Activities

For ILC, addressing the gender dimension of secure and equitable access to land is part of a pro-poor approach to land governance.

In a context in which commitments remain rhetorical due to a lack of political will, ILC aims at promoting women’s access to land by identifying and supporting practical solutions, particularly at the grassroots level, and advocate with policy-makers for their replication and up-scaling.

Over the years, ILC has supported a range of activities on women’s land rights, from local and national to global advocacy, including activities targeted at women (Women’s Resource Access Programme - WRAP), projects supported through the Community Empowerment Facility (CEF), and the more recent “Securing Women’s Access to Land: Linking Research and Action” project in Eastern and Southern Africa.

A key lesson learnt from such activities is that it is necessary to deliberately involve women in the struggle for land rights to ensure their effective empowerment and that giving women a space to share their thoughts and opinions is very important, since they are often excluded from the public sphere. ILC’s project Eastern and Southern Africa builds on these lessons by involving women in action-oriented research at the community level and planning follow-up actions from the outset to ensure research is useful for advocacy.

During the 2007-08 regional meetings, ILC members recognised women’s land rights – or women’s access to and control over land – as a priority area for action. Regional focal organisations have been designated to coordinate regional level work on the thematic area and more resources, including a half-staff at the Secretariat, have been committed in an effort to build ILC’s capacity to include women's access to land as a cross-cutting issue in all ILC activities.

Through the activities above as well as knowledge sharing with different stakeholders, ILC has begun building information and experiences within the ILC network on women’s land rights.