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

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In 1965, 10,000 acres of land in Ding Clan and a small area of neighboring Mehn Clan were surveyed on
behalf of the GOL for purposes of establishing a military academy. Clan members reported that they were
asked to provide a small piece of land to construct a birthday home for President Tubman and were surprised
when the government subsequently laid claim to 10,000 acres. Prior to the war when the academy was
operational, only 100 to 150 acres were developed, some devoted to agricultural operations by the military.
On the remainder of the surveyed land, clan members continued to live and farm in the towns they had
already established under customary arrangements. Several of these towns on Tubman Military Academy land
are said to have TCs. Today there are rumors that the government intends to reopen the Academy, stoking
fears that this could lead to people being removed from their land.
The establishment of the Sapo National Park south of Motor Road Clan in 1983 marked the initiation of a
series of grievances by the current citizens of Motor Road (discussed further in Chapter 6). In 2003, the FDA
was successful in extending the park‟s northwestern boundary by 81,353 acres beyond the Sinoe River, which
served as the original boundary. Prior consultation was minimal. This extension cut into the area claimed by
the Wedjah Chieftaincy, which Motor Road citizens are part of and identify as part of their territory. This
effectively removed land from their access and control and placed it in the hands of the FDA. Then in 2010,
a three kilometer buffer was proposed that would further extend the protected zone around the park and also
provoke the relocation of the Upper Wedjah Community Forest, which is managed by Motor Road and
neighboring Twinboe Clan. According to clan members, FDA staff in Sapo Park told the community that the
relocation was necessary because community forests are not permitted in buffer zones.
4.3 ANALYSIS
Unlike fee simple tenure that predominates in areas first occupied by the Americo-Liberian settlers, in the socalled
Hinterlands where customary tenure prevails, notions of to whom the land belongs are much less
individualized. Rather, rights to land are vested in what we refer to as “core tenure units” – kinship groups
that make up towns, extended families, and smaller family units, along with a minority of strangers that have
assimilated into these groups. Primary rights and responsibility for governing access to land and natural
resources in core tenure units are typically vested in designated representatives – Town Chiefs (or their
customary equivalents), Family Heads, Town Elders, and – increasingly – the broader citizenry of these units.
The endurance of these lineage-based systems of group tenure over time amidst the influence of statutory
systems in Liberia attests to their economic, social, and political value.
Group tenures help communities protect themselves in environments characterized by high levels of
economic and biophysical risk by ensuring members have access to land for subsistence cropping, and
thereby lowering the risk of food insecurity. Group tenure likewise reinforces social cohesion among
members of kinship-based units, thereby equipping them with the social capital necessary for collective action
and a greater capacity to defend their land rights than they might otherwise have as individuals. Moreover,
group tenure is essential to the viability of the shifting cultivation system that rural Liberians rely on to meet
their food needs. Breaking up collective holdings and assigning rights to individual parcels would not only be
likely to lack social legitimacy, but would deplete soils and be agriculturally unviable under the current shifting
cultivation system.
A common feature of the customary systems we encountered is that rules and governance around access to
land and natural resources are highly nested. Whereas access to land for housing and farming tends to be
governed by core tenure units, access to bush resources – especially those that are more plentiful – is often
more open to larger extensions of the community, though increasing land and resource scarcity often elicits
the imposition of barriers to resource access, including requiring non-members of the core tenure unit to seek
permission to access resources and pay in kind (and sometimes in cash) for their use.
At the innermost layer of the nest, households within the core tenure unit are provided with temporary rights
to cultivate rice and vegetable farms, while households and individuals are conferred permanent rights to
parcels planted in trees. The next layer is where the governance rights of the core tenure unit are vested. In
CUSTOMARY LAND TENURE IN LIBERIA