This article discusses the inherent limitations of law in transitional justice processes regarding land grievances. Through analysis of the case of Timor-Leste (East Timor), a country marked by post-colonialism, post-authoritarianism, and post-conflict. The article shows how complex transitional justice regarding land grievances can be, and argues that a legalist perspective gives a limited view of these grievances, both for studying and finding solutions to them. The article employs the concept of ‘wicked problems’ to overcome the limitations of law.

A lack of capacity in the land management and administration is a key reason that land policies are not effectively implemented in many countries and, indeed, is a reason that those policies are inappropriate or become outdated. This Guide outlines a process for assessing the capacity of the land management and administration system in a country as a whole, or just part of it (for example, just the land-valuation system, or the land management and administration system of a particular local authority).

Improvement of Land Governance in Uganda (ILGU) is a project implemented by the German International Cooperation (GIZ), seeking to increase productivity of small-scale farmers on private Mailo land in Central Uganda, co-financed by the European Union and German Government through the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

Rapid urbanization has led vertical infrastructural growth in different countries with differing economic development levels and social systems. The two cities, Prague and Delhi, are the capital cities of their respective countries and have significant vertical developments. However, the two cities represent the urban areas from countries having different economic development levels. The land agencies need to keep monitoring and managing the developments in a city. The paper proposes a conceptual 3D spatial database enabled IT framework for land agencies.

The webinar Rolling back social and environmental safeguards in the name of COVID-19, organized by Forest Peoples Programme, the Tenure Facility,  Middlesex University, the Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic and the Land Portal Foundation, took place on Thursday, February 18, 2021.

Global leaders increasingly recognize that land rights for indigenous and local communities are a prerequisite for achieving national and international goals for forest governance, food security, climate mitigation, economic development and human rights.

Opening up land-related administrative data, combining it with data from other sources  and processing and making this data available as easily accessible information for women and men equally could be a means to counteracting land corruption in land management, land administration and land allocation. But does open data and enhanced data transparency indeed help to counteract land corruption?

This detailed timeline provides further background information on the history and land governance of Botswana presented in the Land Portal Botswana country profile 

This detailed timeline provides further background information on the history and land governance of Eswatini summarised in the Land Portal country profile.

Many countries grapple with the intractable problem of formalizing tenure security. The concept of ‘fit-for-purpose land administration’ (FFPLA) offers a way forward by advocating a shift towards a more flexible, pragmatic and inclusive approach for land rights recording. Inherently, the process and outcome of implementing FFPLA will have significant socio-political ramifications but these have not received much attention in the literature; additionally, few papers have considered this in the context of decentralization, an endorsed strategy for implementing FFPLA.

The emergence of “blockchain” technology as an alternative data management technique has spawned a myriad of conceptual and logical design work across multiple industries and sectors. It is also argued to enable operationalisation of the earlier “smart contract” concept. The domain of land administration has actively investigated these opportunities, albeit also largely at the conceptual level, and usually with a whole-of-sector or “big bang” industry transformation perspective.

According to the United Nations (UN) Refugee Agency, there were 79.5 million forcibly displaced people worldwide by the end of 2019. Evictions from homes and land are often linked to protracted violent conflict. Land administration (LA) can be a small part of UN peace-building programs addressing these conflicts. Through the lens of the UN and seven country cases, the problem being addressed is: what are the key features of fit-for-purpose land administration (FFP LA) in violent conflict contexts?

In this onepager, you can find details on the LAND-at-scale project in Zimbabwe. This project is implemented by FAO and BEAT, and financed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs via the Netherlands Enterprise Agency. 

-- This project was discontinued in 2022 --