The Guide to Land Mediation mainly draws its inspiration from practical experience on the ground of the land program conducted by UN-Habitat in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, especially in North Kivu, South Kivu and Ituri. It refers, in some places, to other countries experiences in post-conflict situations. This guide offers practical steps and tools used during the land mediation process.

The publication highlights, not only the role and responsibilities of mediation stakeholders and beneficiaries, but also principles and foundations of a good mediation. This guide particularly applies to contexts of countries characterized by weak institutional, administrative, customary/ traditional capacities and ineffectiveness at the political, administrative and judicial systems.

This practical guide mainly targets humanitarian actors working on land conflicts mediation, on one hand and stakeholders who are involved in peace-keeping, community rehabilitation and social cohesion programmes on the other hand. State institutions in general and land administration agents in particular will find in this guide a set of tools and ideas to deal with land conflicts.

Everyone has a relationship to land. It is an asset that, with its associated resources, allows its owner access to loans, to build their houses and to set up small businesses in cities. In rural areas, land is essential for livelihoods, subsistence and food security. However, land is a scarce resource governed by a wide range of rights and responsibilities. And not everyone's right to land is secure. Mounting pressure and competition mean that improving land governance - the rules, processes and organizations through which decisions are made about land - is more urgent than ever. This book shows how the Global Land Tool Network is addressing these problems by setting an international agenda on land. It features the land tools that the Network has developed .

The Global Land Tool Network is a partnership of a wide range of organizations involved in land issues. Established in 2006, it has just completed its first phase of operations. This book celebrates the work of the Network so far and illustrates how all land stakeholders play a role in handling the critical social change needed towards achieving equitable access to land for all.

This volume investigates the state of affordable land and housing in Europe and North America (countries that comprise the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). It explores the major trends in housing provision, conditions, availability, and quality; analyses housing policy responses and practices; and provides key recommendations for local, national and international policy initiatives that can increase affordable housing supply.

This volume demonstrates that housing affordability is a pervasive and escalating issue in European and North American countries. Rising socio-economic inequalities are gentrifying and dividing cities and making adequate housing unaffordable for low- and many middle-income households. The rental housing stock has been diminished in favour of home-ownership which is invariably more expensive and difficult to secure.

Furthermore, the need for essential maintenance and the high cost of services in post-war multi-storey housing in Eastern European countries is placing additional pressure on housing affordability in these countries.

Countries in the Latin America and Caribbean region were the first in the developing world to go through rapid urbanization. Today, the region is the second most urbanized region in the world. This urbanization process has been accompanied by sharp social contrasts and economic disparities, a buoyant informal housing and land development process and increased local democracy and municipal autonomy, coupled with active social urban movements. This makes the Latin America and Caribbean region a unique landscape in the study of land and housing for the poor. 

This study brings forward the complexity and richness of the housing responses undertaken by national and local governments, as well as NGOs in the region, with the aspiration to inspire other regions where similar trends are arising. Shedding light on critical indicators and the overall housing needs of the region.

This publication provides an authoritative study for housing experts, policy makers, whilst enhancing our knowledge about the ways in which countries of Latin America and the Caribbean address land and housing needs.

In the vast majority of countries land and housing affordability is a critical contemporary challenge. While in different countries and regions the specificities of the challenge vary, the universal truism is that it is becoming increasing difficult for the vast majority of urban residents to obtain and retain adequate and affordable land and housing. This series canvases the state of affordable land and housing in four regions facing major affordability difficulties: Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia, Africa, and Europe and North America (member countries of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe). Each volume firstly explores the major trends in housing conditions, availability, quality and tenure modalities.

Following this, each volume analyses housing policy responses to address growing affordability problems and the improvement of substandard housing conditions. Lastly, key recommendations for local, national and international policy initiatives that can increase the provision of affordable housing in the respective regions is provided.

This publication, Innovative Land and Property Taxation, is derived from a 2009 conference in Warsaw, Poland. It presents the ways in which land and property taxation policies, legal frameworks, tools and approaches to sustainable urban development have been experimented with around the World. Its key finding is the prominent role that land-based financing and local authorities play at the core of urban development. Carrying ten policy lessons, it is a worthwhile reference for policy makers at local and national governments, researchers, land and property tax specialists, urban economists and other urban development specialists.

This publication, presents and innovatiove method to ascertain the extent to which security of tenure can be measeured at three main levels. Targeting cities in developing countries the methodological framework presented in this publication is entrusted, in the concept of continuum of land rights where tenure can be realised at various levels: individual, household, settlement or communitye, city and national levels.

Various options to measure tenure security at each of these levels are presented. You will also find in this publication a review of the experiences of several agencies and individual academeics in measuring tenure security. From these reviews, lessons are drawn and gaps are identified, which then form the basis of the range of methods presented in this report.

Developing new land policies can be a long and difficult process. It is even more so if the policies are to be pro-poor – if they are to help correct the disadvantages that poor people typically suffer in many areas of land policy.

This guide suggests a way forward. Based on experience in various countries in Asia and Africa, it is not a recipe-book, but outlines a process that can be adapted as appropriate to the situation in each country and the specific aspect of land policy that needs to be addressed. This process is participatory: it involves a wide range of stakeholders from all aspects of land policy, including civil society and the poor themselves. Including all these groups is vital if the resulting policies are to be politically acceptable, technically feasible, pro-poor and capable of being enforced.

This guide is intended for Ministers and senior policymakers responsible for land issues, donors, professionals, consultants, and NGOs involved in developing land policies.

This publication on Secure Land Rights for All demonstrates how secure land rights are particularly important in helping to reverse three types of phenomena: gender discrimination; social exclusion of vulnerable groups; and wider social and economic inequalities linked to inequitable and insecure rights to land.

It argues that policymakers should adopt and implement the continuum of land rights because, no single form of tenure can meet the different needs of all social groups. However, a range of land tenure options enables both women and men from all social groups to meet their changing needs over time.

This study can assist policy-makers to understand and apply the practical ways in which people’s land rights can be made more secure, while at the same time improve land policies as a basis for the better, fairer and more sustainable urban and rural development.

Since the early 1990’s aid modalities and their effectiveness have been repeatedly scrutinized with the aim to promote aid and thus development effectiveness through institutional harmonization, often referred to as Harmonization, Alignment and Coordination (HAC). HAC processes are under way in a growing number of developing countries.

They are based on the consensus reached between donor and recipient countries at high-level meetings on aid effectiveness and guided by the Millennium Declaration (2000) and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).