Sierra Leone Telegraph: 13 October 2024:
A high-level Policy Dialogue for building consensus and political will for policy, legal and institutional reforms and the development of strategies to strengthen land administration institutions has kicked off in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
“The dialogue includes the preparation of a strategy/roadmap to ensure that historical women’s land rights issues are addressed. This will be included in a policy brief to be produced as part of the outputs of this crucial dialogue,” says Joan Kagwanja, Coordinator, African Land Policy Centre (ALPC).
The policy dialogue will be conducted in conjunction with the validation of the report of the Assessment of Barriers to Women’s Land Ownership and Tenure Security and Key Land Administration Institutions Capacity Gaps in the context of COVID-19 and Other shocks in Tanzania.
The validation exercise aims to present the draft report to stakeholders, gather feedback to strengthen the report, and garner expert inputs to review and address possible gaps in the report. An improved and collaborative final assessment report will be produced after the workshop.
Implementing Land Governance in Tanzania – the Process So Far
At policy and legislative levels, the Government of Tanzania is committed to the implementation of the AU Declaration on Land Issues and Challenges in Africa. This adheres to the AU Declaration on Land, which calls on the AU Member States to review their land sectors and develop comprehensive policies to meet Member States’ specific land needs.
The National Land Policy, the Land Act and the Village Act reflect gender awareness concerning women’s land rights and tenure security.
Between 2016 and 2017, Tanzania was part of the six-country project examining opportunities to mainstream land governance issues in agriculture. With support from IFAD and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), a report summarized key recommendations for integrating land governance in the country’s Agriculture Development Strategy and in Tanzania’s Food Security and Investment Plan.
In 2019, through the Ministry of Lands, Housing and Human Settlement Development, Tanzania requested technical assistance from ECA in the context of implementing pilot projects for land tenure regularization in rural and urban areas, targeting women more. True to its mandate, ECA has secured funding to continue supporting Tanzania under the project Gender-responsive Land Governance in Africa as a Pathway for Enhancing Women’s Resilience in the Context of COVID-19.
With its unwavering commitment to evidence-based programming and producing knowledge products, ECA commissioned a study in Tanzania that is now being validated. A policy dialogue is also one of the multi-pronged approaches being utilised in the project across all countries, including Tanzania.
The full-day workshop will bring together participants from the main Land and Gender Line Ministries, Women Land Rights Organisations Forum (Stand for Her Land (S4HL chaired by Tanzania Women Lawyers Association), Campaign Taskforce members, including UN Women); other Non-Governmental Organisations, UN Agencies, academic and research institutions, National Economic Empowerment Council, National Women Empowerment Forum, women business associations, and farmers associations, legal practitioners and traditional leaders.
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