Farming is a way of life for nearly half of the world’s people. In many developing countries and some formerly communist societies, rural families comprise a substantial majority of the population. For these families, land represents a fundamental asset: it is a primary source of income, security, and status. But almost half of these rural families—some 230 million households—either lack any access to land or a secure stake in the land they till. As a result, acute poverty, and related problems of hunger, social unrest, and environmental degradation persist.

For more than 40 years, RDI attorneys have helped tackle the land problem with great effect, using law and policy to confer land rights, and bringing hope and ladders out of poverty to millions of the world’s rural poor. In fact, as a result of this work, more than 100 million rural families worldwide have received land ownership or ownership-like rights to land.

This work began with a “land to the tiller” program in South Vietnam—carried out between 1970 and 1973—that provided land ownership to one million tenant farmers. Since then, RDI attorneys have gone on to develop and apply democratic approaches to land reform in both traditional developing countries and post-communist, transitional economies in Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, and the Middle East.

RDI today is pioneering a revised agenda for land reform in the 21st Century, with currently active programs in seven countries. These include principal engagements in China, India, and Indonesia—three of the poorest and most populous countries of the world—and a multi-country initiative in these and other focus countries to secure equal land rights for women.

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