May 2015: The May 2015 edition of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) Newsletter on the Voluntary Guidelines on Tenure Governance Initiative commemorates the 3rd anniversary of the endorsement of the Voluntary Guidelines.

The Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (commonly referred to as The Voluntary Guidelines) were approved by the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) in 2012 to help address problems of land tenure by raising awareness of existing good practices in this area.

In her message, CFS Chair, Gerda Verburg, notes that awareness about the Voluntary Guidelines has grown rapidly at the global and regional levels, describing the frequent references to the Guidelines at the World Bank’s Land and Poverty Conference in March 2015 as a sign they “have gone viral.”

The newsletter highlights capacity building activities for policy makers and other actors in using the Voluntary Guidelines, as well as practical experiences by civil society organizations in Cambodia, Madagascar, Peru and other countries to monitor large-scale land acquisitions and ensure that governments, private companies and other actors adhere to their commitments on inclusive and sustainable land governance. [May 2015 Newsletter]