Promoting women’s access to and control over land in the central highlands of Madagascar By: Mino Ramaroson Daniéle Ramiaramanana Lilia Ravoniarisoa March 2011 Acknowledgements: The Malagasy institutions that were, and continue to be involved in this action research project are: • The SIF Platform: a non governmental national umbrella association working on land issues (the following organisastions are SIF’s members except FOFIFA). • FVTM: a non governmental federation of rural women’s associations. • Reseau SOA: a national umbrella organisation of farmers’ associations. • HARDI: an NGO working on development issues including land and tenure security. • FOFIFA: a national research centre and governmental institution working on agriculture and gender issues. These Malagasy partners gratefully acknowledge the financial and management support provided by the IDRC and ILC, the research support provided by PLAAS and the time given by Malagasy women and men, and officials, all of which made this action research possible. Table of contents List of figures, tables and boxes Acknowledgements: ii Figures Introduction 1 Figure 1: The two research regions 6 Figure 2: Women interviewed according to their marital 1. Methodology 4 status 16 Action research 4 Figure 3: Women and men’s daily activities 18 Site selection 4 Figure 4: Landscape position impacts on access to and control over land (men) 20 Information collection tools used 8 Figure 5: Landscape position impacts on women’s access Actions 9 to and control over land (poor women) 21 Problems encountered 9 Figure 6: Landscape position impacts on women’s access to and control over land (medium class women) 22 2. Political, economic and legal context 10 Figure 7: Landscape position impacts on women’s access Legal framework 10 to and control over land (rich women) 23 Gender and land rights 11 Tables Customary practices 13 Table 1: Decentralized administration system 5 Table 2: Selection of villages per site 7 3. Data evidence 14 Table 3: Information collection tools used 8 Use of terminology 14 Table 4: Women’s knowledge of local land office Women’s social position 15 in Miadanandriana 25 Women’s place in agriculture 17 Table 5: Women’s knowledge of local land office Women’s knowledge about the land reform process 24 in Sahambavy 26 Table 6: Visits to the local land office in Miadanandriana 27 4. Inheritance process and land rights 30 Table 7: Women’s with land certificate in Miadanandriana 28 5. Conclusion 31 Table 8: Women’s with land certificate in Sahambavy 29 6. Recommendations 32 Boxes Objectives 32 Reformed legal framework (Thalgott, 2009:8) 10 Activities 33 Expected results 33 References 34 Appendix 35 Introduction In Madagascar, as in other African countries, securing ….. many land titles were registered before the country’s access to and control over land is a key issue of economic independence in 1896 and the documentation has hardly development, poverty reduction and household and ever been updated. Today a large proportion of plots of national food security. “Land is of crucial importance to land which have ownership titles are registered in the name of deceased owners. These plots of land are nowadays the economies and societies of the region, contributing a occupied by the descendants of farm workers from the major share of GDP and employment in most countries, and colonial concessions which, like the documentation, have constituting the main livelihood basis for a large portion of not been updated, the occupants thus being considered the population.” (Cotula, Toulmin and Hess: 2004:1) (See also as squatters in jurisdictional terms. (Thalgott :2009:2-3) Thalgott: 2009 :4). More than 80% of the Malagasy population live in rural areas, which means that their main source of income and basis of survival is agriculture. Ramarolanto Customary rights in Madagascar are derived from social Ratiaray (1989) argues that securing farmers’ access to land recognition. For Malagasy people, land is more than an is one way to improve food security for Madagascar, which economic asset. In addition to its productive value, land also is currently food insecure, and thereby improve the overall has a social value because it is seen as the link between the economic situation. Access to and control over land is living and the dead (the ancestors), which is the basis for therefore important to ensure better lives, for both men and cultural and social identity and status in the community. A women. person is recognized as the owner because he (or, in some cases, she) enhances the value of the land. Inheritance is also The land question in Madagascar is marked by great political based on social and local recognition. The owner’s children changes which have occured since the 19th century. As in are considered the heirs of their father’s land, even if there many other African countries that were colonised, land in is no will or official documents, escpecially since the oral Madagascar is subject to plural tenure systems in which tradition has an important place in Malagasy customary a small portion of the land (estimated at about 10%) is rights. registered and held in exclusive private ownership based on French property law, while most of the land, presumed in law These customary ways of managing land rights have, to be owned by the state, is in fact occupied and ownership however, come under pressure in more recent times. In 2005, conferred through locally legitimate processes derived from the Malagasy government declared that there was a land custom. Malagasy citizens have thus seldom resorted to tenure crisis with serious economic and social consequences, registration, a land process inspired by the “Torrens Act”1, including a reluctance by the private sector and farmers and customary rights to access and control over land have to invest in their land due to tenure uncertainty, and land continued to survive and evolve beside statutory laws. conflicts increasing to such an extent that public order was Indeed, in many locations in Madagascar, custom is still endangered, the courts overwhelmed and the legal system more powerful than statutory law in shaping access, use and threatened with malfunction (Thalgott:2009:3). In addition transfer of land, and the underlying titles have been ignored. to this, the commodification of land and individualisation of ownership had resulted in an increase in land sales, including large swathes of occupied state owned land to external investors in late 2008, sparking a very serious political crisis. 1 The Torrens title system,invented by robert Torrens in South Australia in the 1850s and commonly used around the globe, operates on the principle of These threats to tenure security established through social “title by registration” (i.e. the indefeasibility of a registered interest) rather than recognition resulted, in the decade prior to 2005, in larger “registration of title.” number of citizens seeking to formalise their land rights Employment in FAO, argues that: “Disparity in accessing by taking advantage of land administration processes land is causing economic and social injustices against designed to do this. However, the legal framework was badly women in rural areas [and] … can endanger household’s understood, at times even rejected, and inaccessible to the and communities’ food security, and affect national food majority of applicants because it was, amongst other things, security and development” (Gender and right to land, March not adjusted to their practical and economic uses. Therefore 2010). Land reform that does not take this into account the “modern system of title deeds creates additional tenure could therefore accentuate the disparity between men and insecurity on land remaining outside its umbrella. The larger women which prevails at the local level. the externality imposed on those with informal tenure, and The understanding of how statutory rights to land intersect the more difficult it is to make titling universal, the more with rights derived from customary practices and how likely it is that a land titling initiative will entail a net social women negotiate this plurality is also not well developed in cost.” (Jacoby and Minten, 2006:13) Madagascar and elsewhere. Claassens and Mnisi (2009), for Thus the year 2005 saw the announcement of a new land instance, argue that women’s rights to land are often won or policy which aimed at promoting secure access to land by lost in this intersection and that more strategic approaches creating a more efficient legal and institutional environment to ‘forum shopping’ are advisable. through the decentralization of the land management Furthermore, there are gender issues relating to definitions of system. The Malagasy government promulgated the tenure security. Ribot and Peluso (2003: 153) state that “access framing law (2005-019, 17 October 2005), which changed differs from property in multiple ways that have not been the principles of the statutes governing land in Madagascar. systematically accounted for within the property and access Key to these changes was the legal recognition given literature”. They define access as “the ability to benefits from to ownership derived from occupation and use and the things – including material objects, persons, institutions, integration of local, traditional structures (the village and symbols” (2003: 153). In this sense, the meaning of elders) and decentralised municipal structures into the access to land should be seen as “a bundle of powers”, not process of recognition.