Woodrow Wilson: East Africa Land Tenure and Policies

Please join the Environmental Change and Security Program for a discussion of Land Tenure and Property Policies in East Africa  featuring

- Peter Hetz, Vice President for Technical Operations, ARD, Inc.
- Gregory Myers, Senior Land Tenure and Property Rights Specialist, U.S. Agency for International Development

Wednesday, April 23, 2008
12:00 noon - 2:00 p.m.
5th Floor Conference Room
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Webcast live at www.wilsoncenter.org

Please RSVP to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it with your name and affiliation. Lunch will be provided

The transparent, equitable, and legitimate definition and realization of property rights and land and resource tenure can have profound positive impacts on a country’s environmental, social, and economic prospects, helping to prevent conflict and promote peace. Conversely, the lack of these rights*or the incorrect sequencing of interventions*has resulted in poor outcomes across the development spectrum, most recently in Kenya. This session will examine countries such as Ethiopia, Rwanda, and Sudan, where land, property, and natural resource issues*as well as related factors like economic growth, health, and internal and external displacement*are key factors that both contribute to conflict and are critical to its resolution. The role of inadequate land rights in Kenya’s current political crisis will also receive special attention.

Peter Hetz, the vice president for technical operations at ARD, Inc., will discuss the relationship between property rights and conflict. Gregory Myers, a natural resource management specialist at the U.S. Agency for International Development, will focus his remarks on natural resource management and conflict.

This is the fourth event in ECSP’s “New Horizons at the Nexus of Conflict, Natural Resources, and Health” series, which examines new thinking and research at the intersection of these areas. This series is funded jointly by USAID’s Office of Natural Resources Management, its Office of Population and Reproductive Health, and its Office of Conflict Management and Mitigation, with technical support from USAID’s Asia and Near East and Africa bureaus. For more information on this series, please visit www.wilsoncenter.org/newhorizons.


If you are interested, but unable to attend the event, please tune into the live or archived webcast at www.wilsoncenter.org. The webcast will begin approximately 10 minutes after the posted meeting time. You will need Windows Media Player to watch the webcast. To download the free player, visit: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/download.

Location: Woodrow Wilson Center at the Ronald Reagan Building: 1300 Pennsylvania Ave., NW ("Federal Triangle" stop on Blue/Orange Line), 5th Floor Conference Room. A map to the Center is available at www.wilsoncenter.org/directions. Note: Photo identification is required to enter the building. Please allow additional time to pass through security.