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Securing community land and resource rights in Africa: A guide to legal reform and best practices

23 January 2014

Written by: Janet Pritchard, Feja Lesniewska, Tom Lomax, Saskia Ozinga and Cynthia Morel

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Securing community land and resource rights in Africa: A guide to legal reform and best practices

This report draws on examples from across Africa to explain key aspects of law and explore ways of identifying, creating and making the most of opportunities for positive legal reform.

The EU’s Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade Voluntary Partnership Agreements (FLEGT VPAs) have made proved useful tools in encouraging legal reform in the forestry sector, but, as this new guide explores, VPAs have so far tended to focus overwhelmingly on statutory (written, national) law. An opportunity has been missed in previous VPA negotiations to direct legal reform towards strengthening key human rights principles enshrined in international law, and towards reinforcing well established community land rights recognised in customary law. This new guide offers pointers for avoiding these mistakes in future.

For those with too little time to read the full report, please see our on-line presentation of the key information: 

Category: Illegal logging

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