When we look at access to land and security of tenure, we talk about formal ‘ownership titles’, ‘informal written contracts’ and oral agreements between various parties. The rights and rights holders concerned are not usually specified something that often leads to misunderstandings and even conflict. This paper aims to help fill this gap by proposing a clear, simple method for characterising rights to land and natural resources and holders of land rights that can easily be applied in different cultures and legal systems all over the world.
This is one of the PEDAGOGIC FACTSHEETS to gain understanding, ask the right questions, and take action on land tenure issues in West Africa produced during the “Land Tenure Policy Elaboration Support” mobilizing project financed by the Agence Française de Développement. These short documents aims at assisting those involved in the development and the implementation of land policies in West Africa to better understand the complexity of land issues, and to evolve in their benchmarks, based on discussions and recent experiments. Production of these factsheets was coordinated by the Hub Rural, the Land Net West Africa, AGTER, the GRAF, and Roppa with the support of the “Land Tenure and Development” Technical Committee.