Corruption is the abuse of entrusted power for private gain, and corrupt practices in the context of land administration and land management have come to be known as ‘land corruption.’ Unfortunately, land corruption is all too common, with one in every five people across the globe paying bribes to access land services.
The COVID-19 crisis has made 2020 the most challenging year in our lifetime. It has demonstrated the need to ensure that sustainable and equitable land governance remains a priority on the international agenda. The pandemic also underscored the importance of digital platforms for both maintaining access to data and information and providing a space people can trust.
Earlier in the year Prindex – the first ever global measure of land and property rights – released its full 140-country dataset. The results are sobering. Almost 1 billion people around the world feel it is likely or very likely that they will lose their land or home within the next five years.
This is the story of how dozens of communities in Mozambique are mapping and documenting their own land rights. "A New Hope" is the winner of the Land Portal's Second Data Story Contest, and is authored by the team at Terra Firma Mozambique.
We have an ambitious objective here at the Global Data Barometer: To map the landscape of data for public good. To do so, we’ll be gathering information about data governance, capability, availability, and use and impact in 100+ countries. Because data for public good can play different roles and surface differently across sectors—for example, land data, transportation data, and corporate ownership data all have different histories, frameworks, and uses—we’ll also be delving into thematic areas.
Here is where local and granular studies gain relevance for GDB.
"Information is power but information sharing is even more powerful." With this statement, during his opening of the side event on blockchain at the LANDac encounter 2020, John Dean Markunas, Power of Chain Consultancy (PoC) cited me. I am now citing him back to explain what I meant.
This blog recapitulates the interventions made by the panelists of a recently held GODAN Action webinar on “Empowering Women for Open Data Mapping in Agriculture: Implications for Land Rights and the SDGs in Africa”, Victor Sunday, Dr. Toyin Ojo, Nathalie Sidibe and Uchechi Shirley Anaduaka.
The land sector is increasingly being cited as a corruption hub. Many countries across the globe are grappling with land-related corruption that dates to the colonial years and which have metamorphosed into historical injustices and continue to be a source of conflict and violation of basic human rights. Cases of land grabbing, compensation-less expropriation, gender-based discrimination in accessing and ownership of land and related resources, illegal mining deals, bribing to access land administration services among others are not new in the lands sector.
Over the past few weeks, the Land Portal along with colleagues at Cadasta, have been hosting a three week online discussion (September 9-29) on the role of open land data in the fight against corruption. With over 100 contributions to the discussion and a variety of different perspectives, ranging from civil society to government representatives, we have received some valuable and thought-provoking content.