The research projects
Access to land: a major public policy challenge
November 2010
There has been renewed interest in the land tenure issue in recent years owing to persistent poverty and increasing inequality in the rural societies of the South, and the growing number of conflicts arising from competition for access to land in areas where there is much movement between town ...
Conflict and prospects for peace in Côte d'Ivoire
January 2007
Since the attempted coup of September 2002, Côte d’Ivoire has been struggling to overcome a military and political crisis that has split the country into areas controlled by government forces in the south and rebel forces in the north. Identity-based tensions between communities have worsened ...
Environmental approach to urban change in Addis Abeba
January 2001
Most major cities in the South are a concentration of deep poverty and chronic lack of infrastructure, with excessively rapid urban growth causing major environmental degradation. This situation raises many questions for sustainable development. IRD researchers are taking an environmental ...
Globalisation and countries of the South: disparities and solidarity
January 2001
While globalisation is intended to turn the world into one “global village” where countries and individuals will all have access to the same development possibilities, in the South the process is showing clear disparities between different countries and regions. Imagined as a process of ...
Kenya sacred sites listed by UNESCO
July 2008
The kaya forests are a major feature of Kenya’s coastal strip. They were originally residential sites, the earliest founded in the sixteenth century, but are now regarded as sacred − and endangered. They play a central role in the identity and imagination the Mijikenda, a group linguistically ...
Saharan migration: the truth a far cry from popular myths
January 2004
Migration from sub-Saharan Africa to North Africa has increased as never before over the past 15 years or so. What routes are the migrants following and how are they settling in North Africa? What social and spatial changes are these new settlement patterns generating? What effects are today’s ...
