Weak and ineffective property rights
pose many problems in post-conflict situations. Secure property
rights are needed to revitalize an economy after a volatile period.
For many workers, especially farmers and fishermen, their very livelihoods are
dependent on secure rights and access to land. In addition, reliable property
rights encourage investors to take more financial risks and invest in a
post-conflict country. Unfortunately, the impacts of a conflict — including displacement
and resettlement of people; secondary occupation of land by state and non-state
actors; and loss or invalidation of property and other legal documents, such as
death certificates, which affect succession — make land issues difficult to resolve.
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A woman tends to her carrot farm
in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, where many
local women subsidize their
husband's income by renting small
plots of land to grow vegetables
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In the Sri Lankan civil war, which
lasted almost 26 years and was only recently resolved in 2009, land was a
central issue. Over the past three decades, the country — in particular the
northern and eastern provinces — has been wrecked by man-made and natural
disasters, leading to innumerable deaths and displaced people. The Sri Lankan
government’s Commission of Inquiry on Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation declared in
2011 that ensuring land rights is a necessary step in the
restoration and reconciliation process. However this finding has not been acted
on.
Although the government claims that
managing the resettlement process has been one of their strengths in the
post-war period, there are currently more than one thousand court cases filed
by landowners who lost their land due to formalized land-grabbing
policies. These government practices could result in a renewal of
grievances and reemergence of civil unrest if the needs of original landholders
are not met soon.
Since the civil war, the Sri Lankan
military has seized land under the pretenses of security and development. A circular
released in January 2013 declares that land lost during conflict
will be used for security purposes and vaguely-defined “development
activities.” The act claims that the original land claimants are not traceable.
Inhabitants
of the Valikamam North region of the Jaffna Peninsula, a hotbed of
conflict during the civil war, have been greatly affected by these policies.
The region’s Myliddy Harbor, said to be one of the highest yielding and most
important fish harbors in the country, is now under military control as part of
the ad-hoc High Security Zone: A swath of land that takes up 15 percent of the
peninsula and was established 24 years ago to secure restricted, strategic
military bases and industries. Meanwhile, the harbor’s original fishermen have
struggled to resettle in areas such as Point Pedro and Valikamam East.
Farmers in the Valikamam North
province, who once grew cash crops such as red onions, chilies, and tobacco, in
addition to bananas and tomatoes, were forced to abandon their fields and
cultivable land when the HSZ was established. They once hoped to return after
the war, but this seems increasingly unlikely as the military, which has now
taken over farming activities within the zone, is legalizing its ownership of
the land through the 2013 Land
Acquisition Act.
Farmers that I spoke with in the small
northern town of Tellippalai note that ever since they were forcibly displaced
by the military, their lives have been in a constant state of flux: moving
around the countryside, interrupting their children’s schooling; cultivating
small plots offered by nearby neighbors; and remaining unable to accumulate
physical assets due to numerous relocations. Decreases in relief funds over the
last three years and inadequate to nonexistent government compensation have
made matters worse.
The government plans to turn the land
it has grabbed into economic zones for the military and navy by constructing coal power
stations, factories and hotels, in addition to using the land for
typical agricultural and fishing activities, but conducted by government
workers instead of by the region’s original labor force. In areas neighboring
the HSZ, government surveyors are assessing where military barracks might be
constructed. These ”land
alienation” policies are meant to boost investment, tourism, and
production, but in reality they hinder poverty-reduction measures and
post-conflict reconstruction.
To be sure, the military may have the
resources and technology to make more optimal use of the land, but their
actions undermine the post-war demilitarization and recovery process and
threaten already unstable livelihoods that depend on restoration of private and
public lands. In order for Sri Lanka’s development and peace-building process to
succeed, property
rights must be protected and local populations should be consulted
in order to resolve land disputes and move the country forward.
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