Access to and control of land was a key factor underpinning the civil conflict in Liberia which lasted from 1989 to 2003. Over one million people were displaced. Many land conflicts, involving individuals, communities and even administrative divisions within the country, remain unresolved.

The parties to a land dispute sign a Memorandum of Understanding, posing an end to a conflict NRC has facilitated to resolve. Photo: NRC / Laura Cunial

"Displaced people frequently return to their villages to find others occupying or encroaching on their land. These disputes are prevalent throughout Liberia, sustaining tensions within and among communities and impeding the efforts of returnees to rebuild their lives and livelihoods", said Laura Cunial, Project Manager for the Information, Counseling and Legal Assistance (ICLA) project with NRC Liberia.

Judicial remedies are difficult to access, costly, slow, hard to enforce and prone to inflaming tensions rather than mitigating them. Meanwhile, informal remedies, based on local networks and hierarchies of power, are frequently seen as partial to elite interests and are therefore mistrusted by some disputants.

NRC Liberia has worked for the past three years to assist individuals and communities to resolve land disputes. The ICLA project facilitates non-adversarial resolutions to land conflicts. The project has also established close working relationships with the Land Commission, the Ministry of Lands, Mines and Energy, the Ministry of Justice and the Centre for National Documents and Records, with the objective of promoting access to and security of tenure in land throughout Liberia.

The article In Africa, inheriting a field ... or a feud? illustrates land conflicts in Liberia and the context within which the ICLA project works.

Read also the full cover story from the Christian Science Monitor, Africa's continental divide: land disputes