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

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the majority of studied clans, these governance rights are vested in extended families, quarters, or towns.
Within these core tenure units, members will have primary rights to access land and virtually unrestricted
access to natural resources. The subsequent layers typically comprise various extended patrilineal
communities (e.g., clusters of family land or towns) that have rights to access land and natural resources
within that unit – either without restriction, if permission is granted by representative(s) of the core tenure
unit, or if payment is made. In some cases, these broader tenure units will also be characterized by strong
governance rights, as is the case in Nitrian Community and Motor Road. While sometimes these extended
units closely reflect administrative clan units, often they do not. Clan boundaries should therefore never be
assumed to conform to social or lineage boundaries or used as a basis for circumscribing core tenure units.
The individualization of tenure within these patrilineal customary tenure systems appears to have been
prompted by the introduction of commercial tree cropping and statutory forms of tenure. We encountered
examples of this in Tengia, Gbanshay, Ylan, and Dobli where core tenure units tend to be smaller. In the first
two clans, we found extensive tree cropping, whereas the latter three have been substantially impacted by TCs
and deeds. Greater individualization of tenure together with increased reliance on cash over subsistence crops
could weaken social inter-dependencies and community cohesion. The poor and disadvantaged that may not
have access to life trees are disadvantaged. For example, these trends could invoke negative consequences for
women, given that men control significantly more land than women in most clans. The community in general
and the tree owners also incur an opportunity cost if they plant trees just for the purpose of securing their
rights to the land when they could have devoted their land/labor to activities that would result in the highest
return.
Women’s Land Rights
We observed positive trends for women‟s land rights in several clans. In two clans – Ding and Little Kola –
women are able to make farms on their own, suggesting either that they are able to mobilize male labor to
clear and burn the fields or that women themselves are undertaking some tasks traditionally considered to be
“male” in nature. In Tengia, Ylan, Dobli, Nitrian, and Mana, women have their own vegetable gardens, which
are smaller than rice farms and presumably necessitate less labor to clear and burn. In Ylan and Tengia, a
number of women reportedly have their own tree farms. This, however, was not the case in Saykleken or in
clans where tree cropping is minimal (i.e., Nitrian and Motor Road).
In several clans, daughters are increasingly gaining rights to inherit land – including land planted in tree crops
and, where land is held by immediate families, land for seasonal farming. Daughters being perceived as more
responsible than sons is one factor driving this trend in these clans. Women are also increasingly staying in
their natal communities when they marry – either marrying men from the same community or marrying
“strangers” that settle in their community. Remaining in her natal community strengthens a woman‟s rights to
land because she is a member of that patrilineage, whereas if she were to move to her husband‟s village she
would access land through his patrilineage and is in many respects akin to a stranger. Likewise, a woman that
stays in her natal community is more apt to care for her parents in their old age, thereby giving her parents an
incentive to ensure that she has the assets to provide for her and her family. Opportunities are therefore
present to influence women‟s control over land through supporting trends that favor daughter inheritance
and taking advantage of loosening norms around patrilocal marriage traditions.
Despite these encouraging shifts, they were not apparent in all studied clans. In Saykleken and Nitrian, for
example, women appear to be in a much more subservient position and exercise little control over land,
possibly owing to the clan‟s more isolated status.
Women are constrained from farming individually by the labor required for clearing and burning farms, as
well as by the distinct gender roles associated with specific subsistence farming tasks. Although we heard of a
few women with their own rice farms, this tends to be the exception because male labor is needed to clear
and burn the fields. By the same token, men rely on female labor to plant and weed the fields. These
symbiotic labor requirements explain why men and women usually only access their own land for subsistence
farming after they are married and farm with their parents prior to marrying.
CUSTOMARY LAND TENURE IN LIBERIA