IOM INNOVATION NORWAY
LANDLEDGER: Reinventing Land Rights in Crisis
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The protection of land and property rights is crucial for peace, stability, and economic self-reliance when communities face conflict, disaster, or displacement. We are building an innovative platform to better collect, connect, and validate the information that can help communities thrive on their own terms.
About Us
Funded by the Humanitarian Innovation Norway programme, the goal of LandLedger is to develop a low cost and fast moving process to secure and safeguard displaced peoples' rights to immovable property, where there are insufficient or non-accessible mechanisms for recording these rights, and where displacement has occurred or is likely to occur.
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The Challenge
Conventional systems cannot respond to modern needs.
The protection of land and property rights is crucial for peace, stability and economic self-reliance. In most parts of the world, people protect their rights to immovable property by being physically present, occupying and making use of their land or house (i.e. being “in possession”).
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The physical possession of their property, directly or indirectly (through tenants or caretakers), is accepted and socially validated by the surrounding community: their neighbours, traditional authorities, and other respected local residents. In some cases, additional layers of validation are added, such as a confirmation by a local authority or – more rarely – by some form of record-keeping.
When forced displacement happens, due to conflict or natural disaster, the key variables of this formula for securing rights to immovable property ([possession + social validation] x record-keeping) are disrupted. Displaced people, by definition, cannot – at least temporarily - physically possess their land or house. The social and communal circles that once served as validation networks are often fractured due to physical fragmentation or loss of trust.
Our Approach
There is no pre-conceived notion of what a new land rights process/solution must look or act like. Our ambition is to do away with assumptions and approach this solution-seeking with a fresh perspective, grounding our creative process in first principles to ensure every component serves a distinct and intentional purpose.
Given the nature of displacements, the method for identifying, recording, and protecting property rights in post-conflict or disaster settings needs to be light weight, fast moving, and low cost. These goals create an opportunity to leverage both conventional and innovative approaches for land tenure recordation, potentially combining both analog and digital approaches. Ultimately the solution needs to be practical and scalable in challenging displacement setting.
Your claim is a story
“My family has lived here since the old days. My great-grandfather built this house. It was only one bedroom at first, then my father added two more rooms and this external kitchen. It’s big, but we are many living here. It’s our home.” Amara, 43, from Bule Ora, Ethiopia.
Cases such as Amara’s are common. People perceived their rights to the home or land where they live on the basis of a narrative, a story, more than any document or official registry. LandLedger aims to capture these story-based claims, record them, and connect these stories with other elements (location, photos of the home, etc) to form a rich and organic map of the community, it’s inhabitants and their dwellings.
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Displacement often happens in places where property rights are insecure, with poor land administration, inaccessible recordation systems and weak rule of law. Most conventional property registration processes are bound by complex, time-honored procedures that have evolved over centuries. These systems, while thorough and legally meticulous, often face challenges in adapting quickly to urgent situations, such as displacement crises.
And yet, the need to ascertain – with a minimum level of reliability – who has which rights to which property, remains central to building sustainable solutions to displacement and to creating a path for self-reliance, dignity and prosperity.
With the ever-growing multiplication of displacement crisis and dwindling of funding, governments and humanitarian actors need to do more with less and move away from inefficient business-as-usual approaches that tend to serve only a fraction of the affected population.
Evidence suggests a need to shift towards the prioritization of improving tenure security for affected populations and thinking long-term earlier in the response. Investing in interventions that strengthen security of tenure, such as the proposed LandLedger, has the potential to transform the way we approach the response to displacement.
“The story of our land is everywhere. Each of us know a part of it, and together we know the whole story. I would love to see our stories together, so my children and their children could see how and why we are here.”
BEYOND FIT-FOR-PURPOSE: WHAT’S NEW?
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Efforts to develop fit-for-purpose and pro-poor land rights recordation systems have been underway for years. Led by a coalition of expert organisations, including UN Habitat, the International Federation of Surveyors (FIG), and the University of Twente, these efforts have laid a strong foundation. They have created knowledge, tools, and methodologies for recording property rights that prioritise inclusivity, affordability, and adaptability[1].
The LandLedger project zeroes in on the unique challenges posed by displacement situations. Our initiative is tailored specifically to address the vulnerabilities of displaced populations, emphasizing the importance of tenure recordation as a pivotal tool in advancing solutions to displacement, including as a preparatory measure.
USERS & NEEDS
Right-holders: To have access to a system that records pre-displacement rights to immovable property, enhancing the security and protection of these rights in the event of forced displacement.
Humanitarian actors: To be able to know the pre-displacement tenure status of the target-population and identify - with an acceptable level of certainty - who the legitimate rights holders are or were prior to displacement.
The Platform
The need for a platform like LandLedger is not new, nor are many attempts to establish cadastral systems for informal documentation. What has changed is the speed at which both technology and crises have evolved, which has left communities, humanitarians, and engineers in a place with more potential and more need than ever before.
Recent developments in AI and LLM-based technologies offer unprecedented opportunities to collect, validate, and organize unstructured data in ways that humanitarian teams are not equipped to do. The main difference that LandLedger seeks to champion is embracing technologies that can better connect and corroborate the plethora of data than can be used to more efficiently and effectively support displacement-risk communities.
The Process
Led by the International Organisation for Migration, in collaboration with partners, LandLedger is being shaped and conceived through a series of conversations with academia, land sector organisations and technology companies.
Desk research and workshops have been conducted over the last 12 months to inform the needs and development approach for clarifying the scope of what LandLedger should be able to accomplish.
In-Country Assessments conducted in Colombia and the Philippines in September/October 2024 offered a clearer view of needs at the government agency, humanitarian organisation, and community levels, and established a set of clear use-case scenarios for the platform.
Call for Innovation Partners (CfIP) is released November 2024, after which interested parties will have opportunities to research, workshop ideas, and find potential collaborators.
Technology Market Dialogue to be held in November 2024, during which potential partners will share existing technologies and ideate around potential expanded applications.
Partner(s) chosen by February 2025, after which IOM and the successful teams will begin developing and prototyping LandLedger
The Pilot Phase Begins by end of April 2025, working closely with our design and development partners to implement LandLedger in our pilot communities
INQUIRIES
Present in 171 countries, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) - UN Migration is actively responding to major displacement crises worldwide. Should you have any inquiries, ideas, or are interested in partnering with us in this innovation project, please reach out to Ibere Lopes ilopes@iom.int and Melina Holder melsmith@iom.int.
For more information about Innovation Norway: https://hip.innovationnorway.com
Dialogue Series
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World Bank Annual Land Conference
Workshops with World Bank colleagues around Housing, Land, and Property concerns helped established a baseline for communication and education strategies for different agencies.
