A chapter from the Guide that summaries the five stages of the community land protection process developed by Namati and partners.
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This resource is one chapter from Namati’s Community Land Protection Facilitators Guide, which can be accessed here. To view all the individual chapters and supporting resources, refer to the interactive online version of the Community Land Protection Facilitators Guide here.
A chapter from the Guide that provides a short introduction to the global context for community land protection and the history of how Namati developed its community land protection approach.
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This resource is one chapter from Namati’s Community Land Protection Facilitators Guide, which can be accessed here. To view all the individual chapters and supporting resources, refer to the interactive online version of the Community Land Protection Facilitators Guide here.
Major reforms are necessary to ensure that investment projects lead to sustainable, inclusive development in Sierra Leone. Namati’s Sonkita Conteh and Vivek Maru argue that President Koroma can make these happen, and during the West African leader’s visit to Washington, Obama should urge him to do so.
In this report Namati and Landesa highlight the pressing need of Myanmar’s rural population – and recommend potential solutions – as the Myanmar government embarks on wide-reaching land policy reform.
Myanmar is undergoing a major transition, opening space for significant change for the first time in decades. Secure land tenure for smallholder farmers and rural communities is essential in a heavily agrarian nation like Myanmar, where millions in the rural population – nearly 70% of the country – depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. Despite some updates to the legal framework, such as the 2012 Farmland Law and Vacant, Fallow, and Virgin Land Law, millions of Myanmar farmers remain vulnerable with insecure land tenure due to a complex and opaque set of land laws, unresolved historical land grievances, and widespread landlessness.
The common aim of Namati and Landesa is to support the development of a protective, pro-poor legal framework, that will empower farmers to use the law, make informed decisions about their land, and maintain secure land tenure – ultimately leading to poverty alleviation for poor, rural women and men.
Since the start of its Myanmar program in 2013, Namati and local partner Civil and Political Rights Campaign Group (CPRCG) have deployed 30 community-based paralegals in seven states and divisions to help farmers secure land tenure under Myanmar law. In two years, the paralegals worked alongside farming families and large groups of farmers to seek solutions to over 2500 land issues.
The Namati-CPRCG paralegals also rigorously track every case to build an understanding of how farmers experience interactions with land-related laws and administrative systems. With paralegals across Myanmar including central lowlands and ethnic states, the geographic breadth of the program allows for meaningful comparisons of implementation and government decision- making across regions.
Landesa, a US-based nonprofit, has worked on issues of secure land rights for poor, rural women and men, including landless families, in over 50 countries since 1967, including comparative fieldwork and policy review in a dozen Asian countries (including five that have successfully carried out major land tenure reforms: Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, China, and Vietnam). In addition to this extensive regional experience, Landesa has carried out fieldwork in multiple areas of rural Myanmar.
The discussion and recommendations below are informed by the complementary perspectives and experience of Landesa and Namati – international and comparative examples of land reform and best practices, grassroots data from the experiences of Myanmar farmers, and additional fieldwork conducted by both organizations throughout the country.
The regulations covering India’s environmentally sensitive coastal regulation zones (CRZ) are often written in highly technical and bureaucratic language. Namati and the Centre for Policy Research have produced these pocket CRZ Report Cards to clarify not only what the regulations mean in user-friendly language, but to illustrate how effective the various bodies created to protect the CRZs have been at fulfilling their remits.
The report cards are available for the following topics:
NAMATI prepared this curriculum in response to a request for more guidance on the role that paralegals can play in defending and asserting the rights of communities in land acquisition cases, beyond the crucial task of fact-finding.
There is a great need for paralegal involvement in land acquisition cases in Sierra Leone. Nearly one-fifth of Sierra Leone’s arable land is now covered by or under negotiation for large-scale lease agreements, aiming to extract deposits of iron ore, platinum, gold, diamonds, bauxite, and rutile and to utilize the fertile land to produce ethanol, rubber, oil palm, and other agricultural products. The Government of Sierra Leone points to the burgeoning minerals and agribusiness industries as holding the potential to lift Sierra Leone to a middle-income country, in addition to bringing jobs, health clinics, and schools.
On the one hand, Sierra Leone boasted an economic growth of 20.1% last year; On the other hand, its Human Development Index remains one of the lowest in the world. This disparity shows that the growth in the economy is not actually benefiting many of the communities most affected by the large-scale land acquisitions. In fact, in Namati’s experience, many of the communities whose land has been acquired or who live next to a large-scale land acquisition by a mining or agribusiness company suffer negative impacts.
To create more equitable land agreements that benefit holders of large-scale land licenses and communities in a “win-win” situation, paralegals can strive to preventatively meet with communities to inform them of their rights, work with the communities to decide the best option for them given a potential land lease, and work with communities already affected by a lease to advocate for better environmental policies or to renegotiate the contract.
Table of Contents:
Introduction 1
Overview of Sierra Leone Land Law and Policy 2
Advocating for Land Rights of Communities 4
Este manual apresenta informação que pode ser usada na promoção e defesa do direito a saúde no geral e dos grupos vulneráveis e populações chave em particular. O principal objectivo deste manual é de ser uma ferramenta útil para capacitação inicial dos paralegais, defensores de saúde e dos agentes comunitários como pessoas chave que ao nível da comunidade têm o papel de realizar sessões educativas sobre os direitos e deveres, de auscultar as barreiras de acesso aos serviços de saude, e de colaborar na resolução das queixas e reclamações.
Este manual foi desenvolvido pela Namati em parceria com o Centro de Colaboração em Saúde (CCS) e a Fundação para o Desenvolvimento da Comunidade (FDC). O manual apresenta os seguintes cinco módulos: 1) direitos humanos 2) protecção dos grupos vulneráveis 3) participação do cidadão na saúde 4) protecção jurídica e 5) o papel do paralegal ou defensor de saúde. Cada modulo possui exercícios práticos, e o manual contem um guião de correcção que inclui dicas em termos de metodologias de capacitação.
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The Training Manual for Paralegals, Health Advocates and Community Workers: Health, Human Rights and Access to Justice is meant to be used in the promotion and protection of the right to health, with a focus on vulnerable groups and key populations. The principal objective of the manual is to serve as a tool in the initial training of paralegals, health advocates and community agents who play an integral role in educating patients and communities about their rights and responsibilities and identifying and resolving health systems barriers that prevent people form accessing services.
The manual was developed by Namati in partnership with the Center for Collaboration in Health (CCS) and the Foundation for Community Development (FDC). It includes the following five modules: 1) human rights, 2) protection of vulnerable groups, 3) citizen participation in the health sector, 4) legal protection, and 5) the role of the paralegal or health advocate. Each module contains practical exercises, and the manual includes a facilitator’s guide with suggestions on training methodology.
Abigail Moy is the Director of the Grassroots Justice Network, convened by Namati. Since Namati’s earliest days, she has led efforts to build a thriving global movement for legal empowerment: one capable of innovating boldly and collectively tackling the greatest justice challenges of our time. The Grassroots Justice Network works to achieve this vision by connecting, strengthening, and expanding the number of community paralegals around the world. Prior to joining Namati, Abigail worked with access to justice programs in Africa, Latin America, and South Asia, in cooperation with the World Bank, The Asia Foundation, Fundación Soros-Guatemala, and Timap for Justice. She previously clerked for the Hon. David H. Coar in the Northern District of Illinois, served in the Office of the Legal Adviser at the United States Department of State, and worked in the New York office of White & Case, LLP. Moy was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship, graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School, and holds a master’s degree in law and development from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.
This report details the symposium proceedings, and outlines next steps that participants committed to in furthering their work around community land and natural resources protection.
A blog post by Temitayo O. Peters that summarizes the launch of the “Advocacy: Justice and the SDGs” toolkit created by Namati and other members of the Transparency, Accountability, and Participation (TAP) Network.