Togo's progress towards land rights in the SDGs

Main takeaways

According to data centralised and generated through LANDex:

• Togo receives a high score for SDG 1: No Poverty, indicating that men and women in rural Togo have relatively high rates of documentation (72%) indicating their rights to property and feel moderately secure (69%) in their tenure rights.
• People living on community land, however, feel significantly less secure (43%) in their tenure and rural women feel on average almost 4% less secure than men.
• In Togo, SDG 2: No Hunger, received a high overall score, indicating that the government in Togo has made significant improvements to laws and policies to advance the family farming sector.

ABOUT THE REPORT

Land is at the heart of inclusive and sustainable development. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the most prominent and comprehensive global framework guiding sustainable development at the international level, explicitly recognize the role of land in several indicators that call for timely, reliable data related to land rights, rates of documentation, women's ownership to land and perceived tenure security. But the role of land extends far beyond these indicators, informing our understanding towards goals related to climate, inequality and effective partnerships.

While government-reported data provides important insight into progress towards land-related SDGs, there is a growing recognition that complementary sources, including citizen science, are needed in order to monitor progress for vulnerable or hard-to-reach populations and groups. As part of its effort to democratize land monitoring and create a more inclusive land data ecosystem, ILC has endeavored to build a process by which diverse land data sources can be brought together to inform our understanding of progress towards the SDGs. This report is the result of that effort, undertaken together with members of the National Land Coalition (NLC) in Togo.

This report examines various sources of information and data that inform our understanding of progress towards people-centered land governance in the context of the SDGs. The report will be based primarily on data made available through ILC's global land monitoring tool – LANDex – including data from partner initiatives including Prindex, the Land Matrix Initiative (LMI), LandMark and ALLIED, among others.

Additionally, the report includes analysis of political commitments that would contribute to achieving the SDGs, particularly those relating to land. In addition, the report summarizes available official data accessed through the SDG Global Database and reported through the Voluntary National Review (VNR) process.

Furthermore, the report will offer a closer look at the land rights of women and family farmers in Togo, qualitative insights that were gathered through 10 focus group discussions (FGDs) with the relevant groups. These reflections provide insight into the realities these groups face and conclude with concrete recommendations for the government.

By collecting and integrating these different sources of information, the report intends to support the development of a broader data system that can monitor progress towards people-centered land governance in Togo. The final recommendations reflect outcomes of the FGDs and reflections from the validation session held with the National Land Coalition (NLC). They indicate precise policy improvement to secure tenure rights for all and contribute to the achievement of the SDGs.