We worked with the World Resources Institute to conduct country case studies (Cameroon, Indonesia, Jordan, Mexico, Nepal) focusing on how to promote women’s equal rights to govern, use, and benefit from land and forest resources within indigenous peoples and customary communities. We conducted desk research and field-based research, synthesizing results into case studies which identified promising practices, policies, strategies, approaches for securing women’s rights.
The extent of women’s tenure rights was examined in light of three key dimensions of tenure security:
- robustness, including legitimacy or the recognition of rights in both formal and customary systems and the enforceability of rights against external and internal threats;
- completeness or the scope of rights held, including the right to access, use, and derive benefits from the resource, as well as participation in its management; and
- duration or the length and certainty of rights.
The findings were synthesized to glean the main factors that enabled women to claim and exercise rights and strengthen their tenure security within the collective.