General

The rule of law in Kosovo is constrained by poorly defined and enforced property rights, especially the property rights of women and members of minority communities. The absence of an effective property rights regime weakens democratic governance, impacts human rights, disempowers women and impedes sustainable economic growth. Working closely with the EU, the Kosovo Property Rights Program (PRP) will assist the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) to develop a property reform strategy and new property law. PRP is the only donor-funded project in Kosovo working to improve court procedures related to property claims, with an emphasis on improving court practices that prevent women from inheriting property in practice. The project supports implementation of USAID Forward and Local Solutions by building the capacity of Kosovo Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and municipal governments to manage and administer USAID direct awards through grants and Government to Government (G2G) agreements. PRP supports local CSOs to develop and implement public information, awareness, and advocacy campaigns to inform women and men about women’s rights to property and change attitudes and behaviors that prevent women from inheriting property. The project also builds municipal capacity to improve delivery of property related services, enabling citizens to more efficiently engage in property related transactions. The overall goal of the Property Rights Program (PRP) is to improve the property rights regime in Kosovo, strengthen the rule of law, and increase economic growth and investment. The Property Rights Program is implemented under four objectives: Objectives Objective 1: Better Coordination and Policy Priorities Objective 2: Improved Court Procedures Related to Property Claims Objective 3: Enhance Women’s Rights to Use Property in Practice Objective 4: Improved Communication, Access to Information, and Understanding of Property Rights Expected Outcomes Development of implementation-oriented legislation to clearly define property rights and improve tenure security for women and members of minority communities Development of improved court procedures to more efficiently resolve property claims and disputes Increased capacity of courts to decide and enforce property rights Increased capacity of Civil Society Organizations to raise public awareness, change societal attitudes and behaviors, and advocate for women’s rights to property Increased number of women inheriting property and securing access to credit Municipalities improve delivery of services to enable citizens to more easily transact their property rights

General

Under the Evaluation, Research and Communication (ERC) project, USAID is piloting a project to crowd-source land rights information at the village level in Tanzania using mobile technology. The Mobile Application to Secure Tenure (MAST) project (formerly the Mobile Technology Pilot) supports identified needs of the Government of Tanzania to improve land governance and lower the cost of land certification programs. The pilot tests a new, participatory approach for capturing land rights information, as well as a lower cost methodology for quickly building a reliable database of land rights claims. MAST may be particularly helpful to the Government of Tanzania as an alternative to more traditional, and more costly, land administration interventions. Formal land administration systems (LAS) in developing countries have generally not met the need for accessible, cost effective, and appropriately nuanced land registration. As a result, large majorities of rural dwellers (and many urban dwellers) live without formalized rights to land and other valuable resources. This lack of documentation may constrain the ability of individuals and communities to leverage their land-based assets for improved economic outcomes, to limit environmental harms, and to engage in collaborative contracting with prospective investors in land that leads to equitable sharing of benefits. Given rising concerns related to inappropriate and potentially harmful transfers of land rights from vulnerable populations to domestic and foreign investors, many tenure experts view the need to document existing rights in a participatory and efficient way as a high priority. Through the Mobile Application to Secure Tenure project, USAID will test the hypothesis that under certain conditions mobile technologies that support crowd-sourced information about a variety of land rights/tenure claims can be linked to databases that government can use to issue formal documentation in a more cost effective and time sensitive manner or serve as an independent registry of claims, thus, increasing land tenure security. The pilot approach combines relatively inexpensive and readily available mobile technologies (e.g., GPS/GNSS-enabled smart phones and tablets) coupled with broadly participatory crowd-sourced data collection methods in rural and underserved settings. The approach will train civil society representatives and/or local community members to use technology developed for this purpose to gather land rights and tenure information. Source code for the MAST Android application is now available on GitHub.