OSS Workshop Ethiopia

Guiding Principles: Land Tenure in Development Cooperation
Orientierungsrahmen: Bodenrecht und Bodenordnung		Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit Abt. 45 / Div. 45

Anneke Trux, Chedli Fezzani:

Executive Summary

I. Introduction

The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification underlines the need for more effective legal frameworks to combat desertification. The Annex for Africa especially emphasizes that National Action Programs should include measures to adjust, as appropriate, the institutional , and regulatory framework of natural resource management to provide security of land tenure for local populations. Owing to the rapid pace of ongoing social, environmental, climatic, demographic, and political changes in many African countries, land tenure conflicts have arisen and land tenure systems and policies are being reconsidered. A number of African countries have already begun to revise national land tenure policies and have launched discussions at the national and in some cases regional levels to address these issues.

The Sub-Regional Workshop For East Africa on Land Tenure Issues in Natural Resources Management was held to initiate a dialogue for the development of land tenure systems based on a better understanding of their dynamics and impact on sustainable natural resource management and the custody of the environment in the IGAD region. The objectives of the workshop were fivefold:

to review current land tenure systems, policies, and trends;
to analyze specific country experiences
to appraise of constraints and opportunities of land tenure systems for natural resources management and development;
to formulate options to solve problems at different levels including legal reform, institutional development, and methodologies;
to establish a practical approach to follow-up the workshop.

The workshop was divided into two activities. It began with presentations of key note issues papers, keynote country papers, country case studies, and a review of the West African experience of regional cooperation. The information presented in the papers then provided the basis for discussions of the issues in working groups. While a predefined set of questions was prepared for the working groups, participants were expected to draw upon the paper presentations as part of their deliberations. A plenary session then permitted the working group findings to be synthesized in formal discussion and provided a direction for future activities.

The terms employed in this document and the presentation of data contained therein do not imply, on the part of the Sahara and Sahel Observatory (OSS), any opinion concerning the legal status of countries, territories, cities and zones, or their authorities, or the demarcation of their borders or confines. The opinions and recommendations presented in this report which are the result of a workshop do not necessarily represent the position of the OSS.

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