 I would just like to let you know we have simultaneous interpretation into Khmer, Laos and Vietnamese languages. Please make sure you click on the globe icon at the lower part of your Zoom window and select a language. And obviously, if you need English as well, please select that. Thank you. Okay, welcome everyone. My name is Liz Daly. I'm chair of the Land Portal Foundation Board, and I work as a consultant on gender and land governance. It's my very great pleasure to welcome you all to this webinar on women's participation in land governance in the Mekong, moving beyond quotas to meaningful. This is the first webinar in the series, State of Land in the Mekong region. The series highlights the evolving environment of land governance in this dynamic region, including Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam. But the relevance goes beyond to all those interested in land governance globally, and we hope everyone here will take away many insights from our discussion today. Today's webinar will shine a special light on two groundbreaking reports concerning gender and land governance in the Mekong region. The reports are, first, Outlook on gender land in the Mekong region, and second, towards gender equitable land policy and lawmaking in the Mekong region. They were produced in phase two of the Mekong region land governance program, which we abbreviate as MRLG. And MRLG program is jointly hosting this webinar series with the Land Portal. I've been one of the contributors for the first of these two reports, the Outlook, and we will also hear from another contributor on that later on. And our panel includes two of the co-authors from the second report, as well as various other experts on these issues. So today we aim to discuss the relationship between national gender equality institutions and their impact on women's land rights in the Mekong countries. We aim to identify some of the major barriers at the national and local levels that perpetuate gender biases and hinder meaningful participation of women in land-related decision-making and land policy reform. We hope this webinar will be the beginning of a critical dialogue on the common challenges faced by women across the region concerning land governance and particularly concerning their participation in policy processes. We'll also explore how access to information and transparent land governance can empower women, ensuring their voices are not just heard but are also influential in policymaking. So before we get stuck in, I have to share a few logistical notes. So the webinar is being streamed live on multiple platforms. Welcome if you're joining us that way. We are also undertaking live tweeting. This is from the land portal Twitter account and we are using a hashtag state of land Mekong with no spaces between state of land hashtag state of land Mekong. So please do contribute to the discussion on Twitter as we go. We've created a social media kit for this event which has been shared with you in the chat. And if you have any questions throughout the session, we hope you do. Please post them using the Q&A button, which is at the bottom of your screen. So after we've heard from our panelists, we'll attempt to answer as many questions as we can later in the webinar and some of our panelists may also answer some of your questions as we go through simple ones that can come up. So keep an eye on that Q&A if you're joining us through the webinar. Today's session is also being recorded and you will receive a link to the video afterwards, as well as an article with key messages that we will make available on the land portal. So allow me now to introduce our wonderful speakers. We really have a terrific panel today to discuss these issues. First, I can introduce Dr. Micah Ingalls, who is the team leader for the MRLG program. Micah is going to start us off today by presenting some key highlights from both reports. Then we also have Natalie Campbell, who is the regional customary tenure advisor for MRLG. And she's also one of the co-authors of the Outlook. So Natalie is initially listening in, but she'll be joining us on video later in the webinar. We have with us also Puvon Tamavong, who's the deputy director of the Ministry of Planning and Investment, the Investment Promotion Department in Laos, PDR. We're delighted to have her share her perspectives from the national government side there. We have also Dr. Hue Le, who is a senior researcher at Vietnam National University in Hanoi. She was one of the contributing authors to the reports on gender equitable land policy and lawmaking in the Mekong region. Our second report we're launching today. We have also Mai Tin Yumon from Myanmar, co-chair for the Global Indigenous Youth Caucus, and she's also been a UN food security champion. Yumon has extensive experience working with indigenous communities in Myanmar on land, environment and natural resource management. And then our last panelist is Dr. Chani Hak, who is a research fellow at the Analyzing Development Issues Center in Cambodia. Chani is a freelance consultant who has done extensive research on communal land titles and indigenous people and also in the context of contract farming. And she's another co-author of the report about women's participation in law and policy formulation processes. So let's get going. Micah, let's start our discussion with you. Can you please introduce the MRLG program and give us an overview of the key findings of these two new reports? I believe we have some slides as well for you to share. So let's get those up and let's hear from Micah. Thank you. Hi Liz, thank you very much. Thanks for the introduction. Welcome everybody. Good morning or good afternoon wherever you're coming from. So as Liz mentioned, I'd like to do a quick overview of the Mekong region land governance project, sort of by way of introduction into the two different reports that we'll be presenting today. So as mentioned, the Mekong region land governance project is working here in the CLMV countries or Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam. The objective of the project is that smallholder women and men farmers have secure and equitable control over land and forest resources in the Mekong region countries of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam. MRLG also works with the Asian secretariat and with other regional partners in the Mekong region and Asia Pacific. The program started back in 2014 and we will run until the end of 2025 with an overall budget of about 41 million dollars from Switzerland, Germany and Luxembourg. We work to support the development and implementation of improved policies and practices in the Mekong. We're sort of organized around two different thematic areas, one being responsible agricultural investments and the other being the recognition of customary tenure. We also work to mainstream gender transformation through several different activities, some of which you'll hear about today, and also through the support for a community of practice of gender experts in the region and specific policy interventions on gender and land. MRLG doesn't work alone, so the premise of MRLG as a project is that we work through our alliance members. We currently have about 100, slightly over 100 different partners with whom we work from government development agencies, donors, local civil society and academia. In this region, sorry, a second. Here just providing some background on the outlook on gender and land in the Mekong, so this is the first of the two products we want to talk about today. The objective of this, excuse me, the web panel, the objective of this report was to identify strategic priorities to meaningfully strengthen gender equitable land governance across the region. This came out of our work during phase two, which ended last year on doing trainings at both regional and national level on empowering women and men in land governance. And I think through that process we identified that there was a significant lack of data and information on the overall status of gender equity and land related policies and practices in particular. So that was the origin of why this study was commissioned. The target audience for this is regional and national policymakers and also development partners, such as donors, development agencies, academia, local civil society to help inform their actions and their parties. It consists of several different parts or intentions. So one is being sort of stop taking, framing current gender and land situations in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam. Within a larger conceptual regional and international context. And also to review their land related policies and legal frameworks, including their gender specific provisions. Second, it offers a way forward kind of looking at horizon scanning, looking toward future policy and action on gender and land. And for this it then presents a series of recommendations to guide future policy and practice by identifying key gender issues and proposing priority actions on those. There are several different themes so that the piece itself is quite comprehensive and I would encourage everybody to read the full document. So there are several different thematic areas, each of which has its own set of recommendations. But I think for today we'll focus primarily on three. One being policy strengthening, secondarily on gendered social norms, and third on gaps between policy and implementation. So the first of these on the policy implementation gap. One thing it's important is that we cross all of the big bone countries as a general consensus from reports that most of the existing legal frameworks provided an adequate basis for gender equity with respect to land in the main right is particularly true in Vietnam. But primary concerns across all the region is that most of the statutory provisions are generally gender blind, meaning that they recognize that men and women are equal in society but they tend to be silent with regard to specific provisions for addressing existing inequalities or disparities. And so that's since there's a risk of saying, in respect to how the government can actually implement these in practice. There's a couple of things I want to highlight. I think one, as mentioned, in the region I think Vietnam stands out very much as a regional leader. All the countries have have pluses and minuses when it comes to the legal framework. And Vietnam is not perfect, but it really sort of stands in the vanguard of more progressive approaches to recognizing the rights of women and making provision to address inequalities and such. For example, the Constitution explicitly prohibits discrimination based on sex, and it supports special measures for, quote, the comprehensive development of women and promotion of their role in society, thus not just as mothers but also as social agents in society generally. Similarly to civil code Vietnam states that contract will be invalidated. If a contracting party uses gender difference as a reason to force signature participation in contracts and things. So overall the recommendation would be to strengthen policy frameworks through explicit provisions of gender equality and for constitutions across the sale of the countries to be amended to explicitly prohibit sexual or gender discrimination as was done in the case of Vietnam. The second thematic area to highlight was the social cultural norms and practices. So this was reviewed quite extensively across each of the CLMB countries. And generally the findings are that gender norms are one of the main and perhaps the main reason why some women are marginalized within and outside the home. So I mean it's not exactly the legal frameworks themselves that that might be the largest source of difficulty or challenge, but rather social gender norms and how those allow laws to be played out in practice. Secondly, gender norms also explain why women hit households are often at risk or more at risk of losing their rights to male family members, local elites and commercial interests, such as in cases of divorce of inequitable inheritance or things like that. Thirdly, changing social norms and values around gender and land is challenging, but it's both possible and practical. So the report reviews several initiatives that have been undertaken to try to address these gaps. I think generally the finding is that this is certainly an area of challenge, but it's something that really can be grappled with and meaningfully changed when it's really quite a point of hope in all of this. So recommendations. First, civil society and government can work together with local champions of change, both women and men, remembering that gender actions are not just about working with women but also working with male champions also to help mainstream this and not to break down the barriers between men and women be involved cooperatively together in the process. Secondly, development partners, so here are many donors, international organizations and others can partner with these to help with funding or with technical support. The third area is the gap between policy and implementation. I think here again when important finding from this report was that the gap between the existing policies and legal frameworks and their implementation and practice do not appear to be primarily the results of a lack of good intentions. So I think generally speaking that each of the governments in the countries have done have thought to pursue opportunities for the quality of women they sought to strengthen legal frameworks in some cases to make this happen. But in many cases this hasn't been sufficient to really address the issue between policy and practice in large part because of the gender blindness of these statutory provisions, but not only. So the second finding is that all four of the main countries based varying levels of technical and resourcing capacity implement policies and laws. So in many cases the laws that exist on the books when it comes to their implementation and practice they struggle in part due to lack of technical and financial and other resources as well. Also I think a key message from this is that the focus on implementation of law is certainly essential. But it's very difficult to measure and large for the reason it's difficult to measure is a lack of standardized disaggregated data by sex or gender. As a point we'll come back to in a minute. So the recommendation here is that the everyday operational and procedural details of how and by whom laws and policies are implemented is really what matters. For example, how is the law being applied. What do implementing regulations look like and have these implementing regulations and laws been piloted with different social groups as a way of understanding how they roll out unevenly across the society due to existing disparities, capacity issues and things like that. There are many barriers of course that need to be resolved. The key amongst these is of course literacy and education. Also coordination amongst development partners is essential in order to avoid duplication and also to maximize opportunities for synergies and to leverage more positive outcomes. So now pivoting toward the second of the two reports we wanted to present and discuss today. This is a toward gender equitable land policy and lawmaking in the may come region. The objective of this one was to assess the extent and effectiveness of gender equitable consultation in land related legislative reforms. This with a view to ensure that the views and experiences of diverse groups of women are included in processes of legislative reform in Cambodia, Lao PDR in Vietnam. This also came out of Emerald Gees existing work. The problem for this was work that was being done in policy reforms with respect to contract farming, investment regulation also cooperatives. And I think in those processes of working toward law reform, a key issue that was noted was there was a gap between the processes that were happening, the intentions of being gender inclusive in those reform policies and the actual outcomes and participation of women in the process. So this study was based on desk research field research and also consultations to identify barriers and opportunities for government CSOs and academic institutions to be more engaged in legislative reform and more more effectively engaged and more substantively involved in those processes. Ultimately to improve legislative consultation processes to ensure that these one adequately considered gender and to include the participation of diverse groups of women. Like one of the important findings in this was that it's not just about involving women, generally, but also that there's differentiation amongst women in society to refine this some women have greater access to these kinds of processes. Whereas others due to educational status, literacy, ethnic identity have less access to it. And so I think the process of involving women more effectively in legislative reform means also identifying those parts women within society of different groups that are being excluded from the process more than others. Overall finding so in all four countries, there are women focused institutions that broadly address gender equality issues. So this is an important and positive finding. So each of the CLB countries here have established institutions or mass organizations that are explicitly designed to promote equality of women and their participation in society more broadly. But part of the issue we found was that it's unclear the extent to which these institutions and a policymaking domain in general, in the may call region prioritizes women's land rights. So taking a few different examples for specifics in the region, looking first at Laos. So for for decades now the Lao women's union has been established to promote the participation of women in society for equality. And for also explicitly their role in how governance is done generally. So here thinking about their participation in decision making over land and natural resources. But despite this it remains limited. So the ability of women to meaningfully contribute to legislative processes and reforms remains fairly low, both in numeric terms, the number of women actually involved in the process. And also with respect to their ability to make meaningful and effective contributions. This is particularly true at higher levels of government. Taking a different example from Cambodia. One issue is that there's no specific quotas for the appointment of women in land management and administration, or quotas for appointment of women in land dispute resolution mechanisms, such as the or the Maison de la justice, which operates at the subnational commune and district levels. This is despite the fact that politicians have just been discussing the general role of women in politics and leadership for some time. In Myanmar, the 2016 national land use policy, which was generally seen as quite a positive step forward for more equitable inclusive land governance. It stipulates that committees for the proposed national land use councils shall consist of representatives from all ethnic nationalities, experts, women and elders. Similar to the case in Cambodia, it also provides no specific quotas to ensure either minimum level of representation, or to ensure that that representation is meaningful and effective. So common barriers across the region. The way in which the consultations themselves are conducted was generally found to be not conducive to genuine participation of women. The consultation of communities remain top down on typically these come after a new law or policy has been adopted. Of course, this is not true in all cases, but in the main the consultation at the very local level does not happen until after the legislation has been enacted. Women's participation tends to be equated with women being represented or present in consultations, but insufficient attention is paid to ensuring that that participation is meaningful and effective. So merely having women in the room seems to be a sufficient metric for women's participation. But in reality, of course, it doesn't may not measure anything right if those women are not adequately involved and don't have the capacities and resources and the space to meaningfully influenced informant policy. So this presence is not guaranteed these will be either the process itself with gender equitable as I said, nor that the outcome of that process will be gender equitable. This is largely due to the existing power dynamics and disparities within society generally. Okay recommendations to improve women's meaningful participation in leadership and decision making at both family and community levels, and in decision making platforms need to support grassroots consultation processes. And through amplifying local voices and providing a means of feedback through mechanisms for providing those inputs, the need to increase knowledge of gender equity amongst policymakers, especially men to increase the collection and use of gender disaggregated data. As we mentioned above, lack of data is one of the key challenges when it comes to assessing the degree to which meaningful changes are actually occurring within society. This is particularly true at the subnational level, so governments tend to collect data on gender related aspects for reporting against the SDGs and UN agenda 2030. But even where these are collected, they tend to be somewhat superficial, and they're not disaggregated to the subnational level, meaning that where there are advances in some areas, these main mask retractions are not advanced in other parts of the country or other segments of society. Also to recognize and implement women's right to own an inherent land. To improve women's capacity and understanding of land tenure issues and legal frameworks. To ensure women's access to land administration services, despite educational differences and other barriers. To highlight the linkages between gender concerns and land laws and policies, something that's typically often not recognized the gender relevance of different legislation that's being developed and why it's important to involve women that process. And then finally, I think the more the recommendations was that there needs to be a close accessibility be the close the accessibility information gaps. So these relates to the capacity issues mentioned above, but a key issue of course is that some segments of society, women in different ethnic groups or lower socioeconomic groups often will access to information and struggle with accessibility to information also to those administrative services mentioned above. So that's, that's the end of the kind of overview of this. Liz, I'll hand the floor back to you but I think we'll have quite an interesting discussion with the panelists, and with the individuals who were involved in actually writing these things so I'm, I myself am quite keen to hear the discussion and any questions today. So thank you very much. Thanks, Micah. Thanks, that was a great outline. So, yeah, as Micah said, we'll bring in our other panelists now and try to explore the, some of the themes that came out of this so the first one we'll start with is the community impacts of land tenure challenges. And I'm going to call on Chani first. Chani, can you please tell us briefly about your participatory research on women's role in contract farming context in Cambodia. Thanks, Chani. Thank you. Hi, everyone. Yeah. With technology support, we conducted a three country study on women engagement in lawmaking process in the region. And also, I'm of the study is to test the use of families oriented consultative approach in Cambodia we look specifically at how contract farming was conducted with a particular agriculture cooperative in two provinces in Kampung Chinang, which is in the central part of Cambodia and Karate which is culture in the northeast of Cambodia. The Greek culture cooperative was selected based on their experience in engaging in contract farming. Currently the gender dynamic of AC in each community, gender relations in AC and how this relationship opportunity for inclusive consultation. According to the result of the contract farming study, none of the women in the two AC were invited to consultation meetings on draft law on contract farming. The management committee of an agriculture cooperative in Kampung Chinang said they attended a dissemination workshop on contract farming conflict resolution guideline that was led by an NGO and the NGO that they have closely collaborated with. Our study also revealed that while at the sub national level, there is a growing number of women participating in managerial positions, such as being a leader of community based organization or good culture cooperative or even government district office. But at the national level, the participation space in leadership position is limited. Although many women attended in managerial positions, their duty and responsibility are often perceived as day to day administrative managerial positions. For instance, in one encounter, a deputy governor said that she is in charge of women and child care. In one of the interview, an executive director of a Cambodian NGO said she often invited to participate in consultation meeting with mostly NGO working in the same sector, such as domestic violence or any work that are related to women and children. She expressed her willingness to participate in other work including land governance, but she said she rarely involved in such opportunity. In the study, we also uncovered that Ministry of Women Affair did not attend the process of drafting contract farming law. Thanks, Cheney. Those were some really interesting insights on the situation in Cambodia. Let me now turn to Dr Hue Le. Dr Hue, why is women's participation in land governance important to you and what are the major challenges in Vietnam regarding their involvement? Thanks, Lee. Hi, everyone. I would like to start at the international level. The UN Committee on Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, or CEDOR, and the CEDOR Committee's general recommendation number 34 on the rise of rural women and the FAO voluntary guidelines on the governance of land tenure and the UN working group on business and human rights gender guidance require the creation of effective mechanisms and institutions to ensure gender equality by promoting the participation of diverse groups of women in all stages of law and policymaking processes. And at the national level in Vietnam, women are both policymakers and subjects of land governance policy, policymakers who could be both men and women. They need to be able to contribute to a policy such as law-related skills, their understanding of the situation related to land governance and also the local context. Women are also the subjects of policy. For example, when they participate, they have a voice and task that can contribute ideas that are more suitable to their aspirations. And personally, I think that women's aspirations are very important. So women also aim to develop environmentally and socially friendly laws and policy. Women often, as in the context of Vietnam, aim for greater harmony with groups with conflicting interests in land governance. And for the major challenges that prohibit women's participation in land governance, this includes lack of clear criteria for assessing whether legal drafting is gender equitable. Concentration meetings often provide little opportunity for influence, and men often dominate concentration processes, although this is correctly changing. Officials facilitating concentration processes often lack capacity, and the space towards civil society influence is restricted. The Vietnam Women's Union, who are in charge of the women's equality and many other duties related to women, lack authority on land and agricultural issues. Thank you. Thanks, Dr. Huay. I just want to ask you a follow up before we move on. So is this participation better at the national or regional level in Vietnam? And can you also tell us briefly how access to information and transparent land governance can empower women? So ensuring their voices are not just heard, but also influential in policymaking in the region. It's a question already coming up in the Q&A about this issue of meaningful participation. So some further thoughts from you on that, please. Thank you. Personally, I think that the participation of women at all levels is important. That means at the national and also regional level. But it's true that with land governance policy in Vietnam's condition, there needs to be women holding important positions so that would promote women's participation at all levels. Because you all know that Vietnam society is a patriarchal society. So most of the time, more respected than women. So in order to promote access to information in Vietnam, I think that women's participation in land governance is still limited. Therefore, during the lawmaking process, there needs to be transparent disclosure of where policy concentration workshops are held and what percentage of women participants make up. Most of the time, the state officials generally only present the parts of the law that they think that are important to the locality when they hold the concentration workshops, other than the entire law. So this leads to an incomplete understanding of the law. And second, after the concentration meeting ends, it's necessary to synthesize opinions and clearly state which items the participants commented on and in which chapter. And there must be specific results after each concentration meeting. And third, women's representative bodies, in addition to their traditional assigned tasks, need to be given additional land and agricultural issues. The reason is that land needs to be highly political and more difficult for the Vietnam women's union to take up. And this will empower women, ensuring their voices are not just heard, but also influential in policy-making in the region. Thank you. Thanks Dr Hoi, that was really informative. Let me now bring in Poovoin Tamatang for some thoughts on all this in the law context. So Poovoin, can you tell us what the major challenges in Lao PDR are regarding the involvement of women in land governance? Over to you. Morning there, I'm Poovoin Tamatang from Lao PDR. For the improvement of Lao PDR, the attention to the equalize between men and women through various representatives and policy instructions. So just in the land law, it can be written by both men, husband and wife, in the land risk level and the land burden. It is very important on that to protect the land of women, for land owners, for land owners, and with herself. I would like to ask for some help to get through the further. Sorry Poovoin, we can't hear you. I think we've just, oh no, that's alright, your audio is back. Sorry for that. That's okay. It just dropped very briefly. I think you can just continue. Thanks. Okay, so I will continue on the major challenge regarding the involvement. So from now, that I can see from my perspective, the first thing is educations. There are two limitations of women's education in the local and rural areas. The first is that women rule on the participation of women of land governance in the local land governance system. Why the local land governance and it is very important for women to participate in the future at the local levels. The second thing, change the society law. We can see that change the elected value perspective, the system, and tradition of completely new norm that we go slowly over. This may be an extremely important effort to ensure that the important really takes long. In some cases, the specific on the ethnic minority may not have the opportunity to involve the women to join the country. I participate on the land management because of the levels by a limit of knowledge. The cost is on the perspective. Thank you. Thanks Poovoin. I hope everyone was able to hear you very well. I know you've been having some audio issues, but we'll try and get that sorted out as we go. I want to bring in now my team you mon on this topic we're focusing at the moment on community impacts of land tenure challenges. And I'd like to ask, what do you see as the major challenges, especially regarding the involvement of indigenous women in the Mekong. So, you know, how can access to information and transparent land governance empower indigenous women and the youth in the region which I know is an area that you have a lot of expertise on. So I can hand to you more now. Thank you. So, actually, like many country situations we have already heard a lot from my fellow speakers from different countries. So, when we talk about land the challenges, especially in Mekong region, which stems from the, from very like strong patriarchal society, how patriarchal we are, it stems from there. And when we talk about use land use land is sacred for many indigenous, especially for indigenous communities. It's not just about livelihood. It's not just about productivity. It's sacred and land is a land plays a very big role in our indigenous ways of lives, livelihoods for our beliefs, for our traditional knowledge, indigenous knowledge and all the food systems that we are practicing. So, at the same time, land is as land is considered sacred. When we talk about land, usually, automatically it relates, it is usually seen related to men, especially when it comes to decision about land. It is automatically considered at like most of the time that it is men's related business, also because land, when we talk about land, it is very much related to the politics. It has so much like political aspect in it. So, from my experience participating in at different like community level, national and even regional level discussions about indigenous, the challenge, indigenous women in land. I think the challenges are quite similar. The first is that the decision making processes that we have at community level, which comes from the household level decision making processes and practices that we have. And another is the national policies, how these policies, the processes of these policy formulation as Dr. Michael also reflected. So, for women, and especially for indigenous women, because women in general, we already have this level of like barrier that is there. But for indigenous women, the barrier becomes double, also because indigenous communities also have not just indigenous women, but indigenous peoples and communities already have challenges in participating in these land related policy discussions. So, like the major challenges, it also usually comes from the representation that we talk about. And so far, we have been talking also about the meaningful participation, qualified sort of participation, but we are still far away from quota participation, I would say. Even we haven't been able to really reach in these different processes, we haven't been able to reach even the minimum 30% participation of women. So, even like, and usually this tokenism is being practiced by policymakers, that is also another problem. Women are being invited, but women, those who would just like reflect or resonate with the policymakers that are there or that would just, who do not necessarily represent the voices of women. That is also the problem that the challenges that we usually face. So LEND, it was really, it struck me so hard in 2018 when I joined the National Land Use Forum in Myanmar. How sensitive LEND is, it is not just between the government, policymakers and the people who truly use the LEND, it's even between the government agencies. And there were like big, how should I say, arguments, big discussions, debates, because different agencies, government agencies do not want to share LEND information that they have to other departments. So there was really big debate and at first it was like so strange and so surprising because they are part of these governments, they are supposed to implement this National Land Use Policy of Myanmar. But even these different departments, so when we talk about information access, it's really tricky also because even when these agencies who are working under the same government and who have been working, who have been there for like so many decades, have difficulty sharing information among themselves, how can we, like people really get access to information to those related to LEND. So having said that, access to information and transparent LEND governance is really important and because it decides, because LEND is very central to our ways of life and time and again we really experience as indigenous communities. LEND, we do not separate these natural resources. LEND, forests and all these other natural resources, they come in a package for us. So, but usually when like our forested areas become really famous and then governments usually try to take them away by making them as protected areas or national parks and so on. When all these decisions are made, I think it is really important that we invite these stakeholders because they have indigenous communities especially have been the ones who not only use these LEND and natural resources but who have also been safeguarding and making sure that biodiversity thrives in these regions. So, I think it is really important to keep this discussion continue. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much, Eumann. It's really, really helpful to get your perspective on the indigenous, you know, the indigenous aspects of this topic. So, we'll move I think to another area of interest and we'll go back to Chani. So I'd like to have us talk a bit now about what we can do to dismantle stereotypes about women's rights in land governance and also reverse the perception that women's representatives or institutions are only focused on family care in the region. So, we're moving more now to talk about meaningful participation, you know, ways to avoid women from being sidelined in important debates like land policy and gender inclusion and value chains. So, Chani, do you have a few comments you can share with us on this? Thank you. First, I would like to highlight that it is vitally important that women participate in land and policy formulation process. This, for Cambodia case, this is a legal obligation according to Cambodian constitution, women and men have equal rights to participate in political, economic and cultural life of the nation. More importantly, women are also considered as backbone of social economic development. The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries articulate that gender mainstreaming is necessary for the agricultural sector because it could ensure food security. The female Deputy Prime Minister has also declared the government policy to gender equality and women empowerment so that women will have equal opportunity to participate in all level in the country. Historically, Cambodia is a matriarchal society in which women are considered to play important role in the household, including decision making. However, according to culture, women power is counterbalanced by expectation and perception of being a good woman and that women mostly work around the household and taking care of household members like children, husband or elderly parents. Women in modern day actively engage in both productive and reproductive work. Women are in charge of household finance in addition to care and domestic work. Yeah, that's really interesting, Chani. Sorry, I was just going to ask what can be done to break these stereotypes. Yeah, in Cambodia we have so many NGO programs and NGO programs are significant influence in our development sector. The NGO program should address issue of gender inequality and make space in their programming to directly target harmful stereotype, while also building capacity for women and their capacity of women and their confidence around engaging in technical area rather than just household issue. The point is women know so much being about 50% of smallholder agricultural farmer, but sometimes they don't feel confident to speak. This reinforces the stereotype that they don't actually know much at all. Efforts like what Amology is planning to do in Cambodia in its phase 3 work around the contract farming law are key. Here, Amology will support the engagement of women of a good agricultural cooperative leader. This type of work show the benefit and advantages and normalize their participation. At the same time, they will help this woman with the soft skill like public speaking and confidence to feel ready to participate, providing a space where they can talk and feel less pressure to provide perfect responses is key. But to expand and widen women participation in contract farming law go by going by on sexual issues such as care work, maternal and child health or domestic violence. It's required a trend of mentality about women capacity to provide useful contribution to this type of policy dialogue and discussion. There need to be more pressure on policymaker to actually consider this input while also providing safe space for women to discuss the policy issues. Potentially law process should require a contribution from women representative and undertake a review of law and policy to understand their gender impact. Thanks, Channy. That was great. Really helpful. Let's go to Dr. Huay Le again. Dr. Huay, what do you think we can do to reverse the perception that women's representatives or institutions are only focused on family care? Maybe you can also tell us in this context about the famous red book and its implications in Vietnam. Dr. Huay. Thanks, Lee. I think in order to reverse the perception that women's representatives or institutions are only focused on family care, we need to strengthen the capacity of women and women's representative agencies, for example, the Women's Union in Vietnam, through specific actions. This includes the participation of experts from these organizations in the fields of economics, business, entrepreneurs, and politics, instead of traditional topics such as family planning or three-clean programs such as clean house, clean kitchen, and clean alley. Those are fields that are considered only for women. Let me tell you our red book story. Red book is issued by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment with the legal name and land use rights certificate. Many red books issued before 2004 only had the husband's name. Households hate the majority of home workmen signed the red books. Women's tasks did not receive individual rights to land and the land use rights were mainly given to men only. But as a matter of fact, in Vietnam, agricultural land has not been redistributed since 1993. That's why many women are not listed in the red book. So the fight for women to have the right to put their names in the red book was successful and it was clearly stated in the 2003 Land Law. Before that, there was no such thing. However, to research in a number of districts and towns in some provinces in Vietnam show that many women still do not fully understand their rights when their names are on the red book. Many women do not even understand the meaning of having both husband and wife's name on the red book while men consider themselves the head of the family and chat need to have their names on it only. The fact that women are not listed in the red book has directly reduced their role and position in using land for the purpose of family economic development, improving livelihoods, and sustainably reducing poverty. And this also causes disadvantages for women, especially in cases of divorce. So since 2004, women have had the right to put their names in the red book. Thank you. Thanks, Dr. Pai. Let's come back to von and do you have anything you can add for us from the law perspective. You know, maybe talk a little bit for us about what kind of efforts the law women's union makes. Thank you for one. Thank you, Reed. My place are from the perspective of laws in the rural area. We are still pursuing the task of opportunity for women's lives in law unions. However, in order to change the state of place of women's life, we can support and provide, providing with good activities and providing the students and more late on handsome. That's going to be a great deal. Unfortunately for you, as a family law get the equality law and give example of the group hope. On women. All the participation on the main area. Women and the kind of family or family or group model family live by the dinner. To be very comprehensive, inclusive, but also focused on dinner opportunity to be trained. We are planning and making decisions as per the capacity and standard. We should not focus only on quantity, but more on quality of boys. They should and could make. The importance is a complex process and we should request on stakeholders attention. Equal improvement is another practice approach to improve women's law. Particularly while there's participation in one step. So our experience that working together with the law woman. I usually we are in terms of women's empowerment, but actually activities that they could do it. Such as in a weekend or at least two times a month. Or even that they are available to add talent. Thanks for one. So let's just just pick up another set of questions before we come and start addressing some of the great questions that are coming up in the Q&A. I'm going to go back to Chani. Chani did the MRLG study on gender equitable consultations reveal any challenges with the legal reform process in Cambodia. So around women's engagement and community engagement generally. And if so, what kind of obstacles did communities face with getting involved in consultation processes? Could you speak to that for us just briefly please? Yeah, one of the main issue we uncover in the study is that there are technical terms in the law that were often difficult to understand for community members and women in particular. There are need more time and explanations to help them to understand and often the consultation was done in a short time frame. So the understanding of the whole process is not enough. Another problem is that the process of law and policy drafting in Cambodia is very much top down involving lengthy step of consultation at the ministerial and interministerial level. This formalistic approach limit the opportunity for community engagement as it is quite closed door. As mentioned, we have very few women in leadership role in the agriculture sector so women's rights don't come through in this kind of process. Further, although consultation meeting were conducted, there were no clear reporting system or mechanism ensuring that concern or input collected from the consultation meeting are considered or incorporated in the actual law. It sometimes seems like these are token steps rather than a genuine change to influence the law's content or more just like an awareness raising approach. While there are consultation meetings at local level on new law or policy, they are often supported by NGO and men are usually perceived to have more capacity to contribute and time to attend these meetings, especially on issue related to land or natural resource while women participate but more on sectoral input like domestic violence, women and child health etc. To answer, did you ask me about the... No, I didn't ask you more. Sorry, I know we talked about covering that a bit more but I think you touched on it really nicely earlier. Thank you though. Maybe we can just go to Pruvan again and just wondering because we've had some questions in the Q&A coming up on the topic of investment and responsible agriculture investment, which is one of the areas that MRLG works a lot on. And I know there's some experience from Lao PDR on that. So, Pruvan, could you maybe just tell us briefly some successful examples of women involvement in designing or reforming landlords in Lao PDR and why that was successful. Thank you. Thank you, Pruvan. Yes, thank you, Elise. For the example that I could give in this time, Lao women have been part of the Liko framework and policy preparations. Many of them sit in the national parliament and parliament as well as at a high position at the different ministries, including Ministry of Lunar Natural Resources and Environments that control on the issue and also Ministry of Planning and Investment for response on the issue of investment licensing regarding in the sector of agriculture or land-related issues. For example, regarding the investment promotion law that we have done, the Ministry of Instruction on Approval of Lease and Confession and other investment-related law allegation that promote responsible agriculture investment. We have set the task force that was approved by the Ministry of Policymaking, including women participation after they can get 30% for the management level and people level. And for the official structure, it was in the course of change of balance, at least one in three persons have to participate in the education level for ensure that all women related issues or boys can participate in the investment promotion law. Thank you. Thanks, Vivone. Let's go back to Yuman now. And we'll ask the same topic whether you can share any successful examples of the involvement specifically of Indigenous women in designing for forming land laws. So either for Myanmar or more generally for the region. Thanks, Yuman. Right. Actually, I say there hasn't been like very good examples, successful examples on this at national level, but however we have seen like progress improvement at Indigenous communities level. And I think it is really important also for, yeah, I'll come later in the recommendation session. We have seen like projects intervening Indigenous land rights at community levels, Indigenous peoples levels. They touch upon this women participation increasingly. So that has also quite a big impact. And also Indigenous women stepping up for this, to be a part of these discussions has been really increased, even though we are, I would not say we are at very good level already. But we have seen, for example, the women, because as I said earlier, we cannot separate only about land, but it's like, it's very much related to the women's leadership in general. So the women participating more in political arena, for example, we are, for example, in Thailand, we have, and also in Cambodia, we have seen Indigenous women leaders stepping up as, how should I say, stepping up into political positions and leadership positions, for example, chiefs, women becoming like chiefs and village heads and community heads. All these have also advanced these women participation in general in these decision-making processes, which also includes setting community protocols, because for us Indigenous, we do not necessarily call them laws, but there are the guidelines that we follow, the protocols that we follow at our community level, which again, feeds into the regional natural resource management practices. So yes, we have very successful examples at community level, at Indigenous peoples level, but to have successful ones at the national level, I think we have a long way to go. Thanks, Yuman. You've raised a really interesting point there about the different levels of the various interventions around here that can support women's participation and distinguishing, especially for Indigenous communities, between the local level and national level. And you also mentioned, I heard you mentioned the word recommendation. So that's actually what I just want to finish on in this discussion here before we go to the Q&A. Let's go to Chani again. Chani, what are your recommendations for improving women's participation in land governance beyond just implementing quotas, so for making meaningful participation? Thanks, Chani. Hi, sorry. Gender equal participation in policy and lawmaking processes need to be considered, of course, by the quota requirements by trying to reaching out to women champion or informal leader who are not in government. Although I believe that quota requirement is still necessary, especially in government institution, otherwise there's a risk of no input. We have a good example from Cambodia. One good example is that there is a women network to include women network for the case of community forestry or community protected area. We see this women network as a platform for women member of the community forestry or CPA to share and discuss issues that related to community forestry or CPA management. This type of network, which are also trained and supported by NGO activity is helped to improve capacity and knowledge on CF and CPA management. This also helps to be a woman relationship with stakeholders across different sectors and offers a strong chance for women to have their voice heard. Another good example is we call gender expert in Cambodia. This is a digital platform to share information, career professional development for gender experts. This group could be expanded and supported to allow for more engagement in policy and consultation. I just want to highlight that women participation in all process is very important but need to consider equal participation and build up on existing example that already have in Cambodia and how to reinforce and support and strengthen the existing mechanism. Thanks, Chani. That's some great examples you just mentioned from Cambodia around the protected areas and forestry as well. Let's go to Dr Huay again. So what are your recommendations Dr Huay for improving women's participation in land governance again beyond quotas like other recommendations that you can bring for us. Thank you. Thank you. I think, you know, Vietnam, as I mentioned earlier that Vietnam is a patriarchal society, so men are always respected more than women. So I think in order to improve the women's participation in governance beyond implementing quotas, you know, is to, I mean this perspective needs to be changed. And so we need to change the mindset of the policy makers that women don't know anything and women just need to focus on domestic chores and housework and that's it. And then the third thing I think that women need to strengthen their own capacity as well. I mean they don't just, you know, sit and wait for someone to come in and, you know, keep them the opportunity. So if they can strengthen their own capacity, they dare to speak and say they need to be more proactive in participating in planning policies related to land governance. And for the case of Vietnam, the women's union is the right arm of the government. But as a matter of fact, they need to be an independent entity and play the role of the civil society to ensure transparency in women's participation in consent patients in that law. So I think with, you know, on those recommendations, if they are implemented, and then I think that women would have more opportunities to participate in land governance beyond implementing quotas. Thank you. Thanks, Dr. Wei. What about you? What are your recommendations for us here? Good morning. Yeah, thank you. Well, according to improving, improving women's participation in land governance, I've seen when developing that land related to land governance and policies, they need specific quality control with women at all levels for their perspective. They need specific space for a team to be able to date and respect and improve their thought in those policies with clear knowledge. And the other, it is important to try to assess an opportunity for women to participate in the process of policy. So we've got a lot of things related to land governance and investment in land. Women shall receive more capacity, develop training and promote women in the higher courtesans and in the policy makers and legislation. That's all. Thank you. And Yuman, again, can you maybe try and bring us a little bit the Indigenous community's perspective and think about recommendations that might need to be targeted specifically there? Thank you. Thank you. The usual challenge for Indigenous women to be a part of these policies, making processes is also language, usually. Because Indigenous women rarely go out of their own communities, even though they have the most knowledge and they have all the wisdom that they have collected for years and how they manage their land natural resources. So this needs to be very highly noted by any partners, including donors, governments, agencies, policy makers. Because there can be formative actions that needed to be taken. It means more support. So more support is needed too. So we cannot just say, hey, we have opened the door. You can come. We cannot just say that because if we truly want their participation and the meaningful participation, we need to also look at all these different needs that can be there as Indigenous women and young girls. So that is one thing. So it means increasing support. If you say there are participation, if you truly want, then please be ready with the necessary might be resources or any other means of support. And the other thing is that I would reflect what my other sisters also mentioned. For Indigenous communities, it's always, we cannot approach from like pick up land. So we need to more like go from a more like holistic approach, not just women leadership in land. We cannot just like pick up on land. But it's like women leadership overall in all the different areas of these communities that is really important. And we need to, how should I say, we need to apply multi-pronged approaches. And the other one is like the requirements from partners from national and international communities. This also plays a very big role because it's usually the donors that governments listen to or policymakers listen to. So those who have money in hand or those who have technical capacity in hand working with these institutions, please bring your concern and your requirements into these discussions. And the last but not the least is the free parent and informed consent of Indigenous peoples should always be in the forefront before even like, how should I say, for even criticizing or pointing out the challenges or the gaps that we see there because sometimes these practices that exist in these Indigenous communities usually have very different meanings from one community to another. And so we cannot treat Indigenous communities with one size fits all approach or practice. So I think it is really important. Also, when we bring this land tenure discussions to Indigenous communities. Thank you. Thanks so much for that. And actually, we're just going to stay with you for a minute because I think we've, we've heard some recommendations from, from some of our panelists now and we are getting a lot of really interesting questions in the Q&A. Just to remind everyone, please put those questions in the Q&A. There's a facility for panellists to answer some brief ones directly. And we're also going through them on the screen here. So we try to answer now as many as we can. And I'm going to stay with, with, with Mike in Newmont. There's one question from Kathy Farnworth which is directed at you. So this is about land being sacred. And Kathy's asking if you can just explain a little bit whether only men have a decision making role at the community level and then how to conceptualize around the sacred nature of land and use that in managing land. I hope I've, I've captured that question clearly enough. Right, right. Thank you. So that do decisions, our decisions made only by men. So, as I also said earlier, communities have their own different ways of decision making processes. And it's not like, how should I say the same for all indigenous communities. But usually, yes, when it comes to land, whether ownership, whether management, land use management, it's generally men who usually make these decisions. And that is where, like, movements for indigenous women participation and inclusion has really been pushed a lot by indigenous women leaders, especially during the past decade, I would say. There have been success in some communities, but there are still a lot to to get done in many communities. Also, having said that, again, land ownership, and especially like inheritance. This is really a very big question in, I mean, especially in my time. It was not a question during my mother's time or grandmother's time. But, and for me, for our family, we are very progressive family because my mother inherited all the land from his, from her grandparents. So which is a very rare case in our community. And many people asked questions, raised questions to our family for why a woman inherited all the land from her grandparents. So, but now that that's where we have seen the openness of the, these, even men, the openness of men who have always been leading these discussions is starting to open to some extent, even though it was a very difficult question. And it was not even a question. It was not even a question. And it was a practice. Okay, you are the eldest of the family and you're a man and you can inherit land. And if you're a woman, you will inherit like farming equipment and the traditional address from your parents. And that's also very much related to the responsibility that we take in our communities. And again, these responsibilities are tied to, as also reflected a lot during this panel that the household chores and the farming practices. But it's also sometimes it's very, how should I say, an irony because women are the ones who spend, who would spend like 80% of who do 80% of the farming work, especially in shifting cultivation. So, like several questions, why women spend like 80% of their time on the farm, yet they do not get to make the 80% of the decision related to this land. So, these are like ongoing and how should I say increasing questions, and we are seeing, of course, progress a lot, but again, still needs to get done. And land being sacred, I would say it's not like sacred so don't touch it's not like that but our very much existence is closely connected to our land. So it's more like once our land is taken. And even if you like give us the gold or diamond, as big as the size of the land that you take from us, it cannot compensate. It cannot replace. So the land is sacred, meaning it is very much related to our existence, our culture, our traditions, our daily ways of life, our language, our culture. So it's like very much interconnected into our existence in that sense, sacred in that sense. And yeah, our life is centered around land. Yeah, thank you. Thanks so much. That's really, really interesting. I'm going to come back to Dr. Hui to answer the next question. This came up a bit earlier in our discussion we had a comment that gender focused institutions might add more values than women focused institutions. And the concern is that it might cause family disunity to focus institutions on women and on improving women's participation instead of on gender. So I don't know. We said earlier that Vietnam is kind of, you know, very, very strong example of gender equity around all land issues and in general. So Dr. Hui, do you think you could maybe talk a little bit on this subject about how to balance women and gender in. Yeah, can I pass that one to you. Thanks, Lee, for a very interesting but very difficult question to answer. Well, I mean, as I mentioned earlier that Vietnam is a patriarchal society and women are not, you know, as a respected as men. But, in fact, women are considered as domestic generals at home. So they work in the back. But, you know, they find with men, but in a very subtle way. So, you know, one example that I gave earlier was the red book. So now they have the name on the red book, and that ensures, you know, their equality if they get a divorce. But still, in many cases, for example, in terms of regarding the land governance policy or law. Most of the time, you know, the policy and law in Vietnam are made by men and women's participation is still limited. But the government, you know, recognize that and then they have pushed for that, you know, very strongly. And one of the example of the revised land law, you know, that was just passed by the National Assembly recently was an example, because the government put, you know, the new, you know, revised law on different social media as well. On the website of, you know, their institutions or the website of the women's in UN institution. But the fact is that not many ethnic minority women could read the Vietnamese and then they feel not confident to participate or to keep their opinions. So when I did the workshop, you know, meetings for the study for the report that you mentioned earlier, that we had to separate, you know, men in one group and women in the other group, so that women would feel more confident to talk to us and just, you know, tell us what, you know, they wanted in their life and what they wanted for land, for example. So they feel that they had their own space, and then they had to feel like a safe to bring their issues up. So I think if, you know, in the future, if women, you know, they are provided more opportunities to talk, not in front of men, so that they could just, you know, tell the policy makers or researchers, you know, what, you know, they want and need. But as I mentioned earlier in the recommendation that they also need to strengthen their, you know, capacity as well, so that they would feel more confident, you know, to express the ones that needs in front of, you know, the men and also in the public. So in order to do that, we need to improve their status, not only at the, you know, domestic sphere, but also in the, you know, public city. So we need, in order to do that, we need the enforcement and the responsibility of men as well, because many projects in Vietnam, they fail because they just put, you know, they just informed women. And then as you said that sometimes they put more pressure on women because they are so busy with their own, you know, workload already. But I think things are changing right now in the country. So I think that, you know, the future would be brighter, you know, if, you know, the recommendations are taken. Thank you. Thanks, Dr. Quay. And it's a good reminder. And, you know, we have it in the titles of the two reports that are being launched today about, you know, gender. It's, it's, it's not just women, we also bringing men in as well. So thank you for sharing that. I think I would like to invite Micah to come in at this point and maybe Micah, I don't know if you have some reflections on what you've heard so far. But also we've had a couple of questions in the Q&A that I think I would like to direct to you because they're relevant for, you know, running a program such as MRLG. We have a question from Marcus Wise about corruption and land grabbing, which issues a lot of us are familiar with. So this can affect women a lot worse than men. And, you know, is there anything that, you know, some of MRLG's work is doing around that, trying to mitigate that. And then related question we have from Isaac Oppiot. Again, this one is about not so much corruption but difficulties that we sometimes have for activists when they're involved in projects. And this is one, you know, in many countries of the world that, you know, things can be difficult for land rights activists. So I don't know, Micah, if you feel you could share something on those two themes for us and any reflections you have on what our other panelists have said as well. Thanks, Micah. Thanks Liz. Yeah, it's quite a few important topics to engage. And I think, you know, first with respect to land grabbing and corruption issues, I think, you know, corruption is an issue that we deal with in the context of land governance all across the world. It's amazing. It's a difficult thing. It comes back to the observations we had earlier about the gap between policy and practice is one part of this I think in many cases in this region that there's a growing recognition that land concessions are a challenge. I think in some ways they're seen as being a necessary vehicle for attracting foreign investment, but there's also challenges associated with that including difficulties of law implementation, especially the sub national level of how to do that in the way that's consistent with the laws that exist on the books at the national level. I think also there's there's a lot of a growing understanding of downsides of how you know benefits and costs of those are distributed across society. So I think it's a challenge I think everyone's well aware of I think right now we're in probably a better position than that historically it seems that across the many countries, legal frameworks are generally strengthening and improving, both in terms of closing gaps that existed before. Also with the capacity for implementation of law is generally getting stronger, but it's always a challenge. It's, I think in the context of our work. So what we do this is we work very closely together with the government ministries that are responsible for regulating investments. So here in miles for example that's the ministry of planning and investment that this belongs represents here today. In other contexts, it's similar I think they're the opportunity is really to work together to figure out how to strengthen those legal frameworks, how to build capacities, how to raise awareness about the implications of not following the law. But it's, it's, it's always a challenge I think to the other question with regard to, you know how to work in the context of civil rights groups that are often activists. In each of the make on countries it's handled differently in terms of the openness for engaging on those kinds of topics, or with different groups. And, you know, taking Myanmar is kind of an extreme example where there's no open conflict around these things where Cambodia I think that's, you know, let's open but there's still tensions I think, you know, it's always a challenge. I mean, every no gee we seek to try to be a neutral platform for engagement between our partners, you know representing multiple different stakeholders. So we work closely with government, but we also understand the needs interests of civil society groups and how they seek representation and seek to engage on these policy that the idea is to try to work together in a way that's constructive and open and transparent. But it's always challenged, I think trying to walk that fine line between, you know, rigorous technical advisory, and also kind of how to negotiate pathways toward outcomes that I think are most favorable for everybody is, it's always, it takes a given take. I think we seek to do that through building trust in relationships with lots of different sectors, also with private sector, and then try to use as an opportunity for constructive dialogue for constructive co working toward positive outcomes. So I think, you know, I think a lot of in terms of the gender specific outcomes of those risks, I think that's something I think will generally be addressed by the recommendations that are contained in these reports because I think strengthening the legal frameworks overall, and practice, you know, developing the capacities of men and women to engage in a more equitable fashion in the context of policy reforms and also the implementation of those policies. I think those will naturally help to strengthen and mitigate, strengthen the tools for, you know, the mitigation of those different disproportionate impacts on women. Yeah, so hopefully that answers the question that I think probably the answers to those two big questions of course are questions that have been going on for decades and are very difficult to resolve and not unique of course to this region. That's quite an issue globally. Thanks. Let's thank you. Yeah, thanks, Micah. No, you're right. These are really big global issues and it's good actually to see we've got so many participants here from all different regions of the world, not just from the Mekong region. And so that's, and some of these questions are coming from people who are bringing those different perspectives and reflecting back on some of what has been found, you know, from our panelists comments and the reports in the Mekong and we'll carry that back. I hope to the work they're doing in other regions. So thank you, Micah. Hi, I'm going to go back to Chani now. We have two questions that they're kind of similar. Madina Adulirat has asked, what's your recommendation if the community voice is not being listened to or is being neglected because the representatives are like window dressing. So again, we're getting to this issue of how to ensure meaningful participation. And it links also to a question that actually Chani has already typed a short reply in the Q&A box, but I'm not sure if all the participants can see that. I think maybe at the same time, Chani, you could also speak to this. It's, you know, question about that relating to indigenous women in Cambodia, not being highly educated and being very marginalized, but also being among the ones who are most active in protecting their land and actually comparing, you know, to maybe men being less active in land protection. So what factors are helping women in this example to actually engage in that meaningful way. So yeah, Chani, do you want to speak on this a little bit for us, please? Thank you, Liz. I will talk briefly about this and because some of the recommendations has been already highlighted in the previous talk. For the community voice not being addressed in the case of Cambodia, it is a challenge because we don't have a reporting system or any mechanisms to report. Like there is a consultation meeting prepared but how those input has been collected and provided to the national level. In the reasons last week in Cambodia, NGO is organized like consultation meeting to talk about a new draft of land law, which I see there are some good points that the NGO play a very active role in organizing and hosting the consultation discussion and also collect the inputs point by point very clearly and submit to relevant ministry and get to the real especially ministry of land and management who are the person who drafting the law. So I still see collective voice is very important. Individual may not be able to tackle the issue that the government is doing but collective voice like NGO or the build up of community based organizations brings up voice for that to be interesting. The other ones from only that talking about indigenous women in the context that we did for this contract planning we don't go to indigenous women community but his observation is very true that we see some indigenous women very active. It's in my short answer to him is perhaps there is a factor that affect their livelihood opportunity as well as natural or forest resource degradation. So women as being said that they spend a lot of time around the household working on the farm taking care of the children. So the land or a group culture is the only things that they could rely on while man have opportunity to travel or even migrate to work in other place or even outside of the province their own province or the country. So the women are the ones who stay at home if they don't take an active role to protect their own resource who will do for them. So one is there is no other options for them to for livelihood so they have to take the active role. The other one is is that like many people would say that in the process of negotiations or in the process of confrontation women would be would have a better capacity to talk or to negotiate like it's reflected in the contract farming study that when it is an issue with regard to contract family disagreement or conflicts. It's always women will push in the in the front lines to talk to negotiate because they may use their capacity to avoid confrontation and had and could find a way a better way to deal with the confrontation. Yes, yes, that point. Thanks, Cheney. That's great. I'll bring in Favone now please. We had a, well there are two questions which are a bit related. We have one from Christina Agenta that said it's asking what do we know or what has been documented about customary land governance practices related to gender equality and women's roles. So this is now about how much is documented on on the subject and any elements or processes which could help guide reform to improve land governance particularly also this question and mentions indigenous women's rights but I guess relating to you know how much we actually know that's written down and then I think it's a little bit related. The question from Jacqueline and Haley, which is what are the challenges you're facing when implementing the policies and laws governing land in promoting women's participation in land administration entities or governance so I think you kind of answered that one a little bit earlier but maybe if you can say something about how much work is being done to actually document what's going on on the ground that would be that would be great. Thank you. Oh you're still on mute. Yeah. Okay, so thank you for the question from the audience and our participation. For my experience on working in the MLG phase two regarding on collecting the information and study on the contact farming law or not law but a contact farming related issue that during that time we have setting up the tool and some fried lie off are responsible as if I can just make a lie and also we have a big issue that we have this discrimination in the rural area. So, in our activities, we focus on the pilot project with the fire province in Laos and then we have public dealing with women and also the farmers that they related on the investment in their areas. So the a lot I mean some some case that we need the difficulty that we facing is in the ethnic level. Some of farmer they may not clear on the profit that they would get from the project from the investor who invest in that. So, in that case, we also preparing the tomb as like I say not only the government but we cooperate with our stakeholder and other organization like MLG is to meet our partner but we still cooperate with CSF, TLI or some our stakeholder to create the tool and telling the information that we can give to the farmer to make there is more understand about the light in regarding the investment in the area. So, when the investor come or what the rule that they can have voice or showcase and they can look how they can negotiation with the investor or something like this. Now, we are trying on on dissemination, disseminate this tool and the lollipadding on. Thank you. Thanks for voting and we've now we've Natalie Campbell, who's one of the co-authors of the outlook, the outlook document has managed to get on video. So I would like to bring her in as she's a panellist who hasn't yet spoken. Natalie, I know there were a lot of recommendations made in both the papers that we've introduced today. Could you please share some of those. And then also any reflections that you have from the discussion today I know you've been listening in with us from the start. So where do we go from here Natalie over to you. Great. Thanks Liz and thanks everyone. It's, it's great to see so many of you still online for this morning's webinar this afternoon's webinar it's it's really quite inspiring to see all of the people who are very engaged and interesting in this topic. And also to see all the questions that are coming in for our panelists and based on on the reports so it gives us a lot of good hope moving towards some recommendations thinking more about what can we do in the future. I think, you know, there have been a lot of reflections this morning on on how complex gender equity and land governance is. But I think that one thing that's come out and I think it's important to say it again is that gender is always important like we say in our reports it's always important gender is always important not only in land, land governance but in different sectors as well. So it's important for us moving forward to think of going beyond the land sector and as a way to meaningfully have achieved meaningful participation by engaging in these different sectors I just want to reflect on this first of all because I think it was a theme that kept coming up. There were a lot of comments about moving beyond land sector but, but I'd like us to think critically as a sort of community of practice here online, how can we do that. How do we move beyond the land sector and how do we sort of holistically mainstream, and integrate gender into these different sectors, while not losing the concentration and land governance itself and what's important on on achieving tenure security for for small holder farmers and for local communities. Maybe before I go to some other recommendations just quickly the question about customary tenure documentation I think is very interesting and this is something that MRLG has worked on a lot and there are many examples of how there are specific methodologies to include women's voices in customary document document customary tenure documentation, particularly in our work in Myanmar so I would encourage those of you who are interested please get in touch with us at MRLG we have a lot of rich experience with that that our partners have implemented and and being very successful and implementing as well. So just quickly to to summarize I know we're running out of time. It's important moving forward to understand recognize and address diverse barriers to women's participation, but at the same time I think it's important to to highlight and to endorse the the the benefits of women's participation, such as the example that Cheney brought which is that often women are brought forward for mediation or when patrolling forest boundaries it's often older women in Southeast Asia at least that are there on the forefront because they're respected so we have to highlight the benefits and the and the richness that women bring to this not only looking at the barriers. Also important to increase women's meaningful participation in community leadership and decision making, not only at these higher level national and subnational platforms, but also both at the family and community level. So this is important and something that we didn't have enough time to go into. We need to move beyond gender equity in terms of so and only numbers so make sure representative you know representation does not guarantee meaningful participation, or lead to the transformation of these unequal power structure so we need to move beyond quotas and looking at numbers. Something I've we've also heard a lot about this morning is to improve women's capacity and understanding about land tenure issues and legal frameworks to enable them to actually engage a decision making platforms. And something I think that rings a bell important moving forward is also this amplification of local voices and means of feedback this is interesting Michael touch Micah touched on this and his presentation. And that that that feedback loop is something that is integral to holistically looking at gender equity going beyond the land sector but how do we incorporate those feedback loops, not only within the community or the family but going through all of these different levels that we've discussed today, regional subnational national etc. Another important point and this is also one of the motivations for us to have these these publication is to close the accessibility and information gap. So, closing the information gap for these with these with these publications as a start we wanted to have a space a reference document for the community the broader community to be able to engage with these issues but there are so many more information gaps that need to be closed, but also accessibility. So, Yuman talked about language so going down to the community level how do you make these decision making platforms really accessible. You look at community barriers family barriers such as timing of meetings etc really looking at the minute minute details of what it means to be inclusive, going up to ensuring there are adequate resources for women to participate in national regional national decision making platforms but also in land administration land titling etc. And I think just to to close because I know we're running out of time. It's important that we also think about looking at a higher level encouraging commitment at a regional level to agree on standards and indicators for monitoring gender equity and respect to land governance. This is more looking at as a as a as a region in the in the Mekong region what can be done, how can instruments such as a CDA but also as young encourage greater gender equity in the land sector, moving forward, particularly as often the the the goals and expectations of these bodies such as as young drive national development plans and and work on the ground. So, I think with that, I'd like to say there, I have been very inspired listening to all of our panelists this morning, and thanks to Micah from his presentation. There are a lot of opportunities to engage as you heard MRLG is working on various different parts of incorporating and mainstreaming gender and activities, but also a lot of other organizations partners and development partners are working on this. So, let's continue it seems like with this webinar there so there are a lot more conversations that need to be had, and I think it's going in the the right direction and it's very very inspiring. Thank you very much. And back to Liz. Thanks Natalie. And yeah great to get your perspective on that and as you say this is just the start of what we hope will be ongoing conversations. So, I think just to wrap up, I'm going to come back to our wonderful panelists and give you just one minute each one minute to make final point before we close for the day. Let's start with Chani one minute for your final point please. Thank you, Liz. My final point for this is that gender responsive across different government sector and women empowerment are immensely crucial to encourage more meaningful participation from both men and women. Women at work need to be strengthened because they are the catalyst for change and need to work with men's group and particular in the pre-culture cooperative. Thank you. Thanks Chani. Perfectly timed as well. Dr Huile next for you one minute just to give us your final point. Thanks. Well I don't have much to say I think it is a discussion was great. It was like Natalie said it was so inspiring and I'm so proud that I'm part of the webinar and I wish that in more webinars like this when you know be taken place in the future. So in this way we can increase the participation of women in land governance and then so that we can give them more opportunities to do that in the future. Thank you. Thanks Dr Huile and as I mentioned in the beginning this is the first in a new series so I think we'll have more opportunities to connect in the region and bringing in people from all over the world as we've done today. So let's go to Yuman for your one minute final point please. Thank you. And I would like to congratulate Land Portal Foundation and MRLG for this panel because usually we see all the men talking about women and we call it manuals in Myanmar. So this is a real like very inclusive and very meaningful panel so I really congratulate the organizers for this. And my final message is see us women not as demanding seats or demanding roles but see us as partners partners for change. And we have a lot to contribute and indigenous women women from different parts of the world we have a lot to contribute and as soon as you allow us pace meaningful space for contribution. You will have less work less worry and the real a better world that we all are envisioning. Thank you. Thanks Yuman I like that manuals and we had actually one of our questioners in the Q&A was asking about some kind of collaboration and learning between Mekong region and the Congo Basin for the indigenous people so there you go you can follow that one up if you like. Fuvon your one minute for wrapping up please. I would like to congratulate the Land Portal Foundation and also I would like to thank you for the opportunity to share and talk especially on our women and families. Okay I'm not that you're also the one there but the club is very great for me to sharing and hearing from your experience a lot of. Great little land that I can meet and I hope that our opportunity like this will be continue in more than regional level or more. A lot of. Thank you. Thanks Puvon so we do have to wrap up now it's been a really great discussion and I know we could go on for a lot longer but we have to wrap up and thank you to all our participants online for sticking with us for a two hour webinar. It's great to have had everyone so engaged in the Q&A and in the discussions in the chat and making different connections. A big thank you to our panelists. Thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate all your participation and engagement. And I also want to give a shout out to the interpreters who've been busy translating behind the scene. If you haven't done the survey before you leave the webinar please do that Neil has put a link in the chat and I think we'll post it again now. This just helps us to know what you thought of the webinar so that we can improve it for next time and for other webinars in this series in particular. So thank you everyone. Good evening. Good morning. Good day wherever you are. Thank you so much.