Report: Regional Consultative Meetings on Land - Land Commission

and lack of rule of law, with respect to land
sales and transactions.
• Young people within rural communities are
increasingly converting to statutory process
of acquiring land.
• People in rural farming communities, particularly
returning youth, are often planting trees
crops (mostly rubber) on communally owned
family assigned plots as a means of securing
tenure and eventually establishing ownership.
• Rural communities generally place high degree
of reliance on traditional authority for
securing tenure.
• Squatter communities within Monrovia generally
recognize the right of ownership of government
or other parties (where convincing
evidence exist) to areas currently occupied by
these communities. Many of these communities
are now seeking to establish permanency
through invoking the principal of “adverse
possession”.
• Regarding the perceived backlog of land
court cases, participants stressed the need to
enhance capacity of the Courts to effectively
dispense of those cases which can be readily
disposed of through the court system, while
concurrently strengthened judicial enforcement.
• Many rural participants expressed preference
for employing Alternative Dispute Resolution
(ADR) mechanisms including local traditional
land disputes resolution mechanisms, which
they emphatically stated do work (when left
un-interfered by county officials), and are still
widely used in rural communities. These traditional/informal
ADR mechanisms involve
fewer adversarial procedures and are therefore
less likely to result in lasting rifts between
community members (as is usually the
case with “court” adjudicated disputes resolution
mechanisms), thereby maintain communal
harmony, which is of utmost importance
20 Governance Commisssion - Liberia
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to rural communities.
Participants recognized and acknowledged
the need for having land records.
• Many individuals residing within rural communities
have tribal certificates in their possession
for parcels of land on which they
currently have productive access, which are
several years (even several decades) old.
Many wrongly believe these Tribal Certificates
are legally equivalent to deeds.
• Participants expressed frustration with the
cumbersome, time consuming and relatively
expensive process of obtaining public land
deeds.
• Participants also strongly felt that land records
should be maintained and made assessable
at national, county, and district levels. Rural
participants want clan elders to also maintain
a record system for Tribal Certificate issued
locally.
• Generally, rural communities want their property
rights (both communal and personal)
documented.
• Local communities expressed the need to be
involved in all decisions regarding the use and
management of land and land based resources
(both forestry and mining).
• Participants in general strongly feel that limits
should be placed on the amount of land that
individuals, group of individuals, communities,
businesses and concessions, are granted
the right of possession over; under both customary
and statutory land tenure systems. The
recommended maximum acreage allocations
for each of these categories of users were surprisingly
consistent among county groups and
regions.
• Participants recognized the need for instituting
a land taxation regime which is fair and
which promotes investment and development
of land and land based resources. The use of