Welcome to the latest edition of our NGO of the Month feature. We’re showcasing the very best NGOs from around the world to inspire and encourage you to create a better world.
Last month we featured APOPO, a social enterprise based in Tanzania that trains rats to save lives. Read the interview here.
This month we are joined by Rena Singer, Communications Director at Landesa, an NGO working to secure land rights for the world’s poorest people – those 2.47 billion chiefly rural people who live on less than two dollars a day. Landesa partners with developing country governments to design and implement laws, policies, and programs concerning land that provide opportunity, further economic growth, and promote social justice.
What inspired the establishment of Landesa?
In 1966, Roy Prosterman, a University of Washington Law School Professor and former Wall Street attorney, read a law review article that promoted land confiscation as an acceptable tool for land reform in Latin America. The idea seemed utterly irresponsible to him. Prosterman responded with his own law review article, Land Reform in Latin America: How to Have a Revolution without a Revolution, in which he urged democratic and market-friendly land reform which included full compensation for land acquisitions as a tool to help spark broad-based and peaceful rural development in Latin America.
Prosterman’s article garnered the attention of US government officials and others who saw the potential of his ideas – particularly for the escalating conflict in Vietnam. Prosterman was called to testify before Congress and was eventually recruited to carry out his ideas in Vietnam during the later part of the war.
His land to the tiller program in Vietnam from 1970 to 1973 gave land rights to 1 million tenant farmers. Rice production increased by 30 percent while Viet Cong recruitment decreased by 80 percent. A New York Times article called the land reform law that Prosterman had authored “probably the most ambitious and progressive non-Communist land reform of the 20th century.”
What is special about Landesa?
Two things help define Landesa: 1- our focus on women and 2- our partnership with governments.
1 – We place special emphasis on establishing and protecting land rights for women and inheritance rights for girls. This improves family welfare, nutrition, and productivity, and reduces violence and infectious disease.
2 – Landesa has been able to achieve remarkable results that provide a durable route out of poverty by working together with governments. A well-designed and implemented law, policy, or government program has the power to affect tens of thousands of families at a time. To date, Landesa has helped 100 million families obtain ownership or secure land rights and the opportunity for a better future.
How does Landesa change lives?
Landesa is an international non-profit made up of economists and lawyers who work to address one of the most stubborn challenges facing the world today: poverty.
We approach this through a unique lens, by recognizing that most of the world’s poor share two traits:
- They farm land to survive
- And don’t have legal control over the land they farm
There are hundreds of millions of farmers across the globe frustrated by this same conundrum. They lack of legal control over their most important asset. And it impacts the way they farm in fundamental ways.
Without secure rights to land farmers are actually dis- incentivized from investing and improving their farms. Their insecurity and uncertainty forces them to live and farm day to day, instead of investing in their land and improving it year after year. And so it is no surprise they produce a meager harvest.
This is where Landesa comes in, we partner with governments , other NGOs, and companies to research, develop and improve laws, policies, and programs that improve land rights to ensure that those who rely on the land have the security, opportunity, and incentive to invest in the land, improve their harvests and make the most of it.
Once women and men have secure rights to land they are better equipped to support their children’s education, feed their children a nutritious diet, resist threats to their wellbeing, recover from natural disasters, improve their harvests, and participate in community level decisions.
Why is Landesa important to the community you work in?
We have established great partnerships in Kenya, Rwanda, Ghana, Uganda, Tanzania, China, and India. The governments rely on us to provide technical advice as they ramp up and fine tune their anti-poverty efforts. Together with government officials we are helping lay the foundation for a more prosperous, secure, and equitable future.
What is Landesa’s vision for the world?
We envision a world free of extreme poverty. We see a future in which all who depend on land for their well-being have secure land rights – one of the most basic and powerful tools for lifting themselves and their families out of poverty.
