Not about us without us: Working with grassroots organisations in the land field

This publication, from the Global Land Tool Network, presents the grassroots mechanism it plans to promote for the effective inclusion of local community groups (grassroots). The involvement of the grassroots is crucial at all stages of land-related processes. However, many pro-poor land policies are developed and implemented with weak grassroots participation, leading to project failure or outcomes that do not assist women or people living in poverty.

This report provides detailed criteria to assess grassroots participation in order to determine whether it is genuine, effective and rights-based. It then goes on to describe approaches for achieving such participation via four strategic activity areas:

1. Ensuring grassroots participation in large-scale land tool development.
2. Scaling up community-led initiatives.
3. Building the capacity of the grassroots to engage in land administration and land management.
4. Promoting grassroots participation approaches amongst GLTN partners.

Taken together, these approaches define how GLTN sees grassroots mechanism operating within the development of land tools. They will prove helpful to programme planners and decision makers at different levels of the land sector.

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