these agendas requires an understanding of how land administration practices can impact people, property tenure, and health or wellbeing. Hence, there is a need to probe natural resources administration theories and tools.

Good land administration helps to secure property tenures. It also protects the land rights of people (including individuals, communities, and the state) through good governance principles and practices. Therefore, probing land administration practices—whether in developed or developing countries—is essential to developing tools or methods for securing natural resource rights for people, especially for youth and women. Understanding the land and health or wellbeing nexus is crucial for adequate living conditions for people in living urban, peri-urban, and rural areas. A broad knowledge gap exists on the land/water/forest–people–health–wellbeing nexus of natural resource administration research and practical tools.

This Special Issue presents insights on theories and practices on land administration in the context of land/water/forest–people–health–wellbeing nexus relationships. We, therefore, invite conceptual, case studies, field research, and review articles focusing on (but not limited to) the following themes:

  • Land administration and property sciences.
  • Urban and peri-urban land/water/forest administration.
  • Rural land administration.
  • Land/water/forest administration (including governance, policy, and management) approaches and their impacts on people’s wellbeing.
  • Administering land and natural resources to ensure social equity in developing countries.
  • Social conflicts related to land, water, forest, and other natural resources.
  • Consequences of COVID-19 or coronavirus for the global agenda on land and the environment.
  • Land administration in the context of women and youth land rights.
  • Spatial, regional and territorial planning.
  • Urban-rural land linkages.
  • Land tools for global change and local action.
  • Land/water/forest–people–health interconnectivity.
  • Responsible governance of tenure and societal transformations.
  • Tenure security and public health relations in human settlements.
  • Cases of land and health situations in the Global North and South.
  • Impact of pandemics on people’s land rights with a focus on progress so far.
  • Behavioral and social changes needed for the promotion of tenure security and healthy environmental situations; and
  • Emerging approaches to land administration challenges going forward.

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 November 2021.

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Uchendu Eugene Chigbu E-Mail Website

Guest Editor

Department of Land and Property Sciences, Namibia University of Science and Technology, Windhoek, Khomas 9000, Namibia
Interests: land methods; land-use/spatial planning; land tenure; land management; land administration; land governance/policy; rural/(peri)urban development; women’s land rights
Special Issues and Collections in MDPI journals
Prof. Dr. Ruishan Chen E-Mail Website

Guest Editor

School of Geographic Sciences, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200062, China
Interests: land use change, natural resource management, land use planning, environmental governance; rural-–urban interaction, social justice; disaster risk reduction; extreme events; sustainable development goals
Prof. Dr. Chao Ye E-Mail Website

Guest Editor

School of Geographic Sciences, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200062, China
Interests: environment governance; production of space; land use and management; rural-urban interactions; sustainable development goals; gender issues; inequality
Special Issues and Collections in MDPI journals

For more information, please visit the website here.

Young Farmers Open Letter Contest

Young Farmers Open Letter Contest

BACKGROUND

In 2020, the consortium Asian Farmers’ Association for Sustainable Rural Development (AFA) and La Via Campesina (LVC) through the ASEAN Farmers’ Organisation Support Programme (AFOSP) – Asia-Pacific Farmers’ Program (APFP) platform conducted the “Young Farmers Dance Challenge” with the following objectives: 1) to attract young people to join Farmers Organizations; 2) to build friendship and cooperation among young farmers; and, 3) to raise awareness about young farmers contribution in preventing the spread of COVID19 as well as their contribution in the recovery from the pandemic. The contest was participated by 15 young farmers groups from Central Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Visit this page for more information: https://asiapacificfarmersforum.net/young-farmers-dance-challenge/

As a continuation of the efforts to promote agriculture to the youth, AFA-LVC will hold another activity aimed at young farmers: the “Young Farmers Open Letter Contest”. This activity will be a platform for young farmers to express to policymakers their story and the challenges they face in farming, and at the same to communicate these issues to a bigger audience via social media.

OBJECTIVES

The Young Farmers Open Letter Competition aims to:

  1. Raise awareness about young farmers’ challenges in engaging in agriculture
  2. Bridge the communication between young farmers and policymakers
  3. Identify key policy recommendations supportive of young farmers
  4. Promote the role and contributions of young farmers in building back better from the COVID-19 pandemic
  5. Boost the visibility of APFP on social media

WHO CAN JOIN

• Young farmers (15 to 35 years old)
• Must be a member of any of the farmers’ groups within the AFOSP-APFP partners (as certified by NFO and NIA)

For more information, please visit the website here.

The Open City Initiative

The Open City Initiative is a new global network of transdisciplinary education, research, and societal partnerships. The focus is on issues related to cities as open frontier spaces that belong to everyone, and urban studies that are widely open to any discipline. In the face of current events (e.g. BLM, climate crises, pandemic-lockdown, widespread urban evictions) in established cities and the rapid pace of urbanisation across continents, there is an increasing need for an open platform to tackle the urgent societal questions regarding inclusivity, sustainability, and ‘openness’ of urban spaces and research. To provide such a platform, the Initiative has joined forces from geographers, urban planners, anthropologists, humanity and international development scholars at Utrecht University.

The Initiative will be launched through a series of webinars and workshops planned in two weeks from March 16 to March 26. They will provide an opportunity for sharing and exchange of knowledge about the Open City. A wide range of academic and nonacademic speakers will be present, such as NGOs, activists, researchers and students.

Who we are

The organization of the initiative is led by: Abigail Friendly, Kei Otsuki, Francesca Pilo (Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning); Martijn Oosterbaan (Department of Anthropology), and Babette Berrocal (Centre for Global Challenges, UGlobe) at Utrecht University.

If you have any questions regarding one of our events, please feel free to contact us by e-mail through: opencity@uu.nl

Webinars & Workshops
  • Keynote: Open City: The Spatial Justice of Urban Sutainability | March 16, 14:30–15:45 (CET)
  • Webinar: Pandemic (In)securities: Violence and Order-Making | March 17, 13:00 – 15:00 (CET time)
  • Webinar: Coping with Corona in the Margins: Urban Vulnerabilities and Inequalities | March 18, 13:00 – 15:00 (CET time)
  • Workshop: Inclusive Cities and Global Urban Transformations | March 19, 13:00 – 15:00 (CET time)
  • Workshop: The More-Than-Human City | March 23, 10:00 – 12:00 (CET time)
  • Webinar: Sustainable Solutions for Open Cities: How Citizens Deal and Shape Energy and Climate Challenges | March 24, 13:00 – 15:00 (CET time)
  • Webinar: Politicizing the Pandemic: Legitimacy, Integrity and Governance | March 25, 13:00 – 15:00 (CET time)
  • The Open City Initiative: Future Steps | March 26, 15:30 – 16:45

For more information and how to register, visit the website here.

MLRF | Vacancy Communications and Event Management Specialist

Extended deadline: 10 March 2021

The Mekong Region Land Governance together with our partners; FAO and Land Portal will be organising the Mekong Regional Land Forum 2021 in May.  We are currently looking for a Communications and Event Management Specialist.  The application is pretty short as we will be closing on 24 February.  The Applicant will be contracted for 25 working days. Compensation will be commensurate with the successful applicant’s qualifications and competitive with global standards in the industry.  More information about the position here.

Land Portal | Job Opportunity: (Open) Data Officer

The Land Portal Foundation is seeking a dynamic and highly motivated (Open) Data Officer to join our dynamic data team in charge of leading the information and data sharing needs of the Land Portal.  The (Open) Data Officer will ensure all data harvested and published by the Land Portal is highly curated and managed and respond to open data standards and FAIR principles. The (Open) Data Officer will also contribute to advocacy and capacity building strategy and ensure uptake of such principles by the land community.

The successful candidate will also be welcomed into a small, dedicated  and disbursed team of international professionals that make up the Land Portal.  The Land Portal is an inclusive space and we encourage applications from women, and candidates from the Global South.

Organizational profile

At the Land Portal, we believe that data and information are powerful tools for achieving our vision of a land governance system that benefits those with the most insecure land rights and the greatest vulnerability to landlessness. However, information sources remain highly fragmented, unstructured, poorly curated and represent a narrow range of perspectives; they continue to be published in ways that do not facilitate maximum discovery, engagement and reuse. Until policy and decision-makers, intermediaries and grassroots groups have access to the data and information they need to make sound decisions, their initiatives will fail to achieve maximum impact.

The Land Portal exists to fill in these gaps, and to nurture a vibrant online platform to inform and engage with partners.  We do this by promoting open data and the sharing of best practices and stimulating debate and collaboration both on and offline. We provide a vital bridge for those grappling with complex land governance issues, from researchers and NGOs through to governments and grassroots communities, by  connecting people, facilitating dialogue and by mending fragmented information.

Raising awareness of “open data” and the critical role it plays in realizing tenure security for individuals and communities around the world continues to be a great challenge. To this end, we make use of every possible conference, meeting and speaking engagement to promote the concept of “going open,” while recognizing that, given the highly sensitive nature of land data (particularly for vulnerable communities), not everything can or should be made entirely open.

We set out an ambitious new strategy in 2019  to improve the documentation, mapping and monitoring of land governance issues; enrich and inform the global debate on land rights; and democratize access to the land governance “information ecosystem” and improve the flow of data between diverse actors.  The (Open) Data Officer plays an important role in building this information ecosystem.

Job Description

The (Open) Data Officer will be responsible for data ingestions and updates in the Land Portal database, with special attention to the Land Portal’s priority themes (Urban Tenure, Gender & Land, Land & Investments, Land Monitoring Initiatives, Community & Indigenous Land Rights), as well as support and contribution to Land Portal’s knowledge products including the State of Land Information work and and thematic and country portfolios and contribute to open data advocacy strategy and capacity building efforts.

Principal Tasks & Responsibilities:

  1. Keep the Land Portal Database constantly up-to-date and curated by updating Statistical, Bibliographic, and Project data importers and checking it against errors;
  2. Keep documentation for all re-run importers up-to-date.
  3. Ingest new Statistical, Bibliographic, and Project data in the Land Portal database, based on Land Portal priority themes. This includes:
    • Scope and triage new statistical, spatial and project datasets and bibliographic repositories to ingest that are relevant for Land Portal priority themes;
    • Collaborate with the Information Management & Advocacy Officer to develop quarterly data plans and prioritize sources for ingestion; assist in communication with data providers and other external parties;
    • Curate and perform preliminary quality checks for the data,
    • Develop scripts to ingest data, working with API and CSV files;
    • Run importers to generate RDF and upload RDF data to Virtuoso;
    • For bibliographic data importers, analyze and curate external metadata, map external data (metadata models, taxonomies, etc.) to the Library’s data model and, finally, profile missing publishers as organizations on the Portal (incl. documenting number of new publishers) before running the importer and ingesting data in the Library and Virtuoso;
    • Document process of ingestion for each importer on the process and the code for developers;
  4. Contribute in improving research methodology and performing of Open Data Assessments on Land Portal’s State of Land Information (SOLI)
    • Contribute to the continuous development and refinement of the research methodology of the State of Land Information (SOLI);
    • Write the Open Data Compliance assessment upon identified datasets and repositories based on SOLI scoping country exercises;
    • Review and provide comments to the Open Data Assessment Report written by the Land Data Advocacy & Management Officer.
  5. Assist with developing the Land Projects content type as well as ingesting relevant project data
    • Support the process of migration of Land Governance map Database into the land Portal; develop specification and oversee user needs assessment, development of specifications and web development in close collaboration with the GDWGL, Land Portal data and ICT teams;
    • Further enhance project (meta-)data model and identify possible new (standard) taxonomies to use;
    • In close collaboration the Land Data Advocacy & Management Officer, scope for, prioritize and triage potential land project databases and land individual projects/programs to ingest into the new Land Portal Database and assist in communication with data owners and other external parties;
    • Generate new project importers based on priority list. Analyze and curate external metadata, map external data model (metadata models, taxonomies, etc.) to the Land Portal’s model and, finally, profile missing project owners as organizations on the Portal before running the importer and ingesting data in Drupal and Virtuoso;
    • Document process of ingestion for each importer on the process and the code for developers.
  6. Provide support to the development of LandVoc
    • Provide IT support to the LandVoc website, www.landvoc.org (link is external);
    • Maintain and ensure consistent lists of concepts are recorded in all places Landvoc is used and/or stored (i.e. LandVoc website, AGROVOC Vocbench, internal Drive documentation and in Drupal) in collaboration with the Information Management Officer;
    • Provide advice and guidance on the future strategy and development of LandVoc based on expertise in semantic web and ontology management.
Qualifications and skills

The successful candidate will be selected against the following:

  • University Education (Masters level or higher, or equivalent) in Information Science, information management or any other relevant fields;
  • Programming skills (eg. Python, Java);
  • Knowledge of Drupal; Vocbench, Skosmos, Bootstrap;
  • Knowledge of Virtuoso;
  • Proven experience in data management (2 to 5 years);
  • Strong knowledge about open data, semantic web, linked data, controlled vocabularies and data sharing technologies;
  • Knowledge about data standards and metadata standards;
  • Fluency in English. Knowledge of other languages would be an asset;
  • Superior attention to detail;
  • Good drafting, communicating and presenting abilities;
  • knowledge of land governance related issues and land data landscape;
  • Experience working as part of an international distributed, remote team;
  • Disciplined – good at managing time.
  • Strong capacity to work in a team, autonomously, and respect tight deadlines.
Personal and Professional Attributes
  • Inclusive and effective communication skills and techniques with an ability to respectfully engage with, and communicate concepts to others;
  • High standard of ethics and integrity which inspires trust and confidence;
  • Enthusiasm and commitment to sustained effort through diligence and pursuit of high standards;
  • Commitment to ongoing personal and professional development which drives best practice.
  • Proactively utilizes initiative, innovation and a commitment to continuous improvement;
  • Strong collaborative skills which enable effective engagement within a high functioning, cohesive team;
  • Ability to employ sound judgment and decision making amongst competing demands;
  • Ability to show initiative in planning and developing new ideas and approaches, and to implement and communicate change effectively;
  • Problem-solving attitude;
  • Diplomacy, team spirit and willingness to take initiative;
  • Ability to meet strict deadlines.
Reporting

The (Open) Data Officer will report directly to the Land Portal Team Leader and will be accountable to the Board of the Land Portal Foundation. She/he will work under the supervision of the Land Information Management & Advocacy Officer and will report time spent against the ToRs every month in the Land Portal Foundation’s Timesheets; She/he will develop weekly and quarterly work plans in close cooperation with the Land Information Management & Advocacy Officer and will report accordingly.

Position

This position is home-based and will be staffed on a part-time (5-6 days/month) consultancy basis for a year following a probationary period of 3 months. The official language for this position is English. The salary level will depend on experience and seniority.

How to apply?

Please send your curriculum vitae (CV) and a cover letter explaining your interests and qualifications (addressed to Laura Meggiolaro, Land Portal Team Leader) no later than midnight CET on  19 March, 2021 or email your cover letter and CV to jobs@landportal.info (link sends e-mail).

Please write “(Open) Data Officer –  Job Application” as the subject of the email.