Practice of Land Rights

It's basically a Guide to Formalization of Customary Land Tenancy Agreements in Sindh. On ground, verbal tenancy agreements prevail throughout the Sindh Province instead of signing proper written contract deeds. The ongoing insecure tenancy arrangement in Sindh is a major stumbling block to supporting agriculture and it usually gives rise to disputes between the landlord and tenants.

This Guide has been developed for signing customary Land Tenancy Agreements in Sindh with an aim to improve the existing relationship between landlord and the tenant and sensitize them that through signing proper tenancy agreements and enhancing land tenure security, their overall agricultural activity will improve besides raising their farm income which is a win-win situation for the both.

The new Constitution is a culmination of the incremental steps taken by the country to level the socio- legal terrain in favor of women’s rights and interests in land. The new Constitution represents a significant improvement in women’s and men’s rights and status in Kenya in all spheres of life. Land is one of those spheres. There is therefore need to consider the broader definition of land (water and space inclusive) as natural resources, as well as other property and assets in all matters land. Land and other property (such as cattle, extractive minerals, machinery etc.) can be used for farming and production, and can also be the basis for wider political empowerment for women. Having access to secure land and property tenure can provide a home and enable women to engage in political struggles over resources; land is an asset to bring to marriage and can be used as collateral for loans. As such, land and property are the foundation of economic empowerment, giving many women in Kenya the confidence to take risks and to negotiate rights to resources, but also providing them with ‘peace of mind’
In this publication, the opportunities and suggestions given that if women are to make a wholesome contribution to the Kenyan society they must take advantage of the framework in the new Constitutional dispensation is given great prominence.

PhD dissertation, Leiden 1997.
This book discusses the mounting insecurity of Giziga women in the region of Mindif, North Cameroon, and the strategies these women have developed to manage their situation. The case of Giziga women is particularly urgent because of three specific and concurrent factors.
First, the paradox of marriage and divorce among the Giziga: while marriage is the only socially accepted way for women to acquire access to resources, more than 60% of the women divorce, often several times, thereby losing those resources again.
A second factor is the extremely complicated, multi-layered, and discordant socio-political situation in Mindif, aggravated by scarcity of natural resources.
Thirdly, Giziga women have to deal with strong male control over female labour, and a number of other gender inequalities which leave women with little autonomy and control of resources.
Women follow various concurrent strategies to manage their insecurity. Although access to land is important to Giziga women in hteir daily struggle against insecurity, they often give priority to their freedom to divorce. Divorce can be considered a counterstrategy against male control over women's lives, labour and resources. In conclusion, the book discusses the idea of temporary security.

This paper critically analyses the politics of claim-making, vis-à-vis, the Forest Rights Act by illustrating how three distinct political actors in Gudalur, Tamil Nadu, have used the FRA. In this analysis the law has not been taken as an immutable category, but rather as a political instrument that various groups use to assert their identities and political imaginaries. In doing so, these imaginaries invoke unique histories and reference multiple " genealogies of belonging. " By highlighting the multiple uses and interpretations of the FRA in Gudalur, this study opens up space for a discussion around some larger concerns implicated within issues of forests, rights and conservation, particularly, the limits of seeing Adivasis as the only authentic traditional forest-dwellers by highlighting the blurred boundaries between various categories—Adivasi and non-Adivasi, forest and non-forest, legality and illegality. It is in these liminal spaces, where boundaries are blurred, this study offers an analysis informed by the analytic of governmentality to argue that local actors exercise agency in either taking on or resisting environmental subjectivities framed by the FRA.

Agricultural Qualitative Cadastre is a definite part of Agricultural Cadastre that should provide a great variety of information: data requested by the Economic Part of the General Cadastre (mainly, data for taxation), data for other public decisions (e.g. land use change, land subsidies, exchange/ compensation/ reimbursement values, land reclamation projects, soil amelioration projects, other land use planning projects - including land amalgamations, litigious problem solving, environmental impact etc.) and data for some private decisions (e.g. land rent, bank loans, different reference values etc.). At present, cadastral evaluation of agricultural land parcel only provides five "land quality classes", much insufficient for present needs. The paper proposes an extended meaning of cadastral evaluation, which is defined by a set of specific evaluation indicators: current and ideal-potential land suitability indices (for 26 crops and 4 land use categories), land capability
classes (for 4 land use categories), land reclamation capability classes (for irrigation, drainage control and erosion control), site assessment index, perennial vegetation evaluation index (for pastures, hay-fields, vineyards and orchards), a set of economic evaluation indicators for present land use of parcel - taking into account a defined reference sustainable crop technology (reference net margin, reference land rent, reference operation profit, taxation value, economic value, reference value, patrimonial value and value as removed land from agricultural use), risk evaluation index (for land use output variability), sustainability (durability) evaluation index, social evaluation index and a overall evaluation index of parcel. Corresponding to the defined uses of the agricultural qualitative cadastre and to the defined cadastral evaluation, a set of agricultural land evaluation models (necessary for determination of the evaluation indicators - adapted for Romanian conditions - are identified in literature. The input data of these models define the content of the database of the agricultural qualitative cadastre. For establishing the data to be stored in the database, some principles are given: numerical codes, measured/estimated values instead of classes of values, redundant data for alternative application of models according to different available data, (pedo-) transfer functions for deriving new/missing data, monthly climatic primary/input data, primary/input data characterising five soil layers (horizons), data accuracy indicator etc. Hierarchical nested structures of land spatial units are defined as basic elements/entities of the database: administrative district - administrative subdistrict (commune) - soil survey work - parcel - subparcel; pedo-geo-climatic microzone - climatically homogenous area (ACO, new concept) - soil unit (US) - ecologically homogenous territory (TEO) - TEO area - subparcel; complex US (soil association) - simple US; complex TEO (three types) - simple TEO; US - US area - TEO area - soil profile identification number (link to the morphological/analytical soil profile database). Finally, the relational structure of the database entities is given.

ABSTRAK Judul penelitian ini adalah "TINJAUAN HUKUM HAK ATAS TANAH DAERAH LINGKUNGAN KERJA PELABUHAN PT. PELINDO IV TARAKAN". Tujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk menganalisis kewenangan dan SKB yang menjadi dasar PT. PELINDO IV Tarakan sebagai pemegang Hak atas tanah berupa Hak Pengelolaan (HPL) tanah Daerah Lingkungan Kerja pelabuhan. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode penelitian hukum dengan tipe penelitian yuridis normatif, adapun pendekatan yang digunakan pada penelitian ini ialah Pendekatan Perundang-Undangan dan Pendekatan Konseptual. Sumber bahan hukum yang digunakan adalah bahan hukum Primer, sekunder dan tersier. Teknik pengumpulan bahan hukum yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini dengan mengumpulkan dan menganalisis Peraturan Perundang-Undangan yang berkaitan dengan isu hukum yang diangkat, serta mengumpulkan kerangka konseptual dan teori hukum untuk menjadi dasar menganalisis masalah hukum dikaji. PT. PELINDO IV Tarakan memiliki kewenagan terhadap tanah Daerah Lingkungan Kerja Pelabuhan dengan Hak Pengelolaan (HPL) yang ditetapkan dalam Surat Keputusan Bersama Menteri Dalam Negeri dan Menteri Perhubungan RI Nomor 31 Tahun 1992 Nomor K.M 9 Tahun 1992 tentang batas-batas daerah Lingkungan Kerja Pelabuhan. Pada diktum keempat SKB tersebut, namun diwajibkan untuk melakukan pendaftaran tanah pada Kantor Badan Pertanahan sesuai dengan peraturan yang berlaku. Sebagian tanah Daerah Lingkunga Kerja pelabuhan yang belum didaftarkan masih berstatus tanah negara dan berdampak pada terbatasnya kewenangan PT. PELINDO IV Tarakan pada keseluruhan Daerah Lingkungan Kerja pelabuhan.

Grievance-based narratives are a primary component of civil wars. While present among the
general population affected by conflict, the variants held by the segment of the population most
proximate to the armed factions--constituencies--play a primary role in the development and
conduct of a conflict. Such narratives can coalesce around specific volatile issues and enable
non-combatant constituencies to participate in the conflict through the use of specific 'legalities'
or legal precepts. These legalities facilitate the engagement of sets of collective action that are
opposed to those derived by constituencies of the opposing side. However such constituencies
and their narratives are also where potential opportunity resides for peace-building, both during
and subsequent to hostilities. This article looks at the case of Darfur to examine these ingredi-
ents, with a focus on land rights as the volatile set of issues around which narratives have devel-
oped. In Darfur, opposed narratives which maintain how and why groups claim and deserve ac-
cess to land and territory, and how groups were unjustly displaced or excluded from lands (and
hence power), became solidified and acted upon prior to the conflict to become a primary driver
in the current war. In certain cases however narrative change has led to interaction between
members of opposed constituencies for the purpose of exploring cooperative arrangements.

The enormity of the world's dislocated population generated by contemporary conflicts has brought significant attention to a complicated process of returning housing, land and property (HLP) to their rightful occupants once conditions permit. As the complexity of large-scale HLP restitution becomes increasingly apparent, significant obstacles emerge that require examination. This article describes how the 'evidentiary bind' is such an obstacle. This bind emerges when large-scale HLP restitution processes require titles and deeds to be in the possession of the population who are the least likely to have them-the forcibly displaced. The technical, legal and political inability to acknowledge and accept alternative, informal, customary, or hybrid evidence for finding rightful owners means that the 'evidentiary bind' prevents returns, leaves a large amount of land in a state of limbo, produces grievances in the war-affected population, and invites corruption and the use of potentially destabilizing means to regain one's HLP. This article looks at the case of Sri Lanka where the current HLP restitution process faces a particularly acute form of the 'evidentiary bind.'

The article stems from empirical research conducted with a group of women living in Istanbul who have conservative life styles bounded by an Islamic worldview. It attempts illuminate the negotiation and contestation between official civil law and Islamic law. The findings demonstrate that women inherit and bequeath property in a social setting where their gender roles are defined by their adherence to Islam. We argue that in Turkey women’s inheritance practices are not determined solely in accordance with the secular civil law, but rather are the result of a complex and intertwined combination of legal sources, where an Islamic worldview often leads to the adoption of Islamic law.  In other words, the application of the secular civil law in Turkey is limited by the common practice of Islamic Law. Rather than follow the gender equality mandated by the civil law, the inheritance practices of many Islamic women are constituted with a deference to some aspects of Islamic law creating a situation of legal pluralism in Turkey.

Just after the conquest of the Kokand khanate in 1876, the new Russian rulers carried out land surveying and land-tax assessment in the rich and densely populated Fergana province. These “organisation works” constituted the most consistent attempt ever to establish a cadastral system in Russian Turkestan. Differently from what would happen later, they incorporated tentative claims to bring under control the land rights of the Muslim rural population and to internalise the process of land-tax raising. In this context, Russian local officials tested alternative and partly contradictory policies, and their results served as a background experience for the Turkestan Statute of 1886.

Discusses questions of rectification under the Land Registration Act 2002, especially in cases where there are multiple errors and mistakes in registration. Analyses the case of Sainsbury's Supermarkets Ltd v. Olympia Homes Ltd [2005] EWHC 1235 (Ch); [2006] 1 P. & C.R. 17 (Ch D).

Intellectual property constitutes an issue of paramount importance for scriptwriters as far as the registration of their own scripts is concerned. Since March, 2011, Greek scriptwriters are able to register their work via a new web-based application available on the Scriptwriters Guild of Greece website.
The process for the development of such an application was proved technically difficult and quite lengthy. The developer had to take under consideration the right way (i.e., the proper way according to the web standards) for every step of the registration, so as to make the application easy and usable for all kinds of users willing to register their script in no more than 5 easy steps.
At the same time, the developer had to predict any possible mistakes the user might make and foresee both the steps and the user’s reaction in order to surpass a certain mistake. All these steps were made with the indispensable assistance from members of the Scriptwriters Guild of Greece, so that any practical and legal detail could be taken into account.
This paper presents in every detail the useful results yielded during and after the process of developing this online application. These results refer to the difficulties and the technological restrictions that needed to be considered in order this application to be complete in its function and successful in its legal role.

Just after the conquest of the Kokand khanate in 1876, the new Russian rulers carried out land surveying and land-tax assessment in the rich and densely populated Fergana province. These 'organisation works' constituted the most consistent attempt ever to establish a cadastral system in Russian Turkestan. Differently from what would happen later, they incorporated tentative claims to bring under control the land rights of the Muslim rural population and to internalise the process of land-tax raising. In this context, Russian local officials tested alternative and partly contradictory policies, and their results served as a background experience for the Turkestan Statute of 1886.

This paper describes and analyses the tensions, ambivalence and hybridity that prevail in the nexus between discourses of gender and the legal pluralism of the new, formalised and customary ways of handling land titles. Based on empirical research in Cambodia, it reveals a number of mechanisms, challenges and inconsistencies in the practice of land-titling. Foremost, the practice of titling seems to be highly informed by local discourses of marriage, family, gender and age, which all affect who is assigned the land; this leaves a hybrid construction in the nexus between statutory law and customary practices. The paper departs from this observation and adds three contributions – on a theoretical level – to existing research: by incorporating the dimensions of discourse analysis and legal hybridity, by linking the concept of legal pluralism to the process of hybridisation and by introducing the notion of hybridity of implementation as a supplement to hybridity of law.