Afghan Land Administration Projects, 2003-14: A Review Jawad Peikar Chief Executive Officer, Afghanistan Independent Land Authority (Arazi), Islamic Republic of Afghanistan; Jawad.peikar@arazi.gov.af Jawad.ptwo@gmail.com J. David Stanfield President, Terra Institute, Blue Mounds, Wisconsin, USA; jdstanfi@wisc.edu  

Some “lessons learned” from 14 pilot community based land administration projects launched in Afghanistan since 2004.

Community Based Land Adjudication and Registration (CBLAR) Pilots: Three Contexts 1) Informal, urban settlements such as UN-Habitat's Municipal Governance projects, USAID's LTERA project, and its successor, the LARA project. 2) Rural communities whose residents and nomadic peoples claim rights to communal pastures (FAO's SALEH project, the ADB’s RLAP, and the USAID supported PEACE Project) 3) Rural communities which had experienced land conflicts deriving from inheritances, boundary issues, and tribal jurisdictional disputes

Capacity Building for Land Administration in State Entities Some of the projects have also improved the capacities of State land administration entities Judiciary, National Land Agency, Arazi Cadaster Selected municipalities

Some lessons learned: The ways that people relate to the land and to each other are more often governed by custom than by governmental policies and laws The CBLAR pilot projects introduced interesting and useful ideas and procedures, but were almost uniformly unsuccessful in getting governmental buy-in, at least until 2015 when new momentum emerged for dealing with land tenure issues

More lessons: The mostly foreign funded projects have not been adequately oriented, coordinated or monitored--neither by government nor by civil society. New High Council for Land and Water now established, reporting to President is searching for solutions to land problems

Two institutional decisions are of fundamental importance for future land administration projects: how to define the roles of communities and the State (Judiciary and Arazi) in the documentation of rights to land--formal and customary--individual, community (and tribal) and state; 2) how to protect against land grabbing and still enable the formalization of customary rights for those with legitimate customary rights.

Policy Recommendations it is the time for the government to take lead and translate all the good lessons from the pilot projects including the newly completed LGAF recommendations into a "Roadmap“ for the High Council 2) Programmatic approach will replace the "project based approach" and all key stakeholders will work based on the "roadmap" and strategic plans of Arazi as One Stop Shop for land administration in the country

Recommendations (cont.) 3. Process the draft amendments of the Land Management Law, the Land Acquisition Law (LAL) and separate regulations, and policies through the cabinet and Parliament to the country; Arazi and communities to administer customary deeds and rights, separate from Judiciary. 5. Arazi to document, identify special village lands (communal pastures)

Recommendations Cont. 6. Establish an Institute for Land Administration to train Arazi staff and community representatives in skills of land administration (including IT) Separate development budget for land administration Arazi empowered to recover grabbed state lands

Recommendations Cont. 9. Arazi to become focused only on land administration services including cadastral survey, land title adjudication and clearance, land registration, land disputes resolution, mapping and identifying/recording borders of the country, provinces, districts, villages, urban Districts and neighborhoods (gozars). 10. State land and immovable asset management to be in another appropriate institution in order to avoid conflicts of interest in delivering land administration services