Statutory recognition of customary land rights in Africa
An investigation into best practices for law making and implementation
Resource information
Date of publication
January 2010
ISBN / Resource ID
FAO LEGISLATIVE STUDY 105 (Development Law Service - FAO Legal Office)
Recognizing and protecting customary land rights is a critical component of protecting and defending the land rights of the rural poor. This study is founded upon the notion that protecting and enforcing the land claims of rural Africans may be best done by passing laws that elevate existing customary land claims up into nations' formal legal frameworks and make customary land rights equal in weight and validity to documented land claims. Through a close examination of the text and implementation of the land laws of Botswana, Mozambique and Tanzania, this publication investigates various over-arching issues related to statutory recognition of customary land rights, notably:
- How best to integrate statutory and customary legal systems so as to most effectively strengthen tenure security, foster national and community prosperity, and take steps to extend all of the protections, rights and responsibilities inherent in the national legal system to rural communities;
- How to balance what happens on the ground, organically, against what the state views as "useful" or "valuable" and wants to preserve, enforce or encourage from above;
- How to write a land law that merges the practices of the people with the objectives of the state and arrives at solutions that will simultaneously: be used, adopted and successfully implemented on the ground; advance state interests; advance community interests; and advance individual interests;
- The factors that impact a law's long-term, effective and equitable implementation
