When the law is not enough

The Mozambique land law provides statutory recognition of customary land rights and is considered one of the most progressive legislations in Africa. However, the law continues to face implementation challenges, including the realization of equal rights for women and institutional reform. Simply having a progressive law ‘is not enough’ to bring about transformative change in a country. Recognizing these challenges, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) developed a programme to support the legislation through the capacity development of both direct beneficiaries and those responsible for implementing it. This publication, presents an overview of how this programme developed and what it has achieved to date. It highlights the lessons learned from this core element of FAO’s long history of support to the land programme in Mozambique. In particular, the study discusses the challenges facing land and natural resources paralegals in Mozambique today and helps to define the parameters for programme assessment by looking at paralegals in different country contexts. It describes how the programme has included training and capacity-development, not just for NGO-sponsored paralegals, but also for district and local government level officials, justice system officers and staff from public sectors working with land and natural resources.