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News
2007
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December
2007
Magical
Mauritius
Is
it possible to create a digital cadastre of approximately 400
000 parcels, comprising data extracted from 300 000 deeds and
200 000 survey plans, and, assess and value 350 000
properties, all in 18 months? The Government of Mauritius
thinks so, and have issued a Request
for Proposals for contractors to compile a complete new
cadastre by resurveying every parcel, or by compiling existing
records, and inspecting every property. Too ambitious? Maybe
Mauritius is a magic place in more ways than one? > more
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November
2007
Land
Registry Ditches Online Documents
Is
there a downside to having too much land information in the
public domain? A recent case of fraud committed using
information made available via a land register website
suggests there is. The Land Registry of England and Wales runs
a public service, called Land
Register Online, that provides scanned images of original
documents for a small fee. Using a copy of a document
downloaded from the website, a transfer was forged and a
mortgage obtained on the basis of the fraudulent title before
the fraudster disappeared with the money. A one-off case,
perhaps, but sufficient for HMLR
to withdraw the service from the public domain. > more
on the BBC website.
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November
2007
Rights
of the Rural Poor
The
media often highlights development in India in terms of rising
demand for petroleum products and increased pollution and
greenhouse gases contributing to global warming. However, the
Guardian have reported
a different side of India's rush to industrialise - the plight
of the rural poor who are dispossessed of land or cannot
access sufficient land to sustain a livelihood. To highlight
their cause, 25,000 protestors recently marched to Delhi to
present their case to Parliament.
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October
2007
Land
Policies in Southern Africa
Land
policies have been a prominent part of the land administration
scene in Africa over the past 10 years. National land policies
have been adopted in Uganda, Malawi, Lesotho and are in the
consultative stages in many other countries. Often these
policy initiatives have been driven by the good governance
agendas of development donors and agencies. This is now
changing, however, as the continent's leaders, through the
African Union, appreciate the need for regional support to
national responses to the land question. A recent workshop
launched the land policy process in South Africa. > more
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September
2007
Game
Winners Announced
Last
year the World Bank Institute sponsored a competition to
design an educational game on the very important task of
street addressing. Recently two winners were announced
from 35 entries submitted. > More
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August
2007
Giving
the Poor Their Rights
Madeleine
Albright and Hernando De Soto of the Commission on the
Legal Empowerment of the Poor, an initiative hosted by
the United Nations
Development Programme with the aim of making legal
protection and economic opportunity not the privilege of
the few but the right of all, recently published an
opinion piece in Time
magazine arguing how giving the world's poor their basic
legal rights can help break the cycle of despair. Read
the article here.
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August
2007
Land
- Better Access and Rights
for Poor People - DFID Policy Paper
Responding
to the UK's House of Commons International Development
Committee's 2006 report
recommending that more needs to be done in the area of
property rights, the Department for International
Development outlines it's new policy for supporting the
strengthening of land rights and land administration in
developing countries. DFID's approach to land issues is
to help countries develop their own land policies and
practical strategies for improving access to land by the
urban and rural poor. The policy paper can be downloaded
here
(891kb pdf) from DFID's website www.dfid.gov.uk.
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August
2007
Land
Titles Give People a Stake in their Country
The
World
Bank focuses on the importance of land titles to
socio-economic development. "Now I feel confident
for my future and for my children. No one can come to
grab my land. This is my real property" says
66-year old Dith Sary upon receiving her land title
certificate.
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July
2007
Land
and Housing in South Africa
Ethembalethu,
meaning “Our Hope" is a small community on the
outskirts of Johannesburg that is struggling to achieve
it's formal existence. Although the community have the
right to buy the land they occupy, bureaucracy and
resistance to their presence is preventing the purchase
and registration of the property. The community's plight
is the subject of a study by the World
Bank, and the issues raised by the case illustrate
the complexity of peri-urban tenure formalisation.
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July
2007
IT
for Senegal LR
The
European Development Fund has recently announced a
contract (EuropeAid/124236/D/SER/HT)
for the design and development of an information system,
comprising GIS and RDMS, for the Land Registry in
Senegal. Linked to the existing taxation database, the
system will cost Euro 295,000 including training and
support.
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June
2007
Caribbean
Sugar Cane Lands
The
impending end of the preferential market for sugar in
Europe is highlighting the importance of land and
agriculture to the economies of small Caribbean island
states. Adapting to the changes in agricultural land use
that will inevitably result from the end of the
preferential market will require the investment of
capital and tenure security. Functioning land markets
underpinned by effective registration systems are
critical factors if farmers are to help themselves and
not depend entirely on the state.
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May
2007
Rural
Land Certification in Ethiopia
An
important research paper (wps4218) published by the
World Bank examines the processes and initial impact of
the rural land certification taking place in Ethiopia
and the implications and lessons for other African
countries. Although there are some concerns about
sustainability, the highly decentralized and
participatory certification process and the low unit
cost provides important lessons for those other African
countries that are currently struggling to turn their
land policies into concrete results.
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May
2007
Benchmarks
and Indicators for Land Reform in Africa
Land
reform experts from around the world gathered in Addis
Ababa at the beginning of month to propose and discuss
suitable benchmark criteria and indicators for assessing
the progress and outcomes of land policy and land reform
in Africa. The presentations made at the meeting are
available online
at the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA).
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May
2007
Financing
for Small Businesses
A
recent Inter-American Development Bank sponsored "Banking
on Small Business" conference heard that
barriers to accessing credit in the Latin American
region include the absence of a framework for pledging
and seizing collateral on default and ineffective land
registries. There is growing informality in the region,
including in property transactions.
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April
2007
Portal
of Governance Indicators
The
Inter-American Development Bank has unveiled an
innovative portal called DataGob
that offers access to some 400 governance indicators,
covering topics as varied as support for democracy, the
cost of starting a business, wastefulness in government
spending and land registration procedures in Latin
America and the Caribbean and other developing regions
of the world.
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April
2007
Social
and Economic Impacts of Land Titling
A
new report, by Geoffrey
Payne and Associates, provides an important
synthesis of evidence about the impact of land titling
and formalising land tenure systems to reduce poverty in
urban and peri-urban areas. The conclusion: land titling
is popular with governments and people and can
significantly improve security of tenure. Whether or not
this leads to poverty reduction is not so certain: there
are major gaps in our knowledge about the impacts of
titling and much more research is needed before firm
conclusions can be drawn.
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March
2007
China's
Property Revolution
China's
new, and controversial property
law, does not answer the question "who owns
what?" but it is a step in the right direction
according to The
Economist newspaper. The law, as it's critics claim,
protects the rights of the land-grabbers as well as the
rights of emerging middle class home-owners. Is this
perhaps one more step "on a journey of a thousand
steps" towards marketable ownership rights for
peasant-farmed land? Perhaps not. The enforcement of
property rights still remains a formidable challenge.
Click here
to read the whole article.
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March
2007
Ghana
at 50 years
A
model for development in Africa, with a stable
democratic government, strong business confidence, an
economy growing at 6.2%pa, and poverty set to halve by
2015, Ghana has much to celebrate at the milestone of 50
years of Independence from Britain. These recent
achievements are attributable to many things, and good
land administration is playing it's part. In 2003 the Government
of Ghana and the World
Bank embarked on a long term land
administration project to strengthen and
extend registration of title across urban areas.
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February
2007
Governance
and Land Administration
Evidence
of the strengthening link between good governance and
land administration comes from the recently published
notice by the World Bank seeking expressions of interest
from consultants to undertake an 18 month study to
develop a conceptual framework for assessing governance
in land administration, organizing regional
consultations, undertaking case studies in four
countries, and organizing a conference to disseminate
the findings of the study. > World
Bank
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February
2007
Cambodia:
The World Bank announced that it will resume disbursing
money for the Land
Management and Administration Project, one of
three development projects in Cambodia where aid
disbursements were suspended last year due to alleged
corrupt practices. This comes after the Government
agreed to implement 'good governance frameworks' for all
World Bank projects, which would include the use of a
private consulting firm to handle procurements. Source: World
Bank
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January
2007
Legal
Empowerment of the Poor and Property Rights
A
different, but complementary, approach to development
aims to help the poor realize and protect their property
rights. Under the auspices of the United Nations, the
Commission on Legal Empowerment for the Poor is starting
a new phase of regional consultation and advocacy
meetings designed to highlight the importance of legal
rights in reducing poverty in the developing world. At
one such meeting in Indonesia, Hernando de Soto
(co-chair of the Commission) contributed to a lively
debate involving government and civil society by
remarking that 'property rights are not a panacea, and
that formalization should not simply be a process of
expanding the existing formal system, but instead
creating a system of rules grounded in the practices of
the informal system.' More information about the work of
the Commission can be found here.
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