Listers, This may be of wider interest: News [Description: http://www.idrc.ca/EN/PublishingImages/LandSeries-Accountability-in-Africas-...] Report sheds light on demands for accountability, transparency for large-scale land deals in Africa 05/04/2013 In Africa, large-scale land deals can bring benefits such as jobs, market access, and infrastructure, but they can also dispossess people of land and other resources and spark conflict over economic benefits. Part of the problem is that land deals are rarely transparent, with limited accountability on the part of the public authorities that decide them. People who feel wronged by such large-scale land deals in Africa are taking a variety of steps to seek justice, according to new research published by IDRC and the International Institute for Environment and Development <http://www.iied.org/> (IIED). The report, Accountability in Africa's land rush: what role for legal empowerment, is authored by Emily Polack, Lorenzo Cotula, and Muriel Côté of IIED. It examines the accountability of public authorities that preside over such deals. Asking whether legal empowerment offers citizens scope to expect fairer outcomes, the report shows that too few legal options are in fact available to local groups. This report builds on, and contributes to, a decade’s worth of research that IDRC has supported on access to land rights globally, especially for women<http://www.idrc.ca/EN/Programs/Social_and_Economic_Policy/Governance_Security_and_Justice/Pages/ArticleDetails.aspx?PublicationID=1008>. Read the report<http://www.idrc.ca/EN/Documents/LandSeries-IDRC-English-web.pdf>. http://www.idrc.ca/EN/Misc/Pages/NewsDetails.aspx?NewsID=532 http://www.idrc.ca/FR/Misc/Pages/NewsDetails.aspx?NewsID=493