Parliament to vote on crucial land bill

As the Angolan parliament prepares to vote on a controversial land bill on Tuesday, civil society groups have urged MPs to avoid rushing through a law that could harm the vulnerable communities it should be protecting. Observers applauded the fact that the National Assembly had last week begun to discuss the issue of land tenure, seen as a top priority in a country where millions of people fled to the major towns during almost 30 years of civil war. "There has been no official debate until very recently ... We were happy because we felt that the delay in the debate in the National Assembly was a sign that the concerns expressed by different organisations were being heard, and that the need for clarification over the policies on land was being taken into account," said Carlos Figueiredo, programme manager at Development Workshop (DW), an NGO which helps the urban poor with shelter, water and sanitation programmes. However, DW and others believe the bill in its current form would make disadvantaged communities in both urban and rural areas even more vulnerable, robbing them of their rights to land tenure. Many of the millions displaced during the conflict are returning to their land to discover that others are farming it, while in cities like the capital, Luanda - built for 500,000 people but home to four million - land is scarce. It is commonplace for Angolans, the poor in particular, to occupy or buy property on the informal market, without a legally recognised title proving their ownership. While the old land law, dating back to 1992, was seen as outmoded, confusing and poorly applied, the new rules seem designed to make it easier for the relatively well off to secure urban housing property rights, and little to address the issue of land held informally. In fact, observers say, they risk making these informal landholders illegal occupants of the land they live on. Rede Terre (Land Network), a coalition of NGOs working together on the land issue, distributed a statement to members of parliament on Friday, reminding them of the bill's major shortcomings. "It still remains impossible for the majority of rural and peri-urban communities to obtain the legal recognition to their land and, therefore, to obtain the support of this law," Rede Terre coordinator Manuel Antonio da Silva Neto said in the statement. Figueiredo agreed: "It looks like [parliament] was considering a kind of ideal situation which doesn't exist ... The big, big problem is that the law does not recognise the reality, which is that the vast majority of people are living in a situation where they don't have papers [proving legal ownership]." Observers are also uncomfortable with a clause that gives people just one year to formally request the regularisation of their right to the land they are occupying. In a country struggling to rebuild its legal framework - not to mention its infrastructure and health and education systems - it is a pipe dream, they say. "This is very worrying because institutional capacity is very low, so even now, when people apply for regularisation papers, the percentage of cases that are processed is very small," Figueiredo told IRIN. "If you try in a short period to have everyone applying, it's likely that a lot of people will fail. On top of that ... it's very likely that many people will simply not be aware of this process." Rede Terre has asked for a minimum of three years to allow people to regularise their papers, but believes that in a country with such poor access to information, and where many people have no formal identification documents, five years is a more realistic timeframe. Civil society groups were asked to comment on the bill during a consultation period, but they fear that the government has not taken note of all their recommendations. "Several organisations gave contributions and made proposals - whether they will be taken into account or not, we don't know. There were some changes already introduced in the previous consultation process, but we believe they could have gone further than they did," Figueiredo said. Observers who followed last week's parliamentary discussions on television and radio were disappointed by the quality of the debate and expressed concern that the real issues were being pushed to one side by interparty bickering. "I don't think it's very useful to bring to the discussion arguments such as those we heard taking place in parliament, about who caused the present situation. It doesn't help the discussion, nor does it help to improve the law," Figueiredo complained. It remains to be seen whether the government will manage to push the bill through. DW's Figueiredo hopes individual members will vote independently and not toe the party line, paving the way for more discussion and modifications. "It is important to spend more time on consultation, to really create a consensus around the changes to the new law," he said. "We are already rich in laws and regulations that no-one takes notice of in daily life ... It's more important to have a law that will be applicable and recognised by everyone." Rede Terre insisted it was seeking no special treatment for poor communities but rather a land law that protects the rights of all Angolans.