Hi Andrea,
The Global Women’s Resources Rights Initiative (WRR) aimed at promoting and strengthening women’s land rights through piloting gender transformative approaches (GTAs) in the context of IFAD funded agricultural development projects. The initiative involved 6 projects across the globe and one of them was the Resilience of Organizations for Transformative Smallholder Agriculture Programme (ROOTS) in The Gambia. The process for developing the pilot GTAs involved a thorough gender analysis of the legal, social and cultural context that determined women’s land rights in the country, followed by a sensemaking exercise with key stakeholders and a process of co-creation with relevant local partners. The resulting approach consisted in developing a process to strengthen rural women’s capacities to advocate for land rights and opening spaces and opportunities to do this before authorities at different levels.
The process was intended to establish a viable Multi-Stakeholder Platform to advocate and campaign for policy changes that benefit rural women’s land rights and was carried out in 6 steps each feeding into the next, and culminating in a national-level event that brings together key actors around the central theme of increasing women’s land rights. This approach was led by the Rural Women’s Assembly, a women-led community-based organization with a country-wide presence and facilitated by Action Aid International The Gambia (AAITG). The process was operationalized through consultations with communities and local and traditional authorities to engage in discussions on WLR aimed at catalyzing change. More information and details about the 6-step process, as well as the benefits and lessons learned from this bottom up approach, can be found here: https://www.cifor-icraf.org/knowledge/publication/9267/ .
Parallel to this process, the Female Lawyers Association of The Gambia (FLAG) developed a Legal Guide to Women’s Land Rights in The Gambia with the purpose of raising awareness of WLR and clarify the process of obtaining legal documentation for rural people, and especially women. The written Guide is accompanied by audio voice overs and other accessible materials that will enable stakeholders to deliver training at district and community levels.
FLAG conducted a Training of Trainers (ToT) for members of the Rural Women’s Assembly, platform coordinators and AAITG and IFAD staff, to clarify concepts in the Guide, walking through the processes for formally registering land and instructions on how/where to find technical support. They also designed and implemented step-down trainings for communities in the campaign districts, carried out by previously trained members of the RWA, and platform coordinators. The intention of these trainings was to raise awareness of documentation of land and encourage women who are allocated land to formally register it and secure their tenure .
Ana Maria Paez-Valencia