Author: Neil Sorensen

By Julius Bright Ross and Amanda Clark

In a sunny field in El Salvador’s Usulután Department this August, approximately twenty members of a Farmer Field School gathered around a plot containing six different varieties of maize. As they discussed the comparative advantages of the varieties, they keenly appraised their likelihood of withstanding both dry spells and heavy precipitation events. Heavy precipitation, in particular, was top-of-mind after intense storms fell on much of El Salvador this June, flattening young crops and stripping fields of topsoil and organic matter. Another tool for improving resilience wound its way through the maize plants: jack bean (Canavalia ensiformis), planted alongside maize as beans have been for millennia to enrich the soil and provide ground cover. Using funding from the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA), Catholic Relief Services (CRS) is promoting Canavalia ground cover as part of a suite of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) practices, which aim to sustainably increase agricultural productivity and incomes, adapt and build resilience to climate change, and (where possible), reduce or remove greenhouse gas emissions. CRS’ suite of CSA approaches in El Salvador, which they term “water-smart agriculture”, focuses primarily on increasing and stabilizing yields sustainably to improve food security during intermittent droughts. One farmer, Adonis, has enthusiastically adopted Canavalia and other CSA techniques, emphasizing to the BHA team that the ground cover keeps his soil moist during brief dry spells.

Nevertheless, greater adoption of Canavalia and, in particular, more laborious soil and water conservation measures such as in-field infiltration trenches by Salvadoran farmers is heavily curtailed by the trade-off between near-term results and how long a farmer can count on farming the same plot of land — that is, how secure their land tenure is. In El Salvador, a high percentage of farmers do not own their land, often paying a landowner for the usage rights in-kind through crop residues to feed cattle with during the dry season. When unofficially surveyed, only about half of the CRS farmer field school members reported owning the land they farmed, and only half of those that rented (including Adonis) were confident they would be able to farm the same land the next year.

Land tenure refers to the relationship individuals and groups have with land and its resources, including trees, minerals, pastures, and water. These relationships are defined by land tenure systems – the rules, customs, and laws that define how property rights to land are allocated, transferred, used, or managed. More broadly, the field of land and resource governance (LRG) describes the complex relationships between land and societal elements such as culture, politics, economics, and history. The unique LRG context that describes a community’s land tenure varies both geographically and over time, but is of crucial importance to understanding challenges to economic development.

Insecure land tenure is linked in complex ways to food insecurity. The possession of secure tenure over land can itself be a marker of wealth and permanency, which can affect food security in myriad ways including the ability to invest in inputs, the time to acquire knowledge of the land’s idiosyncrasies for growing crops, and social capital with long-term neighbors that might provide coping mechanisms during shortages. In some cases, land tenure security may provide greater access to credit, directly driving the agricultural investments (including both assets and financial mechanisms such as insurance) that cushion the effects of climatological drivers of crop failure such as drought. These factors encourage smallholders with secure land rights to make longer-term decisions for themselves, their families, and their lands.

USAID is a leader in developing evidence at the juncture of land tenure security and CSA adoption. A follow-on impact evaluation of the USAID-funded Tenure and Global Climate Change Project in Zambia found strong links between land tenure security and increased uptake of Climate-smart Agriculture practices, although it is worth noting that the strength of these links varies geographically. Many CSA practices have long-term payouts that require significant upfront investments. For farmers with insecure access to land, these costs can be a significant barrier to adopting such practices. Farmers will likely avoid the high investment incurred by practices that improve long-term sustainability if they cannot count on benefitting from them in the short-term. Conversely, LRG improvements such as strengthening land tenure and investing in governance of communal resources can provide the scaffolding farmers need to embrace CSA approaches, which, despite their initial costs, can improve soil health, increase biodiversity, and build resilience against climate change, thereby increasing the stability of productivity over time.

USAID works to improve land and resource governance and strengthen property rights in 23 countries globally. In each of these countries, the agency ensures that programming is context-specific and responds directly to the needs of those most vulnerable to land exploitation. In Ethiopia, issues such as farmer-herder conflict and unequal land access for women and youth hinder equitable adaptation to climate challenges. The Ethiopia Land Governance Activity aims to address these issues by strengthening land governance systems, expanding communal land tenure security in pastoral areas by facilitating policy reforms, and creating opportunities for more women to serve in land administration entities. In Colombia, unclear land tenure and property rights obstruct economic growth, generate violence and social tension, and fuel illicit activities that lead to increased deforestation and land-based carbon emissions. By providing access to land titles, supporting land restitution, strengthening local government capacity for land administration, and integrating citizens into licit socioeconomic opportunities, the Land for Prosperity Activity aims to protect members of rural communities from climate and socioeconomic risks.

In El Salvador, Canavalia ground cover is a tenure-conscious component of CRS’ Climate-smart Agriculture: short-term enough to produce results within a growing season, but with long-term value for those with surer land tenure. Nevertheless, Canavalia works best in concert with other CSA practices, including mulching crop residues that often go towards paying rent and establishing trenches or live barriers to reduce loss of soil and organic matter on steep farmed slopes. CRS is exploring alternative arrangements to make these investments possible for tenant farmers, such as through promoting herbaceous live barriers paired with silage training to provide an alternative value proposition for landowners.

Whether through increasing land tenure security or finding creative solutions to increase the feasibility of soil and water conservation on rented land, long-term stewardship can make a substantial difference. The BHA team visited Santos Franco Reyes’ farm in the department of Morazán, which he has owned for twenty years and which he has steadily improved over that time. Despite a 12 to 13 percent slope, the field’s maize plants were growing strong in clearly healthy soil, with ample mulch from the well-pruned trees growing throughout the field and worm-castings every few inches. Santos proudly showed off the infiltration trenches that he had dug to capture heavy rainfall and infiltrate it into downslope maize over subsequent days, telling us he has been digging these for half a decade already. Santos has farmed this slope since his daughter Sulma, standing out with us, was a young girl. As Santos put it, “I do everything I can to make sure this farm is here for her when I move on.”

Cross posted from Agrilinks

USAID is supporting small-scale, gender-responsive land documentation to secure farmers’ rights to customary land in Malawi.

“Here, men want to control everything and don’t allow women to talk. If we are aware of our land rights we can act and defend, and if we get divorced, we can still rely on the land to continue feeding our children.” -Margaret Dyson, landowner in TA Mwansambo

Margaret Dyson, a single mother of three, inherited her four-acre farm from her parents, who were granted the land by the village head person when they moved to the Traditional Land Management Area (TLMA) of Mwansambo 30 years ago.

Since then, her family has relied on natural boundary markers such as trees and streams to define their property and keep their land separate from adjacent farms. As local populations grow and land becomes increasingly scarce, these natural boundaries that have worked for decades may be removed or become less effective. As a result, formally documenting land ownership has become a critical part of the government’s strategy to promote inclusive sustainable development.

In Malawi, 70 percent of the population lives on customary land, held by communities and administered by traditional leaders, as smallholder farmers. Less than 10 percent have some form of land documentation. These rates are significantly worse for women due to gender norms that view men as the default heads of households who wield decision-making power over valuable assets like land. Though many parts of the country are matrilineal, meaning that land is passed down from mother to daughter, male relatives often still control day-to-day decisions about land use. Furthermore, though TLMA Mwansambo is matrilineal, it does not follow the traditional custom where men who marry move to the land of their wives’ clan; instead, women typically move to their husband’s village after marriage. Since they are assumed to have land rights in their own village under the matrilineal tradition, they are given no rights to the land in their husband’s village.

Because navigating these customary land rights traditions can be challenging, documenting and formalizing these rights is important. Land documentation not only provides rural populations with greater tenure security, it creates incentives for them to invest in their farms and can provide a source of collateral for expanded access to finance. Land documentation can also reduce land conflict and promote gender equality.

Inclusive Land Documentation Process

Following the 2016 Customary Land Act, the Government of Malawi launched several land documentation pilots across the country, permitting customary landholders to formalize ownership. In TLMA Mwansambo, the USAID-funded Integrated Land and Resource Governance (ILRG) program is partnering with the Ministry of Lands to roll out the country’s most ambitious customary land formalization campaign to date, with an explicit focus on women’s land rights. Using participatory methods and socially inclusive approach , the land documentation campaign is targeting outreach to approximately 40,000 people. The activity expects to document upward of 10,000 land parcels in under one year.

The land demarcation process is gender-responsive, ensuring that both women and men are able to participate at each stage.

Following a comprehensive gender assessment in TLMA Mwansambo, ILRG sensitized all stakeholders on gender and social inclusion (GESI) issues before and during the land registration process and developed a series of tools to guide GESI integration across all steps of the process.

Over the course of eight months, teams of university graduates visit each village to carry out the land documentation work. After holding community sensitization events, they physically walk the boundaries of each parcel with landholders and use GPS enabled mobile devices to map the precise coordinates. Once the data are collected, a village map is produced and posted in a central area for community members to review and bring any corrections or objections forward. These sessions are held during times and locations that are accessible and safe for women to participate. Once maps are validated and finalized, the local government issues land titles to customary landholders.

“We know that we are gender focal points in the land documentation process,” says data collector Sylvia Kasiaya, 28. “When a man wants to only register his name to the land, we ask ‘What about your wife?’ They often say ‘No, she has her own land’, so we push back and inform them about the advantages of joint documentation, such as ‘What if you die, how will your wife and children survive?’ Sometimes it works and we see very little resistance.”

ILRG is also promoting shifts in harmful gender norms that hinder women’s land rights through a series of workshops and dialogue sessions. Now, women and men have opportunities to sit together to reflect on harmful gender norms—such as local marriage traditions which give women no rights to land in their husband’s village—and discuss how to change them in order to promote equal land rights, equal decision-making over land, and equal sharing of benefits from land. ILRG is also holding gender norms dialogues with traditional leaders like village head persons, who tend to be men, to identify the harmful gender norms that might hinder women’s land rights and devise concrete strategies to initiate change.

Promoting Community Leadership in Land and Natural Resource Governance

Another way women can be empowered is through engagement in land institutions. The 2016 Customary Land Act creates Customary Land Committees (CLCs), a group of community members elected to help oversee and resolve disputes that occur within the local land documentation process. CLCs are critical to guide data collectors, land surveyors, and government officials in their villages. By law, the CLCs must be gender balanced. ILRG is improving leadership skills for women elected to these bodies so they can meaningfully participate.

Rose Zuze has four children and was elected as a CLC member in Group Village Mwansambo. She accompanied Margaret and her neighbors to define the boundaries of her property.

“Single mothers have no power, so they need the CLC to defend their rights. Since I am a woman, I know their problems. In addition, women like Maragaret are empowered by the CLC. They see women in positions of leadership and believe that if I can be on the CLC, then they can also be in positions of power.”

These efforts help ensure that women’s names are included on land titles, which aligns with the joint objectives of the Government of Malawi and USAID to advance gender equality in land rights as a pathway for women’s empowerment.

“I put the farm in my name with the three children on the document,” said Margaret Dyson. “It is important because it gives us protection from eviction. With this document, I can prove this is my land.”

The campaign in Mwansambo is establishing the precedent for a socially inclusive and gender-responsive approach to land registration. This scalable approach may influence how the government carries forward the important work of ensuring secure land tenure as a pathway for sustainable development, building on Malawi Vision 2063’s goal to fully harness the potential of land as a catalyst for economic self-reliance, and the USAID/Malawi Country Development Cooperation Strategy to support gender-equitable and accountable development.

And Three Ways We Can Empower them to Lead More

Climate change poses incredible challenges for women and girls in the developing world. The impacts of climate change disproportionately impact women and girls by barring them from accessing increasingly scarce natural resources, leaving them more vulnerable to extreme weather events and limiting their opportunities for education and income-generating activities, which harms their overall health and wellbeing. 

Research shows that women’s participation improves the efficacy of climate change adaptation and mitigation programs. Yet, women are often barred from participating in climate action; an unfortunate fact that USAID’s Climate Strategy 2022-2030 hopes to counteract by centering the role of women and other marginalized groups on climate action. 

Last month, I had the pleasure of moderating an event entitled “Frontiers: Women Leading Solutions to Climate Change” to discuss a critically important question: How can we empower women to continue to lead the fight against climate change? 

This webinar, co-hosted by USAID and New America on the sidelines of the 66th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), hosted seven powerful women in conversation about how climate change poses unique threats to women, and the ways in which women are uniquely positioned to find and deliver solutions to this critical challenge. 

Here, in the event participants’ own words, are five ways women are already leading on climate change solutions, and five ways we can help them become an even stronger voice in this fight.

1. Women uniquely understand the challenge, because they live it 

To quote American public interest attorney and author, Bryan Stevenson: “We cannot create justice without getting close to places where injustices prevail. We have to get proximate.” 

Women around the world are uniquely proximate to the impacts of climate change. Indeed, as USAID Chief Climate Officer Gillian Caldwell pointed out, climate change disproportionately impacts women and girls, limiting their opportunities for education and income-generating activities, harming their health and wellbeing, and increasing their exposure to gender-based violence and exploitation. Women and children are significantly more likely than men to die from climate disasters such as droughts and floods. 

But this inequity creates an opportunity: women understand from firsthand experience the impacts of climate change, and they see opportunities to address them on the ground. 

As an Agency, we are helping provide platforms and channels for women and girls to turn this proximity into power, by sharing their unique perspectives and the solutions they have developed. USAID’s new Climate Strategy prioritizes partnering with women and other marginalized groups on climate action and the U.S. Government’s new  Gender Equity and Equality Action (GEEA) Fund, is expanding resources for this work, helping advance women’s and girls’ leadership and participation to help tackle the climate crisis.  

2. Women see distinct signals, based on the role they play in the household

The division of responsibilities in a household gives women and men unique insights into opportunities to combat climate change. For example, Jamille Bigio, USAID’s Senior Coordinator for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment, pointed out that women and girls often collect water and firewood for the household, and can therefore see changes to forests and water resources in a way that men do not. As they go about their lives, women frequent places within climate-vulnerable urban centers that men do not, and therefore have unique perspectives about infrastructure and affordable housing needs to make urban areas more resilient. And, women have distinct perspectives on green economic opportunities, based on the jobs they hold. 

These perspectives can serve as components of early warning systems for climate impacts and also allow us to spot opportunities for climate action. One example of compelling work at this nexus of gender and climate action is USAID’s partnership with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, called AGENT, which recognizes women as agents of environmental change.

Our challenge as an Agency is to learn how to share and amplify the climate threat signals picked up by women and girls, and the unique solutions they propose.

3. Female leaders help communities better manage their natural resources

Studies show that when women are engaged as decision-makers —not just on climate action but on any aspect of community planning—their communities do a better job at managing resources and protecting against climate shocks. 

Rights and Resources Initiative Coordinator Solange Bandiaky-Badji shared that when Indigenous women manage community forests, they step up to protect land more effectively. Bandiaky-Badji shared a recent experience in Nepal, where Indigenous women worked collaboratively through the 2021 monsoon season to plant lime trees on over 25 hectares of government and privately owned farmland, and restore degraded land through aquaculture. The combination of these women’s traditional knowledge of land and focus on collaboration allowed them to ensure a productive harvesting season in the midst of a drought and a pandemic. The Nepalese government was so impressed with this effort that it has since provided these women with grants and subsidies to scale up their efforts. 

To echo Bandiaky-Badji’s words: “When we support initiatives that are conceived and implemented by women themselves, we allow them to lead instead of just being bystanders in climate solutions.”

4. Women are on the climate activism front line

As New America CEO Anne-Marie Slaughter said: Women are often the ‘rule takers’, men are the ‘rule makers’ … but, women regularly become the ‘rule breakers.’  Indeed, women are often the ones speaking out against entrenched interests and large polluters, even when doing so subjects them to threats and gender-based violence, and imperils their livelihoods and lives. 

Many of the most outspoken climate activists and land and environmental defenders, from Berta Caceres to Greta Thunberg, are female. Women have formed grassroots organizations, like Fuerza de Mujeres Wayuu in Colombia and the Mujeres Amazónicas in Ecuador, to mobilize against environmental threats, and have organized nonviolent protests on climate challenges ranging from deforestation in India to mining activities endangering water access for rural households in Latin America.

As Gillian Caldwell observed during the panel: “Many of these brave women are standing up against powerful companies that are threatening the survival of the planet and in many cases these companies are working in close coordination with governments.” 

5. Women don’t’ just speak up for themselves, they speak up for the vulnerable

Gillian Caldwell made the point that women are better equipped to speak to the justice and equity considerations of climate action, whether those relate to gender, or to the protection of other vulnerable groups. Tracy Farrell, Director, North American Region, International Union for Conservation of Nature, echoed this observation, pointing to a study of 300 forest groups across the world that found that groups run by women were more inclusive and just.

Women leaders don’t just promote people-centered policies; studies find that their decisions are more planet-centered. In her remarks Farrell pointed to USAID’s AGENT project, which found that female parliamentarians tend to make policies that are more inclusive of the environment. 

Three Ways We Can Empower the Leadership of Women on Climate Action

There is so much more we can do to support and amplify women’s leadership on climate, and help empower a new generation of climate leaders. As Jamille Bigio rightly pointed out: “There are women leaders on the ground already advancing solutions, and they just need our support to help amplify their work.”

Event participants shared three ways in which we can further empower women to become leaders in the fight against climate change. 

1. Ensure the women’s tenure rights are secure 

Research shows that strengthening women’s land and resource rights has a striking and positive impact on women’s empowerment, allowing them to play a leading role in mitigating and adapting to climate change. Secure tenure rights also make women more resilient to climate shocks.

Yet, as Bandiaky-Badji explained, women legally own less than one fifth of the world’s agricultural land, and in Africa, fifty percent of legal frameworks governing land and forests do not contain community-level provisions specific to women. Farrell pointed out that this lack of land ownership limits women’s access to finance and other resources to implement climate change solutions.   

To equip women to lead on climate change, we must invest in ensuring women have equal and secure rights to land and natural resources within their communities. USAID is supporting work to strengthen women’s land rights in a number of countries, including new work in Cote d’Ivoire to help women exercise and protect legal rights to land and through its Mobile Applications to Secure Tenure (MAST) approach.  MAST is helping women in three countries register land rights at the same rate as their male counterparts. 

2. Train women to be leaders, and build their decision-making capacity 

Rili Djohani, Co-Founder and Executive Director, Coral Triangle Center, stressed that if we want women to lead on climate change, we must provide them with leadership training and mentorship opportunities. These efforts give women the confidence to demand a seat at the table, and also help shift gender norms and normalize women’s participation and leadership in rooms typically dominated by men. 

For example, the Coral Triangle Initiative has created an intergenerational mentor program that links senior female leaders with up and coming leaders. 

And while leadership training is a critical component of building up women’s voices, so is job training and other support that empowers women economically. The Coral Triangle Initiative has engaged women in seaweed cultivation and trained them to make seaweed snacks to sell on the local market. Djohani shared that training women to make and sell these products not only helps them improve livelihoods and empower economically, but also gives them the skills to engage in other decisions in the village. 

USAID has also focused on building the leadership skills of women who work in industries at the front lines of climate change. For example, through the Engendering Industries program, USAID supports women’s meaningful participation in male-dominated water and power sectors to improve gender equity and improve business outcomes.

3. Explicitly define the role of women in national and international climate policies 

Farrell pointed out that a critical piece of empowering women to lead on climate change is explicitly including them in national and international frameworks, policies and mechanisms aimed at curbing emissions, reducing deforestation, adapting to climate impacts and financing climate solutions. USAID’s AGENT initiative found that 80% of newly revised Nationally Determined Contributions include gender in some way. This is a significant stride that must be taken up by other climate frameworks and policies. 

Farrell recommended that countries adopt Climate Change Gender Action Plans to ensure women are included holistically in climate action, and that their participation is tracked with indicators. 

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As this panel made clear, while women face disparate impacts from climate change, they bring unique solutions and the courageous leadership that we need. Supporting women with secure rights, training, funding, and opportunities to shape policy can in turn increase women’s engagement and empowerment to make the necessary progress we need to tackle the climate crisis. 

A capacity building strategy is guiding budding professionals towards careers in land administration

When the Colombian government and USAID teamed up to formalize more than 3,000 parcels in the municipality of Ovejas, sourcing qualified professionals figured high on the list of challenges. Unable to fill vacant positions from the local workforce, the campaign had to field more than 50 professionals from around the country to support the endeavor.

Positions included land surveyors, legal experts, knowledge management specialists, and social workers with a unique set of skills related to land rights. Ten teams made up of four diverse professionals used their skills and tools to reach rural communities, effectively communicate, formalize a property, and register a land title. The pilot employed some 60 qualified professionals, but only 6 of them were actually from Ovejas.

The lessons are manifold. In a region with an already weak land market, students and young professionals do not consider careers in land administration. In places like Ovejas, the national cadaster—the plot map of land ownership—is out of date and does not reflect the reality of who is occupying what parcel. Instead of registering land titles and paying property taxes, land is bought and sold informally with a paper receipt and a handshake. Few, if any, land titles exist.

Thanks to these lessons gained through the Ovejas land formalization campaign, the USAID-funded Land for Prosperity Activity is targeting young professionals in rural municipalities with the skills and knowledge to select career paths related to land formalization, restitution, and administration.

In its first two years of implementation, Land for Prosperity has held over 200 workshops and trained more than 8,000 people on skills and knowledge related to land formalization. Among them are 80 law students in their final year at the Corporación Universitaria Remington, located in Montería, Córdoba.

Under the USAID partnership, the law students have reviewed academic material about Colombia’s land policies and land formalization processes. The students then have the option to select an internship at the regional offices of land entities, like the National Registry Superintendence–SNR, the land cadaster entity IGAC, or they can work with municipal administrations at one of the USAID-supported municipal land offices. In Córdoba, there are currently three Municipal Land Offices in the towns of Puerto Libertador, Tierralta, and Valencia. The internship is a requirement for graduation and must be related to legal services for their communities.

“In Southern Córdoba the public sector is in need of skilled workers and funding. We need more social workers and lawyers,” explains María Angélica Sakr, coordinator of Remington University’s legal clinic in Montería. “USAID is filling a need by creating a skilled workforce and motivating professionals towards these niche areas.”

Community Mediator

Andris Salgado, 38, plans to graduate with a law degree from Remington next year. He’s currently fulfilling his internship duties at the legal clinic in his hometown of Puerto Libertador. Since 2015, Salgado has worked as a community mediator and conciliator with support from USAID’s Access to Justice Program and the Ministry of Justice. This year, he participated in USAID-supported land administration workshops to learn more about current land policies and goals related to the 2016 Peace Accords.

“Knowing Colombia’s land laws can support rural communities with all kinds of services, from land conflicts to assigning parcels to farmers who have been in possession of their farms for over ten years,” says Salgado.

A legal expert with experience moderating many types of conflicts among families and neighbors, Salgado can now provide the people of Puerto Libertador with counsel and legal advice related to land formalization and access to land.

Following graduation, Salgado hopes to continue working with vulnerable populations as an advocate.

“There are lawyers in Puerto Libertador, but none have this kind of experience. I have always wanted to help the community and aimed my support at young people who cannot afford higher education.”

Land Market = Job Market

By this time next year, there will be two major massive land formalization campaigns underway in the Montes de María region, located just over 100 kilometers north of Córdoba. The two campaigns, which are taking place in San Jacinto and Carmen de Bolívar, will create at least 100 skilled jobs for legal land experts, social workers, and land surveyors.

In one of the regional capitals, Sincelejo, USAID is partnering with the Corporación Universitaria del Caribe, known as CECAR. Over the last 6 months, the program has reached more than 200 law students and 80 future social workers with workshops related to land policies and land formalization and restitution processes. All the students are in their final years of university.

“The learning spaces created by USAID are enriching for students who don’t have much experience with topics on land. They have generated curiosity and motivation for students to continue with these topics. Students benefit, the region benefits, and the university benefits,” explains Ana Claudia Castro, the workshop coordinator, who runs the CECAR’s Victim’s Justice Center in Sincelejo.

Over the next year, each semester the academic partnership will provide the students with new material. Topics include formalizing urban parcels in the name of the municipality, legal analysis of land parcels, land restitution policies, and conflict mediation related to land ownership.

The land formalization campaigns and the local land offices represent a significant part of USAID’s strategy to help the government untangle land conflicts that persisted for several generations.

In the Caribbean departments of Córdoba, Sucre, and Bolívar, thousands of victims of the conflict will benefit from land formalization services. If enough new professionals are trained, the jobs of land administration will be in the hands of the next generation.

USAID is supporting 11 municipal-wide land titling campaigns across Colombia. Each campaign depends on a variety of factors and is expected to require an average of two years to complete implementation. By 2025, the government will have updated more than 115,000 parcels in the national cadaster with the possibility of delivering up to 40,000 land titles.

Q&A with Patricia Castro, Tumaco’s Secretary of Women’s Affairs

In January 2021, the municipal administration of Tumaco created its first Secretary of Women and Gender Equality. The entity represents a new view of equality and the strengthening of women’s rights. In this interview the Secretary, Patricia Castro, talks about the entity’s strategy and the challenges that women in Tumaco face when accessing property due to gender violence.

Why was the Secretary of Women created in Tumaco?

The Secretary was created last year with the aim of working on five pillars: equality, education, health (both promotion and prevention), entrepreneurship, and the last one where we have worked with the Land for Prosperity Activity, housing. It is called the Secretary of Women, but we work on different processes that promote gender equality and the rights of the LGBTI community. It is essential that we work with a very diverse group of people.

What is patrimonial and economic violence?

We call it patrimonial violence, but women do not call it that. When we are with women in our workshops and we hear a woman say, “I have to put up with so much from him because I depend economically on him” or “if I report him, who will sustain me?” or “I can’t separate from him because he is the owner of the house or the parcel where the house is, and I won’t get my part”. When they tell us about these situations, we explain to them that these are examples of patrimonial and economic violence.

What challenges do the women that go to these workshops face?

The women that go to these workshops do not have this information. For example, when it comes to land and property, the best way to overcome these barriers is motivating women to participate in formalization processes, and that is what we are doing with the Municipal Land Office and with USAID’s support.

What should women understand about land titling and their rights?

Titling in favor of women is decreasing the uncertainties they have. They ask themselves what would happen if they separated from their husbands. We explain to them that under the law, even under de facto marital unions (uniones maritales de hecho), women have the right to split all property in half because they have the same rights as formal unions. But there are other types of unions, and we explain that there are successive unions and multiple unions. There are a lot of multiple unions in Tumaco, when the man has parallel relationships with several women.

How do you reach women with these campaigns?

This is done with open calls, focused on certain neighborhoods, and with female leaders that know the communities. We train them on how to get their property title and we connect them to the Municipal Land Office. And because a lot of neighborhoods were built over landfills or are under the jurisdiction of the General Maritime Directorate (DIMAR), the Municipal Land Office guides them on which parcels can or cannot be titled. Thanks to this support, a lot of women that have been waiting for 30 or 40 years to be owners now have the opportunity.

What benefits does a title bring to women? 

With the property titles they can access housing credits or can apply for bank loans to adapt and improve their home now that they are sure it is theirs. When it comes to their heritage, we tell them a lot about inheritance and that they can leave their home to their children. Finally, these women are being empowered and have a feeling of belonging. One of the women once told me that ‘having a home doesn’t make you rich, but not having one makes you very poor.’

How does land ownership favor men over women?

In my own family you have an example. My grandfather had a lot of land, and before he died, he left a clause in his will that stated that only his male children with the same last name, Castro, could inherit the land. So my dad inherited the land, but if he separated from my mum, she would not get any property. And that is what happened, they separated, and the family house was left to my dad only. My mum had to leave. That is why we are working to raise awareness among women and to promote land titling.

With what other topics is the Secretary of Women involved, to support women in Tumaco?

From the Secretary of Women we are working with women on entrepreneurship, to gradually eliminate economic dependence and in this way mitigate violence. We are strengthening women associations in tourism and gastronomy. Because there are a lot of women that have restaurants and can cook the delicious typical food of Tumaco, but they tell me that apart from cooking they do not have any other tools. We are also looking at creating a tourist trail in El Morro so that tourists and visitors can enjoy regional food.

What did the Secretary do for the Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on November 25?

With support from the Women’s Committee (Mesa de la Mujer) and USAID, we coordinated several institutional actors to launch the Week for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. There were activities to commemorate victims of gender violence and remind everyone that we cannot normalize violence. We also organized a street theater installation on the main road to Tumaco, in an area called Tigre, where several women were taken to be killed. We also had a symbolic act where we planted trees to remove the stigma around the victims. Finally, we also held various neighborhood film screenings and painted a mural overlooking the beach at El Bajito, paying homage to a young woman that was raped and killed when she was eight months pregnant.

Photos of activities from the Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on November 25

Cross posted from Land for Prosperity Exposure site

Secure land rights for women are a crucial part of a USAID gender responsive strategy to strengthen land tenure, and is making an impact on promoting gender equality and protecting one’s patrimony.

Tumaco, whose population is overwhelmingly Afro-Colombian, is one of Colombia’s most dangerous areas with high levels of gender-based violence (GBV). Due to a complex web of narco mafia groups in its territory and deep-seated, toxic gender norms, Tumaco is often the municipality with the highest number of crimes against sexual integrity, many of which target young women, according to Colombia’s Victims’ Registry.

Before the onset of the pandemic, GBV—including crimes of rape and sexual abuse—was on the rise in the department of Nariño, where Tumaco is located. And then in 2020 the number of cases dropped sharply, but so did the government services to assist victims.

In 2021, the number of GBV cases in Nariño again increased by 51% compared to 2020, reaching more than 2,000 cases in one year, according to Colombian human rights advocate, Fundapaz. Tumaco registered 260 cases, or 13% of the total.

The Secretary of Women’s Affairs was created in January 2021 to take gender-based violence head on, and represents a bold step put forward by Tumaco’s first woman mayor. Patricia Castro’s job as the Secretary leader is to move women’s initiatives into the forefront.

In reality, the Secretary is helping to do the work of the Mesa de la Mujer, or Women’s Committee, which is a Tumaco-based victim’s advocate group that has worked over 10 years to raise awareness around gender equality and promote Afro-Colombian culture.