A research conducted by Civil Society Coalition on Land (CICOL) last year, revealed that women in the Northern, Upper East and Upper West regions have low access to land and no secure tenure.
Despite this, about 80 per cent of women from these three regions are engaged in small scale farming as means to sustain the livelihoods of their families.
Mrs Lillian Bruce, CICOL National Coordinator disclosed this at Wa during a one day workshop for women on securing land tenure security for small holder farmers in the Upper West Region.
The objective of the workshop which was organized by Better Life and Trust Foundation (BeLT Foundation) was to improve women access, control and secure tenure on land in the face of large scale acquisition of land in the three northern regions.
Mrs Bruce mentioned the UN Voluntary Guidelines on Tenure of Governance on Land, Forestry and Fishery and the AU Framework on Land Governance as some of the international instruments championing women’s access to land and tenure of security.
In Ghana, laws that guaranteed women’s access to land include the 1999 Land Policy, the Family Accountability Law, the Guidelines for Large Scale Land Acquisition, the Intestate Succession Law (PNDC Law 111) and the 1992 constitution of Ghana.
Mrs Bruce said women having access to land would bring about improvement in incomes and livelihoods as well as food security and nutritional values of the people.
Mr Yaw Acheampong Anawah, the Acting Regional Lands Officer appealed to men to understand the benefits that came with women having adequate access to land and allow them to register lands in their names for security of tenure.
He said 84.5 per cent of all land transactions at the Wa Customary Land Secretariat were males with only 8.2 per cent females.
Mr Anawah said 71. 2 per cent of land rights were registered in 2013 for males and 21.2 per cent for females which saw a gradual trend of improvement.
Mr Enock Debon, Executive Director, BeLT Foundation in a presentation called on all to recognize and respect all legitimate tenure rights holders and their rights to avoid land disputes.
Ms Rose Norteye, CICOL Monitoring and Evaluation Officer stressed the need to work more with traditional authorities, who were the custodians of land for them to see the need to allow women to have adequate access to land

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