Can land registration serve poor and marginalised groups? summary report

This report summarise the research findings of a project to examine the current processes of land rights registration in Ethiopia, Ghana, and Mozambique and assess their outcomes for poor and vulnerable groups. It examines the design and process of registration, the governance of those processes and the equity of the outcomes.This research finds that land registration is not inherently anti-poor in its impacts and that the distributional consequences of land registration depend on the design of the process and on the institutions responsible for its management. Land registration systems, the authors argue, can be designed so as to address the risk of bias against poorer and marginalised groups. To protect and secure the land rights of these groups, attention should be paid to:registration processes with regard to language used, registration fees, geographical accessibilityrecognising and recording “secondary” land rightsestablishing effective accountability and oversight mechanisms for the institutions implementing registration programmesinclusive dispute settlement institutionsThe study shows the need to avoid “one-size-fits-all” solutions and documents experience from a number of case studies from which the authors hope others will be able to learn.This report forms part of a series of seven papers based on a research programme entitled “Securing Land Rights in Africa: Can land registration serve the poor?” led by IIED.