The system of

land tenure In common law systems, land tenure, from the French verb "tenir" means "to hold", is the legal regime in which land owned by an individual is possessed by someone else who is said to "hold" the land, based on an agreement between both individual ...

in Angola was addressed by the 2004 land act. While the land act is a crucial step towards normalization of land ownership in post-war

Angola , national_anthem = " Angola Avante"() , image_map = , map_caption = , capital = Luanda , religion = , religion_year = 2020 , religion_ref = , coordina ...

, some problems such as competing land claims, land grabbing and the unresolved status of

customary land Customary land is land which is owned by indigenous communities and administered in accordance with their customs, as opposed to statutory tenure usually introduced during the colonial periods. Common ownership is one form of customary land owner ...

tenure persist.

The 2004 land reform

The recent

land reform Land reform is a form of agrarian reform involving the changing of laws, regulations, or customs regarding land ownership. Land reform may consist of a government-initiated or government-backed property redistribution, generally of agricultural ...

Angola , national_anthem = " Angola Avante"() , image_map = , map_caption = , capital = Luanda , religion = , religion_year = 2020 , religion_ref = , coordina ...

took place after the

Angolan Civil War The Angolan Civil War ( pt, Guerra Civil Angolana) was a civil war in Angola, beginning in 1975 and continuing, with interludes, until 2002. The war immediately began after Angola became independent from Portugal in November 1975. The war was ...

had ended in 2002. After two years of preparation, the land law (''Lei de Terras de Angola'') was passed on 18 December 2004. Amongst others, this law included a formal possibility of transforming customary land rights into legal rights. During the civil war, a clear system of land rights was largely absent, so it was one of the most urgent tasks to have them re-establish in the immediate post-war time. Access and entitlement to land were seen as a key point in the Angolan recovery process. This is especially relevant as two thirds of Angolans work in

agriculture Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people t ...

and are thus directly dependent on land rights. One of the main tasks of the new land laws was to protect people from evictions, which had frequently taken place during the colonial period as well as during the civil war, largely due to unclear land rights. Nevertheless, some people doubt whether the land reform has been able to fully address the challenges, which is seen by some as related to the insufficient overall accountability of Angola’s government.

Challenges for land issues

It is estimated that the

resulted in a total of 4.1 million

internally displaced persons An internally displaced person (IDP) is someone who is forced to leave their home but who remains within their country's borders. They are often referred to as refugees, although they do not fall within the legal definitions of a refugee. A ...

(IDPs). This posed a major problem of land distribution, because it led to a situation in which often competing land claims existed between IDPs who relocated to the land during the conflict, and others who had owned the land in the pre-war period. Another challenge to land rights is constituted by land grabbing. This process set in during the last years of the war, as big areas of fertile land, which had once been the territory of

pastoralists Pastoralism is a form of animal husbandry where domesticated animals (known as "livestock") are released onto large vegetated outdoor lands (pastures) for grazing, historically by nomadic people who moved around with their herds. The animal s ...

and their herds, were grabbed by a new wealthy class of land owners, which were often either connected to or part of the government In the recent years, several additional deals between

multinational corporations A multinational company (MNC), also referred to as a multinational enterprise (MNE), a transnational enterprise (TNE), a transnational corporation (TNC), an international corporation or a stateless corporation with subtle but contrasting senses, i ...

or foreign governments and the Angolan government have been agreed on. Even now, most of the land in Angola is still owned by 'custom', which means that people have no documents to prove that they own the land. As the situation of

tenure is still very ambiguous, those who claim their land on the basis of customary law are vulnerable to arbitrary actions perpetrated by the state. Amongst others, this situation led to numerous forced evictions, particularly in the capital city

Luanda Luanda () is the Capital (political), capital and largest city in Angola. It is Angola's primary port, and its major Angola#Economy, industrial, Angola#Culture, cultural and Angola#Demographics, urban centre. Located on Angola's northern Atl ...

References

External links

Lei de Terras de Angola (in Portuguese only)
{Dead link, date=February 2020 , bot=InternetArchiveBot , fix-attempted=yes
The Right to Land and a LivelihoodLandmines and Land Tenure in Postwar AngolaUrban land reform in post-war AngolaWoman's Land Rights in Post-Conflict AngolaLand and natural ressourse management assessment
Law of Angola 2004 in Angola Land tenure

The 2004 land reform

Challenges for land issues

References

Further reading

External links