In the second PhD session of the LANDac Conference 2021, three PhD researchers presented their work in progress. We learned about slums in Abuja, Nigeria, about forest rights in India, and about the relation between inequalities in soil fertility, gender, and access to subsidies. Each presentation was discussed by an expert from the LANDac network.

Key Takeaways

Securing women’s land rights remains high in the news and in the development agenda in recent months. A quick search on Land Portal shows since March this year more than 250 resources related to land & gender, including news articles, blogs and publications.

Advancing women’s land rights is a priority for the international development agenda. Yet, there is no consensus on which rights should be monitored and reported. Three indicators of women’s property rights are widely used in the literature. Each captures a different aspect of women’s land rights, but a recent paper explores the extent to which these different rights are held by the same person, using data from six African countries.

Oil companies are paying billions towards development in the Niger Delta, but it’s having little impact on the ground, say Tijah Bolton-Akpan and Miles Litvinoff.

OUR CITY: WHY WE WORK WHERE WE WORK

‘Chicoco’ means mud, the black, fibrous mud that people living in Port Harcourt’s waterfront communities cut from the mangroves and throw down on the river’s edge to reclaim land from the creeks. They build their homes on this mud.

In February of this year, a deportation officer of the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency was indicted for extorting immigrants for cash and sexual favors. Arnaldo Echevarria promised two undocumented women “working papers” in exchange for sex, eventually impregnating one of them.

This is just one example of the many cases of sextortion that vulnerable women, and sometimes men, face around the world.

By Andrew Smith