The Community Land Initiative in Mozambique lessons for the funding of pro-poor land tenure reform implementation
Emidio de Oliveira & Celia Jordao
The Community Land Use Fund, known in Mozambique as iTC 1, is an independent fund created by six international donors to complement governmentts efforts in implementing the Land Law, by helping rural communities secure their rights over land and natural resources, and to reduce poverty. Under the Mozambican Land Law the land belongs to the state, but informal and customary forms of community rights are recognised. The implementation of the law has however faced many challenges, due to poor awareness of rights, high demand for land use applications, and fragility of in-house capacity to enforce systems and procedures. As a result, key steps of the regulations, such as community consultation in land use attributions, have been neglected. iTC was designed to address part of this gap. After 8 years of continual refinement of systems and implementation methodologies, and as a result of feedback obtained from the public, iTCCs model can well be applicable to Mozambique and, potentially, to other similar contexts in the world. This paper shares the processes through which the iTC became a potential instrument to promote and protect community land rights, aimed at poverty reduction.
Event: Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty 2013
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