Supporting Myanmar's land governance reforms: Approaches for legally recognizing customary land tenure as a driver for development for upland communities practising shifting cultivation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keyword(s):  
Land Tenure ◽  
Shifting Cultivation ◽  
Customary Land ◽  
Governance Reforms

The Design and Implementation of Customary Land Reforms in Central Malawi

1982 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clement Ng'ong'ola
Keyword(s):  
Land Tenure ◽  
Shifting Cultivation ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Agrarian Change ◽  
Royal Commission ◽  
Land Reforms ◽  
Design And Implementation ◽  
Group Control ◽  
Customary Land

In 1967 the Malawi Parliament passed a set of statutes which were intended to provide a new legal framework for rural agrarian change. The President, Dr. Banda, emphasised during the proceedings that existing customs for holding and tilling land were outdated, wasteful and totally unsuitable for the development of a country with agriculture as the basis of the economy. He suggested that the main problem was the absence of individual titles:“No one is responsible & for the uneconomic and wasted use of land because no one holds land as an individual. Land is held in common & and everybody's baby is nobody's baby at all.”He argued that the existing laws and customs discouraged individuals and institutions from providing loans for the development of land. New laws were therefore required to ameliorate the situation:These remarks were not completely novel; they echoed and repeated recommendations in the reports of the East Africa Royal Commission, 1953–55, and the Conference on African Land Tenure in East and Central Africa held in Arusha, Tanzania, in 1956. The defects of customary land tenure pertaining to shifting cultivation and the preponderance of group control over land holding and use which the Malawi President particularized were not the only justifications for reform. The reports suggested that tenure reforms were necessary where population explosion and shortage of land contributed to the uncontrolled emergence of land dealings; where unfixed and uncertain customary land boundaries contributed to excessive land litigation; and where succession rules led to excessive fragmentation and sub-division of holdings.

scholarly journals Land Tenure Reform in Three Former Settler Colonies in Southern Africa

2021 ◽  
pp. 87-110
Author(s):  
Chizuko Sato
Keyword(s):  
Land Tenure ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
Land Reform ◽  
Tenure Reform ◽  
Traditional Leaders ◽  
Land Administration ◽  
Traditional Leadership ◽  
Communal Areas ◽  
Primary Focus ◽  
Customary Land

AbstractThis study explores the challenges of land tenure reform for three former settler colonies in southern Africa–Zimbabwe, Namibia, and South Africa. While land redistribution programmes have been the primary focus of land reform for these countries since independence, land tenure reform for the inhabitants of communal areas is an equally important and complex policy challenge. Before independence, the administration of these areas was more or less in the hands of traditional leaders, whose roles were sanctioned by the colonial and apartheid authorities. Therefore, one of the primary concerns with respect to reforming land tenure systems in communal areas is related to the power and authority of traditional leaders in the post-independence period. This study highlights striking similarities in the nations’ land tenure reform policies. All of them gave statutory recognition to traditional leaders and strengthened their roles in rural land administration. In understanding this ‘resurgence’ or tenacity of traditional leadership, the symbiotic relationship between the ruling parties and traditional leaders cannot be ignored and should be problematised. Nonetheless, this chapter also argues that this obsession with traditional leadership may result in the neglect of other important issues related to land tenure reform in communal areas, such as the role of customary land tenureas social security.

Landowner Groups and the Codification of Custom in Papua New Guinea

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria C. Stead
Keyword(s):  
Papua New Guinea ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
Land Reform ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
Resource Extraction ◽  
Land Reforms ◽  
Middle Way ◽  
Customary Land ◽  
Relations Of Power

Although it diverges markedly from the vision of the Melanesian Way elaborated in the 1975 constitution, large-scale resource extraction has in recent decades been championed as the key mechanism for development in Papua New Guinea. In this context, forms of “middle-way” land reform are advocated as means of rendering customary land tenure commensurable with the requirements of modern, capitalist practices of production and economic activity. Principal amongst these are Incorporated Land Groups (ILGs) and lease-lease-back arrangements. Ethnographic exploration of communities affected by the tuna industry in Madang Province shows how these land reforms transform structures and cartographies of power, privileging the agents of the state and global capital at the same time that they transform relations of power within communities. At the same time, however, forms of codification and the assertion of landowner identities allow communities to make claims against outside agents involved in resource extractive activity on their lands.

scholarly journals When Tradition Meets Modernity in Land Registration: Evidence from Dagbon, Ghana

Land ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (11) ◽  
pp. 416
Author(s):  
David Asante Edwin ◽  
Evam Kofi Glover ◽  
Edinam K. Glover
Keyword(s):  
Land Tenure ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Land Ownership ◽  
Registration System ◽  
Land Registration ◽  
Tenure System ◽  
Title Registration ◽  
Land Tenure System ◽  
Customary Land ◽  
And Control

Development practice over recent years in much of Africa prioritized formalization of land policies deemed to enhance better handling and use of land as an asset for social development. Following this trend, land reform policy in Ghana was based on a pluralistic legal system in which both the customary land tenure system and the statutory system of land ownership and control co-exist by law. The primary research question for this study was the following: What implications emerge when customary land tenure system and the statutory system of land ownership and control co-exist in law? The study discussed the prospects and challenges of land title registration and the meaning of the new organizing concept in land ownership and administration among the people of Dagbon in the northern region of Ghana. The principal aim of the study was to assess the challenges of the implementation of a modern land registration system over a deeply traditional one. A qualitative research methodology was used and included qualitative descriptive analysis. This descriptive-analytical study was carried out to investigate opinions on the implications of the merger and preferred options for redress of any systemic challenges. It employed Focused Group Discussions (FGDs) to supplement in-depth interviews. Interviews were conducted among 40 key participants within formal and informal institutions including officials from both the Land Commission and Town and Country Planning Departments. Purposeful sampling was employed, and an interview guide was developed and used for collecting the data. Data were analyzed using a thematic approach. The results showed that in this structural reform, the ‘allodial title’ holder was much more trusted for tenure security because of the traditional legitimacy of the King as the sole owner and controller of land. The title registration system therefore principally served the secondary purpose as additional security. The findings indicate that in the circumstance where the law was seen as pliable, the policy engendered blurred and confusing effects that deepened the sense of ambiguity and outcomes were sometimes contradictory. We argued that the crossroads presented challenges that were novel and engendered innovative thinking for more appropriate solutions. The study revealed that policy reforms must be tailor-made to the physical, social, cultural and economic settings.

Joe Gumbula, the Inaugural Liya-ŋärra’mirri Visiting Fellow

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 91-101
Author(s):  
Marcia Langton
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Knowledge ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
Knowledge Systems ◽  
Teaching And Research ◽  
Knowledge Practices ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Customary Land ◽  
Methodological Considerations ◽  
Literary Legacy

AbstractThis is my account of collaborating with Joseph Neparrŋa Gumbula and, in tribute to him and his teaching and scholarship, a discussion of the methodological considerations for teaching and research-based teaching of Yolŋu culture. By privileging the agency and ontology of exegetes such as Gumbula and working in partnership, Yolŋu knowledge has become a part of the modern academic canon as well as a literary legacy for Yolŋu people. The invariable context of the scholarly encounter with Indigenous knowledge is an intercultural one attended by significant historical problems from experiences of the colonial and postcolonial capture of most indigenous societies in modern nation states. Indigenous exegetes hold knowledge systems that exist in situ, in places held in long traditions of customary land tenure and jural principles that predate colonial and postcolonial systems, and inherited in each generation by a few honoured and remarkable people who take up the arduous responsibility of learning and transmitting knowledge practices and their spoken, sung and performed vehicles of expression.

Customary Land-Tenure and the Poor: A Study of Jharkhand and Meghalaya

Social Change ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 430-446
Author(s):  
Ankita Goyal
Keyword(s):  
Land Tenure ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Disadvantaged Communities ◽  
The Status ◽  
Land Tenure System ◽  
Customary Laws ◽  
Customary Land ◽  
And Control ◽  
Individual Ownership

For most people living in rural India having access and control over land is crucial for their livelihood, more so in the case of tribals. This article analyses the nature of the customary land-tenure system in some districts of Jharkhand and Meghalaya and their impact on livelihood patterns, food security and poverty. Based on both secondary and primary data, the article seeks to examine the nature of the customary land-tenure systems in selected scheduled areas; specifically identifying the status of locals versus non-locals in managing land resources and analysing the extent to which women have been able to secure land rights under customary laws. The article concludes that though there are both positive and negative aspects to community and individual ownership of agricultural land, but on the whole the prevailing system does not helping in bettering the conditions of disadvantaged communities.

A New Era of Customary Property Rights? – Liberia’s Land and Forest Legislation in Light of the Indigenous Right to Self-Determination

2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 439-462
Author(s):  
Ricarda Rösch
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
Land Rights ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Forest Legislation ◽  
Customary Land ◽  
The Right

After the end of Liberia’s civil war in 2003, the country embarked upon the reform of its forest and land legislation. This culminated in the adoption of the 2009 Community Rights Law with Respect to Forest Lands and the 2018 Land Rights Act, which NGOs and donors have described as being amongst the most progressive laws in sub-Saharan Africa with regard to the recognition of customary land tenure. Given these actors commitment to human rights, this article takes the indigenous right to self-determination as a starting point for analysing customary property rights and their implementation in Liberia. This includes the examination of the Liberian concept of the 1) recognition and nature of customary land rights, 2) customary ownership of natural resources, 3) jurisdiction over customary land, 4) the prohibition of forcible removal, and 5) the right to free, prior and informed consent.

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