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Women’s Land and Property Rights

SALC’s Women’s Land and Property Rights programme has the following objectives:

  • Developing jurisprudence through cases challenging discrimination in areas of inheritance; sharing and distribution of matrimonial property; legal capacity of married women; and chieftainship.
  • Challenging the denial of women’s right to participate in decision-making on acquisition of land resources and developmental programmes affecting rural land and resources.
  • Highlighting the particular impact of forced evictions and mining pollution on women.

On-going cases:

Precedent cases:

Publications:

Advocacy:

Business and Human RightsNewsWomen’s Land and Property RightsZambia

STATEMENT WELCOMING ZAMBIA’s COMMITMENT TO PROTECTION OF COMMUNAL LAND RIGHTS

15 September 2022, Lusaka – The Southern Africa Litigation Centre (SALC) welcomes the Zambia government’s renewed commitment to protecting the land rights of communities in rural areas. In President Hichilema’s speech at the opening of the National Assembly on 9 September 2022, he highlighted the unscrupulous way some local authorities…
Staff Writer
15 Sep 2022
Business and Human RightsOngoing casesWomen’s Land and Property RightsZambia

Zambia: Challenging illegal deforestation and encroachment of the Kasanka National Park and the Kafinda Game Management Area

On 19 October 2021, the Mapepala and Nabowa Community Forest Management Groups (CFMG), together with Kasanka Trust Limited, commenced an action in the Lusaka High Court challenging large-commercial agriculture and related activities within the protected Kafinda Game Management Area (KGMA) and the Mapepala and Nabowa Community Forest (MNCF). The said activities…
Staff Writer
20 Oct 2021
BotswanaNewsWomen’s Land and Property Rights

MEDIA ADVISORY: BOTSWANA HIGH COURT TO DETERMINE WHETHER LAW ALLOWS THE COMPULSORY ACQUISITION OF A TRIBE’S FREEHOLD LAND

19 March 2021 - On 22 March 2021, the High Court of Botswana will hear a counter-application brought by the Ba-Ga-Malete Tribe, represented by Kgosi Mosadi Seboko, and the Gamalete Development Trust, against the Malete Land Board and the Attorney General. The application relates to a long-standing dispute between the…
Staff Writer
19 Mar 2021
Articles and OpinionsWomen’s Land and Property RightsZambia

A new dawn for the protection of the rights of vulnerable communities with unregistered land in Zambia

Commonwealth Lawyers Association 26 June 2020 Brigadier Siachitema In a recent decision of the High Court for Zambia, a community of displaced Zambian villagers succeeded in a land dispute against commercial farmers, the local authority, and the Zambian government. The decision sets an important precedent protecting the rights of vulnerable…
Staff Writer
7 Jul 2020
JudgmentsWomen’s Land and Property RightsZambia

Zambia: Challenging the displacement of communities from customary land in the Serenje District

The Muchinda Royal Establishment, the Zambia Land Alliance and SALC supported a displaced community who is currently residing in Musangashi Forest Reserve after they were violently displaced from their ancestral land in Mulembo, near Mulembo River (now called Billis Farm Limited) in the Serenje District of the Central Province of…
Staff Writer
4 May 2020