Customary Land Rights

Above 95% of Sierra Leone’s land mass is under customary rule and such is the land endowed with the natural resources useful for agriculture mining and other investment purpose. With laws that are no longer adequate for purpose, lack of reliable real-time data and land inform system, customary land rights and tenure security are both jeopardized. Thus land acquisition process over the years has been centralized with investors approaching central government in Freetown, which subsequently would approach the paramount chief or some local authorities in the desired are to acquire land. Usually, the really land owning families are not adequately consented in line with what VGGT prescribed as a Free prior and Informed Consent.  There are cases of communities putting up resistance to the taking of their land, but such resistances are usually crossed by the State and the local authorities. Individuals and families who refuse to get over the embarrassment have lived in perpetual disagreement with the operations of investors and these are the basis of the numerous community conflicts with investors.

What are we doing?

Community empowerment for the realization of their land rights is the bedrock of our engagement on land issues in Sierra Leone.  For we acknowledge that the guarantee of tenure security and customary land rights are two sides of the same coin. A threat to community land rights threatens tenure security and vice versa. Therefore, our role as a civil society platform is to strengthen communities to be able to understand their rights to land and defend those rights against abuse and marginalization. We provide the appropriate information that communities need to negotiate from an informed point of view. We also collect their views and relay those views at district and national level so that news laws and policies can be formulated in respect of these views.