Levelling the field with land rights

Monday, 21 March 2016 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

The Sri Lankan Government is readying to create 1.5 million freehold landowners over the next few months and if a significant portion of them are women then giving land rights can drive down underage marriage, domestic violence and increase economic empowerment.

In fact a group of land and property rights specialists are due in Washington this week to discuss how improved land management can reduce global poverty and foster development.

When women have rights to land, argues Klaus Deininger, a leading economist and organiser of this week’s World Bank Conference, children’s health and education improves, household resources increase and there are fewer underage brides as daughters do not need to be married off young for financial reasons.

Equally, women with land rights tend to have savings accounts, a factor that reduces domestic violence. It would also provide stronger economic resilience and increase overall development.

Organisers say the conference will focus on women and property with particular emphasis on gender equality and land rights which are key to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The goals, adopted by the United Nations including Sri Lanka last September, provide the foundation for an ambitious plan to tackle the world’s most troubling problems over the next 15 years.

Land and property rights experts say when women are included in a nation’s land ownership there can be far-reaching impacts.

In sub-Saharan Africa, women make up more than half of the agricultural workforce, yet fewer than one in five own farms, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

But if women farmers had the same access to resources as men, the number of those hungry in the world could be reduced by up to 150 million, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) says.

Numbers in Sri Lanka are less certain but as much as 70% of the population rely on agriculture for employment and since 52% of them are women an educated guess puts millions of women as farmers. Moreover, since only 34% of women make up the formal workforce, many others, especially rural women, engage in farming.

According to Rodney Schmidt of the Rights and Resources Initiative, a global coalition that works on forest and land policy reform, more than half the world’s land is still held under age-old customary arrangements often arranged by gender.

Traditionally, women are most often engaged in producing and collecting food and as such women do play a major role in how land is used, he said.

When foreign companies enter the picture, buying land from local governments, they can find themselves on a collision course with resident communities. But often women do not own the land or do in partnership with other family members.

Creating over a million freehold landowners will be unprecedented but if they are to also promote sustainable development then policymakers need to ensure that a large share of them are women.