Exploring the Nexus between Displacement and Land Administration: The Case of Rwanda

Abstract

In conflict situations, many people are displaced because of hostility and arms in the area. Displaced people are forced to leave behind their properties, and this in turn interrupts the relationship between people and their land. The emergency period in particular has been identified as a weak point in the humanitarian response to land issues in post-conflict situations. In addition, during this period of response, most post-conflict governments do not prioritize land administration as an emergency issue due to other social, economic, security, and political challenges, which countries face in the immediate aftermath of the conflict. In the longer run, this results in post-conflict illegal land occupation, secondary occupation, numerous disputes and claims over land, and dysfunctional government institutions that legalize these illegal and secondary occupations. This research explores the nexus between displacement and land administration in a post-conflict context. It uses empirical data from fieldwork in Rwanda, and discusses how government interventions in land administration in emergency and early recovery periods of post-conflict situations affect future land administration during the reconstruction phase. The post-conflict Rwandan government envisaged proper land administration as a contributor to sustainable peace and security as it enhances social equity and prevents conflicts. Thus, it embarked on a nationwide systematic land registration program to register land all over the country with the aim of easing land administration practices and reducing successive land-related claims and disputes. However, the program faced many challenges, among which were continuous land claims and disputes. Our research anticipates these continued land claims and disputes are due to how land issues were handled in the emergency and early recovery period of the post-conflict Rwanda, especially during land sharing initiatives and Imidugudu (collective settlement policy).

Plural Inheritance Laws, Practices and Emergent Types of Property—Implications for Updating the Land Register

“…On the other hand, the development of sustainable recording systems as formal schemes of legibility making would be untenable if they do not incorporate some elements of the very complexity (diversity) they intend to simplify or dismiss [44] (p. 7). In the domain of land administration, land relations are modelled in the form of subject-rights, restrictions, responsibilities (RRR)-object [38,45,46] and keeping the land register useful in time and space requires the updating of these relationships [38] (p. 18). What if the reality to be captured in a land register does not present itself in the model: subject-rights, restrictions, responsibilities-object; but multiple subjects with different rights, restrictions and responsibilities connected to an object?…”

Restoring Property rights: The Effects of Land Restitution on access to credit

“…In simpler terms, defining a right to restitution becomes challenging when the connection to the land is not rooted in conventional property rights, and multiple competing claims hold equal weight. Sometimes these customary rules are pragmatically acknowledged, as seen in Rwanda's approach to resolving competing claims among refugees from conflicts in 1959 and 1994 through land sharing and collective settlements known as Imidugudu (Todorovski & Potel, 2019). Conversely, the failure of the restitution process in Guatemala can be attributed to the neglect of this reality, leading to difficulties in addressing the rights of new claimants to the land (Williams, 2007).…”

Land Governance from a Mobilities Perspective

“…The three articles focusing on conflict and post-conflict settings analyze this situation from three distinct angles while offering strong complementarities. Todorovski and Potel's [26] (in this special issue) analysis of approaches to land administration in post-conflict Rwanda is structured chronologically into emergency, early recovery, and reconstruction periods. As such, it demonstrates not only the complexity involved in finding solutions to distribute and re-distribute land to several waves of refugees and returnees under conditions of weak institutions and high potential for renewed conflicts within families and across ethnicity.…”