[imgur:med_topban_lft.gif:]RDI is an international nonprofit organization working to secure land rights for the world’s poorest people, those 3.4 billion chiefly rural people who live on less than $2 a day.
Land rights represent the single greatest asset for the world’s rural poor. For decades, RDI has used the law to bring land rights to the poor in a peaceful, fair and democratic manner.
For 40 years, RDI professionals have worked with the governments of 40 developing countries, foreign aid agencies, and other partners to design and implement laws, policies, and programs that provide opportunity, further economic growth, and promote social justice. To date, RDI has helped provide land rights to more than 400,000,000 people
Mission
RDI works to secure land rights for the world’s poorest peoplethose 3.4 billion chiefly rural people who live on less than two dollars a day. RDI partners with developing countries to design and implement laws, policies, and programs concerning land that provide opportunity, further economic growth, and promote social justice.
Vision
We envision a world free of poverty. We see a future in which all who depend on land for their well-being have secure land rightsone of the most basic, powerful resources for lifting oneself and one’s family out of poverty.
Values
- Eliminating global poverty is possible and is squarely within our moral, economic, and security interests.
- All poor and marginalized people deserve respect, dignity, and meaningful opportunities to improve their well-being.
- Law is a powerful and highly leveraged tool for social and economic change.
- Land is the most critical asset for a majority of the world’s poorest people.
- The lack of secure land rights is a root cause of global poverty
- Secure land rights provide a foundation for better living conditions.
- Women deserve equal land rights.
- A small group of individuals working together, motivated by common purposes, and fueled by passion and a commitment to professionalism, can take on the world’s biggest problems and make a positive difference.
[imgur:med_topban_cen.gif:]
Our work
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 familiessome 230 million householdseither 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 Vietnamcarried out between 1970 and 1973that provided land ownership to one million tenant farmers. Since then