Supplementary joint memorandum submitted
by FARM-Africa, Harvest Help and Oxfam
LAND RIGHTS,
LAND TENURE
AND LAND
REFORM
In a technical sense, land rights may
be said to include one or more of the following: rights to occupy,
to transact, to exclude others, to enforcement of legal provisions
to protect the rights holder, and to compensation for compulsory
acquisition by the state (Adams, 2000). In a broader sense, politically
disadvantaged groups have historically struggled to assert rights
to land they may once have enjoyed, but from which they have become
dispossessed or excluded. They include eg indigenous people in
many parts of the world, women, black Zimbabweans and South Africans.
Today privatisation threatens the land rights of the poor across
the globe. A particular impact of HIV/AIDS has been to undermine
the security of land rights of widows. For women, access to and/or
ownership of land can greatly strengthen her bargaining position
in the domestic sphere and provide the opportunity to secure other
social and economic rights, while also enhancing food security
and nutrition for her family. But land rights for women are fiercely
resisted at many levels (Palmer, 2002).
Land tenure may be defined as the terms
and conditions on which land is held, used and transacted (Adams,
2000). "Tenure"' is derived from the Latin term meaning
"holding" or "possessing", but land tenure
is a legal term which refers to the right to hold land, rather
than the act of possession. Recent studies stress the social nature
of land access and control (IIED, 2000). The land tenure system
in a given jurisdiction comprises the set of possible bases under
which land may be used. As such this range encompasses both rural
and urban tenures and includes ownership, tenancy and other arrangements
for the use of land (FAO, 2003). For decades the World Bank strongly
promoted the view that Western-style individual tenure was the
only path to development, but it has recently come to accept evidence
which supports the continuing viability and adaptability of indigenous/"customary"
tenure systems in many parts of the world (World Bank, 2003).
Land tenure reform (which can be either radical or gradual) refers
to a planned change in the terms and conditions on which land
is held, used and transacted. A fundamental goal is to enhance
people's land rights and thus provide tenure security. This may
be necessary to avoid the suffering and social instability caused
by arbitrary evictions and landlessness; it may also be essential
if rights holders are to be allowed to manage their land resources,
invest in the land and use it sustainably (Adams, 2000).
Land reform is generally accepted to
mean the redistribution and/or confirmation of rights in land
for the benefit of the poor. These may be tenants, farm workers
and other disadvantaged groups whose tenure is legally insecure
because they use and occupy land belonging to other persons, including
land registered in the name of the state. The potential scope
of land reform is very wide (Adams, 2000). The most common types
of land reform are those dealing with reallocations of land and
those redistributing legal rights of ownership. There is a common
perception that land reform is the prerogative of developing and
transforming economies. The reality is that land policy and the
legislative and institutional framework implementing that policy
are constantly changing in all societies as political, economic
and social circumstances change (FAO, 2003). Women's experiences
of land reform programmes based on titling and registration have
been mixed, with very negative consequences in much of Africa,
but more positive ones in parts of Latin America, as a consequence
of their greater social and political mobilisation there.
References
Martin Adams, Breaking Ground: Development
Aid for Land Reform, (ODI, 2000).
DFID, Better livelihoods for poor people:
the role of Land Policy, issues paper (DFID, 2002).
FAO, Multilingual Thesaurus on Land Tenure,
(FAO, ed Gerard Ciparisse, 2003).
IIED, Land Tenure Lexicon, (IIED, 2000).
The International Land Coalition (International
Land Coalition, 2003).
Oxfam GB's Land Rights in Africa website,
http://www.oxfam.org.uk/what_we_do/issues/livelihoods/landrights/index.htm
Robin Palmer, "Gendered Land Rights—Process,
Struggle, or Lost Cause?", 2002 www.oxfam.org.uk/what_we_do/issues/livelihoods/landrights/downloads/genderedrtf.rtf
Robin Palmer, "Struggling to Secure and
Defend the Land Rights of the Poor in Africa", Journal
für Entwicklungspolitik (Austrian Journal of Development
Studies), XIX, 1, 2003, 6-21 www.oxfam.org.uk/what_we_do/issues/livelihoods/landrights/downloads/struglin.rtf
Camilla Toulmin and Julian Quan (Eds), Evolving
land rights, policy and tenure in Africa (DFID, IIED, and
NRI 2000).
World Bank, Land Policies for Growth and
Poverty Reduction: A World Bank Policy Research Report (World
Bank and OUP, 2003).
May 2004
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