Land and Housing

Despite the importance of land as an asset for livelihoods and social recognition, and global commitments and instruments to ensure women’s rights to land and property, women represent less than 20% of the landholders globally. They face restricted rights to access, use, inherit, control, and own land.

Often land and agrarian reforms, allocation, and titling or registration programs target the household, assigning ownership to the “head of household,” most frequently – a man. Across all the regions, women land rights are mostly linked to their male relatives. Global trends, such as large scale land investments, are increasing threats on communities’ land rights. This is especially concerning to the land rights of the indigenous women, whereas powerful investors grab land for mining, agriculture and tourism.

Insecurity of tenure is challenging the grassroots women the most because of access to and control over land linked to their social and economic status in the community. Security of tenure linked with rights to own land and property becomes key to grassroots women’s economic, social and consequently political empowerment.

Over the last few years, Huairou Commission’s land and housing campaign has focused on equitable and gender-responsive land governance that enables grassroots women to access secure tenure of land and housing within this context of scarcity and climate change.

Huairou Commission works to:

promote grassroots women’s representation within land governance structures
ensure grassroots women’s access to and control over land, enhancing their resilience to climate change through livelihood improvement
support grassroots women’s groups innovation in land management, nutrition and food security

The land and housing campaign carries a strong focus on advocacy. This is illustrated by Huairou Commission’s engagement in global initiatives such as the Global Land Indicators Initiative (GLII), which succeeded in including land indicators on women’s land ownership in the Agenda 2030 (specifically: 1.4.2 and 5.a.1 and 5.a.2).

HC employs cross-cutting actions such as partnership building, advocacy and communication, and resource mobilization to ensure that grassroots women’s needs and expectations are considered in global, regional and national level discussions and decision-making processes.

Women Land Link Africa

The Women Land Link Africa (WLLA), was initiated in 2008 as a tool for learning, communicating and advocacy, and illustrates the process of knowledge and practices sharing. WLLA is a self-help platform by grassroots women and for grassroots women striving to change the course of their own development by gaining secure access to land and housing through innovation and collective action.

WLLA’S mission is to influence the formation and implementation of land and housing policies for the benefit of grassroots women by

strengthening their collective capacity to effectively engage social, cultural and political systems and practices that obstruct grassroots women equality with men on matters of land and housing
consolidating the knowledge from the missing voices of grassroots women to inform policy and frame practices that will empower women to be agents of development within their communities

In addition to building a network of grassroots women leaders and organizations engaging in land campaigns and advocacy, the HC increases its engagement within global networks to affect policy change.

As a partner and vice chair of the Global Land tool Network, Huairou Commission endeavours to ensure that land tools produced and implemented are gender sensitive and promote women land rights in general. The new GLTN gender strategy which was launched in November 2019 is a concrete example of achievements of our partnership strategy. Being an International Land Coalition member at the global level, is giving an opportunity to our members to engage in ILC led initiatives at the national level. Huairou Commission also plays an important role in the design and implementation of global initiatives with local footing, such as the new campaign “Stand For Her Land” (S4HL), which is a multi-year global campaign advocating to advance secure tenure for women worldwide in alignment with the 2030 Agenda. The S4HL is an inclusive, collaborative effort among representatives of grassroots women organizations, civil society, development organizations, women’s rights and empowerment groups, land rights advocates, land mapping and technical specialists.

UCOBAC, Uganda

Uganda Community Based Association for Women and Children’s Welfare (UCOBAC) is a member of Women’s Land Link Africa with a mission to deliver human rights and improve welfare of at risk women and girls through community based initiatives. As a member of Huairou Commission, UCOBAC belongs to the ILC, and participates in the Commitment Based Initiative (CBI) to deliver women and girls’ land rights. UCOBAC will undertake regional and sub regional advocacy actions with the East Africa Community and Africa Union Regional Economic Committee (RECs) on the Africa Union declaration on Land and Women’s Land Rights.

At the national level, UCOBAC is coordinating the Gender and Women’s Land Rights thematic group of the National Engagement Strategy on Land in Uganda with a collective goal to promote people centered and gender responsive land governance through policy and practice. Under the NES-Uganda process, UCOBAC leads the Stand For Her Land Campaign (S4HL), a global campaign to strengthen the land rights of millions of women through collective advocacy with an aim of closing the implementation gap between law and practice. In 2019, UCOBAC together with the S4HL Secretariat convened 20 diverse organizations in Kampala, that all share a vision on the transformation that can happen when women can assert their equal land rights in their daily lives. Together, the organizations analyzed, strategized and ultimately realized that S4HL will add important value to moving the needle on strengthening women’s land rights in Uganda.

SWID, Uganda

Slum Women’s Initiative for Development (SWID), is a grassroots women led organization in Uganda based in Jinja city to deliver security of tenure and land ownership rights to women. SWID was founded in 2003 and joined the Huairou Commission in 2007, when it was invited to participate in multiple peer exchanges on women’s land rights hosted by Huairou members in Ghana, Kenya, Zambia, South Africa and Uganda. Consequently, SWID started receiving programs funds from Huairou for their land rights campaign and joined the WLLA. Following the peer exchanges, SWID learned how to adapt the land rights work to engage women who were HIV/AIDS positive and experienced heightened risk of insecure tenure, and used Huairou funding to build habitable houses and get land titles for individually and cooperatively owned land.

Peer exchanges have introduced SWID to the L2L methodology that enhanced their dialogues with local government officials. The women showcased to local officials how secure tenure and land rights build self-sufficiency and community resilience, reducing reliance on relief and social security from government meanwhile positioning the group as a viable partner to manage land productively. Through Huairou Commission, SWID actively participates in the International Land Coalition (ILC) meetings as well as Commission on the Status of Women, and World Bank meetings on Land, where Joyce Nangobi, SWID founder, met former Ugandan Minister on Land and Housing, strengthening SWID partnership with national and local housing authorities. Recently, SWID received an operational permit to engage in land titling work in 10 other districts aside from Jinja with their work also expanding to ensure shared ownership of property between husbands and wives.