Customary Land Tenure in Liberia - Land Tenure and Property ...

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effective negotiation. Moreover, high standards of transparency and robust accountability systems would be
necessary to mitigate incentives for collusion and corruption by investors, government authorities, and even
community authorities at the expense of communities.
10.6 GOVERNANCE AUTHORITIES
To ensure responsiveness to community needs, equitable implementation of laws, and transparency in local
dispute resolution, it is critical that Community Land governance authorities be socially legitimate actors with
deep knowledge of customary rules and norms. Thus, we recommend that authorities governing land and
natural resources be based at the level of the core tenure unit, as determined by the communities. These
authorities should be representative, and can be pre-existing entities – such as elders, Family Heads, Quarter
Chiefs, and Town Chiefs – or can be a new set of authorities charged with land and resource governance,
either working in tandem with other authorities or independently charged with land and resource governance.
One such possibility is locally-elected, representative councils that would be responsible for: administering
and enforcing rules; working with their communities to develop new rules; and resolving disputes over land
and natural resources. Preexisting local authorities would not be precluded from serving on these bodies if
selected to do so by their communities. Depending on the preferences of the community, the authority of
these chiefs and/or councils may go beyond land and natural resources. In any case, to ensure social
legitimacy, communities should determine the format of their land and resource governance institutions, as
well as be involved in a consultative, community-driven process to develop the rules (by-laws) that it will use
to govern. However, national law would need to frame the process by which communities would determine
their land tenure governance institutions.
Whether communities opt for individual authorities, representative councils or a combination of both, local
governance authorities should be recognized by the government and vested with the rights and
responsibilities for governing land and resources. These would include developing new rights and rules for
land and natural resources; adapting existing rights and rules; enforcing those rules; resolving land and
resource disputes; and allocating unclaimed land, including farming plots, house plots, and areas for planting
life trees.
To ensure more equitable representation, we recommend that the government promote stronger integration
of women and youth as governance authorities over land. In the studied clans, a few women and youth
served as governance authorities. However, where women were in positions of authority, their power was
often truncated by traditional gender roles. Similarly, youth sometimes struggled to have their voices heard,
fueling a sense of exclusion and resentment. While increasing the number of women and youth as governance
authorities will not immediately change the stereotypes associated with their ability to govern, doing so will
create an environment whereby behaviors can gradually change over time. The government could promote
women and youth as governance authorities by implementing representative body quotas on land governance
councils; these representatives should be elected or otherwise chosen in a manner viewed as socially legitimate
in eyes of community. Further, the government could develop programs to train and mentor female and
youth leaders and implement campaigns that shift mindsets around women and youth as strong and
responsible leaders.
Finally, we recommend that Paramount and Clan Chiefs be removed from land and natural resource
governance where they are not deemed to be the appropriate leaders of the community-recognized tenure
unit. In the studied clans, we found that Paramount and Clan Chiefs rarely served as legitimate representatives
of the core tenure unit. Their lack of legitimacy over land matters stems from their association with the
government: these authorities are not indigenous to most parts of rural Liberia and were introduced by the
government to support their indirect rule. Further, there have not been chieftaincy elections since 1987,
meaning that some chiefs who do not represent the interests of their constituents have been serving in
positions of power for decades. Thus, we recommend that Paramount and Clan Chiefs not have a role in land
and natural resource governance, except where they are identified by communities as the leaders of the core
CUSTOMARY LAND TENURE IN LIBERIA