Land access in conflict situations: can sustainable livelihoods play a role?

Ensuring people have secure access to land is difficult in many post conflict situations. However, this is essential for achieving and sustaining peace. Sustainable Livelihood approaches offer opportunities for securing land tenure in post conflict situations.

Whilst access to land is often a cause of conflict, traditional land tenure laws can also be overruled during conflict. This denies rural people access to land after the conflict ends. People can be displaced from traditional lands during conflict or find their access rights weakened. In other places, their land becomes unusable after conflict, for example if it has been planted with land mines.

For rural populations dependent on agriculture, a lack of secure land tenure is a direct threat to food security and to incomes. Ensuring rural people have secure access to land is an important part of conflict resolution and preventing future conflicts. Research from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization suggests that sustainable livelihood (SL) approaches provide useful methods for post-conflict land tenure negotiations.

SL approaches are based on several principles:

• they are people-centred, focusing on the assets and resources that people have and what they are doing
• they are dynamic, allowing people to respond to situations and to develop solutions that are based on their immediate needs, abilities and resources
• they recognise the diverse and cross-sectoral nature of people’s livelihood strategies in many regions
• they are aware of the limitations of focusing analysis on a single sector
• they recognise the vulnerability of displaced people after conflicts and work to reduce this vulnerability
• they acknowledge the forces that are beyond the control of local people and institutions but which contribute to poverty, conflict and marginalisation (such as conflict and post-conflict dislocation, and collapsed economic, political and food systems)
• they can be applied on macro and micro levels to secure land tenure and maintain post-conflict peace.

SL approaches are useful tools in securing post-conflict land tenure agreements as their core principles mean they can be applied to a wide range of post-conflict situations. SL approaches can also help to include vulnerable groups in land tenure agreements. This usually includes women and children, and may also include ethnic, political, religious or geographical minorities.

Human capital, in terms of education and awareness of support opportunities, is often damaged during conflict. Rebuilding this is integral to maintaining peace.

Social capital is also often affected. Rebuilding social networks, relationships and inter and intra group communication, trust and reciprocity through SL approaches contributes to sustainable peace.

To apply these approaches successfully, the research suggests:

• A post-conflict environment will see many people attempt to switch livelihood strategies. It is important to examine what land-related problems affect this transition and identify the capital assets needed to facilitate more effective transitioning.
• The categorisation of problems will reduce the overall magnitude of issues and deal with the large number of problems more effectively.
• It is important to reduce problems quickly so that the governments are seen as ‘active’ on land issues and to reduce the prospect of local returnees taking such matters into their own hands.

Source(s):
‘Post-conflict land tenure – Using a Sustainable Livelihoods Approach’, LSP Working Paper 18, Access to Natural Resources Sub-Programme, by Jon D. Unruh, 2004 Full document.
‘Land Tenure and Legal Pluralism in the Peace Process’, Peace & Change Volume 28 Issue 3, Page 352, by Jon D. Unruh, July 2003 Full document.

Funded by: Livelihood Support Programme, Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO)

id21 Research Highlight: 26 January 2006

Further Information:
Jon D. Unruh
Department of Geography
McGill University
805 Sherbrooke St W.
Montreal, Quebec
H3A 2K6
Canada

Tel: +1 514 398 8989
Fax: +1 514 398 7437
Contact the contributor: jon.unruh@mcgill.ca

Livelihood Support Programme, Food and Agriculture Organization

Other related links:
'Exploring the causes of armed conflict in Africa'

'Land disputes in Ghana: can the state courts deal with them?'

'How do pastoralists cope with increasing pressure on land?'

'Africa’s changing landscape: new policies to resolve conflicts over land'

'Agriculture heals the wounds of conflict'