Towards Regulating Inheritance in Palestine

The Legal Regime of ‘Land Ownership' (propriété foncière) in Cameroon.The French and British legal systems inherited by Cameroon from the colonial period have greatly influenced its land law. This legal pluralism places Cameroon's land property law between traditional and modern law.In fact, there are two conceptions of land property in the contemporary context. The pre-colonial concept, based on customs and traditions, is drawn from the African conception, which is particularly based on the relationship between human beings and the soil and which invests collectivities with land ownership. Then, the post-colonial conception gives land rights to individuals. Cameroon's legal rights are therefore torn between these two conceptions that hardly co-exist and that are impossible to apply, in spite of all the legal reforms that have been made since 1960.There are two mains causes: the incoherence of the actual normative dispositions and the inability of the authorities to elaborate consensual land policies.The objective of this paper is to analyse the government's land property policy, its seizure of land ownership. It is also an attempt to present some of the causes and to propose an alternative to the state's land property vision. It is concerned with the problematic and basic question: How to give an account of the question of access to land and secure land property in Cameroon? With this in mind, this dialectic study then covers three main aspects:- the uncertainty of rules granting the right to acquire land, and the determination to dispose of the traditional manner of land acquisition.- the contestation of all legal categories of land property- the difficulty for women to have access to land.The opposition between customary law and the written law in Cameroon is clearly illustrated in the various conceptions of land ownership, as well as in the authorities’ concept of land distribution and in the modalities thereof.Land property legislation in Cameroon, while investing individuals with land ownership, also communities with the possibility to own land.The concept of national estate, which has replaced the former notions of ‘vacant land with no owner’ or the ‘national collective estate’, has only one objective: to give the control over the land in Cameroon to the state. This notion concretizes the objective of economic and social development adopted by the great reform in 1974. The national estate is then the government’s legal instrument for intervention in land property.However, the government and the local communities have not been able to agree and the conflict is heading towards an impasse. This is characterised by the situation of many women, mostly in the rural sector, who find themselves deprived of their legal right to acquire land, despite the constitutional and legislative regulations giving equal rights to both sexes.

This research paper offers a comprehensive examination of land governance and property rights in Jharkhand, India, with a particular focus on the challenges faced by tribal communities. Drawing on interdisciplinary perspectives from anthropology, sociology, political science, economics, and law, the paper delves into the historical evolution, socio - economic implications, and policy dynamics that shape land tenure systems in the region. Jharkhand, endowed with rich natural resources, has witnessed protracted conflicts, dispossession, and socio - economic marginalization, particularly among tribal populations. Despite the presence of protective legislation aimed at safeguarding land rights, the implementation and enforcement of these laws have been hindered by legal pluralism, colonial legacies, and economic liberalization. The paper examines the tension between formal legal frameworks and customary practices governing land relations, highlighting the complexities and contestations inherent in land governance. It explores the impact of development initiatives, industrialization, and mining activities on land rights and social justice, revealing the profound disparities and injustices that persist in the region. Through empirical data, case studies, and literature review, the paper elucidates the historical context, socio - cultural dynamics, and policy implications surrounding land governance in Jharkhand. It underscores the urgent need for transparent, efficient, and participatory approaches in land management, while advocating for protection of marginalized and vulnerable communities from illegal land transfers and dispossession. Ultimately, the paper aims to contribute to ongoing policy discourse and scholarly inquiry by offering insights into pathways towards more equitable and inclusive land governance systems. By centering the voices and experiences of tribal communities, the paper advocates for policy interventions that uphold the rights and dignity of all citizens, fostering sustainable development and social justice in Jharkhand and beyond.

With the continuous urbanization, China is facing a dilemma of achieving two conflicting targets in land governance, i.e., the continuous supply of urban construction land to support urbanization and the preservation of cultivated land for food security. Under China’s dual land system, the implementation of the “Linkage between Urban-land Taking and Rural-land Giving” (Linkage) policy is of great significance in promoting more inclusive urbanization by commodifying the land development right and connecting urban and rural land markets. In the specific land property right system and changing land governance of China, this policy appears to provide an opportunity for stakeholders other than the state to compete for the value from the transfer of development rights (TDR) and triggers the emergence of diversified approaches in organizing land projects in rural China. Based on the theoretical perspective of New Institutional Economics and empirical evidence from Zhejiang Province, Hubei Province, and Sichuan Province, this paper conducts a comparative institutional analysis for China’s TDR practice and argues that the diversified operational approaches in China’s practice have aligned various interests of the stakeholders through flexible participation methods and elaborate reallocation of land property rights, in order to fit various institutional environments and material conditions

Land relations—property, access, tenure, landscape—are a central underlying driver of the material form of food systems, from farm to distribution. Despite their fluidity and historical and geographical diversity, land relations have a tendency to become normalized through law, custom, and practice. In particular, the exclusionary private “ownership model” of property has come to be deeply entrenched in legal systems worldwide, particularly in the Global North. The power of this normalization is evidenced, for example, in how research and practice aimed at reshaping food systems from grassroots movement, policy-level, or biophysical perspectives often omit the role of land relations in bringing about agricultural sustainability and agrarian change. Understanding land relations as static thus potentially constrains or directs the kinds of sustainable agriculture and food transformations that can take place. Entrenched norms of property drastically limit the urgent possibilities of food system transformation. However, a confluence of political and ecological conflagrations may be placing land back on the agenda and in the forefront of people’s minds. In a moment when hegemonic understandings of land and property can also appear absurd and paper thin, we describe counter movements bubbling up to contest the status quo of the land food nexus from within the core. This article introduces a special feature centering the role of land in sustainable food transformations. The collection provides new understandings on how governance of land (property relations, land access, land tenure, landscape policy) mediates the potential for food system change. The special feature goes beyond understanding dynamics of the land food nexus to ask how land relations can be reformed to create favorable conditions for more just and sustainable food systems to emerge. We highlight 5 empirical domains of transforming land relations from within the Global North: legislating land reform, quasi-market reforms, remaking land for sustainability agendas, Indigenous claims to land in the settler state, and using municipal power to unlock land. Each domain has the potential to act as a non-reformist reform but each carries its own drawbacks and limitations. Nevertheless, if our argument holds that there will be no food system transformation without a parallel remake of land relations, it is time to start organizing a concerted effort for land reform bespoke to geographical and political contexts.

Millions of people around the world face difficulties related to the land where they live, work, grow crops, tend animals and run businesses. Even though they or their families may have lived on the land for many years, it is a serious obstacle that they have no formal relationship to it (UN-Habitat, 2012, Handling land: Innovative tools for land governance and secure tenure, Nairobi, Kenya: United Nations Human Settlements Programme). Competition for land is intensifying because of rapid population growth, unregulated urbanisation, land conflicts, climate change, food, water and energy insecurity among others. Coupled by historical injustices and unlawful evictions, many people particularly in developing countries are becoming landless. Although many countries have completely restructured their legal and regulatory framework related to land and they have tried to harmonise modern statutory law with customary ones, millions of people around the world still have insecure land tenure and property rights (UN-Habitat, 2014, Land tenure security in selected countries. Synthesis Report, Nairobi, Kenya: United Nations Human Settlements Programme). It is now well recognised that secure land and property rights for all are essential to reducing poverty, because they underpin economic development and social inclusion (UN-Habitat, 2008, Secure land rights for all, Nairobi, Kenya: United Nations Human Settlements Programme/Global Land Tool Network). Uganda like many other countries has embarked on massive reforms to improve land tenure security. The development of a computerised land information system, decentralisation of land governance and development of national land policy are included among the many efforts (Ahene, Nsamba-Gayiiya, & Satana, 2013, Land sector strategic plan, 2013–2023, Kampala, Uganda: Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development). Despite tremendous efforts, land tenure insecurity persists in the country. This article provides a review of land ownership and existing initiatives to improve tenure security in Uganda.

Anatomy of women’s landlessness in the patrilineal customary land tenure systems of sub-Saharan Africa and a policy pathway

Extending the ground works of Ho (1993), Baldwin (1994), Walters and Hastings (1998a, 1998b) on property management in Hong Kong, this short paper documents the context[1] of research on illegal structures, explains the incentive for building illegal structures on government land and private property and discusses the significance of illegal structures for the proprietor and the property manager, as well as the relevant legislative provisions and policies.

Land registration systems in many regions suffer from issues of forgery, inefficiency, lack of transparency, and costly manual intervention. In this paper, we introduce a secured land registration framework based on blockchain technology, where the dynamic social contracts implemented will be used to automate property transactions and will guarantee the integrity of the data, its security and traceability. The architecture of the system combines dynamic smart contracts (complex legal logic) to support a permissioned blockchain (Hyperledger Fabric), and decentralized off-chains storage (IPFS) to handle large documents. Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) and biometric along with PKI-based digital identity verification supports the secure stakeholder authentication. It supports low-latency, high-throughput operation with the use of Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT) consensus which is appropriate to real-time land transfers. Thorough benchmarking has been done in terms of system performance measured by various parameters, such as transaction time, throughput, cost of gas, the latency of the update of ownership, and auditability of smart contracts. Proposed system has also significantly minimized the errors used in both traditional systems and the accuracy in transactions stood at 99.84%. The average ownership transfer time was decreased to 420ms versus 5600ms, and throughput was above 175 TPS, beating both public blockchains and centralized databases. In addition, the system has undergone all of the both significant smart contract security audits, as well as tests of reentrancy, DoS, and access control breaches. The paper shows that the combination of blockchain and adaptive smart contract may achieve the modernization of land registration providing its clients with safe, transparent, and efficient services. The system has a high likelihood of being implemented in the land governance infrastructure where legal compliance, real-time update facility and fraud resistant are king.

Historic patterns of land governance and property rights have played an important role in creating conditions for low agricultural productivity and food insecurity throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Although the region is endowed with abundant land and natural resources, much of its rural population still lacks basic rights to land. Customary land rights are often overlooked or ignored by the state, and communities following customary land tenure principles—including the vast majority of rural residents—remain vulnerable to expropriation of their land and livelihoods without fair compensation. Insecure land tenure has become a more pressing problem for rural communities during the past decade, as outside (domestic and international) land investments have escalated. This chapter presents a legal analytical framework for assessing land institutions and property rights in sub-Saharan Africa, highlighting two countries—Mozambique and Zambia—where land deals have become widespread.

Rapid urbanization in developing countries has widened the gap between urban and rural development, due to inefficient land markets and weak institutional systems in rural areas. China’s innovative “Urban–rural Construction Land Linkage” policy was designed to address this imbalance by encouraging rural land consolidation and creating a transferable development rights mechanism. While this approach has shown potential in improving the utilization efficiency of existing construction land and continuously supplying urban development space, concerns remain about its actual benefits to villagers and rural development, with some arguing it disrupts traditional livelihoods and favors government interests over rural needs. To respond to this debate, this study investigates two core questions: first, does China’s transferable land development rights (TDR) program genuinely improve rural welfare as intended; second, why does the theoretically preferred self-organized governance model sometimes fail in practice? To address these research questions, this paper develops a new analytical framework combining the IAD framework of Ostrom with the hierarchical institutional framework of Williamson to examine three implementation approaches in China’s TDR implementation: government-dominated, market-invested, and self-organized models. Based on case studies, surveys, and interviews across multiple regions, this study reveals distinct strengths and weaknesses in each approach in improving villagers’ lives. Government-dominated projects demonstrate strong resource mobilization but limited community participation. Market-based models show efficiency gains but often compromise equity. While self-organized initiatives promise greater local empowerment, they frequently face practical challenges including limited management capacity and institutional barriers. Furthermore, this study identifies the preconditional institutional environment necessary for successful self-organized implementation, including clear land property rights, financial support, and technical assistance. These findings advance global understanding of how to combine efficiency with fair outcomes for all stakeholders in land governance, which is particularly relevant for developing countries seeking to manage urban expansion while protecting rural interests.

In this chapter, we evaluate whether drylands have expanded and become increasingly arid over time using geographic information systems (GIS) and climate data across 33 Latin American country boundaries and across two property regime types in Mexico. In all cases, we evaluate and identify changes using the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Aridity Index (AI) that measures the annual ratio of potential evapotranspiration to precipitation. Annual fields of land surface precipitation and air temperature data are extracted from 1960 to 2017. We also compare aridity index summary statistics and trends between communal and non-communal land property regimes in Mexico as a proxy of communal environmental governance. Our results show that: (1) with some exceptions, most Latin American countries have experienced aridification from the 1961–1990 period to the 1991–2017 period, and the trend is for this pattern to continue; (2) in Mexico, communal lands experience slightly lower levels of aridification than non-communal lands. However, because the difference in aridity index values between periods is very small, the degree to which that difference is significant needs further research. If this difference were significant, it mean that communal land holders are at lower risk than non-communal land holders. At this point, however, we cannot claim that land regime practices have or have had any connection with the process of aridification itself.

O artigo discute, sob uma perspectiva institucionalista, a dimensão do problema fundiário brasileiro expresso pela fragilidade dos direitos de propriedade da terra rural. Além dos condicionantes históricos referidos no texto, o artigo chama a atenção para o papel das instituições de registro e cadastro de imóveis que, por estarem separadas e não integradas, favorecem as práticas de fraude, apossamento e potencializam os conflitos fundiários. O artigo conclui com uma proposta de mudança institucional, baseada no aumento da governança da terra, no recente contexto favorável ao aperfeiçoamento da estrutura de direitos de propriedade da terra.

With the fast world population growing, the efficient use of land properties became of great necessity. In this context, the traditional two-dimensional (2D) cadastral management mode cannot satisfy the need of current 3D land use and 3D urban planning (Guo et al. 2014). So, developing a 3D cadastral system is a very promising solution for land administration. However, the development of such a solution can be faced to some challenged issues related to economic, legal, technical and organizational aspects. In this paper, we present some basics about the 3D cadastre in Land governance. Then, we discuss some issues about migrating to a 3D cadastre solution. Finally, we propose some ideas and reflections about the adoption of a 3D Moroccan cadastral system.

Land management is becoming more recognized as a community-wide if not global need. Landed assets are an important source of government revenue in Rivers state, and they necessitate a land information systems infrastructure. The creation of LIS of Port Harcourt property layouts is critical to realizing that ambition. Results of this research paper has lots of potential in providing sustainable land relationships and information to decision makers (land administrators and revenue drivers) in Rivers state so that they can make decisions that are beneficial to sustainable development in the context of efficient land administration and management. This study used geospatial methodologies to document, create, and populate land information in Trans-Amadi and GRA phases 1 and 2 of Port Harcourt's cadastral layouts. According to the findings of this study's analysis, discussions, and queries, effective usage of the LIS, which is driven by many aspects of services supplied by government Ministries, Departments, and Agencies, will increase efficiency and productivity in property taxation in capital city of Port Harcourt.The following recommendations were made as a result of this research: Information decentralization to make it easier to keep track of and recollect data. Fees charged for various services given are published and displayed. Official procedures should be simplified, and a faster and more efficient method of moving files should be established. In Rivers state, there has been a reduction in the time it takes to complete title paperwork for landed properties. All occupants of government lands in Port Harcourt will get a formal allocation of encroached lands and a certificate of title. A chart for employee training, particularly in ICT, should be prepared. External consultants should be taught customer service, change management, time management, project management, supervisory management, and systems administration. The state's Ministry of Lands and Survey should develop a website that enables for e-payment of grand rents, C of O applications, and land mapping. Finally, the LIS of cadastral layouts in Port Harcourt as a pilot project should be implemented in major towns and cities across the LGAs of Rivers state for efficient land administration, property taxation, and revenue generation, in line with the Federal Government of Nigeria's current land reform programme.
 Keyword: Taxation, information, land, systems, cadastre, and revenue are some of the key phrases.

Illustrates how weaknesses in land governance, coupled with social norms and practices, restrict access of both firms and individuals to land in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), hindering private sector development and contributing to exclusion and vulnerability. Based on the World Bank’s Enterprise Surveys, MENA region firms’ access to land proves very difficult on average, and in seven of 10 MENA countries, more than 20 percent of firms face issues. Women continue to face a variety of difficulties in accessing land and protecting their land rights. and very few countries report gender-disaggregated figures on land and housing ownership. Conflicts and the resulting population displacements have given rise to the need for urgent legislative reforms, including support for refugees’ and internally displaced persons’ (IDPs) access to land and housing in destination areas, legal protections for land and property assets, and dispute resolution mechanisms for forced sales, abandoned properties, and destruction of property documents in origin areas.