 Now, welcome everybody. It's my pleasure to welcome you to this timely and important webinar on realising women's land rights in Africa and beyond, which is co-hosted by Adekru in Mozambique, Action 8, both ends, Endapuronat in Senegal, Forum Mujer in Mozambique, Grootskénia, the Netherlands Land Academy, Landak, the Land Portal Foundation and Oxfam. And it's my great honour to moderate this discussion. For those who don't know me, I'm Girit Steele, assistant professor at Utrecht University, and as a research coordinator of Landak, I have led a year-long action research programme on women's land rights in Africa, together with Michelle Leuen, currently working at ILC. Now, with this webinar, we want to reflect on some of the key lessons and messages of the programme and look how we can strengthen women's land rights in Africa, but also in other continents and countries across the globe. And for this reason, we have invited a very diverse panel of four panellists from different civil society organisations and grassroots movements. On the basis of their day-to-day work in the field, they will reflect on how they fight for women's improved access to and control over land and other natural resources to scale up women's land rights. So please allow me to introduce our esteemed panellists. First, we have Nzira Zau-Deus. Nzira is the executive director from Forum Mujer in Mozambique, a civil society organisation that for years has been working on gender equality and rural rights in communities in Mozambique. For the Women's Land Rights programme, they have teamed up with Adekru, another co-organiser of this webinar. As a human rights activist, a member of the feminist movement, Nzira is advocated for the human rights of women and girls regarding violence, economic empowerment, political participation, and sexual and reproductive health. So welcome Nzira. Second, we have a man on board, his name is Elhagi Fai, program coordinator of ENDAPRONAT Senegal, a civil society organisation looking for agro-ecological alternatives that reduce the use of pesticides and strengthen the position of rural families. As the project manager of ENDAPRONAT, Elhagi has worked around questions on tenure security, agricultural politics, and agro-ecology in general. His day-to-day work is in French and Wolof, so this is why we would also like to welcome his colleague Marina, who will help out with translation, just in case it's needed because his English is pretty well. Now third, I also welcome Elhagi and Marina. Third, I also would like to welcome Frida Hituku, the executive director of Brutzkania. Brutzkania is a network of women-led community organisations in Kenya. It formed as a response to inadequate visibility of grassroots women in development and decision-making forums. Frida works with grassroots women and girls in 17 counties in Kenya and started programmes that have seen many women because become successful, lead farmers, land owners, and leaders at the grassroots, including members of land boards. So, welcome Frida. And last but not least, I would also we would like to broaden a little bit our geographical focus. We would also like to welcome Sritama Gupta Bhaya from Oxfam, India. She has 16 years of experience on issues of governance, of natural resources, rights, and livelihood, primarily with tribal communities in India. She has worked with national and international NGOs with government of India on policy and advocacy related to tribal rights and livelihood. So, she will speak on women's rights in the context of natural resources by advocating for importance of collective rights on how these enable a space for women to be negotiated. So, welcome to all of you. So, what we will do in the next hour is to ask these four panellists a couple of questions about the bottlenecks of women's land rights, also why it remains an important issue to focus on, as well as questions on their experiences and good practices of their day-to-day work in the fields, and the opportunities to upscale these good practices. After this first hour, we will be very happy to open the discussion and give room to the participants to ask questions for which you can use this question feature so that we can do an effort to answer all the questions in the discussion after the conversations we have. Now, let me start to begin with a conversation with a question for El-Haji Faye from Enda Pro-Martin Senegal. So, El-Haji, maybe you could please share your thoughts with us on why women's land rights is an issue with so much attention focused on. Thank you very much. Good morning to everybody. Before starting, I want to insist on something in fact, the expression women's land rights is an expression that cover many realities of what kind of rights we're talking about. Access rights, of course, rights, ownership rights. It is important to define preciously the problem we are facing, because then the approach to find a solution will differ. Now, women's land rights mean a central issue also because it is becoming, land it is becoming scarce. This is due to several factors, democratic growth, land grabbing, as well as insustainable agricultural practice that they've had. So, it's producing available land in increased competition about land brochures. Now, then women's land rights also remain a central issue because in communities, we lack consensus with this. By today's, some people believe it is a false problem. And even worse, that those are westernized ideals that want to disperse our way of life and make a mess. So, we need to make people realize this has a real problem. What is more of the problem is often taken in isolation. The problem is often taken in isolation without linking it to the global issue relating to the perceptions of women in society. According to the perception, women are concentrated by an immature, they are, the women are incapable to take control of their own dignity, and therefore should always always be under the responsibility of the man. This man can be the father, the husband, sometimes the son. And all this relation between resources depend on these facts, on this relation. Also, it is not only about lands. We don't talk only about lands. We also need to work on women's access to the means of productions. Without those brochures, for example, the inputs, land cannot serve as a vector of economical appointment for the women. So, finally, we found that the approach to solve the issue, there are also standards to emphasize the legal dimension, based on the belief that if things change on paper, things are solved. The problems are solved at the local level. In reality, the reference point for communities is not always the legal norm, but rather customers and practice. Therefore, we need to change the social norms and local practices. So, this is what I want to do for the question. Now, thank you, El-Haji, for this very wide take on the issue of women's land rights and to look at it from a broader perspective. I would like to address the same question to Zira as well. So, why do you think women's land rights remains an important issue to address with so much focus on it? Thank you, Brit, and thank you all for joining this session. For us, the main principle point that we can raise is that starting by saying that 80% of foods are produced by women, but 50% of land is owned by women. In Mozambique, these are the statistics. And legally, women do have equal access to land as men is on the low. So, unfortunately, we have a big challenge with the asymmetric power relation between men and women, founded on social and culture dynamics in the society characterized by patriarchal practice. That is an obstacle for women to have access to land. And so, it's used to be ruled by customer law as a governance of land and law. And often, women stay in the secondary place in terms of have access to land. So, it's not understood that women deserve to manage to control the land-controlled assets in Mozambique, especially we see this also. So, very few women have this control power on the land. And we see that these cultural and social norms is being assumed also by the government that should do something to challenge this and revert this situation. The other thing that is less important is that we see that we are receiving lots of investors coming to Africa looking for land to produce food, agribusiness, and the forest and so on, and it's impacted negatively on women. So, women is now suffering a lot of displacement, is lost losing their own lands, because of the investor, we are seeing a lot of conflicts on women controlling the land. And on this process also, we have the fact that the decision makers are getting in the corruption system where politicians are in both sides trying to get power, trying to be allies of the investors, rather than consider the communities, consider the small farmers that are mainly women. And this is impacting negatively on the life of women. A lack of commitment of the government on implementation of the legislation on challenge the social and social barriers and not assuming this important thing that is the majority of the population that are women need the land for producing, is used to land for their own life. So land is a life for women in must be, not just for food, but even in all Africa. And besides producing food, the land is a identity for women. We come with, we have a strong connection with land, looking for the social, our dynamics and cultural community practices where we found the traditional treatment coming from the plants, coming from the trees. So we use this practice to treat our life, to treat our children. So it's not just producing food. And also we have connections with our ancestors. We have some practices of rural women and farmers that we connect with land coming with our strength. We go there, we get inspiration. And so the evidence, invisibility, invisibility of the needs that land means to women. So land is not just a space for women, it's not a piece of or for said, sent for women. It's more than that. It's about the life of women in community. Now, thank you very much, Zira, for stressing so explicitly how central land is in not just the livelihood of women, but also in the identity of women and also together with El-Haji, I think you very clearly stressed a couple of problems why women's land rights is so important and why it should be at the center of the agenda. So let's move from Senegal to Mozambique to Kenya now and ask Frida also, why is it so necessary to put attention to women's land rights? Thank you, Ritz. This is an important issue. One, because women land rights is a human right issue and we are not doing women justice by denying them their human rights. Here at the country level, I can confidently say that we haven't given women land rights enough attention. It is not a mainstream reform agenda in the land sector and even in the women movement in itself. We find that most of us acknowledge this inequality in our private corridors, but in the public corridors, where resources are located, where budgets are developed, where flagship projects are designed, and where government plans are developed. It is not featured as a major reform agenda. And even within the land institution themselves, you find that women land rights has not been acknowledged as a problem. And that is to mean that then within the public system that is allocating resources and is responsible for delivering on people's rights and giving them services, we don't have real champion inside the public service to push for that agenda. Kenya have been undertaking land reforms for the longest, for over a decade now, but these reforms are really broadly their gender blind. And so they have taken into account the issue on the demand side, which is where as an organization we see as groups Kenya as advocates, we see that there are also very few actors that are demanding for this pushing for this right as a core area of focus. And this we I think this is not a Kenyan problem. It's actually broadly, even at national level, you will see that women land rights is always addressed as a side issue, as a side event, which is disheartening, considering the level of inequalities that we are talking about in Kenya, we don't even have the data itself. We cannot authoritatively say that this is the amount of land that is under the hand in the hands of women. Of course, there are statistics that have been drawn here or there, around 1% or less than 2%, which is again, not very not good statistics at all. But even the lack of data in itself is a demonstration that we have not given this issue, the attention that it deserves, the fact that we just the fact that we don't have data, the resources for advocacy also limited. And most of the time, we are getting in what you would term, it's not sustained advocacy. It's not sustained advocacy. Women land rights, like Konzira and Elhadi have said, is not just a legal problem. It's also a social issue. So just enacting legal reform, like Kenya has done in itself, will not transform the lives of women and girls. It is sad that actually we've turned a blind eye to the social and cultural discrimination issues that are aided by patriarchy. And I personally believe it is the greatest contribution of why we have a policy practice gap. So it needs to be, we need to put more focus on this issue and look at the social angle of the problem. It is fashionable to reform policies and law. It puts any country and government and policy maker in a good international map. But if such reforms are not accompanied by, you know, socio-cultural reforms, then we don't see real transformation in the life of girls. And I think that's where most African countries are. The legal reforms themselves, they are not unend by themselves. We need to do more. And that's why I think we need to put more emphasis into this advocacy aid agenda. Okay, thank you Frida. So very clear plea to put it like more central, even as agendas, as a policy making agendas, I would like to move to Sri Tama to give her an, yeah, an Indian perspective on why you think like women's land rights are remain an important issue to be addressed. And also to see like, as we see now from the African countries, that it's not just to be considered as a legal problem, but also very much as a social issue. So Sri Tama, could you give your take on these questions? Thank you. Great. It's been a great opportunity for me to be part of this discussion and learn from the African experiences and share mine from the Indian context. I think there are a lot of similarities between what the conditions as pointed out in Africa and India and the problems are quite similar. And to start with, I would say, you know, the basic concept that, you know, women frequently have what we call de facto or land use rights as compared to men's ownership or DJO rights. So often we see that women often have use rights that are mediated in terms of their relationship with men, whether it's property or land, sometimes the ancestral property or land that's held is of the women is defined by the relationship with men and not as women independently. That has been a traditional reason why women have been kept out of decision making. And if we even just see the agricultural sector, which is the biggest employed in India, 74% of the farmers are actually the farm work are being done by women, whereas 14% have rights to land. I think it's very similar to situations in the, what was pointed out in Mozambique and in any other part, a large part of Africa. So even despite the dominance in agricultural labour force, women continue to face extreme disadvantages in terms of land rights. And the most important is as a representation in agricultural decision making continue to be poor, there is a very big agrarian crisis. And again, these groups of women remain invisible in the whole process because again, because they are not the owners of land. And with fragmentation of land and increasing in population, it's given that the land is a very finite resource. So in the longer run, the tiny pieces of land, even if they have 10-year-old rights, will not be enough to fulfill any livelihood requirements of the people. And this brings me to another major issue which I'm going to focus my talk on is what we have also ignored, or rather we should say the women land rights movements needs to build into their agenda, the common resources, which are mostly the indigenous communities and women especially depend on, even if we just look at worldwide figure of 2.5 billion people rely on indigenous community land. Yet much of the energy on women's land, forest and water rights have really not focused on the collective rights, but on individual land titles, which is very important. But there is this whole resource space where women actually depend on. And how men and women use this resources reflects gendered access. And if you see the world over the depletion of this common property resource, pose a severe threat to the livelihoods and food security of poor women and men. And also climatically, they are the most vulnerable people. So women again remain a majorly disadvantaged in the natural resources to meet. And in these communities, at least in India, we just see it just as an exemplify value in the state of Odisha, a particular state where a deforestation of forest lost has doubled in five years. The travelling time for women and girls to get a load of fire would increase from two kilometers to seven kilometers. So that increases the tragedy and the impact on different groups are felt differently when there is loss of these resources. So this raises the question that how can we save that women's land, water and forest rights across all 10-year system? I think that should also be part of the agenda. Now, thank you very well, Srinthama. And I really like the way you also enlarged the whole subject of not saying like we are talking just about land, but we are talking about natural resources in general. And that also very much relates to the way El Haji already started that we don't have to see it as a problem in isolation from other issues. Now, I think the four of you have very well managed to set the scene and to see like, okay, what are the problems we are talking about and what are the kind of issues we are addressing. But also with the next round of questions, I would like to see what you are doing in order to address these issues. And because you're all very active in the field of women's land rights, I would like to learn a little bit from the four of you what kind of good practices you have already in place. So let me first ask this question to El Haji. So could you talk briefly about the successes that you have already achieved with some good practices or the interventions you do on a day-to-day basis? El Haji, are you there? Excuse me. Okay. Thank you. Great. As I said previously, we mostly need to influence local practice, but also change public policy toward a better prioritization of gender use rules. To do so, we need to take action on the two levels at the national levels and at the local levels. We need to raise people's awareness to influence practice and perception at the local perception of the local actors. And mostly important, we need to involve those who hold the power at the local levels in the process. For example, the customary chief is a religious authority, the mayors, the local representative, etc. We need also to influence public opinions on the use of relating to women's rights in general and especially in land threats through radio, TV show, etc. To advocate, we need also to advocate with women's movement for the state to institutionalize good practice. Also, we need to also reinforce intellectual and political capacity of women so that they may have power in local decision-making institutions. What can they do about this? We do a local workshop to raise awareness on local actors because I think that only knowledge can make change. So we have to awareness all the actors at the local level. We organize workshops, typically gather more than 1,000 people with local representative, local administration, chiefs, all the leaders at the local level. Therefore, it is actually those leading figures of public opinion that we sensitize to the issue. Then they must take what they learn to the grassroots level and discuss and continue discussion, but it is not enough, I think. We also organize training for a specific group of local actors. We call land facilitator. It is usually around 6 people per country. These facilitators organize workshops at the village, at the local level to reach any more persons. The workshop at the village level are based on what we call a village approach. It means that we regret all villages at the public square to discuss the issue and debate on women's access to land. Facilitators start by sensitizing villages to the stake of women's access to land with the support of the chief, of the religious leaders, etc. We also organize workshops that specially target women. Those workshops allow us to work with women's group to the local levels to reinforce their advocacy and leadership so they may better argue and negotiate their land rights with women, with the men. We also, and on these activities, the collecting data is more important, as said Frida previously. We have to collect data and to prove the problems. We also organize radio show on women's access to land at the local level in local language to expand the reach of all those organizations. But at the national levels, we seek to reinforce social movement for women's land rights through the national network of rural women in Senegal, which is a group of all associations of rural women from all regions in Senegal. We also do this work through the National Alliance for Women's Access to Land, which will group NGOs, women's associations, research institutes, and the targets their advocacy efforts towards the state. We also organize advocacy meetings with women and the Ministry of Agriculture, and also the state of institutions, the institution state that work for a better inclusion of women needs in public policy. We also organize technical workshop with the civil society organization and the women's movement to gather strategy and policy proposal for the reform, for the land reform. Finally, we organize also radio and TV show to better sensitize the public opinion and decision makers on women's land rights. It is one of the most famous action we do at the local level and national level. Thank you. Now, thank you, Elhachi. That's a wide variety of activities, and I'm sure maybe later in the discussion there will be concrete question on how you do it concretely or practically. But we will also like to move on to the next speakers. Zira, could you also give an overview of what kind of good practices and what kind of successes you have already achieved towards women's land rights? Okay, the first success that we can share is that when we designed the land in 1997, we, the women's movement, we engage deeply on this process. So we had, as a result of this law, progressives, the law, progressives, the law that we have now that ensure rights for women, men, and communities. But the implementation is still a challenge in Mozambique. So what we are doing is to disseminate this law to all levels, especially at community level, and use different languages in Mozambique. We have different local languages, speaking more than 10. So to the land law, and also raising an awareness on women's rights, that they have rights and they need to demand this right. So engage in political training on women, and so women can demand their rights. And we managed to engage actively at local level, demanding the respect of the land, and also challenged some cultural barriers. The other thing that we're doing is build collective action and build social movements, so women can come together and help each other, understanding the challenge, and understanding that the problem is not with one woman, but this is a happy one. And this process building also solidarity among the communities of women that have been losing their lands for parents or for relatives, or even from the state. So this movement, the solidarity movement is something that is is growing out and needs to be, and it seems to be giving some results because women are resisting, women are resisting, and they are talking that this is my land, this is the land for my ancestors, this is an earth, my future, my future, and I'll say that, okay, for my son, my daughters, and it's our land, and this movement is growing up and spreading to some regional region, southern Africa region, and also we managed to have this big campaign, Kilimanjaro campaign, that was going from all over Africa, climate, the Kilimanjaro mountain, the highest mountain in Africa, demanding that the government, the head of state, respects the law also to in those where women can assess and control their land, also demand more investment for women to work in land, that was a big campaign running in 2016, and in March, we had women, more than 50 women, that managed to meet the president directly and give them, give the president, the letter where women were demanding specifically points that need to be improved in our legal frame and also in practical way in Mozambique. The other thing that also we are doing, it's an organized community workshop, it's LHEO summation, and my previous colleagues also mentioned a small groups debate, and where we can discuss deeply and understand deeply about the laws, and discuss the prioritizing, the priorities on the community, on women, and how to address any other issues around, not just adults, but also violence against women that are not community level, and many, we are documenting the stories of women doing, documenting written documents and video, where women can bring their voice to tell their stories, so powerful tool that we use, so we can. I'm afraid I have to cut it here because the connection is not fully, they feel that they are too zero, I'm afraid I have to cut it here because the connection is not fully, look at it, but I very much liked the ideas you brought in, and the whole idea of building solidarity, of movement building, and the way as LHEO already mentioned as well, as we can work at different levels, but also at the continent-wide level, this movement to Kilimanjaro was very important, and Groot-Skenia was also very active in this Kilimanjaro event, so maybe we can move on to Frida, and ask also from the perspective of Groot-Skenia some good practices, and what were the main issues that helped you to achieve success in moving the women's land rights agenda forward. Thank you, Groot. I agree with my colleagues at Groot-Skenia, we are using a very right, right-based approach, I would say, of bringing together the people who are mostly impacted by this violation, and those are the grassroots women in their community, and girls living in the rural areas, and organizing them in what they are described as a strong social movement for collective action. Of course, we don't stop at organizing, we go on to inject capacity, whether it is on how to advocate, equip them with the right political skill, and also equip them with evidence for their advocacy, which is the issue of data that I talked about, and because there's a data vacuum in the country, we have adopted a very innovative way of generating land data, which is community-generated data, where the women generate data on land ownership control and access within their own jurisdiction, where they are, and equipped with, when they are organized, then they have the right skills, advocacy and political skills, they understand what the law says as far as the access to the right to land for women and men, and of course equipped with data, then we accompany them to actually influence the action of policymakers or people who are in a decision-making position to influence policies, to influence plans, and to influence government budget. The good thing in Kenya is that there is a space for public participation, and for us, we have taken that space very seriously, and we consistently make sure that we are supporting the women in their organized form, to be present in those spaces where resources are located and voice their priority, and women land rights is one of their priority, and monitor that actually they are taken up, and whole governments are accountable on this. So that's one of the best practices that I would say is building and accompanying social movement, and particularly the movement of the national people, but we also know that we have to connect with advocates and activists at the national level, and that's why for us, being part of the women to Kilimanjaro was very important, and still very important, a very active multi-stakeholder movement here in the country. We have managed to develop an implementation charter together with the Ministry of Land and monitoring tools where we can monitor the actions of the government as far as realizing the women land rights, as far as that is concerned, and so movement building for sure is a big area of interest for groups Kenya in a big area of the investment. The grassroots champion again, they do a lot of work, we live in an environment where the justice system is not very friendly for the category of people that I'm talking about, so most of them rely on alternative justice mechanisms, and so we have developed the grassroots women to be champions. Some of them will call themselves community watchdog groups, others will say they are paralegals, but the most important thing is that they are equipped with legal understanding and they are able to mediate family disputes where women are impacted, where girls and children are impacted, and we have seen numerous and isolated cases of success for people living in very poor and marginalized areas that would never ever afford to go to court to seek redress. So these women have the goal in between, of course it's a lot of unpaid care work, but it comes with the benefit in the sense that those who are not able to access the form of justice, then they have people that they can go to, which is something that the youth has invested for some time. Their thing is testing, developing, and piloting different kinds of social models for documenting land rights for all, and we do this because the system of documenting people's rights in the country, I would say is very skewed towards confiding absolute ownership of land to the men, which is unfortunate, really unfortunate, and for us we are constantly testing and trying other models that would be an alternative to what we have today in the form of system that actually document the rights of everybody who has an interest in the land, and that's why we came up with the community-led land mapping model, and we are talking about documenting the rights of women, whether they are mothers, their wives, their sisters, their children, and men as well. So these are things that we have implemented. We have replicated in areas where governments have cooperated with us, especially the county government, and we actually do hope that in the long run, because there's also a lot of advocacy that we're doing on this area, that the government will be able to evaluate these kinds of models, test them because they have the power to achieve scale more than we can, and so adopt and formalize them. Okay, thank you very much, Frida. Very interesting also to bring in, apart from this movement building, which we see indeed is very important, but also this whole idea of monitoring and documenting to bring it in. So thank you very much. I would like to hear from Sri Thama as well, what do you see as a good practices in achieving success towards women's land rights in India, and what made these initiatives and strategies successful? Yeah, I mean, as Oxfam India, we have been involved with women land rights on many levels, on recognition of women as farmers, and on the common resources. Actually, when we started our work on the issue of natural resources and rights over natural resources and tenure real security, we honestly, we didn't start with women's group in mind. It was largely how communities and villages and village councils would play a critical role in that. However, as we moved ahead, of course, women emerged as a natural and very key stakeholder in the process, because it was, of course, we had training, and we have a law in India, which emerged after a lot of grassroots movement. It's called the Forest Rights Act, by which communities living on forest lands, their rights for cultivation as well as community rights for management and governance is recognized. So this is the first law which gives title in the name of both the husband and the wife for lands that they're cultivating. So there was space for women and for overall governance, where women's participation in the village council had to be 50%. So that gave us, you know, a legality to work with. And we saw wherever this law, we were able to work with the communities in claiming their rights. Women came forward to defend their forests. Once they had the tenure real security and rights, we saw women came forward to defend their forests when it was being logged or timber being sold. And women resisted against the harassment by the forest departments. So the very interesting thing that is, once they have their rights, they assert their rights. And I think that's a very critical part, because often just recognition of rights or tenure security is realized only when people assert their rights. I would still say we have a long way to go to give them space and decision making in governance and management of their resources. We still have to go a long way. But we have been working with village councils where at least women find a voice within the village councils because they're often marginalized in their own communities. So that's another big area which is clearly linked with, again, governance of the resources. And what we also see is that collective decision making in collective spaces are empowering women much more as an individual woman is deriving strength from the collective and in the longer run, it penetrates in the family level decision making too, where a very charismatic and very good leadership wherever they have emerged. And so that's been a very important learning. And we also see women at the forefront of grassroots struggles where every land is being diverted or land acquisition is happening. So that's been our experience of working with women. And we are also trying to now link it to the gender justice campaign and the gender groups who are actually working on women issues to start talking on land for women and common resources and at the same time groups who are working on natural resources bringing the women's land right agenda into their issues. Now, thank you very much. Very interesting, Sritama, very interesting in general that we see all this kind of approaches, all this kind of good practices ranging from awareness raising workshops to movement building, including women in decision making, documenting women's land rights, also capacity building. And what I was wondering or what we were also wondering during the program and we have still like a quarter of an hour to address this question is like what do we need to scale up these approaches? Because as Elhadi already said, we are working on different levels, but many of you start very much from the grassroots. The question is like what do these grassroots initiatives, what do they need in order to scale up and what would be then the core message to policymakers? So maybe Elhadi, you could give your talk on it like what do we need to scale up these approaches and what would be your message to policymakers? Thank you, Greg. I will be very short on these questions. I think that civil society, NGOs, women organizations at the local level, at the national level are doing many good things, are adopting many good practices, but they have not means to scale up this. So to scale up this, I think that the only actors which can do this is the government, to the public policy. So to scale up the good practices we are doing on the film, we need to capitalize, I think that it is a good practice, to capitalize all this good practice and all approach of project programs, of civil society programs, and also of some state programs, but only in the, even in the government, have some few good programs, but they are very short and they don't integrate in the local, international, international, international politics. So we have to capitalize all this practice and also to make scaling up those initiatives and integrating them in the government's policy and program. I think that it is what we do first and if you do this, I think that it will be good to scale up our initiative and I know of our practice. Okay, great. Thank you, I'll hurt you. That's very clear and like a big call for integration. I would like to address the same question to in Zira, like what do you think we need to scale up these interventions you've been talking about these good practices and what would be like the key messages for policymakers in that sense? I think that we need to continue investing on the building and strengthening grassroots movement and women's initiative to monitor the implementation of the law and also sitting with the dialogue space, continue to produce evidence on what is going on on this mapping data collection that we can show on the table on negotiation that this work, what this is happening in the field and so government can understand that. I think that also it's important to have a champion and involve more the local leaders and communities that they have a lot of power so they engage on this so we need to map who are the people that are with the women on this campaign and this struggle. Ken Zira, that's great. I think also your connection was much better so thank you for solving that issue in overall. I think we're doing great to be connected all over the globe in such a way, thanks for that. Very good to mention indeed the need of data to show and to really put something on the table when you are negotiating and that's also an interesting one to move on to Frida because you were talking a lot about data collection really to really monitor and document so I would like to ask the same question to you also like what do you think we need to scale up these approaches as you were talking about community lab mapping and other kind of activities and good practices and what will be in that sense also your key message to policymakers. Thank you Frida. I think we all agree that to disrupt the state of school we need to build a strong social movement I would say a strong grass with women led social movement so I agree with the other panelists that we should dedicate resources to strengthen that kind of movement on women land rights but also we need to identify our champions inside the public service and I had alluded to that in my in the last section it is good to have champions who are outside the formal service you know the grass with champions that I spoke about but even inside the system we need people who will be pushing this agenda that we are so passionate about and placing it as a top pick in the menu in the government agenda we also need to inject some feminist leadership inside the land institution I would say to disrupt the patriarchy that is derailing our agenda and that is why as groups every day we are trying very much to build the leadership capacity of grass with women so that they can apply and be appointed in the land control board in water committees in water boards in the agricultural board because unless we have people who have serious feminist principles and values sitting in those positions then our agenda will keep on being derailed and it should be the agenda of all of us including government. The other thing I think in terms of achieving scale I agree with El Hadji government sits in a very privileged position unless they actually evaluate these models that we are talking about that guarantees people's rights regardless of the kind of tenor regime they find themselves in unless the government evaluates test them and adopts them through resourcing and implementing them because they have the mandate to deliver on women land rights then we may not achieve scale I would say the power of achieving scale rest largely with the government what is my message to policymakers bring the women land rights to the mainstream land reform agenda we want to see it featured in the vision 2030 of Kenya we want to see plans we want to see budgets and we want to see flagship projects that are geared towards removing the obstacles that currently hinder women from accessing land rights even when the law states otherwise I would call them to rethink the land documentation system that we currently have that confers all ownership I mean absolute ownership and disregards women as mothers as wives as siblings and as daughters I also take cognizant that majority of women are in the small scale land holding with user rights of course so it is important to recognize this and give protection and support to this category of people and minimize the threats that they are currently facing and Zira talked about this from large-scale investments whether they are driven by government local or foreign investors I will insist again that we need to have new we need to inject progressive staff into the land institution we need to see feminist leadership within the land institution because currently as it is it's overcrowded with patriarchy all the way to the devolved level and it doesn't help in solving the social cultural issues that all the panelists spoke about in the problem analysis so that we can also end that anti-gender equality attitude that is significantly contributed to the policy and practice gap and I hope you do agree with me that human resources are an important part of the means of implementation and if we don't address that co-part then we cannot deliver the internal change needs to happen in terms of the composition of the people who are driving the agenda within the institution so international governments I would say that they have the power that is drawn from the development assistance that they give to government in the south and I think Sweden and others I think Canada have set a good example of adopting feminist foreign policies which in a way puts an obligation on part of the recipients but also incentivizes those government to do things that deliver on women priorities and I would say this is a good approach let's persuade through the power that we each and each actor hold let's persuade government to deliver on women land rights as an issue of priority of course dedicate predictable and adequate resources to advocates to women rights organization to grassroots group to strengthen the movements and to for sustained advocacy advocacy is not going to deliver the land rights issues are sensitive the land sector is complex need sustained and strong advocacy social movement that are adequately resourced and that they can predict their future the other thing is to the UN and this is let's finalize the methodologies for the indicators 1.4.2 the SDG indicator 5.8.2 so that government can start reporting on this and so that we start generating data on land by gender and by age thank you okay thank you Frida for this very powerful message before we move we move to the questions because they are entering already a lot of questions but I would also first like to ask Fridama if she could give or add from an Indian perspective like what is needed to scale up these interventions you've been talking about before and what would be like your core messages to policymakers yeah I think a lot of it has been covered by the other panelists which are quite it is the pride the main agency is the government which has the responsibility of scaling up through programs and budgetary locations but as civil society and implementing organizations and movements what we definitely there are number of demonstrable models which only have created but they they remain largely isolated or you know small islands of successful models primarily because there needs to be needs to be a lot of evidence-based advocacy for its adoption we need to create those evidences we need to advocate based on evidences for its adoption and as previously I mentioned that scaling up which which which is in the hands of the civil society and the movements group is to politicize the agenda and broaden the agenda of land rights and incorporate the common resources as well uh coming to the messages for the policymakers I think it was also been said that we need data in any any any interventions we need to we need to have a gender segregated data even to decide what it is actually looks like so so we need we need to we need to make power of the agriculture census which we have in India to involve to count the landless women farmers then disaggregated data in terms of both land which has been regularized by the government and the land which is had privately access to financial support to be made available to small and marginal women farmers for land development activities to make those land much more productive because often the land that is given under government regularized programs to women of course not in the best land quality so the productivity is low so that needs to be taken care of and women should have the rights and decision making on the kind of agriculture they want to do because largely women from the perspective of livelihood and food security so biodiversity in terms of crops and supporting different things like grain banks and primary processing etc again technology women friendly technology is something which which needs to come to the to the forefront because as we as we see most of the farm work have been done by women and technology again is not very women friendly because they they're designed with men in mind and again I think the it has already been said we want women represented in the decision making positions so that these issues become part of the primary policy processes and even the agricultural extension and service department should have women personnel with that and with regards to commons this was the land as agriculture we need a comprehensive policy for decentralized forest governance and in Indian context with women playing a central role in the village council must be integrated in the policy and practice and we what we see is a large part of land being diverted and poor are facing evictions and displacement so again you know land being taken up for commercial plantations and land banks have been created again this again affects the women and it is it is our our experience that while men opt for monetary compensations women's approach is much more from a livelihood perspective therefore I think the consent of women should be mandatory in case of displacement of eviction in case of consent at least 50 percent if it's at the consent stage in the village level 50 percent should be women and and and finally women should be part of any committees that mediate conflict-religion to land and access. Now thank you very much Shwetama. Thanks to the four panelists to really bring to the fore like what can be done to put and actually that's indeed what we put at the center from the beginning of this webinar that is still a continuous fight to put women's land rights at the center of the international development agenda and I think the four of you have really nicely managed to first yeah set a scene and to really say like what are the bottlenecks what are the problems but also very much looking forward to good practices good solutions and also concrete suggestions for scaling up. Of course if you're bringing so many different different perspectives and so many different suggestions it also poses a lot of questions so what came in is already more than 10 different questions so we still have half a little bit less than half an hour for discussion so I will go through it one by one and address them to you and then we can yeah just have an open discussion on the issues that have been addressed already. Now my first question is not my question it's a question of one of the participants and this participant says that you have described really good capacity building work for women for ten years security and the participant was wondering if you have evidence that your workshops and capacity building efforts have increased access to justice for land rights. So El Haadi would you be able to answer the question to really look at the outcomes or what you have reached with these workshops and capacity building activities? Hello, good. Yeah. Can I go? Definitely. Okay no I said that this workshop was an opportunity for women to negotiate land on the local levels with the administrator and the results of all these process because it is a big process between sensitization at the common and sensitization at the local and at the village and also they had some what do you say the parcel of the affected so they have the result is many of these women had land and they had paper to prove that it is their own lands but it is available in the area where land is a property individual property but in other regions land is not property of one person in this country in this in these regions what women are revendicates is to implicate on decision maker on the common research it's more important and I I like the the the threat gamma group position on this there is land she is can be divided between the but there is many lands which is a common research and women don't have their own segment of land so in this option we wanted to to work with the community to integrate women in the policy decision maker it is more important and have you also within this communal land regions or areas have you also achieve some concrete results in that aspect wait here it is more difficult to to try to measure the impact because we want just to sensitize the women and the the the the men to inform about any decision on on land research but now we are on the process and we will capitalize the results on this but we have concrete reasons with women which have land and which have but which have title this land okay now very interesting I'm afraid we have to move on to the next question otherwise we will never be able to answer all of them this is a question for Sreetama about the recent supreme court ordered to evict tribals whose claims for land ownership have been rejected and the question is how this relates to the land rights under the forest rights act okay this is a huge issue I will not get into much of it but I would just update on this that there has been a lot of momentum I was you know last two days we were very busy with trying to you know support get support from different quarters and the movements and the organizations finally were able to push the central government to act on it and we have got suspension from this court saying eviction they have asked to suspend the any eviction for now at least for four four months and the state governments have been asked to to to provide for what what is the process that has been undertaken for recognition of rights and what are the processes that have been followed in case of rejection so there has been some little breather or victory as a result of a lot of pressure this is okay now thank you very much I also have a question for Frida there is a participant who would like to have a little bit more explanation on on how the land mapping model or the the community land maps how it works so of course the community land mapping model is a step by step process where you start identity by identifying what are the gaps in terms of land data and specifically gender data because that is where groups interest is and what are the kind of evidence that women would want to build for their advocacy and after you've had that kind of consultation with the women then you build their capacity to understand what is the legal and political context that they would be working in you also we also support them to have what you call stay called a consultation people like policy experts or people who have interest in land reforms across the country and after that then you develop with them a tool this is a research tool and the tool can be developed by the grassroots women by on their own or through co-creation so for us we've tried models where the women develop the by themselves and also where they partner with professional researchers to develop the tool and after that within a certain jurisdiction it could be a county or a certain area that is zoned off based on the kind of tenor regime it could be community land or an area that is largely occupied by private land or even public land and so within that area they do the enumeration they generate the data on ownership on use on the control and even on legal status and then after that data is generated they analyze it of course develop trends or get some advocacy messages out of it but with backed evidence of the data that they collected and using this that is what they then they used to advocate is a model that we have tried several in different areas but we also we've also partnered with the county government in a government called Morana to actually use it to document the public lands in that county so it's a people led process where they create inventories of land in their own jurisdiction in their own counties or location and also they are able to demonstrate who is controlling the land is it men is it women or is it the states okay thank you Frida I do have another question actually also for all the panelists to be addressed but maybe we can first ask it to win zero it's like why we talk about land rights we cry it for women and why we don't in Africa but why we don't talk about joint land rights so that's for men and women together um in fact he was a big joint title land rights and is it's it's a good one and it's a good way to do that but in the practice way and sees that where we we mentioned about the challenge with them the power relation and and we may not have enough capacity to negotiate this and more culture and understood that women must obey men is not being applied properly so this is approach that we think that could be the better one to to use the land title also like community we have to depend on the context depending on the area what is is a better way and a good the good the mechanics that not discriminate and not taking right for anyone so it's not something that you not take it in consideration in fact it is so in the workshops that we run it we were able to share that we may also um have this chance to be uh on the title online title with a man not just a man or when we use this also with a man when we find that there is a resistance that women can resist the land on their own name so it's one it's one way also to to and we we think that work a lot in some areas but in other areas that we have these problems of power is not taking duration so yeah okay now thank you and zeta very interesting i do have another question it's very interesting also on power no because the participant says that it seems like there may be resistance to actualizing women's land women's rights when doing so threatens the power of or authority of people who perceive to be losing power when women gain individual and communal rights so the question of this participant and i just put it in the in the group so the one who would like to answer can just answer it's like what sorts of barriers are erected by power brokers who don't want women to gain and how can this be addressed please i can i can attend to answer that question but i also want to comment on what in zeta said you know when we talk about women land rights and i like what the famous author chimamanda said we have to define our problem our problem is women land rights and we should not sugarcoat it when we talk about women land rights we are not just talking about women rights to own land we are talking about women rights to participate in land governance institution we are talking about their capacity to use and develop that land their access to financing so that they can invest in that land and the their ability and opportunity to be able to say that within common lands the resources that we get out of here whether they be mean roles or from other natural resources will be allocated like this for the benefit of the household and for the benefit of the community so women land rights is our problem and we have to be is the problem and we have to define it as as it is every time that question is raised to me i see it as more of the patriarchal backlash where we want to suppress you know advocacy is about messaging so if we we define it and say it out there differently we are not likely to achieve what we are targeting to achieve let's define it the way it is let's define our problem the way it is what are the barriers i think the major barrier that i've seen consistently is the attempt to block women from ascending to leadership because the moment that they ascend to leadership in this institution in parliament in the executive and i'm talking about people who actually believe in fully in women land rights they could be women or men by the way feminist people believe in feminist value could be either but they attempt to block such progressive minds into leadership is one of the major barrier that i see most of the okay very interesting thank you frida i don't know if other panelists would also like to add a little bits on the barriers when we're talking about power relations can i can i can i uh just uh say a bit on this uh yeah yeah so uh power uh i mean we we uh so basically uh when it comes to uh the issues of rights and uh and and women rights it's basically challenging the fabric of the society we're challenging the fabric of the society and not just with the status within the household we're challenging the status within the community as well as challenging the government uh in terms of sharing of power so there is definitely there is going to be resistance from all levels there is going to be resistance at all levels and we see uh and one big way against women we see is is violence uh using violence against women and a number of cases that have been reported uh that that's and where the main way to block them or scare them away is to is to uh either have violence or you know put cases against them even to the extent of sexual violence so so uh this this is a very common way of of dealing with women issues uh or to or to block the women issues but but definitely uh the the fact that there is a is there is a you know resistance says that there is a movement which is which is concerning people and and the fact that the movement is able to create a space for itself uh i think is it's a it's a it's a significant step in terms of challenging the status okay thank you thank you uh Sritama i think we could continue to discuss this but i also have to move on to the other questions and i would like to bring on two questions together because it's very much on the laws and one question is how can the these laws or your your radical instruments assist women to take up cases and the other question is very much related to that because and i very much like it it's also the question if if there are experiences with female judges in one of the countries uh or if there is any experience in bringing female judges on board um in terms of that they also can champion in such a way great let me say i don't work i don't work in the corridors of justice so i'm not a dad but uh i think it is it is good and it's important to have of course women in all areas of leadership including to have them as judges but it is women and men and youth again who believe fully in women right and who think women uh demands a priority that will bring change so i've really i wouldn't give a case study of where we had a case in front of uh being attended to by a female judge and a male judge because groups doesn't pursue uh litigation as an intervention so i will i may not be able to comment fully on that but yes the laws are important in assisting the women to pursue cases absolutely definitely it's much easier even to do advocacy when the legal context is already set but remember uh we are not uh championing for this right in uh niland we also live in an ecosystem where the judicial system itself has has a significant challenge in fact in the women to Kilimanjaro in the demands by the rural women one of the things that they raised is the high cost of seeking justice in courts and also the bureaucracy around there and the corruption so even if the law is set in a manner that it benefits the women as long as we live in an ecosystem where these judicial institutions aren't reformed then it doesn't help in searching out the issues of the women so i think that is the downside but the law for sure is a starting point and uh it is important it helps with the with the advocacy context a great deal one thing that i've got to say is for the participant who asked about the land mapping model they can also google uh groups Kenya and they'll be able to see the step-by-step in our website all right to us okay thank you for that Frida there is also still a question for swedama on how india is contributing or progressing toward land rights for women that's a very big question in terms of yes there have been a number of steps that the the the government has taken or over the period the movements have taken is one big change that came in 2005 was amendment in the hindu succession act which governs the property rights so for the first time in the ancestral property uh the right of of course the right of the widow was recognized but now uh women doctors have equal share to men so that was a one big move in 2005 but that only applies to the to the communities who belong to the hindu religion there has been a lot of movement in terms of women as farmers to be recognized as farmers which is happening we we have policies and programs now which are targeting women farmers again as i mentioned within the forest rights act first time the legislation recognizes the titles for individual the the titles of a cultivable lands in both the name of the men and and women uh so other than that you know as as uh haji and others pointed out there are a lot social and other things which are equally connected to the land rights so we do see actually that wherever land rights has a connection with violence i mean wherever land rights have been recognized are in a better state whether india or outside india also we see uh countries where the substantial women land rights have been recognized there is a better economic position and actually violences have come down so so uh that's one thing for us as Indians to learn india has a women's commission which looks at the women's issues and land is becoming one of the important agendas within within for them to to look at is what is happening to the land rights of women so so there are a number of policies and practices and a number of policies and programs but the question is about its implementation and how politically how what is the political willingness to implement it i think that's that's the greater question now very interesting thank you sridama i still have two questions to go and zira you want to like to add something on the the contribution of women judges so maybe you can go first and then afterwards i still would like to ask another question to haji yeah just to to to bring experience that we had last year two women justice uh they received a process against the community community complaining about the conflict that we had with the investors and the judge came on face of the the group of women the cooperative of women and what happened is that she suffered the trends from the the invest i don't know if we we don't know if it was from investor and so on what happened is that land is a is a very important issue is a very important asset for for the investors corporations that want to come in in in our in our country that want to invest in so when judges like women come for and defend the right of the community or right of women most of the time they suffer a lot of repression and it's it's not good but i we believe is that is important to to target the women because they need also our support and bring them as a and this is we we did we have a good partnership with the government we have a good partnership with them so we start to strengthen that um just by that okay thank you very much and zina there's one last question because before we finalize this webinar and i would like to address it to el haji because there are two questions which are very much emphasizing like what can be done to change his cultural and social norms his cultural difficulties and the question is very much like what can be done also in primary schools and universities or what's what are they already doing to change these cultural norms and traditions so maybe el haji you can give a very brief answer on that hello okay i want to that uh we have to integrate gender and women's right the curricula of formation of training especially the training curricula of public public scholar and the sense of training like when will we train the the agriculture uh when we keep formally the yeah i think i i saw that if the community and all the actors in the community uh understand the women's rights and also the women's understand their rights about uh land and about all the other things change will come though at the scholarly program we integrate gender and swimming and at the other the television for example in senegal we see there are many televisions we must have program of such education of the public to women rights i think that it is one way of uh to change the program and at the local level also we have to to to to create a a card and a card of concertation a framework discussions about these questions because it is a lack at the level we people don't discuss problems they think that it is not a problem or it is uh it isn't it isn't a problem or it is a real problem at the local level now after this we have to continue to to to sensitize all the community yes yes we hand up or not uh i am working with the government to include uh yes the environmental science on the scholarship at the primary school and the gender very interesting al-haji i think we could continue our discussion for hours i think very interesting contributions but i'm afraid we have to end here i would like to thank you all for this very interesting opportunity to really exchange experiences and also to the panelists who brought it uh to the uh to the audience because i think it was a very interesting question which we could of course discuss for much longer but i'm afraid we have to stop here so thank you and Zira al-haji Prida Sritama you were a great panelist it was really great to have you on board and i would also especially like to thank Neil Sorensen from land portal because he has assisted us in this whole setup of the webinar and who has offered us the opportunity to connect across the globe to talk about these issues i hope there were not too many technical issues but in general i think it's great that as in such a way we can connect and keep on putting the women's land rights agenda or the women's land rights issues at the center of the development agenda and so thank you all for being here and um hope to meet life at another other opportunity thank you thank you so much thank you thank you thank you you did well