 access to land in the Middle East and North Africa. So before we start please be aware that we have simultaneous translations to Arabic. So check at the top of the charts field you will see interpretation and the French button to interpretation but this is for Arabic. So make sure you are in the right channel the French channel for Arabic and in the English channel for everybody else. Let me introduce myself. My name is Laura Mejolaro. I'm team leader of the Land Water Foundation which is a Dutch, no-profit organization that work globally towards improving access to land related data and information to all. So we provide a global free and open data platform to help make invisible data visible and available to everyone. For this we collaborate with a large network of international, regional and local organizations around the world. So before introducing our esteemed panelists a few logistical notes. So this webinar is being recorded. So it will be available for later consultation both through the land portal and on our YouTube channel. So following the presentations from our panelists we will have a 30 minutes to address your questions. Feel free to put your question in the Q&A feature or you can also use the chat if you want others to read your question. And finally we are also live tweeting the webinar using English and Arabic so please follow us on Twitter as well. A bit of context about this webinar is the second webinar of a series aside of the second Arab land conference which is a conference that took place from 22 to 24 of February this year in Cairo, Egypt and also online. So the conference was organized by the Housing and Building National Research Center represented by the Urban Training and Studies Institute in partnership with UN Habitat, the Global Land Tool Network, the World Bank and GZ and the Dubai Land Department in the context of the Arab land initiative. So it was a platform to discuss countries experiences and new research to support good land governance in the Arab region. Gender land rights of course was one of the main topics discussed throughout the conference and in a minute I will give the floor to our colleague Umbreta Tempra who will tell more about that. Now two minutes to discuss the topic of this webinar why women land rights and access to information and technologies. Well in more than 30 countries women and girls do not have the same rights to own and inherit land as men and boys and in dozens of others custom undermine women's rights to land a property. These tenure and security constraints social and economic opportunities for more than a billion urban and rural women. So this phenomenon is also not well documented. As we know I mean the World Bank estimates that 90% of the rural land in sub-Saharan Africa is undocumented. So women land and property rights are the least likely to be documented. So there is a tremendous gap in understanding how many women's own or do not own land or we do not much about their illegal recognitions but also we do not know much about if they feel a risk of losing their hands or other challenges. It's impossible to understand if we do not measure a phenomenon. It's very difficult to understand it. So the challenge faced by women in the Arab state is very similar to many other countries. It's not very different from other part of Africa and the world. There are many barriers here as well and our panelists will speak about it. These barriers include conflict, in-house or community conflicts or lack of access to institutions power or social norms at community or family level. In the Middle East and North Africa as for today only the 5% of women have their name on a legal land or housing document. So despite the lack of data there are a growing body of empirical research that demonstrates that by strengthening women's land and property rights can have a tremendous ripple effect on income, food security, land stewardship and children welfare. But there are also many positive advancements and our panelists will document and describe some of those. For instance in the Arab countries land administration practices that take women's perspective better into account lately and also there are inheritance claiming that are being are being positive. So we have invited you here to this webinar to discuss what role information and access to information and data and digital technologies can play in improving enhancing women access to land in this region. Why this specific angle? Well because the land portal works in the intersection between land rights and access to data information and how access to more information has a positive effect in land governance. So let's listen from our panelists. I will now introduce them. Our first panelist is Miss Ombreta Tempra. Ombreta is an international development expert with 18 years of experience in program management and partnership development in developing and conflict affected countries. She's currently a land specialist at the regional office of for Arab states UN Habitat. We also have Mr. Joe Feigertag. Joe is a research fellow in the climate and sustainability team at ODI. His research focuses on how land investment can be shaped in a socially and environmentally responsible way, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Joe is also involved in the initiative called Prindex, which is a data initiative, a global data initiative funded by FCDO and Omidial Network. Then we have Miss Putaini Zampati. Putaini is a legal professional with 18 years of experience. She's been working as data rights research specialist in support of the Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition initiative. We also have Weyl Zakut. Weyl is the World Bank Senior Technical Advisor and Global Lead for Land and Geospatial. Miss Zakut has a PhD from the University of Wisconsin's Medicine in Land Policy and Geospatial. We also have Miriam Ababsa, French, Algerian, such a geographer, expert on land issues, housing and urban planning in Jordan and Syria. She's also an associate researcher at the French Institute for the Near East and the former World Bank Consultants. Very rich panel and we will also hear from the audience. Dr. Dina Naguib, PhD candidate for Norbert Design and Community Development at Cairo University and Winnie Kamau, a journalist hailing from Nairobi, Kenya. Okay, let's start. I will ask questions to the panelists who will respond over the next 45 minutes and then we will start. We will open the Q&A for addressing your questions. Let me now give the floor for the next 10 minutes to Ombretta. Ombretta, what have been some of the most important takeaways regarding women's land rights during the recent Second Arab Land Conference and what are the challenges that women face in accessing land in conflict affected context? How this can be mitigated? Over to you, Ombretta. We cannot hear you, Ombretta. You are muted. Thank you so much. Yes, thanks a lot, Laura, for introducing me. Welcome, everybody. I'm very happy to be part of this webinar and discussing this important, very important issue. I would like to briefly report back on what was discussed on the theme at the recently concluded Arab Land Conference, where the issue of women access to land and women land rights was actually quite at the center of very many discussions, particularly a high-level session that was all on the topic, then a round table on the land rights of this place to women and a technical session where papers were presented. Some of the outcomes, obviously this slide doesn't make justice to all the content that was developed, but in a nutshell, also compared to what was discussed in the previous conference. In this one, which was held three years ago, in this one, really women land rights were much more openly discussed and acknowledged by both partners and also government representatives. So the importance and urgency of securing women land rights really came out very clearly. And also many correlations were unpacked by the different speakers between women land rights and other aspects of social economic development, also peace and stability, human rights, food security, and better ability of women but family as a whole to cope with conflicts and climate-related challenges. Land rights were clearly identified as a tool for empowerment of women, especially if coupled with additional initiatives and intervention like increased access to credit, public participation, and decision making over the rights that women have to make decisions over the land and properties. There is experiences were presented with a lot of focus, particularly on women access to housing. So access to housing for women, vulnerable women, widows, women head of household in different cases, Jordan was one of them. A lot of discussion also took place around the impact of the plurality of legal system and discriminatory practices on women access to land and enjoyment of their land rights. And also the privation, particularly the privation of their inheritance share in some context. That really is one of the the point that was raised by many speakers. Some of these practices and also laws in some cases has been repealed. But still, so there is a lot of action also on the legal aspect to actually improve the situation for women, although still we know the region has a very wide gender gap on this issue. Even if we don't really have consolidated data to the extent that we are really able to put numbers to it, but anecdotal evidence or build the evidence that we are starting to build up shows that still the gap is wide to fill. Also a lot of attention on women living in displacement where we see that women knowledge of their rights is inadequate. And also there is a lot loss of lack of civil documentation and difficulties in accessing justice that really hampered their access to land. However, change is possible and he is happening and a lot of positive cases were presented. I also want to briefly touch upon a campaign that was launched by an habitat and its partners, women and land in the Arab region, which and you can find more information on it and also information that you can share at the website that is indicated there. And this campaign revolves around some key messages that touch up on five topics. Why women need access to land because a lot of times I think this aspect is left behind because people don't really see the correlation and the urgency of this. How to increase it for in developmental but also humanitarian context and then how to promote women participation in decision making. We touch also briefly on Islamic land law. So I think on why women need land rights, I think Laura already touched upon it and I believe most of you already know about that but you know it's about financial security, self-increase of self-determination, a change of power relations within the household, a rebalance when land arrangements, land property arrangements are changed, agricultural productivity overall increase in decision making. There is also a section on why women need access to land in displacement and crisis affected contexts. And then the how. I think this is also something where data will help us more to understand better where exactly are the gap and where we should focus but overall there is need of increasing awareness on the topic. Also increase and protect better women land rights at the time of marriage because that's where the land and property arrangements within the family get redefined. Protect women in inheritance rights. We know although we don't know for sure the exact share that the majority of women, the wide majority of women actually access land ownership through inheritance particularly in rural areas. And for this reason inheritance is very important and we would like to know more about that. And also we need to strengthen secondary land uses for women, secondary land rights so not only ownership which only very few women have as we were hearing before from Laura but also the other types of land access that women have you know ability to stay or use or you know other people property or maybe rent properties etc. So this is very important as well. Practical support is needed because of course legislations and norms go only that far in providing actual access to the women on the ground and also increase women access to justice and dispute resolution is important. We see that many women, many women more than men struggle in access to justice courts and other disputes resolution systems. Overall of course an improvement in land administration which is also badly needed in the region would definitely improve women land rights as well as men land rights because obviously the two parts go hand in hand. Now we are discussing women land rights but whatever measure that actually promotes women land right will ultimately also benefit vulnerable men and of course when needed reform constitution and policies that are remaining gender discriminatory. Some messages revolve about how to address the multiple legal system where a lot of cracks are left where women land rights fall. And lastly as I was saying the message is also touched briefly on Islamic land law. This is because of course is one of the sources of law used in the region on which also a lot of national legislation are based and we see that in many cases misinterpreted Islamic land principle actually negatively affect women because of this misinterpretation. So although of course we still promote international laws and national laws are the main source of laws to promote women land rights it's still important to clarify actually what the plurality of legal system and particularly Islamic land law says. To conclude I invite all of you to look at more in detail on these messages and what we propose in practice to increase women land rights in the Arab region and I look forward to hear from the other panelists on their contribution. Thank you so much. Thank you Beretta. This was really insightful it was indeed a rich conference and women land rights really resonates with was one of the main topic discussed during the conference. I want to now invite other panelists to discuss about this topic in particular well. I will now want you to tell us about your experience working in this region. What do you think the main challenges the main obstacles are in addressing women land rights in the Arab context and what can be done? Do you have any anecdotal story to tell us? What is your view about this issue in this particular context? We know that every context is different. Yeah good morning everyone it's great to see so many colleagues connected to this. As they probably all know that the access to land and property is one of the very important pillar of the women empowerment. This has been highlighted by the gender study of the World Bank but also many other gender research which really is a very important element. The Arab region I would say on land issues in general there are many challenges. Beretta mentioned a little bit of it. It's clearly the land governance in the region it does not really rank I would say well compared to other regions. Many countries actually rank very low in the World Bank doing business of registering property but I will not talk about the broader land. I will talk about the on the land issues that are affecting women. There are two major issues I would say one is with regard to the inheritance. How usually men and women get their land in general. They get it through two main ways. One is they get it through inheritance from their parents or they actually deviate during their life. We have two seriously challenges facing women in these two areas. On inheritance the sadly I will say many Arab women they don't get their rightful inheritance rights when it comes to land and property. In fact we did a study in Palestine, a research study in Palestine showed that I think it's less than 30% of women actually they get their inheritance right. The other part is when people buy property the tradition that men they register the property in their name and they don't put actually the name of the woman on the title. As a result of this there is a death in the family or there's a divorce very often actually women they don't get anything literally and they miss out and in many cases actually women contribute to the property as much as men in fact actually probably in some cases even more. They lose us a bit. The issues in the region we know it well they don't get enough inheritance they don't get the inheritance right from a land and their names are not on the title. The problem and I see it and probably we know the solution I will say. The solution is increase public awareness and probably there is some kind of adjustment on the laws and so on. Always the problem and I'm really challenged with is how to get there to really to work on a plan to implement the solution to increase awareness of the society. I would say awareness of women is very important but I think it's equally important even more important awareness of men and as well really to honor because women are really the mother the sisters the daughter all of us and when we empower them we'll actually will empower the entire society and we need to increase clearly the awareness of the importance of women land rights to the to the broader economic you know a growth agenda you know of the countries. Still you know as probably as we know you know the women participation of the labor force in in in many region in North Africa is one of the actually the lowest in the world and if the country if the region is going to move economically you know forward we have to give the women you know the opportunity to move forward. There is one if you all will just I will raise that head maybe we'll come back to it in the discussion you know as you know there's a lot of discussion about equal rights for women you know personally I'm very much you know with it and I think it's like all of us we really would like you know to move to equal rights or inheritance rights for women. The issue is this is really complicated you know in the Vena region you know the religion play a very important role you know in the society you know and if you're going to promote equal rights probably you're going to you know to face the challenge from at least the religious establishment you know and and might actually becomes an encounter productive but it's an area where I think it probably will really be good to come back to it as part of the discussion you know which is more effective you know is to promote you know really pushing very hard and increase the awareness to get women access to their rightful inheritance rights according to the Sharia law you know or somehow promote you know more equitable you know or equal rights for inheritance so these are really debate is good actually just maybe to hear also discussion on this point so let me talk. Thank you and thank you for stressing the importance of awareness raising and we know how much information is important in this in this game of increasing awareness through increasing access to information I will go back to this point later now I want to hear from Miriam about the specific situation in Jordan Miriam can you tell us more about women access to land in Jordan? Yes thank you very much so Jordan is like the other countries we have we have some data showing that they own less than seven percent of the land in fact we are talking about statistics in fact you should compare men access to land to female access to land okay well basically in Jordan half the men own a plot of land so 51 percent according to the Department of Statistics 2012 and 60 percent own an apartment to come to be compared to only a 6.8 person for women of land and of apartment in fact you have all the discussion concerning the fact that you have rights that are enshrined in the constitution and you have also and in as Dr. Wael mentioned it a very strong importance of the religious norms and the fact that and it's really interesting the fact that pastoral land could be inherited equally between men and women but property of rural land and of course urban land apply the sharia by which you you receive as a daughter half the share of your brother but as a widow you could receive one eighth you know it's always mentioned one eighth which which could be high okay so this is in theory but in practice what do we see we see three phenomena social pressure to women to renounce to their inheritance and I would like to mention that specifically because a woman rights activists have been working not against but with the supreme court of the sharia Kadil Kuda in 2010 and they managed so it's the Jordan national forum for women and Misan they managed to introduce an amendment to the inheritance law which is the following several amendments first a period of a three months period during rich women cannot renounce to their inheritance this is really interesting and it has an impact already in 2014 statistics show that a third of inheritance cases were followed by exclusion to Harouz where women renounce to their inheritance and in 2020 it went down to only 20 so you have something a change that is occurring okay we can discuss that another point interesting by the law is that from 2010 law an amendment article 319 mentioned that now you should be informed about all the property owned by your father or grandfather so you should be informed you know you should not be kept ignorant of the what is aesthetics you know the property this is interesting and also very important to mention that in Jordan you have the same rule applying to also the Christian woman so there might be a minority but Christians are large land owners and very important part element for the the political economy of the country having a lot of insurance company and pharmaceutical companies and major role you know in Jordan so it's very interesting to see that the patriarchal norms are not linked to an Islamic culture but in fact to a patriarchal Arab culture you know that overarch also this but as I mentioned there are some hopes and we can so in detail that you have several techniques to deprive women from inheritance one is of course life donation when you give you give land while you are still alive to your sons or to your brother if you have only women daughters but we will see that and I will mention that later on another key problem is the absence of land subdivision so the plot of land is still of the grandfather is still not subdivide and this is a point I will come back on later on thank you thank you Miriam very informative thank you for describing the situation in Jordan you mentioned a bit of statistical data so and we know that this global phenomena needs to be better documented so I now want to bring Jo into the forum and ask about your we know that that five percent of women owns land and property in the men origin and we heard about seven percent in Jordan still is one of the lowest rates in the world um you've been part of an initiative that uh made a global survey of over 140 countries no conducted by prindex and you were part of so um I just wanted to ask can you tell more about the findings in this region Jo over to you yes of course uh thank you Laura and uh thank thank you already to the other panelists because I think you've already said a lot of the stuff that I wanted to talk about um but it's really good to back up some of the some of the things that you've said already in data um uh and and I'll give you I mean though we've got many findings that we presented in two papers at the abland conference a couple weeks ago but but two two of them really um uh sort of uh I feel very strongly about so first of all um the first findings really about um experiences of women uh women's ownership and that's very different from from that of men so prindex asked about 14 000 men and women uh in the in 13 countries in their Arab region um about how they perceived their tenure status to be so whether they considered themselves individual joint owners whether they were renters or or had more informal um tenure arrangements such as staying in family owned property um and this I wasn't planning to present any slides but um I think it's easier if I if I talk about this um with the with the help of some uh uh visuals then try and repeat these statistics to you um orally but the the columns on on the very right those two really show you the results for the men a region as a whole across the 13 countries and what you can see there is that about 40 percent of men said that they considered themselves individual or joint owners of the main property they lived in and that was about double the rate um among women which was about 20 percent so so one in five women that considered themselves individual joint owners um so and you can see as well if you look at it um across the subregions they're in the mashrek region those differences are biggest or widest so in countries like yemen or egypt where the rates of individual joint ownership among men really you know two to three times higher than they are among women uh and in the maghreb region you can see marocco stands out there as well um so so that that was really uh sort of eye-opener to us of course when you look at what explains those differences um uh as the other panelists might have already suggested uh and you can see here highlights of knowledge is that most women about about 50 percent of women in uh across the region um consider themselves as living in family owned property so so that they don't consider themselves individual or joint owners they they consider the property they live in as belonging to the family um and that can have many reasons i'll talk a bit more about this later but the way the methodology works is that we randomize within the household so we might speak to very young women you know above the age of 18 but you know who's still staying with their parents you might also speak to to older grandparents both male and female and obviously in in those sort of situations you might imagine uh those respondents saying that they stay in family owned property rather than you know individually the jointly owning the property but but the difference still exists between male and female spouses and that's that's really important to us i should say there's not necessarily a bad thing to live in family owned property and i again i'll come back to that a bit later but what the data really shows us is that men have that individual joint right to the property and that comes with many benefits that we associate with um with empowerment we associate with economic opportunity and that are are withheld from women benefits like deciding what's going to be planted on land that's attached to the property or deciding whether the property is going to be rented out or whether it's going to be sold or who's who's going to inherit the property that those decisions aren't in the hands of women they are the hands of men according to this according to this data the second finding that i wanted to really bring out is is out is is really the main purpose of prindex which is to assess levels of tenure security what we define as tenure security is is perceptions of tenure security so we go beyond that legal definition of tenure security whether whether people have legal rights to land and property and ask people how likely or unlikely it is that um they will be expropriated from their land in the in the next five years and based on what i just said i i you know you might expect that levels of tenure security are very different between men and women you know that that security would be higher for men than it is among women because men are more likely to have individual joint ownership rights in the region but actually that isn't really the case uh and there are good reasons for that the levels are quite similar between men and women and you can see that from from uh the this graph over here which shows you um the rates of tenure insecurity so so the the share of men and women who considered it likely or very likely that they would be asked to leave for them the next five years and and really there isn't much difference between men and women i mean there is a difference but it's not as big as the difference in in levels of individual joint ownership and like i said i one of the one of the reasons for that is simply that staying in family owned property doesn't necessarily have to be associated with insecurity quite the opposite you can imagine that when your tenure is attached to the to your family uh arrangements that that it's actually a very strong and secure form of tenure that's that very unlikely to be be disrupted and and makes people that reside and they feel very secure but the finding really is that um if you look beyond the five-year horizon and this is a sort of slight criticism not really a criticism but um but something that we need to ask ourselves when we look at the stg indicator for 1.4.2 which is what the prindex methodology is based on is that um the five-year horizon may not be capturing those the sources of insecurity that we should be looking at for women because women's tenure is attached to the family arrangements so it's therefore also very susceptible to changes in in the structure of families or changes in the social status of men and women um and the most obvious example that is in as the other panelists have already mentioned is in the event of uh of of spouse or death of inheritance of of divorce as well and so we actually complimented the main question with two further questions in in the survey to ask men and women who are married how secure they would feel in the hypothetical event of a spouse or death or divorce and that's when the differences really start to emerge so overall about 40 percent of married women said that they felt insecure in in a divorce scenario and compared to only seven percent of men in the region and so that that was quite striking if you remove that five-year horizon you suddenly open up this huge gender gap in the tenure security between men and women um and that and by the way this also applies for for um uh spouse or death scenarios as well so that was that was uh the real eye opener for us and and in the prindex findings for the region and something that that we really need to address going through thank you joe this was very informative thank you for reminding us on the importance of the continuing of land rights and that's it's not just a title that's to make people feel secure on their land sometimes they use rights or stronger than poverty rights but let's hear from um dina now we are in this second part of the webinar where we start discussing about how to measure how to document this phenomenon what has been done what data exists so dina there is this wide recognition the land is one of the most important household assets for women and their food security and employment so what are the potential for integrating digital information and technologies in land in existing land systems and what are the challenges in the region can you show us any examples yes thank you lara so this is um a recent statistics from 2016 about the distribution of agricultural holders of bisects so um it's um working towards the target for the goal 5.8 about the sex to get it the data so it shows the difference between male holders and female holders of course the ownership and control of land are too critical dimensions regarding women's land rights as landowners the refers to the legally recognize the uh acquired uh land acquisition uh to use and to transfer land property and uh while the control over land is associated with the ability to make decisions over this land so and maybe jump to the digital innovations that are uh have some potential so mapping and location intelligence to help organizations to unlock the power of data to create a stronger and more digital uh connected region so we can use like platforms that are web-based data management platforms or mobile applications um some applications work a participatory approach on ground approach uh through empowering the citizens to to the process and understanding the rights and documenting the reliance and resources so for example we have the something called the mast it's a mobile application to secure tenure it's an infographic innovative participatory approach as that um usually for women's programs it's also or it's already active in some of the countries not in the region but maybe in Africa so it had the good practice and success in some African countries like Bertina Passo like Zampia like Tunisia and um it's mainly empowered by land surveys to map and validate their own land in a transparent and affordable documentation uh so women learn about their land the resources or legal rights and develop a strategy for uh verifying this information so that's what I meant by mapping it can help the stakeholders to visualize the spatial distribution and also the um to address um the complex problems in the region on ground and if there are any disputes and identify the boundaries while mapping so they can share it with the local authorities for example and then after the verification they can receive their land certificates through this process so the digital technology presents new opportunities and innovations and securing women access to land maybe in the customary tenure areas which may need some change in legislations and facilitate the technology transfer and increase the awareness of women and their participation of course in the decision making uh forums uh so also another example the GIS it's embedded in many organizations on national level uh in Arab countries so data accessibility is is one part that we need to work on to and review as an open data concern but GIS had been a relation with information technology infrastructure through the regional offices in some of the gulf area and the north eastern Africa through the resource planning database management and decision support so we have some good success stories for that in Bahrain for example 12 municipalities are working with on a land information system program to validate the data using the ArcSDE which is the platform for ISRI and GIS so another land management program also include land information on ownership details and property information so they are layers of information that helps management of spatial and non-spatial data also another programs in municipal governance and housing in Oman there are another program for land management in Saudi Arabia for Morocco for agriculture land and Tunisia as well and also in formal settlements in Egypt they rely on that so the programs just need to be more focused on gender data and segregation of this data so moving through the other slide the next slide please Stacey so there are some challenges so this is an digitized index that uncovers the strong variations across the Middle East countries between this demand and supply measures between the ICT supply and innovation we can see that according to what's displayed we are in the low part so there are some challenges if we are talking about implications of the community's capacity to sustain the initiatives to the expenses of the technology this is mainly one of the main challenges and the softwares the potential for mapping initiatives to to unearth the existing land boundaries conflicts and the choices that had to be made to secure this consumer land rights of women moving to the other slide also this relates to the digital usage gap across the Middle East and North Africa region they come in order to transform the region into additional region there are some potential but at least there is the gap now that had to be shown an address to work on so one of also the other challenges is the gender perspective according to the current endorsement of customary systems and land tenure and decentralization of the land management because we had this digital we have to say that we had a gender blind age between the 1910th and 1970 and the land reforms were based on the implicit assumption that assets allocated to households are typically for male head that would benefit to the members all members equitably but this has to be changed so we have to work maybe on the digital financials infrastructure and to provide the foundation for digital transformation in order to help to facilitate this transformation that we need and the data to be collected into gender perspective data thank you thank you Dina thank you for this very interesting perspective Ken I asked you where from your perspective as a geospatial expert what do you think that documenting women land rights looks like in this region compared to how the region be working okay you know the you know I mentioned earlier the the Arab region they don't to score well you know on the you know the World Bank doing business indicator of registering for property you know and you know many countries you know still have a manual system you know and they don't have all of the properties are registered you know and this is really creating a major challenge you know as we're dealing with the broader land governance issues but also how it will apply you know to women there is a few countries I will say they're doing well you know the GCC countries you know scores very high I think Qatar was called number one UAE was called I think it's called number 10 you know Sweden API scored I think 24 you know and the rest of the GCC is actually scoring well many of them have electronic system you know to register any property so therefore they have you know a clear access to information you know about property registration Jordan also you know the their system is is very well electronic system you know and you know but what we hear is actually about the case of Jordan you know the correlation between having a good electronic system of property registration and women access to land they don't correlate you know so probably you may have you know very good you know functioning land administration system you know automated system but it's still the fundamental challenges of women access to land you know it's it's it's it's there so therefore I you know in my view and I think it's the fundamental issues you know while I think it's you know working on modernizing property registration and by completing the registration of all the property automated functions you know plan the registration provide information free access to information about ownership to citizens and you know you know government agents in private sectors and bank that does not substitute in my view you know of working you know at at all levels you know to to make sure that women you know inheritance right are you know provided you know according to the to the existing law you know which is you know many countries are the sharia law you know and the other one is making sure that the women you know the their name is on the on the property you know title it clearly we need to deal with these things on you know both on the public awareness and I think this is where the digital technology in my view actually works sensibly you know while you know it's very important you know we increase the public awareness through the traditional media so lots of people in the region they watch the traditional media the tv radio and you know and so on but the but the younger generations very much actually hooked on to the you know the social media you know and you know many of them in fact actually they don't watch the traditional media you know and therefore you know the any you know information campaign has to integrate the you know the social media you know as part of the activities the other part in my view and I think there is a still in you know there is a legal intervention is needed you know we saw the the experience from Jordan you know what you know which is actually has achieved some results I would say you know by making sure that the women they don't wave their rights on inheritance for three months you know but I think it's we you know much much needed you know on the legal side I mean for example is registering women you know opening a name of a woman on that title you know you know there's might be a legal intervention you know which is saying is you know if all of the properties voted during marriage would be jointly held you know between a man and woman doesn't have to be physically the name of the of the woman on the title but you know in the US law you know not sure what you know the one in Europe but you know any I need actually assets you know as well as income or saving you know where uh uh uh collected during the marriage will be you know in a case of divorce will be split you know 50-50 and I think it clearly this is that I could be a legal intervention but you know that you really public awareness has to make sure that the society is accepting this legal intervention even in the you know we know the many of the Arab regions are you know the governance of these countries are you know autocrity or you know or you know it's not democratic I would say just put it mildly you know but still they will be watching the public opinion you know unless the public opinion opinion supporting some of these legal intervention you know in my view it will probably will not happen so I think it's the two levels has to be on the on the public awareness campaign but also need to accompany it by some legal reform in order to make sure that women have thank you thank you well um but thank you for for reminding us that having a strong digital record system doesn't necessarily translate into empowered women or more women and rights but let's pause a little bit still on how we are doing documenting rights to women access to land and I wanted to bring in a new another panelist for the innate to talk about the open data mapping project what are the implications for women and rights in the main region can you describe this project to us put this sure um hello everyone um yes I'm going to talk a little bit about the open data mapping and how can really be linked with women's land rights not only in the main region but in in general I would say mostly developing countries so open data mapping refers to the acquisition processing management publication and geo visualization of geo reference data and more specifically open data mapping provides the special databases maps and geo information that are freely accessible and available globally it provides the opportunity for everyone to freely share use and reuse data about land use farm lands land rights and essentially anything that is that it is mapped on the earth's surface and open data mapping is about the fact of course that we can map land use when it comes to agriculture we do know that one of the basic question is around location um where are we currently farming and rearing livestock so with open data mapping we are able to know what is where and how um as well and who owns that land it provides data for sharing about land uh documentation um so empowering women to drive open data mapping in agriculture is a short trigger I would say of multiple measurable targets of SDGs in the main region um data about where and who is empowered is critical as well as knowing as I mentioned who owns the parcel of land for agriculture and where it is located and as a result of these issues about women's land rights agriculture sustainability and the SDGs can be tackled with open data mapping it can contribute to achieving SDGs targets and women's inclusive community engagement it contributes to bring bridging the gap in gender digital divide by providing women the opportunity through capacity building and raising awareness to know about their land rights and benefits um so the approach of open data mapping would be that it has positive impacts about knowledge about women's land rights and agricultural sustainability of course so this is pretty much what it's about of open data mapping in general thank you for the evening one last question to you Jo and the your data collection experience and how perception data can help us challenge sex sexist norms around land and housing more generally and specifically in the main region can you say something about that yeah sure so we um we actually quite recently published a blog about this on the CG IAR engendering data log series um and that was together with with Ruth Mites and Dick from IFBRE and Cheryl Doss from Oxford um who are both working uh with us on on analyzing the next data um and we we recently published another paper on that and land use policy actually which I encourage you to read and we are also preparing further papers on this so I'll stop there with the self-promotion and talk about the ways in which we can use subjective data so the first one I've already really spoken about which is um how prindix or how perceptions data can be used to go beyond legal definitions of land rights and ownership and that's already recognized in stg 142 also in 5a1 which not only talks about men and women's legal rights to land and property but also they're the about their perceptions of those rights um and you know the other panelists you know while Miriam they've all spoken about this which is that even where there are legal protections in place where where governments have introduced gender equal rights to land and property it's not necessarily the case that those rights are exercised or practiced uh in the way that they should be and you know the example that we always use is is from the world bank uh and the women specifically the women business and law database which says that 171 countries out of 190 in the world have laws in place to guarantee equal home ownership right between land and women but we can see from the data that women aren't always able to exercise those those rights and that's especially the case in the Arab region um the second way in which we can we can use subjective data to tackle sexist norms around land and property and just give me a second while I bring up the screen again um is to um is to pair it with with objective data as we call perceptions data subjective uh but we we can also collect objective uh data characteristics and that can that can help governments to see where their legal protection is not being effective and the example again from the Arab region that other panelists have spoken about is is that of young women in particular uh being forced to or being asked to renounce their uh legal rights even if it's under Sharia law Islamic law or other laws where they are asked to renounce their legal rights to land and property to their brothers and to their uncles and for instance this is showing the data uh you know rates of tenure security between men and women by objective data characteristic and you can see where the difference is live the women's rates are in orange the men's rates rates are in purple and you can see that there's a big difference between uh men and women within the 18 to 24 uh age category so that really shows you that you know especially if you go on to analyze the data further it's especially the case in rural regions where young women are obviously feel quite insecure about their land and property rights and the possible reason for that may be that they are they are being asked to renounce their rights and so that gives governments an idea of where to strengthen the legal rights that they've already put in place whether that's through awareness raising as the other panelists have spoken about another good example of that is by using male champions so some male members of the community to promote women's land rights and champion them and to to force that change in social norms and attitudes that's so important to achieve this just very briefly I mean there's another area in the Arab region which is especially among women who are financially disadvantaged and there are big gender differences when you look at the differences between tenure security of men and women in low income groups and then finally so so third um uh let me just stop sharing this so concentrate the third way in which we can use subjective data to to tackle sexist norms is actually about asking men and women about their preferences and I know this sounds a bit strange but actually I was very happy that Weil talked about um the Gulf countries because this is where you can see this as an opportunity because um there's some very interesting research by Najaba or others that shows that in many Arab countries women actually don't prefer to inherit fixed assets such as land and property especially when it's in rural areas that are affected by these patriarchal uh social norms and actually there are uh non-fixed assets that that that women would prefer to inherit or to acquire and I think one area of land policy that isn't really explored enough in this from a gender perspective is exactly that is is using rentals a good quality affordable rents to empower women because it gives people it gives women the opportunity to be in the proximity of employment opportunities of educational opportunities and if it's available then then women can for instance move to cities and that's that's kind of what we see in the in the Gulf region where rates of ownership are extremely low and although it's very early days and a lot of the rental arrangements in the Gulf region are simply not adequate and there's actually a lot of insecurity within uh many women who desire them but it's something that we need to explore a bit further and actually ask men and women what do they prefer do they prefer to inherit this piece of land and property or they prefer to move somewhere else and maybe inherit non-fixed assets so I'll stop there thank you thank you Joe thank you and this will bring us to the third part of this webinar to discuss more concretely about how access to information dental technologies will be instrumental to support and power women their capacity to access land I would like to bring in someone from their audience Winnie Kamau Winnie I would like to ask you I would like to ask you from your perspective as a journalist how are women using technology and data or the media to elevate their voices Kenya where you work and advocate for the land rights and housing can you bring in your experience hi everyone and thank you for the opportunity to be able to share some of my experiences some of the things that we we have seen I hope you can hear me there's some construction being done in the office I'm trying to baffle out all the noise so in Kenya we are I'm from Nairobi Kenya and we have a law that was passed in the 80s and then it's a succession law and then in the 90s it was amended to include both men and women that the sons and daughters would inherit land and despite their gender and whether they are married or not but this has not been adhered to so over the over time the cultural practices is that the people do not get in many cultures because we are many communities in Kenya in many cultures so women do not inherit they are seen as they are seen as as passabytes in the family in that they will come in the family as girls they will grow up to as as big daughters and once they grow up they are eligible for marriage and once they are married they are now given off to their suitors and to their husbands so they women culturally in many cultures in Kenya are seen as passabytes so they are not entitled to inherit any piece of land so that poses a danger even though in law it has been accepted and the government has already issued the directive and they've already gazetted everything the women should inherit land and culturally this is just seen like it's an abomination for a woman to be able to inherit a piece of land so that's where the clash is but over time we're looking at some of the some of the tools that have empowered women and enabled women to be able to acquire land and we're looking at the social media channels that have really helped women and looking at Facebook looking at WhatsApp so what women have done they've come together in small groups and they know they they they do not stand a chance of owning land because land in Kenya is very expensive owning land is very expensive and if you can get land you can't inherit land from your parents or from your husband then you come together as a group young women old women they come together they there's this thing we call it chama so you create a community a small community and you are able to bring in you you give in your money you appoint a treasurer you appoint like how would I say it it's it looks like what we call table banking you come together as friends you appoint a treasurer who is in charge of the money and who collects the money from you every month and with a mission of owning a piece of land at the end of maybe one year or two years you'll have collected enough every month you've you've come together and you meet people meet and with the or with the covid pandemic people are meeting virtually so you meet up on zoom or google meet and or whatsapp and you chat and you talk about you identify a piece of land you'd like to buy and then from there on you go in and you can even involve their groups which have involved banks who give them collateral I mean who give them money and loans and they're able to buy pieces of land and from there they are able to empower themselves because once you have a title deed then you're an empowered woman because then you can always use it as a collateral for the next loan and to be able to empower yourself and grow yourself we're looking at uh uh channels like facebook so like facebook we found that uh there are groups that have been created by young men and women and here they're they're able to display like um you can see their groups like for um owning a piece of land and people come together and they have the conversation so how is it for you owning a piece of land and there's also conversations that come up on how did you develop your land you can develop your land for ten thousand dollars you can develop your land for you can buy land for five hundred dollars and from there on as in from all these channels people now are empowered if you see a friend on owning uh on facebook owning a piece of land ensuring of their their their house that they have been able to build then you you you feel challenged as a human being you're like if so and so can own a piece of land if so and so can be able to build on their on their piece of land then i can also do it so that's an empowering tool for us and uh it is working although the challenge of inheriting land from your parents and from your husband it's still there but people are finding ways to circumvent the challenge that is there yeah thank you winnie thank you this is a great example of our access to information even using social media really empowers sorry uh laura i also forgot that to say that uh currently the government is digitizing land land data so very soon maybe they will be able to share with us the data and hopefully it will have captured the the the gender disaggregated data yeah and hopefully it will be easier to the data yes but they also need to make it open right yes yes from a group kenya is is doing in your country in empowering women to have access to disaggregated data and and and use the data actually to advocate for better laws and policies and women land rights as well as our colleagues in in brazil in perlambuco doing a great great job in empowering women by um you know organizing groups of women to to assess and analyze gender data let me go now to fortainia back to another question of course the technology can be used as a tool to raise voices but one of the main discussions during the arab land conference was also data for transparency you know it can also increase transparency and accountability so what what do you think the implications are for women in this region for them yeah well um data transparency has freshened up all to do in my opinion with trust uh and how women could get access to all these digital technologies so it has to do with information it has to do with knowing their rights it has to do also evaluating what are the current policies and legislation around their land rights for example and all this could be done with capacity building raising awareness it's exactly what we mentioned earlier it can be done through consultations and knowing their rights and of course governments would also have a role in this with the relevant data infrastructure with the digital platforms um with the relevant policies everything should be uh into consideration to enhance data transparency um so another issue I would say is to for women to know the benefits of when they're sharing their data because in many cases they don't receive and they don't get back the value from the sharing their data the services and the products that's an issue that needs to be addressed in over or not only about their land rights but in general their data rights um and what is important I would say again is to um work more about the legislation the current legislation what Obreta mentioned I think it's a very very good example how things could move forward in the MENA region yeah I think it's an excellent initiative I think it's an excellent progress but it needs to raise awareness and empowerment of women to know their rights and really protect their rights in general this is what I would say thank you for the unit let's hear from um museums again now and how technology helps women in to access their land rights in Jordan yes I would like to show you or I don't know if we have time but if you go to the website of the Jordan land department you can see that you have access you can zoom in to each plot number you could also do a request not online but asking about the property owned by your father your grandfather I mentioned since 10 years you are obliged by law to know precisely okay but what is not mentioned is that the price of land women are kept ignorant ignorant of the real value of the land they are renouncing to and most of the time they are given a symbolic compensation but not equivalent to the money we are talking amount of money I want to give you an example this is linked to the lack of taxation of vacant urban land within the cities in the Arab world we have taxation now since 2015 in Saudi Arabia okay we don't have that in the other cities so what is the impact I want when the we need spoke about access to land for 500 you cannot access anything in Jordan with 500 dollar because I want to tell you a plot of land a thousand square meter within a man is one million dollar okay one million dollar the plot of land a thousand square meter if you go of course in the countryside it will be ten thousand ten thousand to fifty thousand dollar but you need you need to gather that amount of money when your salary as a teacher will be three hundred or four hundred dollar or maybe let's say as an engineer you will reach a thousand dollar you know so this is we are talking about big money and big business and this is a main a male immense world you know they are not most of the discussion they are not informed about that and in the event there is an underestimation of the value of land you know so when we talk about the fact that it's a glass ceiling it's a real economy glass ceiling to women because if you do not inherit from the from or if you don't have a rich husband you know you will not get large property you cannot get them you know except for inheritance of course and except and it's really interesting because Joseph mentioned that you and also I think for Taini you must distinguish between inheritance of money and inheritance of land what we about land but money you cannot you could be you could renounce to your money also but it's less difficult it's more difficult because you receive a check in your own name you could not assign a power of attorney you cannot renounce even if you are sick you will be carried you know but you must go to the Shia court of your locality to receive your check okay so this is also important you know you cannot deprive economically you know maybe go into details and another point I would like to say and we didn't mention that of course you have hope okay but you could take the example of Turkey and it's not it doesn't give a lot of hope since 1926 you have the three civil code that is applied and equality inherited between men and women so you have one century you know to look at what happened and what happened you have it's okay property female property in the cities in the large cities but in the Anatolian region in the southeastern region women still are under pressure you know to renounce the right so let's go back to of course the as Winnie mentioned you have information okay social media you can discuss about the transactions the prices what you are renouncing to also you could so I mentioned inheritance of money you could also mention the fact that women own 22% of shares of companies and for me this is fascinating 22% of shares you know in Jordan are owned by women so okay in detail sometimes I have to sign another contract you know telling that they will not decide by themselves about the selling of this action and shares these are ways for the husband and father to hide or to protect some of the assets you know in case of default of payment in case of bankruptcy or something like that so in fact I hope that what's happening since 10 years digitization social media forums and also and female woman business woman you know you have of course you have an elite you have a bourgeoisie you have a high bourgeoisie and in the last bourgeoisie when you marry it's elegant to have to receive an apartment in your own name you know it's not even big co-owner I mean you're from from the elite of course you will marry this fancy man and have this fancy apartment because you are you know that in case of divorce you enter poverty poverty compare the status of poverty of divorce men to divorce women in the Minas region uh-oh that's strange because your brother is supposed to uh to to to to to to support you you know you have the Mukawama they are supposed to support you so I don't want to be but let's say only uh 16 percent of women are working with salary where are our Marie Curie where are our genius where where are all the women who could have deposed some uh you know uh how do you know uh how is patent you know who are the women with patent who are the arab uh you know why where are they there are secondary school teachers university at best you know this is the only hope we have you know to reach excellencies in academia and sometime enter the world bank or you know this is terrible I think this is terrible so anyway thank institution of powers now our relations between women and women in society of course you touch a very interesting point about um absence of land value transparency no we absence information yes but what information there is someone from the audience that would like to say something about it uh let me give the floor to Raffi to talk about a couple of minutes to say to to to share his perspective Raffi cover to you take the floor please just unmute yourself yes do you hear me now Laura yes yeah well good afternoon to everybody good morning to our colleagues from the United States and Americas I wanted to congratulate everybody for the very interesting presentations that we have heard I would like to say one or two things first of all the transparency that value transparency is a major issue in the Arab world and in in particular when it comes of course to land we have in in Europe the the reports public reports for instance about land land transactions and the the value of the square meter for an apartment for instance is well known and and the the value of agricultural land also is is very well known and it is monitored and published so I mean these issues we are still to be to be I mean valid and and available in the Arab world this is fundamental I wanted also to say one thing about women and it is clear now we have there are several reports saying that women students in the Arab world are more much more interested now than their the male their male fellow colleagues in scientific technical engineering and mathematical studies so I think that we should develop training in terms of geographic information for all these women who are working in such fields so that the the use of the production of data and the use of at least open softwares can be I mean a tool to empower them at least from the scientific point of view and encourage them to be more productive in this particular regard and this could also help help them to empower their rights thank you thank you your interesting perspective the remaining on land values and taxes there is a question from the audience I would like to address too well if you wish to respond the question is I would like to know if land is sold or exchange in Arab countries and if so are women allowed to buy land yeah no you know absolutely the Arab countries there's a free market I would say you know with regard to land there is no restriction in any of the Arab countries to buy you know and sell property very vibrant you know land market and most all of them and absolutely women have the full right you know by law you know to buy property to own property you know to own it jointly with the with the husband you know as well as we discuss I mean to inherit it according to you know to the existing laws that most of them are a sharia you know law so I do really no restrictions with regard to the buying land on the on the on the valuation and the inheritance let me just say one thing you know when we say the inheritance land you know women we you know we call for you know women to get their rightful inheritance for land that does not mean that they will get you know a small piece of land and every time there is some kind of an inheritance especially in areas where you know the land holding is very small you know and if you're going to to divine you know the land you know to give to the rightful here you know the deceased person you know you will end up with a very very small you know parcels of land and economically speaking that probably is not the best way to do and therefore you know what we call for you know is women get their rightful inheritance now in some cases where the land cannot be divided because it's too small you know the value of the land need to be you know determined and this is where I think is the valuation of the land becomes you know very important so that women can get you know their their fair share you know in monetary you know terms with regard to their share of the inheritance you know of that so it's not necessarily and every time you know the the women will get a small piece of land or or part of the building or the apartment but the system should allow the fair valuation according to the market value you know and getting the market value is not you know it can be done easily you know in my view in certain cases even if the government does not have the the met the price of techniques to determine market value but they can you know higher values in order to determine the fair market value you know of the public yes thank you well and and fragmentation of inherited land is also a problem for having plots that are not big enough to manage to be profitable say Serima Begdaki from the audience and let's now ask another question when you look to the data and agriculture holding women's in our countries are holding less than 10 percent what are the main causes can't we think of the polygamy as kind of a cause because these make husband having to kind of distribute their land to many wives is who wants to respond to this question and address this issue from our panelists that talk about social norms here I just want to say I don't know I guess Joseph studied that but no no there's no impact and the polygamy you know most really no no it's really a little phenomenon it's like a nine percent of wedding in Jordan and even sometime it's no no really it's not well spread and I don't think but it's not impacting as much no no no but yeah thank you so much thank you so we are I think at the end um I wanted to thank all the panelists and your great contribution to the discussion I think you have been your your contribution have been invaluable and and so diverse and bringing different perspectives thank you so much I hope the webinar was interesting you will find the recording on the line portal if you want to distribute to your colleagues or in our YouTube channel thank you for attending and we have another webinar scheduled on the 22nd of April on indigenous and how they contribute to reduce carbon emissions and mitigate climate change please keep following us and thank you again and have a great day bye bye hi hi thank you thank you thank you