1. Land and Poverty Conference 2017
Responsible Land Governance – Towards an evidence-based approach
March 20-24, 2017 Washington DC
Implementation challenges of land administration in rural areas of Haiti : From the elaboration of a pre-cadaster methodology to the land tenure reform
Michele Oriol, Bruno Jacquet, Anastasia Touati CIAT- Inter American Development Bank- World Bank

2. Introduction : an outdated land administration system
An old question without answer
An old issue with inappropriate answers: agrarian reform of 1994
With January 12, 2010 earthquake land tenure issues come back
Land is a basic asset for haiti’s population and growth
Yet : less than 5% of the country covered by a non-updated cadaster. Last complete cadaster dated from colonial times.
The Haitian Government decided to put in place a holistic land reform

3. What history teaches us
Current land administration inherited from colonial times private property structure
Large plantations of 100 hectares during colonial times
1804 independance : plots become State land or owned by freed men and freed slaves
The State distributes divided plots through « national grant » to military and civil officers
Creation of a large class of landowners

4. Minifundia, family and State Lands
Peasant property is legally and historically founded
Main feature of the 19th century : the egalitarian sharing of property and land framentation
Haitian land characterized by private small holdings and family land or indivision
Remaining land is State land administered by the General Tax Direction (DGI)
Creation of a large class of landowners

5. An obsolete and inefficient institutional framework
Structure inspired by France where private professions have public service delegation : notaries and surveyors
Private property rights established through notary deeds (urban) or survey minutes (rural). Only few plots are formalized, and mainly in towns.
DGI, responsible for land right registration : suffers from lack of personnel, technical and managerial capacity.
No centralized registry, nor electronic information system
Weak juridical and technical background of notaries and surveyors. Archives kept in bad conditions
High share of informal transactions due to costs
Difficulties encountered by ONACA to fulfil its mandate 5

6. The land reform as a long term solution
Deal with the land tenure reform as a whole
Change the legal framework
Modernize land administration tools
Elaboration of a pre-cadaster methodology (PFB)
Involves various stakeholders led by CIAT
DGI, ONACA, judicial services
Notaries and surveyors
Significant achievements so far include
Preparation of four laws (Notaries, land surveying, cadaster methodology, land registration)
Update of adminstrative boundaries for 8 municipalities with geo referencing
Installation of GNSS network of permanment CORS stations 6

7. The master piece : The Plan Foncier de Base
A pre-cadaster
Consisting of permanent geo-referenced data base
Linking parcels, owners/occupants and land rights
Registering transactions over time
A precise methodology developed and implemented by the Haitian government
Municipalities demarcation
Pubic information campaigns
Plots demarcation, collection of information (titles, etc.)
Parcels mapping and creation of the land register
Surveyors minutes issued
Collection, organization and digitization of existing land records
Intensive technical training for public and private tehcnicians to implement the PFB 7

8. Progress on the field: 2 months to survey 3000 ha, but:
6 months to evaluate rights, social arrangements and validate with the community
- And 2 more months to have final lists of owners and cadastral map

9. First results and lessons learned
The challenge of high land fragmentation
Overall underestimation of parcels to be surveyed : 8000 estimated at appraisal, finally surveyed in Camp Perrin
parcels to be surveyed by 2018 over 55,343 hectares
(Chantal, sainte Suzanne, Grande Riviere du Nord, Bahon)
Main results in Camp Perrin
38% of the municipal area is State private property
3948 titles collected
Average plot area : 0.43 hectares
35% of properties : familiy lands
Title delivery process began in July 2016
Cost of 175 USD per parcel 9

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11. Remaining challenges to scale-up modern land tenure administration services
Training of land administration professionnals and field staff
Difficulty to find titles and documentation
Difficult conditions throughout the country (montaineous terrain, lack of roads and electrictiy, natural disasters)
Land Tenure information system should be developed and put in place soon
Conflictual situations: less than 1%, but lots of plots with informal/oral tenure arrangements
PFB does not include land appraisal yet
Sustainability depends on handling by public institutions 11

12. Conclusions
Addressing the key structural elements of land tenure governance through a comprehensive legal, institutional and operational reform requires a strong political and institutional buy in and leadership.
Choice was made to build on and improve the existing system through a pragmatic, concrete, systematic and iterative approach, in dialogue with the main stakeholders involved in the system, including the local communities.
An important challenge is to find means to upgrade and update the PFB and provide resources to municipalities, in a context of mass poverty. 12