Document Type: Other

Zoom sur le Foncier is a quarterly newsletter produced in French by the National Land Observatory (NLO) in Burkina Faso (French: ONF-BF).

In 2007, Liberia’s Governance Commission had already identified land governance as a seriously problematic area. The commission was impressed with the range and difficulty of issues posed, and so recommended a special commission on land issues be created, with a five-year time frame. A law to establish the Land Commission was enacted in 2009, and it tasked the commission with reform of land policy and law.

Early on, the Land Commission made four important choices. The first was that the commission would not move directly into legal reform but first develop land policies and, even earlier, do a major national consultation to “ground truth” tenure problems that had been raised. Then, based on the requirements of those policies, legal reforms could be proposed. Second, the Land Commission decided to break down the task of land policy reform into a number of more specific, more manageable policy domains. The five policy domains pursued were land rights, land administration, land use, land dispute management, and gender and land. A task force was organized to assess each domain and recommend policy and law reforms. Finally, it was decided that the commission would not think in terms of a single Land Policy or a single Land Law, but of more specialized policies and laws related to the policy domains.

Five years later, the Land Commission has developed and seen approved a Land Rights Policy and a Land Administration Policy. The Land Rights Policy has been the basis for development of a historic Land Rights Law, currently before the legislature, that would for the first time provide legal recognition to the custom-based land rights of many Liberians, as well as update an antiquated body of legislation on the common law of real property. The institutional recommendations of the Land Administration Policy have provided the basis for a proposed law that seeks to consolidate the badly fragmented land governance authority in Liberia into a single new land governance institution, the Liberian Land Authority, in the hope that it could tackle the confusion and mismanagement that have characterized Liberia’s land resource management and land administration.

Similar policies and proposed laws were not produced by the other task forces, for a variety of reasons explored in the body of this report. There is, however, a virtually final policy on land disputes prepared by that task force and not finalized because a legal review has still not been carried out. That report includes a recommendation for a law that would provide for and legitimize non-judicial procedures to resolve land disputes and augment processes currently provided by the government’s judicial system. The Liberian Land Authority should finalize this report and follow up on its recommendation for a law. It is important, in planning for future policy and law work, to learn from the experience of the Land Commission to date. Some of the more important lessons are:

1. Policy reform efforts profit greatly from the broadest possible participation by the public and by diverse groups of stakeholders, both governmental and nongovernmental, in the development of policies.
2. Public consultation may at the outset need address not a predetermined issue but instead consult with the people on what they—not officials or consultants—perceived as problems. The person who wears the shoe can tell us if it fits.
3. Because land-related competences are often dispersed among several government agencies, a government agency seeking input on a policy reform proposal will need to draw in a number of other agencies. Participation is often by mid-level or technical staff, and there is a need for further efforts to make sure ministers and other heads of agencies or organizations are fully briefed.
4. Public consultation is critical in policy development in all cases, but the extent and nature of the public consultation required should vary depending on the potential depth and breadth of the impacts of the policy change, including those on disadvantaged groups or groups likely to be impacted differently.
5. There is no standard way to validate a policy in Liberia, but higher-level validation—by president, cabinet, or legislature—increases the authority and durability of a policy and should be pursued wherever possible.
6. Participation in the drafting of reform laws is difficult to maintain because of their more technical nature. A drafting committee supervising a draftsperson will be needed. It is difficult to sustain the broad and iterative participation of stakeholders in the drafting of a law that is possible in the case of a policy. However, at least a few key participants in the policy-development exercise should be involved in the drafting of the law, to ensure consistency with the policy.
7. Once a first full draft of the law is ready, it should be widely circulated for comments. Stakeholders need to understand that it is the law and not the policy that will control, and examine the draft carefully to see if it will in fact achieve the goals of the policy. Public consultation on laws is challenging because of their more technical language, but this can be overcome through publication of summaries in laymen’s terms. Consultations with organizations representing stakeholder groups and their attorneys, as well as the larger legal profession, are critical.
8. It is feasible and important for the Liberian Land Authority to provide briefings for key legislators at the policy stage, and once the proposed law has been submitted to the legislature, to proactively arrange briefings and workshops to better inform them on the content of the law, its objectives, and the attitude of their constituents.
9. While the Land Commission was designed as a policy and law reform commission, in the absence of any other trustworthy competence in this area, the commission and its senior staff were drawn into land dispute resolution, vetting of applications for public land sales, and management of tensions around poorly conceived grants of agricultural concessions. These involvements beyond the mandate of the Land Commission have been time-consuming and have limited participation by some key senior staff in the policy and law reform work of the commission.
10. Nonetheless, these “distractions” have turned out to have real positive value for the commission, including awareness of the importance of tribal certificates, familiarity with alternative dispute resolution (ADR), field experience for commission staff, and learning-by-doing experience that will be important down the line.

Many of these lessons have been incorporated into recommendations, land policy-making processes, and on land law drafting processes in the report.

The Washington Declaration formally incorporates a series of policy goals to advance development of the Artisanal Mining Sector and improve Kimberley Process implementation.

Release Date: November 29, 2012

On May 7 at 9:00 am EDT, USAID’s Land Tenure and Resource Management (LTRM) Office will host an online panel discussion titled Why Land Still Matters: Three Years of the Voluntary Guidelines–Where We Are and Where We Are Going? The panel will feature discussants from three key stakeholder groups who will share progress, lessons learned, and challenges from three years of Voluntary Guidelines implementation. They will also discuss implementation next steps and the future direction of this important issue.

The conversation will be streamed live on USAID’s Land Tenure portal. Please register for the event here. After you register you will receive the link for the stream and you will have the opportunity to submit questions in advance. You can also submit questions during the event via the comments box or on Twitter by using the hashtag #VGGT3yrs.

Release Date: Tuesday, April 28, 2015

August 12, is International Youth Day, a UN day dedicated to raising awareness of the cultural and legal issues faced by youth around the world. This day provides an important opportunity to highlight why access to, ownership and use of land and other natural resources are important for youth.

Land matters to youth for a number of reasons: a) when youth have insecure land rights (as a result of being orphans, younger members of a household, or biased inheritance rules) they may face conflict and exploitation by more powerful actors; b) youth may be less able to access needed capital and inputs when their tenure rights are insecure. which may constrain their productivity; c) young women may face special challenges related to accessing and using land and inheriting property, which may limit economic growth and empowerment; and d) when rural land rights are insecure, youth may have incentives to migrate to urban centers, which can contribute to the growth of informal settlements.

Release Date: Tuesday, August 11, 2015

MUSTAPHA ISSA:
The project is aiming to test the using of a mobile application to capture land right information, mapping the parcels and so far, the project is a pilot project which is tested in three villages in Iringa Rural District, in Ilalasimba [and] Itagutwa now. The application has done so many things.

DICKSON MWALUBANDU:
Such as training them on the land law and land right with the focus to the right of women in attaining land.

PENDO ALEX N’GASI [SWAHILI]:
My name is Pendo Alex Ng’asi, and I am 18 years old. I am happy about MAST because I’ve got employment. Secondly, here with MAST, we have mapped people’s farms, so that they can get their CCROs [Certificates of Customary Rights of Occupancy] because having the CCRO helps to resolve conflicts. Also, it helps people to obtain loans because it shows the value [of the land]. For children, the CCRO helps them understand the boundaries of the farms they will inherit.

MARIO LONGO [SWAHILI]:
It has also really expanded my knowledge, for example, to know the boundaries of the village, and the areas which have been designated for different uses here in the village.

MUSTAPHA ISSA:
In Itagutwa, we have managed to measure over 1,000 parcels through [the] mobile application and the application is very familiar and very simple.

In the post-2015 sustainable development context, land tenure and property rights issues present both obstacles and solutions to our most critical development goals: addressing extreme poverty, enhancing resilience, improving food security, combatting climate change, and reducing conflict.

Your photos can help us tell us the story of how land tenure and property rights play a role in all of these important issues. Therefore, USAID’s Land Tenure and Resource Management (LTRM) Office is launching a contest to solicit photos that depict these important issues. Photos will be judged based on their aesthetic appeal, effectiveness in conveying a story related to land tenure and property rights, creativity, and overall impact. Contest winners will be selected by the staff of the LTRM Office.

To submit a photo, please request entry to the LTRM group on Flickr. Alternatively, photos can be submitted either by sending photos as an attachment or by saving photos in Dropbox or Google drive and then sending the link to photos@usaidlandtenure.net. There is no maximum number of photos that one person can submit. The next deadline for submissions is March 6, 2015. The contest will repeat on a regular basis.

STARR partners should now use the above process to submit project photos that meet the STARR IQC reporting guidelines. This approach will allow partners to submit higher resolution versions of their images than is possible by embedding them in Word or PDF quarterly reports. It will also allow partners to submit additional project photos, including those that they would not ordinarily include in their quarterly reports.

Photos will be uploaded to Flickr and winners will be announced on social media platforms and the USAID Land Tenure and Property Rights Portal. We will notify you via email if your photo wins.

USAID has the right to reproduce your photo in ANY format, including print products, online, and in social media. Please make sure you read the disclaimer below for full details.

Submission Requirements:

• High-resolution, high quality photos that are at least 1024 x 768 pixels or larger, or around 300 pixels per inch. Please send us the highest resolution version of the photo you have (at least 1 MB). If you are using Photoshop, please send only level 7 or higher compressed photos.
• Accepted formats: high quality JPG, JPEG, PNG, and BMP
• Photos must be original (submitted by photographer or with permission)
• Photos must each include a credit: name of photographer and organizational affiliation (if applicable)
• Photos must each include a unique, robust caption, which includes a description of what is going on in the photo, who is involved, where it was taken, and how it is a part of or relates to land tenure and property rights
• Photos must also be tagged at a minimum with: date (ddmmyyyy), country, subject(s), and any relevant USAID project or program title (if applicable)

DISCLAIMER

By submitting a photograph to the USAID Land Tenure and Resource Management Photo Contest you:

1. Declare that you own any copyright for the photograph and it is your original work.
2. Declare that you have permission to use the visual image of any identifiable individual or building in the photograph for entry into the competition and that the image may be published as stipulated in the photo contest rules.
3. Agree that USAID and/or other individual U.S. government partners/contractors who use the photo will not be responsible for the infringement of any third party rights in the photograph, moral or otherwise, that may arise as a result of your actions or omissions and that you indemnify USAID and/or other individual USG partners/contractors against all legal fees, claims, damages and other expenses that may be incurred as a result of your breach of the contest rules.
4. Grant any reproduction rights for use by USAID and in doing so agree that USAID may use your photograph for the purposes of the competition and also for future reproduction on websites and literature and other materials and may allow others to do the same at USAID’s discretion (photographers will be credited where appropriate).

Home to nearly half of the world’s usable uncultivated land (202 million hectares), Sub-Saharan Africa is well endowed with agricultural land and other natural resources (Deininger et al. 2011). Yet it has the highest poverty rate in the world, with 47.5 percent of the population living below US$1.25 a day in 2008, notwithstanding robust annual economic growth of 4.7 percent (6 percent excluding South Africa) between 2000 and 2009 (World Bank 2012a). The region’s poor record of development suggests that it has not leveraged its abundant agricultural land and natural resources to generate shared and sustained growth or eradicate poverty. There is a general disconnect between abundant land and development.

Text of statement by H.E. President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf at the Land Commission Land Rights Policy National Validation Conference held at Centennial Pavilion in Monrovia, Liberia on Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Liberia’s first-ever Land Rights Policy concerns four land rights categories (Public Land, Government Land, Customary Land, and Private Land), and a cross-cutting sub-category called Protected Areas, which must be conserved for the benefit of all Liberians. For Public Land and Government Land, the Policy sets forth critical policy recommendations regarding: how the Government transfers such land, and how the Government acquires land, especially through the exercise of eminent domain (i.e. forced acquisition). With respect to the new category of Customary Land, there are several significant recommendations: Customary Land and Private Land are equally protected; and communities will self-define, be issued a deed, establish a legal entity, and strengthen their governance arrangements to make them fully representative and accountable. The Government also undertakes to support communities in implementing these recommendations. Finally, several Private Land issues are detailed, which include loss of ownership, leases, easements, and adverse possession.