Legal aspects of land administration in post conflict areas
Zevenbergen, Jaap & Paul van der Molen
Paper presented at the Symposium on Land Administration in Post Conflict Areas, held at Geneva, 29-30 April 2004 (LAPCA, Geneva).
An array of issues has to be faced when the land administration functions are being reactivated in a post conflict area. This paper will look at several issues with a strong legal component. It deals with land rights, and the land records describing these, and especially with what they (still) mean and what not, and how to use them and other information as evidence in a procedure to clear upp the legal situation in regard to land. This procedure can be compared to a process of adjudication and depending on the choices made, can hinder or even de facto block the formal land market for years. Solutions could be the avoidance of registered (and guaranteed) title (as under a title registration system), by sticking to a deeds registration system, or introducing provisional or qualified titles. That, however, means everyone runs some risks for some time to come, in a formal land market that can start easier. The authors at least do not consider a post conflict period a good time to introduce title registration.
Event: Symposium on Land Administration in Post Conflict Areas
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