Officials from FAO and stakeholders from various institutions and traditional authorities pose for a picture during the validation workshop for the VGGT Otjiherero translation.

Two separate validation workshops of the translated versions of the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (VGGT) recently took place in Namibia’s capital city, Windhoek.

The validation workshops, which took place on the 26-29 October 2020, sought to engage a range of stakeholders in a bid to ensure that the interpreted versions correctly convey the contents of the English version which has been translated into two Namibian indigenous languages namely, Otjiherero and Khoekhoegowab (also referred to as Damara-Nama).

The translations were prompted by a request made during the VGGT guided capacity-building workshop for Namibian Parliamentarians which was held in June 2019. The workshop, which was organized by FAO, provided an introduction to the VGGTs and promoted their application in coherence with the Framework and Guidelines on Land Policy in Africa (F&G) in responding to land reform challenges in Namibia.

The said workshop revealed that there is a need to urgently extend the VGGT and F&G training to traditional authorities that are responsible for managing communal land from which the majority of Namibians draw their livelihoods. This was seen as an essential means to raise awareness and build the capacity of traditional authorities and other stakeholders to effectively administer communal land.

The validated VGGT version in Otjiherero and Khoekhoegowab will further be simplified into illustrated versions to facilitate capacity development of traditional authorities and other stakeholders in the application of VGGT for administration of the Communal Land Reform Act.

The locally translated versions were validated by various stakeholders during the workshops, including traditional authorities; officials from the Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Land Reform (MAWLR); the University of Namibia (UNAM) and Namibia University of Science and Technology (NUST).

Read up more on the VGGT here: http://www.fao.org/policy-support/mechanisms/mechanisms-details/en/c/448858/