Land Rights In Africa - West Africa: Liberia
West Africa
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Liberia
Large-Scale Land Acquisitions in Liberia NEW
Source: Bread for the World (Analysis 39)
Summary: Includes large-scale concessions and oil palm growing in Liberia, international attempts to qualify big land concessions, the FAO’s Voluntary Guidelines, national law and its relevance, the national legal framework concessions in Liberia, Sime Darby and Golden Veroleum in conflict.
Date: May 2013
Download (2,129K pdf) -Bread for the World-
Land Policy and Institutional Support (LPIS) Project. Customary Land Tenure in Liberia: Findings and Implications drawn from 11 Case Studies
Source: USAID
Summary: Includes land use and livelihoods, rights and rules governing land use and natural resources, women’s rights to land, local governance institutions in Liberia, disputes, dispute resolution mechanisms, sources of tenure security and insecurity, community recommendations, policy recommendations.
Date: February 2012
Download (4,181K pdf) -USAID website-
Protecting Community Lands and Resources. Evidence from Liberia, Mozambique and Uganda (Executive Summary)
Source: Namati (Rachel Knight, Judy Adoko, Teresa Auma, Ali Kaba, Alda Salomao, Silas Siakor, Issufo Tankar)
Summary: A community land titling initiative designed to protect community lands from land grabbing. Supported communities in Liberia, Mozambique and Uganda to follow their countries’ community land registration laws. Sought to understand what type and level of support was most effective. Concludes that community land documentation may be a more efficient method of land protection that individual and family titling, and should be prioritized in the short term.
Date: June 2012
Download (2,790K pdf) -Namati website-
Whose Land is it? Commons and Conflict States. Why the Ownership of the Commons Matters in Making and Keeping Peace
Source: Liz Alden Wily (Rights and Resources Initiative)
Summary: Addresses the tenure fate of three commons: the 30 million hectares of pasture lands of Afghanistan which represent 45 percent of the total land area and are key to livelihood and water catchment in that exceedingly dry country; the 5.7 million hectares of timber-rich tropical forests in Liberia, 59 percent of the total land area; and the 125 million hectares of savannah in Sudan, half the area of that largest state of Africa. All three resources have a long history as customary properties of local communities and also share a 20th century history as the property of the state.
Date: July 2008
Download (307K pdf)
So Who Owns the Forest? An Investigation into Forest Ownership and Customary Land Rights in Liberia
Source: Liz Alden Wily (for Sustainable Development Institute, Liberia / FERN)
Summary: State/people forest relations are at a turning point in Liberia. The crux of the issue is property relations and how the rights of rural Liberians to forests are treated in law and in practice. Central to the problem and the solution is the status of customary land rights. The paper tracks what happened to the natural rights indigenous Liberians have to their lands and the valuable forests that grow on them. It looks back at the treatment of customary land tenure over the century-long process of forming the modern Liberian state. Through fieldwork, the study identifies customary property norms as operating today. It finds that colonial policy with regard to indigenous land interests was uncharacteristically benign, as was the imposition of indirect rule. Together these have created a foundation on which democratic land relations may be rebuilt. There is also genuine vibrancy in collective norms of customary tenure closely linked to the role of forestland in the rural economy. Interference in customary property rights is severe but mainly recent. Favourable conditions for remedying the situation exist. Remedial rather than radical action is required. Practical steps towards achieving a solution are suggested. Much rests on the proposed Community Rights Law.
Date: November 2007
Download (3,766K pdf) -FERN website-
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