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Her rights.

Her land.

A better future
for all.

Help make land rights a reality for
millions of women around the world.

ABOUT THE CAMPAIGN

 
IXMIQUILPAN, HIDALGO, MEXICO (11/03/16)- Valentina Ángeles stands in front of the home she helped build with Habitat for Humanity in Hidalgo, Mexico. ©Habitat for Humanity International/Jason Asteros

Valentina Ángeles stands in front of the home she helped build with Habitat for Humanity in Hidalgo, Mexico. ©Habitat for Humanity International/Jason Asteros

Why do women’s rights to land matter?

Land is the foundation for shelter, livelihood, and climate resilience. Land is fundamental for survival.

Because land is central to power and identity, control over land is fundamental to gender justice. But despite enormous recent progress to ensure women’s equal legal rights to land and housing, we are still far from achieving equality in practice.

We cannot achieve gender equality without women’s equal rights to and control over the world’s most elemental resources: land and property. Women’s land rights are fundamental human rights.

  • Stronger land rights can empower women, while also increasing investments in land, spending on food and education, and improving child nutrition - lifting whole families and communities for a more equal world.

  • Women and girls bear the brunt of poverty; they shoulder time-consuming household duties, and live with deep discrimination and restricted rights. Women feed families, but are less than 15% of landholders worldwide.

About the Campaign

The Stand for Her Land Campaign is closing the implementation gap for women’s land rights: the gulf between the strong standards in place to protect women’s rights to land, and the realization of those rights in practice, so that millions of women can realize the transformational power of rights to land. Whether her home is a small farm in Uganda, the coastal regions of Colombia, or an informal settlement in New Delhi, India, every woman deserves firm ground to stand on.

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Women cannot be owned as property, but land as property can be owned by women.
– An Elder mediating land rights disputes on behalf of women in Kenya

What’s New

Tanzania geared towards policy, institutional and legal reforms to promote gender-responsive land governance

UN Economic Commission for Africa — S4HL Tanzania participated in a high-level policy dialogue in Dar es Salaam focused on strengthening land administration and addressing barriers to women's land rights in Tanzania.

Women activists call for reforms in land management

Nation Media Group — S4HL Uganda and its coalition members organized a two-day workshop to urge the government to implement reforms in land management to better protect women’s rights to land.

ILC Africa at the Landac Conference

ILC Africa's Jane Njeri Mwangi summarizes two sessions hosted by Stand for Her Land at the 2024 Landac Conference. The conference brought together various stakeholders from academia, land practitioners, civil society, and researchers to deliberate on the key conference themes.
Standing together in solidarity The tragic incident where Uganda has lost one of its power women, Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegai, burnt to death by her Kenyan boyfriend due to a land dispute is a true testament to the persistent challenges that women face as they strive to assert their land and property rights. These challenges are anchored in deeply entrenched discriminatory social and gender norms and associated power balances especially at the family level, and lack of recognition of centrality of women's land rights to empowerment of women and development of families, communities and economies at large. These injustices continue to be one of the leading causes of gender-based violence with extreme consequences like death, a case in point is one of our own Rebecca. We as advocates for women's land rights condemn such acts and join Ugandans and the rest of the world in mourning the loss of such a profound woman. We call for concerted efforts to promote women's land rights as a fundamental human right and end all forms of violence against women. We encourage everyone to seek peaceful means to resolve their land disputes. We demand justice for Rebecca and other women that have suffered land injustice and GBV and call on Governments to enforce the rule of law by ensuring that such culprits are brought to justice.

Standing Together in Solidarity

The tragic incident where Uganda has lost one of its power women, Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegai, burnt to death by her Kenyan boyfriend due to a land dispute is a true testament to the persistent challenges that women face as they strive to assert their land and property rights.

Promoting women’s land rights could stem tobacco growing

Monitor — Rita Kemigisa was interviewed about S4HL Uganda's work on gender transformative approaches at the community level and their advocacy for gender responsive land services at the national level.

Inheritance practices still hindering women’s land rights

Monitor — S4HL Uganda is identifying and transforming harmful patriarchal norms that lock women and girls out of owning, inheriting, and making decisions on land.

Join Us

Join our growing movement, receive important campaign updates, and learn how you can help make secure land rights a reality for women around the world.