Land rights in Africa - Key principles

In working on land rights issues in recent decades, Oxfam GB has subscribed to this set of broad principles and ways of working:

• Justice and equity must be fundamental considerations in all land rights work.
• Access to land and security of tenure are necessary for people to raise and stabilise their incomes and to participate in economic growth. They are also essential prerequisites for diverse land-based livelihoods, sustainable agriculture, economic growth, poverty elimination, achieving power in markets, managing natural resources sustainably, and preserving a people’s culture.
• But that access and security, for many individuals and communities, is currently threatened by powerful elites seeking to exploit their power and knowledge to change tenure to the detriment of those unaware of their legal rights or unable to enforce them. This can operate at different levels, e.g. elites over certain communities, male family members undermining women’s tenure, ethnic majorities over minority populations, discrimination by age, etc.
• Gender equality. Women, regardless of marital status, should be entitled to independent land rights, including an expansion of enforceable legal rights of access to and control and ownership of land and property, increased inheritance rights (as daughters and widows), access to loans, and co-registration in leasehold systems.
• Pastoralists, indigenous peoples, and common property regimes. Oxfam believes there is an urgent need to support and defend the particular land rights of pastoralists, of indigenous peoples, and of common property regimes.
• Decentralisation. In principle the allocation and management of land and other natural resources and reviews of land sales should be devolved to accountable and representative local structures.
• Regulating market forces. Oxfam believes that land, like education, is something which markets do not necessarily provide well. Hence public action will often be needed to ensure that unrestricted market forces do not lead to increasing polarisation. Oxfam believes strongly that laws and policies passed today which further marginalize people living in poverty will inevitably breed serious social conflict in the future.
• Responsible foreign investment. With regard to foreign investment in or ownership of land, there is a need for safeguards to provide more effective protection to citizens. Where land is taken from communities for foreign investment, proper and adequate compensation must be paid. Oxfam urges governments to work together more closely towards developing common policies in this key area. Compensation should also be paid and due processes followed when land is acquired by the state.
• Accessible, transparent debates. Because the land rights issues currently being debated will have long-term social consequences, they are too important to be determined largely by small numbers of politicians or officials in private. Oxfam strongly believes that in the public interest there must be genuinely transparent and fully participatory debates on land. It is only as a result of such debates that a national consensus can emerge and workable laws be created which balance equity with efficiency, justice with expediency.
• Support. Oxfam will continue to seek to provide effective and timely support to organisations committed to enhancing communities’ access and rights to land and hence to the development of sustainable livelihoods as a means towards effective poverty elimination.
• Solutions. Finally, Oxfam fully recognises that there are no easy solutions to today’s complex land problems but believes that popular participation in the decision making process is a fundamental prerequisite to finding just solutions.