Policy brief: Community land rights in the “Zero Draft” of the Post-2015 Agenda

The United Nation’s  post-2015 development agenda’s transformative potential depends on the extent to which it can address the structural factors that entrench global inequalities ranging from poverty to food insecurity. Many organizations consider secure and equitable rights to land and natural resources to be fundamental to achieving the agenda’s goals.

However, the zero draft fails to recognize that land tenure governance is often community-based, and is organized according to local, customary laws. It is imperative that these tenure systems are strengthened rather than fragmented, and that collective rights are recognized alongside purely individual ones.

The Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), Oxfam, and the Secretariat of the International Land Coalition (ILC) have proposed a revision of six of the agenda’s goals to better ensure that positive change reaches those most reliant on land-based resources, particularly women and Indigenous Peoples.

The full policy brief can be accessed here.