Land and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding: A new global standard for land administration

by Douglas Batson

Douglas Batson joined the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) as a political geographer in 2004. He previously worked for the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. Department of Justice, and is now retired from the U.S. Army Reserve. Batson wrote on “Snow Leopards and Cadastres: Rare Sightings in Post-conflict Afghanistan” in Land and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding, and provides an update in this guest-posting.

My chapter in Part 3 of Land and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding begins with an overview of the challenges faced by U.S. and coalition forces in rebuilding Afghanistan during the 2000s, and specifically the need for a cadastral system that records the array of relationships between people and land. It also discusses the problems of refugee resettlement in the context of the post-war population explosion and the environmental destruction from decades of conflict. The discussion of secure tenure to land describes local initiatives including dispute resolution and management of land resources. It concludes by underscoring the potential of the Land Administration Domain Model (LADM) to record heretofore undocumentable, orally defined forms of customary land tenure.

Shortly after the completion of my chapter, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) took up the LADM as a draft standard. I had the opportunity to advocate full adoption of the LADM as an ISO standard to the U.S. Federal Geographic Data Committee. This effort included addressing concerns about the cost of conforming 3,100 disparate U.S. county-level Land Administration Systems (LAS) to a new global standard. The LADM’s value, I argued, lies less in its utility for the U.S. homeland, than in its relevance for U.S. security, diplomacy, and development goals, in a context in which 75% of the world’s people-to-land relationships, or 4.5 billion cases worldwide, are not documented. This situation clearly invites land disputes, land grabbing, and violent conflict.

Safeguarding land rights: An opportunity for the World Bank to lead

by David Pred and Natalie Bugalski

Washington, April 13, 2013 – At the start of the Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty this week, World Bank President Dr. Jim Kim made some welcome remarks about the global land rights crisis.   He did not respond directly to the withering criticism of the role the Bank has played in promoting land grabs.   But he did say that the Bank shares the concerns about the risks of large-scale land acquisitions, and importantly he acknowledged that “additional efforts must be made to build capacity and safeguards related to land rights and to empower civil society to hold governments accountable.”

What caught people at the Conference pleasantly off guard was the Bank’s statement that its own social and environmental safeguard policies, now under review, would be informed by the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Forest and Fisheries.

Inclusive Development International and Oxfam put forward a concrete proposal at the Conference for the Bank to do just that.  We presented a proposal for a new World Bank safeguard policy on tenure of land, housing and natural resources that draws extensively from the Voluntary Guidelines.

The proposal addresses major gaps in the Bank’s current policy framework that have left people affected by Bank operations unprotected from harmful impacts on their tenure rights.  If adopted, these policy measures would ensure that the Bank upholds its responsibility to respect human rights by safeguarding against the weakening of tenure rights, the instigation of land conflict and the exacerbation of inequality in access to land and natural resources by Bank operations.

Report on property issues and displacement in Libya for UNHCR

by Rhodri C. Williams

Toward Tajoura, March 2012, picture by the author

Many TN readers will be aware that I spent the better part of last Spring working for the UNHCR on a report on housing, land and property (HLP) issues related to displacement in Libya. The research involved interviews with numerous internally displaced persons (IDPs), many of the officials directly or indirectly responsible for their welfare, as well as civil society activists and legal experts. The work was undertaken throughout the north of the country, including Tripoli, Misrata, Benghazi, Sirte, Ajdabiya, Tiji, Nalut, Yefren and Kikla.

The resulting report was published earlier this Fall and includes both immediate term recommendations for humanitarian programming and longer term observations on how the process of seeking durable solutions for Libya’s displaced relates to broader dynamics of transitional justice, rule of law reconstruction and sustainable development. Accordingly, those of you who have read my earlier short piece on HLP issues in Libya will find many of the themes introduced there greatly expanded upon here. 

The report goes into some detail and is not a light read at nearly 100 pages. The Executive Summary is a bit more manageable at 15 pages and closely tracks the four part breakdown of the full paper. However, in order to help TN readers get a quick overview of the main points in the paper, I have further compressed the summary down to about five pages, reprinted just below.

A great deal of credit is due to the UNHCR country office in Libya, and particularly to Senior Protection Officer Samuel Cheung, for recognizing early on the need to understand the nexus between property issues and displacement in Libya. The UNHCR also proved farsighted in providing a mandate not only to examine the humanitarian implications of property disputes, but also to extend the analysis to take in concerns related to transitional justice, rule of law and development.

Since its local release last Fall, the report has supported efforts by both national advocates and international observers to ensure that outstanding property questions in Libya are resolved in accordance with international standards. Such efforts will be crucial to achieving an end to the ongoing and protracted displacement of entire communities collectively punished for their imputed support for the Gaddafi regime, and thereby achieving meaningful national reconciliation.

The report also underscores the need for more research and further analysis in order to ensure that the resolution of HLP issues is based on Libyan realities as well as international standards. There have been some very promising signs on this front, including the inclusion of a study on property and housing issues in a broader project related to strengthening rule of law institutions in Libya run by the Hague Institute of Global Justice, as well as plans to shortly include an updated property rights profile of Libya in USAID’s land tenure country profiles series.

In sum – this paper represents a first stab at a complex issue that is crucial to Libya’s future. I am grateful to the UNHCR for giving me the opportunity to participate in this process and look forward to any comments and feedback from TN readers.

Kyrgyzstan property issues update, part 2 – Unen-durable Solutions

by Kaigyluu

‘Kaigyluu’ is the pseudonym of a longtime TerraNullius reader with broad experience working on housing, land and property (HLP) and legal reform issues in many countries post-socialist, post-conflict or both. Having provided an earlier briefing last year on the aftermath of the 2010 ethnic riots, Kaigyluu yesterday updated TN readers on the local and regional politics of rebuilding Osh, and today addresses the policy choices of international actors involved in humanitarian response and reconstruction.

While housing, land and property (HLP) rights were put on the agenda in the immediate aftermath of the June 2010 inter-ethnic violence in South Kyrgyzstan, the HLP process was complicated (a) by a lack of clear rationale or objective and (b) strategic choices made at the outset.

With respect to the first point, based upon an initial assessment by the Global Protection Cluster (GPC) conducted in the wake of the June events, UNHCR focused first on the construction of shelter and then on legal assistance to restore HLP documents lost or destroyed. The assumption upon which provision of such legal aid was based proved faulty, in that it was soon discovered that over 80% of affected households had never had proper documentation. And so the HLP project concentrated on obtaining documentation for those whose homes were destroyed, as well as registering the newly constructed replacement shelters.

Nevertheless, the justification for securing documentation only for those whose homes were destroyed, whereas the majority of the affected population – and, indeed, the population at large – also lacked such documentation, was undermined. The project might have been realigned – and was, ad hoc, to provide documents to those whose homes were threatened with expropriation – but the follow-up scoping mission recommended by the GPC to conduct a full situational assessment was never carried out.

This leads into point (b) on strategic choices, namely that the international community chose to channel their support through the State Directorate for Reconstruction and Development for Osh and Jalal-Abad Cities (‘SDRD’ – previously, the State Directorate for Rehabilitation and Reconstruction or ‘SDRR’) set up by the central government, and headed by current Prime Minister Jantoro Satybaldiev. The international community decided to bypass the Osh mayor, Melis Myrzakmatov – understandable, given his nationalist (and often erratic) rhetoric.

Myrzakmatov was opposed to anything directed by Bishkek: an opposition entrenched when he successfully resisted the attempt of the interim government to remove him. Unfortunately, in the case of reconstructed (and, indeed, all) housing, the issuance of building permits was controlled at the municipal level. Therefore, in Osh, construction permission was never granted. And so, the majority of the shelters constructed there remain unregistered; whereas, in Jalal-Abad, where the mayor was successfully replaced (twice) by Bishkek, authorities were more cooperative, building permission was issued, and registration proved relatively simple.

More broadly, apart from reliance on the SDRD, there a choice by the international community – perhaps by default – to opt for a ‘rule of law’ approach, as opposed to one driven by the need for a recognition of rights. That is, the reconstruction and HLP process was channelled through the existing domestic land and housing regime. As such, it became vulnerable to the inefficiencies or gaps in the system, as well as any political or personal manipulation of it.

Kyrgyzstan property issues update, part 1 – Who’s afraid of the big bad master plan? Rebuilding Osh’s mahallahs in brick

by Kaigyluu

‘Kaigyluu’ is the pseudonym of a longtime TerraNullius reader with broad experience working on housing, land and property (HLP) and legal reform issues in many countries post-socialist, post-conflict or both. Having provided an earlier briefing on the politics of property in southern Kyrgyzstan after the 2010 ethnic riots, he, she or it now follows up with an update in two parts. Part one focuses on the local and regional politics of rebuilding Osh, while part two, tomorrow, addresses the policy choices of international actors involved in humanitarian response and reconstruction.

International attention on Kyrgyzstan, limited as it was during the Tulip Revolution (Redux) of April 2010 and inter-ethnic riots that followed two months later in the south of the country’s geologically and politically unstable Ferghana Valley, has long since waned and turned elsewhere. Indeed, with the Western military drawdown in Afghanistan, the importance of Central Asia – exemplified by the bidding-war between the US and Russia over the Manas airbase outside of Bishkek – has diminished correspondingly, while the problems in the region continue to fester and grow.

At least in terms of rebuilding and reconciliation (including international reconstruction assistance) in the aftermath of the June 2010 clashes between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in the ‘southern capital’ of Osh, as well as the nearby city of Jalal-Abad, progress would seem to be consolidating. The latest government shuffle, following the collapse of the yet another parliamentary coalition, saw the appointment of Jantoro Satybaldiev as Prime Minister. Satybaldiev, a former Head of the Osh Administration, led the central government’s reconstruction effort following the June 2010 clashes. He was a key partner of UNHCR, the Asian Development Bank (ADB), and other international actors in this, and seen as a counterweight to perceived hard-line nationalists in the south, such as Osh’s current mayor, Melis Myrzakmatov.

Not only can Satybaldiev’s ‘promotion’ be construed as a reward for his work in the South, it is also hoped that his elevation will give him the authority to overcome the last hurdles to secure the housing, land, and property (HLP) rights of those displaced by the June 2010 events.

A ‘friend’ of the post-2010 reconstruction effort is sorely needed in high office. This past summer, the City of Osh began long-threatened expropriation of land and the demolition of at least two dozen houses, as well as several business premises, in order to widen roads: this, despite ‘iron-clad’ assurances to donors that reconstructed houses would be not be touched. It is feared that this is but the precursor for implementation of a new urban plan: one that is rumoured to include the replacement of the traditional Uzbek enclaves with ‘modern’ apartment blocks and, amongst the conspiracy-minded, one that is said to mirror – or even predate and predict – the patterns of supposedly spontaneous destruction that occurred from 11 to 14 June 2010.

The international community funded the reconstruction of almost 2,000 homes damaged or destroyed during clashes. UNHCR and ICRC led the emergency response, providing two-room (28 m²) shelters for affected households before the onset of winter in 2010. The ADB provided an additional $24 million to expand (up to 100 m2) and complete 1,500 of those shelters in a second phase of reconstruction in 2011-12.

However, optimism over Mr. Satybaldiev’s elevation may be misplaced. It is debatable whether the new Prime Minister will wish to expend precious political capital to protect those affected persons, the overwhelmingly majority of whom are from the minority (but substantial) Uzbek community. He seems still to accept, if not actively encourage, the inevitable replacement of the mahallahs – the traditional neighbourhoods composed of walled family compounds favoured by the Uzbeks in the centre of Osh – with high-rise apartment blocks. Off the record, even Mr Satybaldiev’s patron, President Almazbek Atambayev is said to have expressed puzzlement and mild exasperation at the international community’s obsession with preserving and reconstructing the mahallahs, in the face of the inexorable march of modernisation and progress.

Cambodia housing rights activists released from prison

by Rhodri C. Williams

Photo credit: International Alliance of Inhabitants

Last month, TN carried a guest-posting by Natalie Bugalski and David Pred on the arrest and imprisonment of 15 mostly female housing activists protesting evictions in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh. The blog also ran a piece describing persistent tensions between the World Bank and the Cambodian government over urban forced evictions and highlighting a petition meant to persuade the Bank to take a firm stand in favor of the release of the imprisoned “Boeung Kak Lake fifteen”.

It seems that what has been a remarkable campaign of international proportions has borne fruit (the picture, kindly provided by International Alliance of Inhabitants, depicts Cambodian activists who addressed an audience of 800 at the June 18 Peoples’ Summit in Rio de Janeiro). As announced in a joint statement by civil society activists yesterday, the authorities have now released the BKL 15, albeit in a face-saving manner and one which may expose them to further legal risks. See the ‘Free the 15′ webpage for more on the celebrations as well as considerations on how to work from this significant breakthrough to securing meaningful security of tenure for poor urban communities in Cambodia.

Land, property and displacement in post-revolution Libya

by Rhodri C. Williams

An earlier version of this text was submitted to Forced Migration Review for its newly released Issue 39 on “North Africa and displacement 2011-2012”. The article has been published there in a shorter version. I can recommend the entire, highly topical magazine and am grateful to the editors for their permission to publish the longer version of my piece here.

By post-conflict standards, Libya has a relatively small population of about 70,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs). However, as a result of basic security concerns, many individual IDPs – as well as several entire displaced communities – face the prospect of protracted internal displacement. Despite national and local efforts to foster reconciliation, return will not be a realistic prospect for many until after the national elections currently scheduled for July. Inability to access pre-displacement housing, land and property (HLP) assets poses a significant obstacle to the achievement of durable solutions for almost all IDPs.

However, there is significant variation in the nature of the HLP problem. For households that remain displaced within their own communities due to the wartime destruction of their homes, durable solutions are largely contingent on reconstruction. However, for IDPs displaced outside of their places of origin, inability to access pre-war homes and properties is merely a symptom of the broader insecurity that has blocked virtually all return to date. In most cases, IDPs also face significant tenure insecurity in their current locations, whether they are in collective settlements or private accommodations.

Lurking behind both the tenure insecurity currently facing IDPs and their difficulties accessing pre-war property is a much broader question related to the sweeping and arbitrary redistributions of property undertaken during the forty-two year reign of Libya’s ex-dictator Muammar Ghaddafi. These waves of confiscation and partial compensation undermined the rule of law and sowed the seeds of corruption and legal uncertainty that continue to affect nearly all sectors of society in Libya. While these acts are largely viewed as illegitimate by the interim National Transitional Council (NTC), there is broad recognition that any peremptory attempt to revoke them would risk destabilizing the country.

As a result, these ‘legacy’ property issues are unlikely to be definitively resolved until after the upcoming elections, in the context of democratically-grounded legislative and constitutional reforms. From this perspective, the HLP question in Libya must be seen not only through a humanitarian lens, but also from the perspectives of transitional justice, national reconciliation, rule of law and economic development. While IDPs – and some refugees in Libya – may be disproportionately affected by this question, almost every constituency in the country has a stake in its outcome.

World Bank urged to stand firm on land-related rights violations in Cambodia

by Rhodri C. Williams

As reliably as the annual arrival of the wet season, the protracted  struggle over who controls Cambodia’s land has entered into another one of its hot phases. On one side, local communities supported by a coalition of national and international NGOs continue to defend their rights to land and homes they have built their lives around. On the other side, the Cambodian authorities continue to almost ostentatiously prioritize the interests of international investors over those of their own constituencies. The latest salvo takes the form of an open letter to the World Bank signed by over 100 civil society organizations urging incoming President Jim Yong Kim to continue his predecessor Robert Zoellick’s firm stance on forced evictions.

As before, ground zero for the forced evictions debate in Cambodia remains the Boeung Kak Lake (BKL) neighborhood of the capital Phnom Penh. While the open letter points out recent killings outside of Phnom Penh (including an environment activist and a 14 year old girl in the course of an eviction), the incident triggering the current wave of activism has been the arrest of 15 mostly female BKL residents, 13 for having had the temerity to protest against being expelled from their homes and two more for having volunteered to testify on the others’ behalf.

The arrest and sentencing of the BKL 15 (most got over two years on trumped up charges) is the latest phase of a long-running controversy that first led the Cambodian government break off its long-running cooperation with the World Bank on land registration, and then saw the World Bank take a principled stand in favor of meaningful reform. The twists and turns of the BKL affair are lucidly presented in Natalie Bugalski and David Pred’s guest-post earlier this week. They have also been the topic of past postings on TN that documented:

• The decision of the Cambodian government to walk away from the multi-million dollar Land Management and Administration Project (LMAP) when the World Bank suggested (under pressure from the late, lamented COHRE) that greater priority be given to urban tenure security, beginning with BKL;
• The subsequent deliberations of the World Bank Inspection Panel on whether the Bank had violated its own policy on involuntary resettlement by being implicated in the BKL evictions;
• The November 2010 decision by the Panel finding a breach of the Bank’s Policy and the subsequent deliberations by the Board of the Bank on how to proceed in Cambodia;
• The Board’s March 2011 decision to acknowledge its past shortcomings and insist on compliance with the Policy in future engagement with land issues in Cambodia;
• Mounting questions over how this firmer line would be implemented in light of lack of improvements on the ground;
• The August 2011 revelation that the Bank had suspended new project funding in Cambodia pending a resolution of the BKL issue;
• The subsequent concession of the Prime Minister in granting title to the remaining holdout families in BKL that had not yet been evicted; and
• the Government’s return to form, with forced evictions continuing at the edges of the BKL neighborhood and elsewhere.

The concerns expressed in the current open letter relate to signs that the World Bank is considering withdrawing its freeze on funding new projects in Cambodia. In earlier statements, the Bank had asserted that it would not resume funding until “an agreement is reached with the residents of Boeung Kak Lake”. However, while the Government’s earlier grant of title to BKL holdouts represents a significant breakthrough, it does not apply to as many as 85% of the residents of the neighborhood forced out under extreme duress earlier. And as noted in the open letter, the entire BKL community has demonstrated exemplary solidarity, with current title beneficiaries continuing to hold out for an “agreement” that does not exclude their less fortunate former neighbors.

At a broader level, one might wonder whether even a full resolution of the now notorious BKL issue alone should be seen as sufficient, particularly in light of the Bank’s association with an earlier joint call by Cambodian development partners for a general moratorium on urban evictions. On the other hand, full satisfaction for BKL’s battered residents would have tremendous symbolic value. As demonstrated by NGO statements in support of the open letter, BKL has taken on regional, if not global significance as a concerted stand against arbitrary government land takings. Meanwhile, the Government’s paranoid reaction to attempts by the human rights group Licadho to speak with the BKL 15 at Prey Sar prison demonstrate that it is well aware of the symbolic power of this case:

…two guards, dressed in unmarked grey clothing distinct from regular guards at Prey Sar, ordered those who ventured near the fence closest to the Boeung Kak women to move away.

Licadho president Pung Chhiv Kek, who led a contingent of about 50 youths into Prey Sar for the event, spoke to prisoners up close through the fence, but when she began to move in the direction of the Boeung Kak prisoners, a guard told her to clear away.

“In my long experience of going to Cambodian prisons, it was the first time I was prevented to see prisoners,” she told the Post. “They did this because they had orders coming from the upper stratum of the regime, which regards Boeung Kak lake as a sensitive question.”

As noted previously in this blog, the World Bank does not enjoy exclusive or unlimited power to shape Cambodian policy, nor should it. However, recent events have demonstrated that the Cambodian government does consider the resources that the Bank provides worth an occasional policy shift. It would be a shame – and a mistake – for the Bank to needlessly cash in its chips before seeing the Government’s hand.

Cambodian mothers and grandmothers behind bars after facing off the most powerful men in the region: Will the World Bank stand by them?

by Natalie Bugalski and David Pred

David Pred and Natalie Bugalski are co-founders of Inclusive Development International. They co-authored the complaint to the World Bank Inspection Panel on behalf of the Boeung Kak community.

Last week thirteen Cambodian women representatives of the Boeung Kak Lake community were sentenced up to two-and-a-half years in prison after a summary trial. The women, including a 72-year old grandmother, were arrested on May 22 whilst singing at a peaceful protest to support 18 families whose homes had been buried in sand by a private developer (view the video). The arrest, trial and sentencing took place within 48 hours, with no time for the women’s lawyers to prepare a defense. During their trial, the police arrested two more community representatives who were waiting outside the courthouse prepared to testify as witnesses for the 13 women on trial.

Photograph: Housing Rights Task Force

The women, who call themselves the League of Boeung Kak Women Struggling for Housing Rights, have waged a multi-year battle to defend their homes and land in the bustling center of Phnom Penh. Their campaign has included everything from publicly burning effigies to rid the city’s authorities of evil spirits to baring their breasts at demonstrations to display their desperation. It has also involved a sophisticated legal advocacy strategy, including the submission of a complaint to the World Bank’s Inspection Panel, an internal watchdog mandated to investigate alleged violations of the Bank’s operational policies.

The women’s family homes were being threatened by one of the wealthiest and most powerful Cambodian tycoons, who is also a ruling party Senator, backed by China’s Inner Mongolia Erdos Hongjun Investment Corporation. In early 2007, Senator Lao Meng Khin was granted a 99 year lease over 133 hectares in central Phnom Penh, which covered Boeung Kak lake and its surrounding villages, home to some 20,000 people. The lease was granted for a mere $79 million US dollars, a fraction of the estimated $2 billion value of the property. Soon afterwards, the company began filling in the lake and coercing its denizens to leave the area for a measly sum in compensation.  Attempts by the community and civil society advocates at persuading the Senator’s company and the government to stop the mass forced eviction appeared futile. They remained impervious to the outcry against what threatened to be the biggest single mass displacement of Cambodians since the Khmer Rouge emptied the cities in 1975.

From shelter to housing: New NRC report on tenure security and displacement

by Rhodri C. Williams

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) just released a substantial study I wrote for them on the right to security of tenure and how it relates to interim shelter needs and long-term durable solutions for both refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs). It is a long read, but I would recommend it to those interested in these topics as my most comprehensive attempt to date to articulate the legal and policy dynamics of this important emerging area of humanitarian practice.

The background analysis in the study picks up on themes I developed earlier with regard to Liberia (also for the NRC), as well as Serbia (for the Brookings Institution) and Iraq (for the US Institute of Peace). These include the need for humanitarian actors to continue their engagement with both human rights and development discourses related to access to housing and security of tenure. The nexus with human rights emerges clearly from the moment of displacement, given the increasing trend (as reflected in the Sphere Standards) toward aligning humanitarian shelter provision with the human right to adequate housing. In accordance with commonly accepted understandings of this right, this means that even transitional shelter should meet basic standards of adequacy and be provided in a manner that ensures an appropriate level of tenure security to its occupants.

Meanwhile, the nexus with development standards relates to the insight that an increasing number of both refugees and IDPs find themselves in situations of protracted displacement. As a result (and as described in my earlier study on Serbia), measures to provide interim shelter solutions for displaced persons may quickly take on a de facto permanent character, and should often be planned with this eventuality in mind. This implies that pro-poor urban development standards (such as those developed by UN-HABITAT) should be applied wherever possible to allow the community-driven upgrading of IDP and refugee settlements. It also implies that development standards regarding involuntary resettlement should complement human rights standards in guaranteeing legal security of tenure for the displaced.

In the current NRC study, the case studies chosen related to Palestinian refugees in Lebanon as well as IDPs in Georgia. Application of the relevant standards on tenure security is difficult in both cases, but for entirely different reasons. In the case of Lebanon, refugees do not (unlike IDPs) enjoy a right to seek local integration as a durable solution. However, the particular political sensitivities in Lebanon have led to a situation in which efforts to prevent local integration have led to restrictions in areas such as access to housing that cannot easily be reconciled with the country’s international obligations.

In the case of Georgian IDPs, there has been a determined and ambitious effort to facilitate integration in a manner that does not foreclose the eventual possibility of property restitution and return. However, significant complications have arisen in part because this program has been aligned with a broader attempt to privatize state-owned property. This has led to some some difficulties in a program to allow IDPs to buy the shelter allotted to them in buildings subject to privatization as well as questions regarding what can be done for the large proportion of IDPs still sheltered in private accommodation.

It is important to recognize the initiative of the NRC, and particularly its Information, Counseling and Legal Assistance (ICLA) program, in driving these issues forward. The ICLA program has in many respects led the way in terms of seeking effective property remedies for the displaced in the field, and have now pivoted quickly to address new concerns related to tenure security where such remedies are not forthcoming. As always, I benefited a great deal from the insights and hospitality of my NRC colleagues while preparing this report, and it is my fond hope that some of them will guest-post on TN soon with both updates on the specific case-studies covered in the report and comments about their other ongoing initiatives in the area of housing, land and property rights.