Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty 2015: Linking Land Tenure and Use for Shared Prosperity

Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty 2015: Linking Land Tenure and Use for Shared Prosperity

March 23-27, 2015

Washington, DC

The Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty organized by the World Bank Development Economic Research Group (DECRG) is a key global event where representatives from governments, civil society, academia, the development community, and the private sector come together annually to discuss new developments and progress on land policy and implementation. The conference aims to foster dialogue and sharing of best practices on the diversity of reforms, approaches and experiences that are being implemented in land sectors around the world.

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• IMPORTANT DATES
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LAND AND POVERTY CONFERENCE 2015

• TITLE: "Linking Land Tenure and Use for Shared Prosperity"
• ORGANIZER: Nisma Elias (202) 458-5628
• CONTACT: Land Conference 2015 landconference@worldbank.org

Preliminary Program

The World Bank is pleased to announce the 16^th Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty to be held from March 23 – 27, 2015 at the World Bank Headquarters in Washington D.C. Participants include leaders and professionals from across governments, civil society, academia, the private sector and partners to interact and discuss innovative approaches to improving land governance. Last year’s conference attracted more than 1,000 participants from 101 countries; 60 percent of participants were from developing countries, about a fourth representing government officials and another fourth from international organizations.

The theme for 2015 is Linking Land Tenure and Use for Shared Prosperity. The topic highlights that, while land tenure affects the distribution of assets between men and women, generations, and social groups, patterns of land use will have far-reaching implications for welfare and other socioeconomic outcomes at household, community, or landscape level. Although they are by no means a silver bullet, recent innovations in geospatial technologies provide exciting opportunities to document and analyze determinants, as well as impacts of land use change that are of great relevance for policy, projects, and research in this area.

Conference Structure

The conference will start on March 23 at 5pm and conclude on March 27. A pre-conference workshop on ‘monitoring land governance’ will be held immediately preceding the opening session on March 23. Sessions comprising select papers and debates on important innovations and policy issues will run concurrently on March 24-26, together with poster presentations. An Innovations Fair featuring how innovations in technology and open data can help improve land governance at scale will be held on March 26 and a post-conference learning day on March 27 will offer hands-on classes to familiarize participants with cutting edge tools and techniques developed to help policy makers.

March 27 — Post-conference Learning Day

There has been considerable interest by participants to gain hands-on experience with cutting edge tools and techniques in order to improve land governance. To respond to this interest, we will provide an opportunity to sponsors and partners to offer master classes or clinics for a limited number of participants in a classroom setting. Events will be published in the program book and participation will be by registration only, with the possibility of repeat classes if interest is high.

March 26 — Innovations Fair

A new feature to be introduced to the 2015 Conference is a full day focusing on solutions for land administration and management.  Service providers and technology vendors are invited to present solutions in a show-and-tell day.  The scope of the Innovations Fair is expected to cover land and geographic information systems, earth observation satellite imagery data acquisition and applications, aerial imagery, satellite positioning applications and location based services, online services and e-governance, land surveying, data conversion, data security, standards, systems interoperability, open systems, social media, volunteer geographic information, etc.  The Innovations Fair will encourage hands-on interaction with conference participants looking for solutions to the land challenges of the post-2015 Development Agenda. If you are interested in participating in the Innovations Fair, please fill out the online form. 

If you are interested in offering a master class, please fill out the online proposal. Priority to offer a Master class will be given to Sponsors. In case we receive more proposals than we have rooms available, preference will be given to sponsors.

The thematic areas for the 2015 Conference are:

1. Land tenure, climate smart land use, and resilience.
2. The role of land tenure in effecting urban form, density, and urban-rural linkages.
3. Impacts of large scale land-based investment, implementation challenges, and policy implications.
4. Scalable approaches to improving tenure security and their impacts.
5. Using standards-based geospatial technologies to monitor land use and improve land governance.
6. Harnessing the potential of open data for transparency.
7. Advances with securing and protecting land rights from a gender perspective.
8. Innovations on improving access to justice.
9. Tenure security in conflict states and resource rich economies.
10. Benchmarking, performance monitoring and policy dialogue: from local to global.

The people pushed out of Ethiopia's fertile farmland - BBC News

By Matthew Newsome

Ethiopia

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The construction of a huge dam in Ethiopia and the introduction of large-scale agricultural businesses has been controversial - finding out what local people think can be hard, but with the help of a bottle of rum nothing is impossible.

After waiting several weeks for letters of permission from various Ethiopian ministries, I begin my road trip into the country's southern lowlands.

I want to investigate the government's controversial plan to take over vast swathes of ancestral land, home to around 100,000 indigenous pastoralists, and turn it into a major centre for commercial agriculture, where foreign agribusinesses and government plantations would raise cash crops such as sugar and palm oil.

After driving 800km (497 miles) over two days through Ethiopia's lush highlands I begin my descent into the lower Omo valley. Here, where palaeontologists have discovered some of the oldest human remains on earth, some ancient ways of life cling on.

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Some tourists can be found here seeking a glimpse of an Africa that lives in their imagination. But the government's plan to "modernise" this so-called "backward" area has made it inaccessible for journalists.

As my jeep bounces down into the valley, I watch as people decorated in white body paint and clad in elaborate jewellery made from feathers and cow horn herd their cows down the dusty track.

I arrive late in the afternoon at a village I won't name, hoping to speak to some Mursi people - a group of around 7,000 famous for wearing huge ornamental clay lip plates.

The Mursi way of life is in jeopardy. They are being resettled to make way for a major sugar plantation on their ancestral land - so ending their tradition of cattle herding.

Meanwhile, a massive new dam upstream will reduce the Omo River, ending its seasonal flood - and the food crops they grow on its banks.

It is without doubt one of the most sensitive stories in Ethiopia and one the government is keen to suppress.

Human rights groups have repeatedly criticised schemes like this, alleging that locals are being abused and coerced into compliance.

I'd spoken to local senior officials in the provincial capital of Jinka, before travelling into the remote savannah.

The suspicion is palpable as the chief of the south Omo zone lectures me. Local people and the area's reputation have been greatly harmed by the negative reports by foreigners, he says.

Eventually a frank exchange takes place and I secure verbal permission to report on the changes taking place in the valley.

The Gibe III Dam

The Gibe III Dam under construction in 2012

• Situated approximately 300km south-west of the capital Addis Ababa, the dam is 246m high
• Work started in July 2006 and was estimated to take 118 months (nearly 10 years)
• The government says it will provide much needed-power and help develop the country's economy
• Authorities say no-one has been forced from their home

It seems prudent to let the Mursi tribe and attendant police warm to my presence before I start asking questions. After all, I have the whole evening.

But a brief chat with the tribe ends abruptly with the entrance of a police officer, wearing a replica Manchester United football shirt, vehemently waving a dog-eared copy of the country's constitution.

I am prohibited from talking to anyone and must immediately climb back into my jeep, drive back up the mountain and return to Jinka, he says.

As often in Ethiopia, he doesn't explain exactly why.

I object to driving through the wilderness at dusk on safety grounds and so a compromise is reached: I will pitch my hammock outside the police station, a short stroll away from the village, with armed guards watching my every move.

The political boss of the zone comes on the two-way radio. "This is house arrest," I protest. "No, just a misunderstanding," he replies.

The prospect of returning home without interviews is unthinkable. My ruse is to distract my captors.

I sit them down for a meal of pasta and vegetables - and brimming beakers of spiced rum - in front of my laptop, which is playing an Ethiopian comedy.

After saying good night I strike out through the scrubland.

I run without sense of direction through bush and bog, crawl under fences, and negotiate large herds of noisy cattle. I have to find a village elder I met earlier, and interview him before policemen and their flashlights turn up.

So I am relieved to stumble on two boys milking their cows in the moonlight. They lead me to the elder's hut. The sound of so many rudely-awakened animals in our wake fills me with dread that searchlights are heading our way.

The moment arrives. I squat in front of the elder inside his mud dwelling, surrounded by his sleeping companions: several cows, a goat and a cat. My dictaphone is poised to record truths heard by few journalists in this media-muzzled region.

I ask him in broken Amharic what is going on. He tells me: "The government is telling us to sell our cattle and modernise like townspeople - they say our land is the property of the sugar corporation. We have not been asked what we want or need.

"If we do not accept the resettlement plans, we'll be taken to jail. How can we survive if we have no access to land, cattle or water?"

I promptly thank the elder for his time, apologise for disrupting his evening and head back to my open-air jail.

On reaching my hammock I find several dozing policemen and an empty bottle of rum. Mission accomplished.

The Mursi people

• About 10,000 Mursi people live in Ethiopia
• Traditionally insert pottery plates known as debhinya in the lower lips of young women
• They live in an area surrounded by the rivers Mara, Omo and Mago, which flow into Lake Turkana
• Mursi territory was incorporated into Ethiopia during the reign of King Menelik II in the 19th Century

Source: Oxford University Department of International Development

'via Blog this'

Saudi Star To Restart Rice Project on Disputed Anuak Lands in Ethiopia - CorpWatch :

Lands in Ethiopia by Fatima Hansia , CorpWatch Blog December 30th, 2014

An abandoned Anuak village in Gambella, Ethiopia. Photo: Julio Garcia. Used under Creative Commons license. Saudi Star Agricultural Development plans to pump $100 million into a rice export project in Gambella region of Ethiopia despite allegations of human rights violations surrounding the “villagization” program under which the land has been taken from indigenous Anuak pastoralists to lease to foreign investors. The company is owned by Mohamed al-Amoudi, who was born in Ethiopia to a Saudi father and an Ethiopian mother. Al-Amoudi made a fortune from construction contracts to build Saudi Arabia's national underground oil storage complex. Now a billionaire many times over, al-Amoudi has invested heavily in Ethiopia where he owns a gold mine and a majority stake in the national oil company. Al-Amoudi was one of the first to invest in a new scheme under which president Meles Zenawi offered to lease four million hectares of agricultural land to foreign investors and his company was also one of the first to become the subject of controversy. After Saudi Star was awarded a 10,000 hectare (24,700 acres) lease in 2008, a dozen aggrieved Anuak villagers attacked Saudi Star’s compound in Gambella in 2010 and killed several employees. Saudi Star abandoned work at the time but this past November the company announced that it would return to invest millions to grow rice using new large-scale flood irrigation techniques. Saudi Star hopes to sell its produce to Saudi Arabia under King Abdullah’s Food Security Program.  “We know we’re creating job opportunities, transforming skills, training local indigenous Anuak,” Jemal Ahmed, Saudi Star CEO told Bloomberg.  “The government wants the project to be a success and see more Gambella people able to work and produce more, that’s the big hope.” But activists say that Saudi Star’s newly invigorated project in Gambella is likely to have a detrimental impact on the local population, notably pastoralist groups like the Anuak as well as the Nuer. “Sadly, right now, the Anuak, nearly all small subsistence farmers, are becoming refugees in their own land as they are internally displaced from indigenous land their ancestors have possessed for centuries,” Obang Metho, Executive Director of Solidarity Movement for a New Ethiopia, told the Africa Congress on Effective Cooperation for a Green Africa. “They have become ‘discardable’ by a regime that wants their land, but not for them, in order to lease it to foreigners and regime-cronies for commercial farms,” he added. All told as many as 1.5 million subsistence farmers are expected to be offered voluntary relocation to new settlements where the government has told them that they will be given housing, social services and support infrastructure under the villagization program. However, activists like Human Rights Watch and the Oakland Institute say that the relocation process has been plagued by violence and broken promises. Instead of getting housing, villagers are forced to build their own tukols – traditional huts – and risk beatings if they speak out, says Human Rights Watch, which conducted interviews of 100 residents during the first round of villagization that occurred in 2010. The majority of resettlements did not have a school, health clinic or even water wells, says the Oakland Institute. Lack of agricultural assistance such as seeds, fertilizers, tools and trainings, have further exacerbated the risk of hunger and starvation among families.  The traditional pastoralist communities also say that they are having a hard time adapting to sedentary farming practices in the new settlements. “We want you to be clear the government brought us here…to die…right here,” an Anuak elder in Abobo district told Human Rights Watch. “They brought us no food, they gave away our land to foreigners so we can’t even move back. On all sides the land is given away, so we will die here in one place.”

Saudi billionaire to invest $100 million in Ethiopian farm -

Saudi billionaire to invest $100 million in Ethiopian farm by William Davison Saudi Star Agricultural Development Plc, an Ethiopian company owned by billionaire Mohamed al-Amoudi, said it plans to invest $100 million in a rice farm in western Ethiopia next year to kick-start the stalled project. The company leased 10,000 hectares (24,711 acres) in the Abobo district in the Gambella region, where it’s based, in 2008 and bought the 4,000-hectare Abobo Agricultural Development Enterprise from the government 18 months ago for 80 million birr ($4 million). After delays caused by unsuitable irrigation design and contractor performance issues, Saudi Star wants to accelerate work in 2015 after a change of management, a redesign of the farm and a successful trial of rain-fed rice on 2,000 hectares at the formerly government-owned operation, Chief Executive Officer Jemal Ahmed said by phone. “We have a very aggressive plan,” he said on Nov. 26 from Jimma, about 260 kilometers (162 miles) southwest of the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. “If we’re able to do that we’ll be able to produce more.” The project is part of a government plan formalized in 2010 to establish commercial farms on 3.3 million hectares of fertile land in sparsely populated parts of the country such as Gambella. Ethiopia expected to earn $6.6 billion a year from agriculture exports in 2015, according to a five-year economic plan published in 2010, though total goods exports last fiscal year brought in $3.3 billion. Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn said in October 2013 that progress on the program had been “very slow.” Billionaire Investor Ethiopia-born al-Amoudi is worth $8.1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which ranks him as the world’s 157th richest person. His company built underground oil-storage facilities in Saudi Arabia and he owns Preem AB, Sweden’s largest crude oil refiner. Al-Amoudi is increasingly investing in formerly government-owned farms in Ethiopia, a nation where companies under his Midroc group operate the only commercial gold mine and built the largest cement plant in 2011. Saudi Star’s $100 million investment will focus primarily on building irrigation infrastructure, including finishing the main canal from the more than 25-year-old Alwero Dam built by Soviet engineers, as well as a rice de-husking plant, storage silos and land clearing, according to Jemal. An initial plan to have the farm divided into 3.75-hectare plots to produce rice from submerged paddy fields has been shelved as unworkable, he said. Only 350 hectares has been developed since 2008 on the land leased for 300,000 Ethiopian birr ($14,908) a year. Economically Unviable “It was not environmentally and economically viable, that’s why they were struggling, so we stopped that,” Jemal said. “We want to make it large-scale flood irrigation, not small ponds.” Saudi Star’s revenue is forecast to be about $60 million in 2016 once the irrigation system is developed, with 60 percent of the aromatic rice exported mainly to Arab nations on the Persian Gulf, Jemal said. Hampering current harvesting are late rains and, for two days in October, unrest in Abobo town after violence between ethnic Anuak, who are indigenous to Gambella, and other Ethiopians. The company has Ethiopian soldiers guarding its compound and about 100 stationed nearby. Two Pakistanis and three Ethiopians employed by Ghulam Rasool & Co., a closely held Pakistani engineering company building the irrigation canal, died in April 2012 after an attack by a group of gunmen. Security Addressed The government has “taken care” of security issues, farm manager Bedilu Abera said while seated in one of the air-conditioned trailers that are now Saudi Star’s headquarters after they were moved from Addis Ababa. Anywaa Survival Organization, a Reading, U.K.-based rights group, said in an Oct. 14 statement that land leases in Gambella have fueled conflict. “The rush for land, water and other essential natural resources has become a curse for indigenous and minority peoples who barely have legal protection and redress,” it said. Saudi Star says only two Anuak villages of huts with sweeping grass roofs lie just outside the project’s boundaries in deep forest. Some local residents complain they’ve not benefited from the investment and that they suffer collective punishment by the military. “They used to kill people from the village,” Akea Ojullo, a 27-year old teacher, said in a Nov. 23 interview in Perbong village. “It got worse after the attack on Saudi Star,” he said. ‘Wrong Project’ The company plans to work with local residents by investing in workers, distributing rice and plowing land for them. “We know we’re creating job opportunities, transforming skills, training local indigenous Anuak, but there’s a campaign to have people perceive it as a wrong project,” Jemal said. The farm still has the backing of officials, even though progress has been slow, Jemal said. “The government wants the project to be a success and see more Gambella people be able to work and produce more,” he said. “That’s the big hope.” Large, complex projects like Saudi Star’s need many years to produce results, Gambella President Gatluak Tut Khot said in an interview in Gambella town. “We are not disappointed about the operation because we know that agricultural operations are very difficult,” he said. “We are giving them time in order to correct every mistake, overcome every obstacle, every challenge they face.” To contact the reporter on this story: William Davison in Addis Ababa at wdavison3@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Antony Sguazzin at asguazzin@bloomberg.net Paul Richardson, Michael Gunn, Sarah McGregor

Ethiopia: Onslaught against Somali-Issais ongoing silently in the Awash River | Somalicurrent.com

Ethiopia: Onslaught against Somali-Issais ongoing silently in the Awash River

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Ethiopian government is implementing a program aimed at selling large swaps of land to foreign and international investors and to fulfill that purpose it wants to clear the area from indigenous Somali-Issa. Already, investors from Saudi Arabia and India are growing crops destined for the international market but not for Ethiopia.

Unfortunately those investments are made at the expense of dwellers like the Somali-Issa who live near the Awash River as pastoralists or agro-pastoralists.

Often the Ethiopian government deports villagers and pastoralists at gunpoint without any compensation. As documented by Human Rights Watch, Survival International and the Oakland institute regarding what happened in Gambella and the Omo River between 2010 and 2012, any resistance is suppressed violently on the assumption that those areas are so remote that neither local nor international media are able to reach and report incidents.

Following the demonstration on 25 November 2014 by the Somali-Issa inhabitants in which 4 elders and 16 youths were jailed respectively for 3 and 2 years in Jigjiga, the capital of the Somali Regional State; another one took placethe14 December 2014 in the town of Gadmaytu.

The federal army fired swiftly and indiscriminately into the crowd. As a result, several pastoralists were killed and dozens were seriously wounded by bullets, among them MahamedDageyeh, AduanBouhdil, HousseinGuirehAinan, HabibaAinan, Ahmed Ali Iliyeh.

Some of the injured were brought to hospitals as far as 150 km in the city of Nazareth. Others who had no chance simply sufferedin silence without getting any help at all,as medicine is scarce in those rural villages of Ethiopia. At the same incident, Moussa Hassiliyeh, HocheAinan, BouhRobleh, IguehGuedi, Hassan Farah and 7 fellow men were taken into custody and disseminated in others cities far from home and no one knowsof their whereabouts to date.

The Ethiopian government is further damaging its volatile reputation abroad by repeatedly conducting ethnically based violence and fuelling intractable borders disputes among the multiples tribes that make-up Ethiopia.

The slow economic recovery dubbed as “double digit growth” and highlighted from 2010 by Western media for a country known for drought and famine since the 1970’smay nothide the dark side of this populated country -80 million inhabitants- and the oppression that the EPRDF, the ruling party dominated by the Tigreans, is forcefully exerting against other ethnic groups such as Somali-Issa.

The ethnic federalism that the EPRDF has put in place in Ethiopia since 1991 has been praised and welcomed at the time by the entire spectrum of the Ethiopian political and civil society. Indeed everyone was expecting adecentralized state with the empowerment of local municipalities vested at managing their own policies.

Instead the EPRDF has swiftly transformed itself into a gigantic one-party which has re-established the top-down rigid hierarchy that has been in place from Menelik II through the DERG, something that everyone was fed up with.

As described in July 2012 by MrHagmann, an independent academic,“Ethiopia is a highly centralized one-party state. No independent media, judiciary, opposition parties or civil society to speak of exists in today’s Ethiopia. Many of the country’s businesses are affiliated with the ruling party.

Most Ethiopians do not dare to discuss politics for fear of harassment by local officials.As I found out in dozens of interviews with Ethiopian Somalis, security forces indiscriminately kill, imprison and torture civilians whom they suspect of aiding Ogaden rebels.”

All Ethiopians are eager to see a fair and shared economic development for their beloved country; but forced displacement, expropriation without compensation, and brutal repression of peaceful demonstration must stop.

No later than 19 December 2014, some Ethiopian websites are reporting another demonstration in Bahirdar, the capital of Amhara Regional State, where clashes with the police left three deaths and several injured. One 25 December 2014, Waberi Ali Bouh who was member of a delegation, sent from Dire-Dawa by the Ogass of Somali-Issa to visit the 4 elders unjustly jailed in Jigjigafor three years last month,has been arrestedand jailed upon arrival in the city.

The crude force used by the EPDRF ruling political party and its ally the SPDP in the Somali Regional State and elsewhere in Ethiopia may drag it to its demise.

We are only giving the following common sense advice to the EPDRF: It is not in the interest of the Ethiopian governmentto fuel and entertain violence anywhere in the country; and especially along the Addis-Abeba/Djibouti corridor-transit for 85%of Ethiopian trade- within the dwelling area of the Somali-Issa pastoralists.

By: Waddour Issa

- See more at: http://www.somalicurrent.com/2014/12/31/ethiopia-onslaught-against-somali-issais-ongoing-silently-in-the-awash-river/#sthash.aVus2LZ9.dpuf

Engineering Ethnic Conflict: The Toll of Ethiopia's Plantation Development on Suri People | oaklandinstitute.org

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Recently dubbed “Africa’s Lion” (in allusion to the discourse around “Asian Tigers”), Ethiopia is celebrated for its steady economic growth, including a growing number of millionaires compared to other African nations. However, as documented in previous research by the Oakland Institute, the Ethiopian government’s “development strategy,” is founded on its policy of leasing millions of hectares (ha) of land to foreign investors. Implementation of this strategy involves human rights violations including coerced displacement, political repression, and neglect of local livelihoods, and places foreign and political interests above the rights and needs of local populations, especially ethnic groups who have historically been marginalized and neglected by the government.

Read the full report

 Report_EngineeringEthnicConflict.pdf

TV4's investigation of H&M's connection to landgrabs in Ethiopia