Practical steps to strengthen women’s tenure security in natural resource contexts through capacity development

- GLTN article featured in special Women and Land addition of the African Land Policy Journal. Women’s capacity to own and access land remains one of the critical challenges to sustainable development in both rural and urban areas. Understanding what practical steps can be taken to improve women’s land rights, particularly tenure security, is therefore fundamental to delivering concrete improvements. Long standing GLTN Partner IFAD and the GLTN Secretariat have recently published an article reflecting on what appropriate capacity development mechanisms can improve women’s tenure security in natural resource settings. Amongst a range of insightful and practical reflections contained within the paper, two key recommendations for programme designers and strategy implementers are proposed:

• Develop an understanding of the enablers and barriers dynamic system – ensuring that contextual factors, such as power, politics and institutional history, and the barriers and enabling conditions that they create for progressive tenure security, have been fully identified.
• Design multi-level strategies to influence change at individual, interpersonal, organizational, and institutional levels – ensuring that they build on each other and respond to the context.