Legal Empowerment of the Poor through Property Rights Reform: Tensions and Trade-offs of Land Registration and Titling in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

Land registration and titling in Africa is often advocated as a pro-poor legal empowerment strategy. Advocates have put forth different visions of the substantive goals this is to achieve. Some see registration and titling as a way to protect smallholders’ rights of access to land. Others frame land registration as part of community-protection or ethno-justice agendas. Still others see legal empowerment in the market-enhancing commodification of property rights. This paper contrasts these different visions, showing that each entails tensions and trade-offs. The analysis helps explain why land law reforms aiming at legal empowerment may be controversial or divisive in African countries.     

Regularization of Irregular Migrants and Social Policies: Comparative Perspectives

Abstract

This paper examines the social policy implications of the regularization of irregular immigrants. As an act of legal integration regularization arguably is about irregular migrants’ inclusion into mainstream social and legal structures and, as a corollary, has important implications for migrants’ access to social rights. Based on a recent comparative study of regularizations and their impact in seven EU Member-States, the study finds that access to social rights associated with regularizations indeed are reported as the most important impacts of regularization by regularized migrants themselves, next to access to work and related welfare entitlements.     

Testing Claims about Large Land Deals in Africa: Findings from a Multi-Country Study

Abstract

Despite much research on large land deals for plantation agriculture in Africa, reliable data remain elusive, partly because of limited access to information and practical and methodological challenges. International debates are still shaped by misperceptions about how much land is being acquired, where, by whom, how and with what consequences. This article aims empirically to test some common perceptions through an analysis of findings from research conducted in three African countries: Ethiopia, Ghana, and Tanzania. The article presents new evidence on the scale, geography, drivers and features of land deals, relates findings to data from earlier research and international efforts to monitor land deals, and outlines possible ways forward for ongoing monitoring of the deals.     

Land Use and Tenure Insecurity in the Drylands of Southern Ethiopia

This paper examines changing patterns of land rights and use in Borana and Guji zones, southern Ethiopia. It seeks to understand how heterogeneous groups of pastoralists and agropastoralists gain access to land under varied institutional configurations. We find different means of exclusion are pursued, including private enclosures that rely on customary institutions, government administration, and/or hybrid combinations to enforce claims. We also find that some herders may be making claims to farm plots with the goal of securing access to land rather than planting crops. By assessing how different situations and socio-economic factors affect land claims, the paper deepens understanding of motivations for plot acquisition by pastoralists and challenges the common dichotomy between customary and formal administrative rules and institutions.     

Do land reforms have adverse impacts on the livelihoods of poor land users? Evidence from the Nkoranza South Municipality,Ghana

Poverty reduction is the overarching goal of most development interventions in the developing world. From 2004, Ghana has been implementing a land reform policy/programme that seeks to improve tenure security and reduce poverty. The present study uses qualitative methods to analyse the extent to which land reforms are enabling or inhibiting poor land users in Ghana to exit poverty and improve their living standards. The study finds that Ghana’s land reform system redefines customary land governance resulting in a breakdown of the trusteeship ethos of the chieftaincy institution, increasing land sales, insecurity of land tenure for the poor and disappearing commons. These factors subsequently have adverse impacts on the ability of poor people to meet their livelihood needs. The study concludes that, for land reforms to work proactively for the poor, they must be pursued as part of broader, holistic and integrated development initiatives.     

Beyond trips: Why the wto‘s Doha Round is unhealthy

The current round of World Trade Organization (wto) negotiations—the Doha Round—has significant implications for global health which have received insufficient attention from the global health community. All too often the health implications of global trade agreements are examined only after their conclusion, and are concerned only with intellectual property rights. This paper seeks to move beyond this narrow focus and elucidate the wider health implications of the Doha Round. It explores the negative effect of the Round on state capacity to provide and regulate health services in low-income countries, and the impact it will have on livelihoods among the poor and their ability to access health services. Overall the paper makes the case for greater engagement from the health community with the wto and the Doha Round negotiations beyond the customary focus on intellectual property rights.     

The Legislative Process in Republican China: The 1930 Nationalist Family Law and the Controversy over Surnames for Married Women

Abstract

This article investigates the legislative process that produced the 1930 Nationalist Family Law Book of the Republican Civil Code, focusing in particular on the debate over married women's surnames. In the accompanying discussion, Guomindang (GMD) lawmakers, legal experts, educators, women's rights advocates, and others grappled in a remarkably open manner over how best to address the surname question in light of their concerns with Party consolidation, legal modernisation, gender equality, social stability, and individual identity. Although the outcome of the legislative process affirmed customary surname practices (albeit with progressive overtones), the process itself was uniquely radical, with participants thoroughly reevaluating one of the oldest and most fundamental patriarchal institutions in Chinese society. The legislative and post-legislative debate over surnames illuminates the Nanjing Decade as a singular transitional period in the history of Chinese law and gender during which law was subject to revision and amendment rather than orthodoxy, and GMD policy toward women was subject to deliberation rather than dictated by ideology.     

Land Reforms,Poverty Reduction,and Economic Growth: Evidence from India

Abstract

Recognition of the importance of institutions that provide security of property rights and relatively equal access to economic resources to a broad cross-section of society has renewed interest in the potential of asset redistribution, including land reforms. Empirical analysis of the impact of such policies is, however, scant and often contradictory. We use panel household data from India, together with state-level variation in the land reform implementation, to address some of the deficiencies of earlier studies. Results suggest that land reform had a significant and positive impact on income growth and accumulation of human and physical capital. Policy implications are drawn, especially from the fact that the observed impact of land reform seems to have declined over time.     

International terrorism,human rights,and World order

Abstract

This article attempts to summarize the efforts that have been made during the 1970s in the search for an appropriate definition of international terrorism, its causes, and the measures to combat it. It evaluates these efforts in the context of the simultaneous interests in human rights. It advances some propositions as to how international terrorism could be seen from the perspectives of both social‐psychological theories of violence and Western legal practices. In conclusion, the relationship between the individual and the state is evaluated in the context of the present world order and its operative political and legal principles. Although this approach may not solve the problem of international terrorism by advancing any neat scheme of control which can be readily applied by anxious governmental law enforcement agencies, nor succeed in articulating a strategy for the respect of human rights by governments and individuals, it will hopefully generate some ideas about how justice can be rediscovered while searching for viable solutions for both international terrorism and human rights.     

Something Funny Happened on the Way to Reform Success: The Case of Budget Reform Implementation in Ghana

Abstract

The current article discusses experience with budgeting and financial management reforms in Ghana and is particularly focused on the development of the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) between 1998 and 2002. Evidence shows that this reform began well but faltered after an initial period of progress. A number of factors are referenced in trying to explain why reform implementation was derailed, including reform ownership and political will, organizational integration and organizational incentives, and strategic capacity. All of these factors are commonly presented as influences on reform implementation. The Ghanaian experience provides detail as to how such influences could work.     

Hybrid land markets: monetarised customary land transactions in Zambia

This paper examines the growing trend of monetarised transactions of customary land in Zambia, and the impact of these dealings on customary land practices and norms. While transactions of customary land involving money are not a new phenomenon in many parts of Africa, including Zambia, the growing demand for land, especially in areas where land shortages are emerging, has led to a steady growth in these transactions, with the practice becoming more widespread. In the Zambian context, this is directly linked to the policy that allows customary land to be converted into leasehold tenure. Local elites, urban dwellers, and foreign investors are taking this opportunity to acquire customary land which they then convert to leasehold tenure. However, while these dealings have some features of a conventional market, they are, at the same time, bound up in local customary land norms. Although such transactions have been reported widely in the literature, there has been little analysis of their nature and the impact this is having on traditional land practices and norms. Drawing mainly from qualitative data, this paper examines the nature of these transactions and the effects they are having on customary land relations, practices and norms.     

The right to food in the context of large-scale land investment in Ethiopia

Abstract

Since the global food crises of 2007, smallholder farmers, pastoralists, indigenous peoples and other rural groups in many developing countries have seen their access to land, water and forest resources being threatened and reduced due to the acquisition of those resources by other actors – acquisitions that may have been promoted by state policies. Taking up the case of Ethiopia, this article aims to explore the implications of large-scale agricultural investments for local food security and the right to food. The article argues that in the context of the recent and ongoing large-scale agricultural investments driven primarily by the state, the interpretation and realisation of the right to food becomes a politically contested issue and that such investments run counter to implementing the state’s obligation to protect local people’s access to and procurement of adequate food. It argues that the large-scale agricultural investments both condition and pervert the realisation of food security.     

Turning deserts into flowers: settlement and poppy cultivation in southwest Afghanistan

Abstract

Supply-side interventions are often criticised for reducing illicit drug crop cultivation in one location only for it to rise in another: the balloon effect. The balloon effect is generally seen as an inevitable consequence of attempts to reduce opium and coca cultivation. In Afghanistan, there is little evidence of this causal relationship and limited acknowledgement of the socio-economic, political and environmental processes that govern access to the factors of production such as land and labour. This paper examines the settlement of former desert areas in southwestern Afghanistan. It shows how the encroachment on this land and the rapid expansion of opium production since 2003 were supported by affordable deep-well technology, collapsed controls on the use of what is officially government land and the relatively high price of opium that endured long after the demise of the Taliban prohibition of 2000–2001. Finally, it reveals that the rate of settlement of these areas was affected by an opium ban imposed across the Helmand Food Zone from 2008 to 2011 and shows how this drug control effort ultimately helped transform the province, bringing new land under permanent settlement and thereby increasing Helmand’s capacity to cultivate more opium poppy than ever before.     

Reconciling Privacy and Access Interests in E-Government

Abstract

Privacy is both the most often cited and the least understood rationale for information policy aimed at protecting the disclosure of governmental information. The use of privacy as a means of limiting governmental information sharing has expanded rapidly in recent years, as a variety of interests—all seemingly concerned with informational privacy—have emerged in the policy making arena. Governments increasingly turning to e-government solutions must confront privacy issues while maintaining access to governmental information.

One of the most contentious privacy–access issues concerns the digitization of court records. Historically open to the public in paper form with limited exceptions, electronic court filings raise novel privacy issues unimagined by keepers of paper-based records systems. This paper looks at the rules that a number of municipal and state governments have adopted in order to move court records online. It examines the new court rules in light of the origins of informational privacy law, offering an avenue for comparing modern conceptualizations of data privacy with the legal principles created in seminal privacy decisions related to informational privacy. Using the rules themselves, the paper explores the dominant strands of privacy doctrine, illustrating the divide between privacy law and privacy policy regarding data protection statutes, freedom of information law exemptions, and other data controls.     

The Imbalance between Public Expectations and Resource Provision in Developing Countries: Can Inter-Assemblies Cooperation Reduce the Gap?

ABSTRACT

Local authorities have long sought for solutions to the numerous service delivery challenges arising out of increasing demands from the general public coupled with budgetary constraints. One such solution is inter-organisational cooperation which has been found as an alternative cost-effective way of providing services to the general public. Drawing on resource-dependency theory, this paper explores the possibilities and challenges of cooperation among Assemblies in Ghana by adopting a qualitative approach. The findings reveal that inter-district cooperation is still at its development stages in Ghana despite the respondents’ recognition that it has the potential to address most of the problems faced by District Assemblies in Ghana.     

Access to What? Legal Agency and Access to Justice for Indigenous Peoples in Latin America

Abstract

In this paper I issue a call for a primary focus on expanding and strengthening alternative, community-based justice systems, as a strategy for securing the full benefits of legal agency to indigenous and other culturally distinct groups. I do so because what lies within the formal justice system – the very system to which so many well-meaning programmes promise access – is, for these groups and their members, often partial justice at best. Efforts to increase the space governed by autochthonous justice are more likely to produce true legal agency for both the communities and their members, although they raise important issues for included subgroups, such as women or culturally nonconforming groups. Somewhat paradoxically, indigenous groups’ engagement with the very apex of formal systems, through constitutional litigation, has been one avenue for increasing that space, thus reflecting the exercise of collective legal agency in the pursuit of collective and individual legal agency.     

Scientific capacity building and the ontologies of herbal medicine in Ghana

Abstract

The Centre for Scientific Research into Plant Medicine, a large herbal medicine research center in Ghana, has received important research equipment and training through a transnational research collaboration involving the Japanese International Cooperation Agency. By situating this project in regional debates about traditional medicine research priorities and the ontologies of plant medicine, this article argues that the collaboration had the perceived effect of standardizing research practices oriented toward drug discovery rather than the rationalization of crude drug preparations. This shows that “capacity-building” components of research collaborations should not be taken as the transfer of neutral goods from one location to another. They are charged with the political potential to make crucial decisions about the objects of research in postcolonial Africa.     

Local Council Development Areas and Local Service Delivery: How a Fourth-tier Government Unit is Improving Access to Primary Health Care and Education Services in Lagos,Nigeria

ABSTRACT

Emerging accidentally from an array of political and legal contestations is a fourth-tier government unit in Lagos state – Local Council Development Areas (LCDAs). The LCDAs have survived almost two decades of existence without the ’traditional’ monthly federal allocation, which has been the mainstay of the existing 774 LGAs in Nigeria. This study attempts an explanation of this apparent survival by examining the institutional structure of the LCDAs vis-à-vis their service delivery performance. Different from earlier studies that have examined service delivery using final outcomes, the study examines accessibility as an intermediate output; dimensioned as availability, adequacy and affordability. Using a mixed-methods research design, the study shows that Lagos LCDAs’ inclusive operational structure is significantly improving access to primary health care and education services. Thus, the study finds evidence within the operational structure of Lagos LCDAs for Acemoglu and Robinson’s theory of inclusive and extractive institutions.     

Sino-Ghana bilateral relations and Chinese migrants’ illegal gold mining in Ghana

ABSTRACT

This article examines the participation of some Chinese migrants in illegal gold mining (known as galamsey) in Ghana, and how the Government’s policy to address the issue created diplomatic tension between China and Ghana. Drawing on primary data from in-depth, face-to-face interviews with 250 respondents and supplementary information from archival sources and personal observation, the study found that small-scale gold mining is an area legally reserved for Ghanaian indigenes, who faced stern competition from some Chinese migrants’ miners. Their ability to mobilize resources and machinery to execute galamsey virtually displaced the indigenes from their source of livelihood and caused environmental catastrophes. The Ghana Government’s policy response to the Chinese migrants’ galamsey, which led to arrests, sentencing and deportations of some Chinese miners, angered Beijing and fractured Ghana–China diplomatic ties. But the dispute could not collapse the entrenched bilateral relations between the two nations because the calculated mutual benefit derived from the relations was thought to be higher than the Chinese galamsey issue. Policy reforms which legally integrate Chinese migrants’ miners into the small-scale mining sector would stop galamsey and strengthen Sino-Ghana relations.     

Reconceptualizing Early Ghana

At the time of his death, Nehemia Levtzion had initiated a project to revise Ancient Ghana and Mali in the light of new scholarship since its original publication in 1973. He proposed that the question of origins and early development of Sudanic polities such as Ghana should be thoroughly reconsidered with regard to findings from research in archaeology and related disciplines. In this article, I discuss four topics (climate variability, sedentary-mobile interactions; external / internal dynamics; and organizational variability) central to Levtzion’s 1973 account of Ghana’s origins and the implications of research results to date for our understanding of early political consolidation in the Sahel.