Abstract
This article discusses the need for a fundamental rethinking of urban planning in Liberia with special reference to Monrovia, the capital. Liberia is a post-conflict country and is facing a multitude of problems. One is the very rapid urbanisation of the country. Well over 50% of the population live in urban areas, and over one million people—one third of the population—live in Monrovia, for the most part in informal ‘illegal’ settlements with few facilities. Despite land issues being acknowledged as in need of being tackled as a matter of urgency, little has been done by the Johnson-Sirleaf government since it came to power in 2006. What is needed and what this article argues for is a plan for the development of Monrovia based on the Right to the City with residents given clear rights to land and to participate in the governance of their city. The approach is denominated as a transformational one, taking its inspiration from van der Walt’s approach set out in his Property in the Margins. The need for and the outline of an Urban Transformation Act are set out in the article which concludes with a warning that it cannot be supposed that the residents of Monrovia will continue indefinitely to put up with their very poor living conditions.
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Notes
An urban area is defined as any place with more than 2,000 inhabitants, so the ‘real’ amount of urbanisation is lower.
Unruh (2009). The article quotes the President’s comments on the need for land reform (p. 425).
Under an agreement signed between the Japan International Cooperation Agency and the government in 2008, JICA was to develop a Master Plan Study on urban facility restoration and improvement in Monrovia. At the launch of the draft final report of the study in September 2009, the Minister of Public Works was quoted as saying that the objectives of the study “were to compile master plan for the recovery and reconstruction of urban facilities in greater Monrovia and to compile project implementation plans targeting roads, public water supply and the sewage and storm water drainage facilities…” The ‘master plan’ did not cover housing or any upgrading of citizens’ living conditions (The Informer 2009). It has not been possible to access the draft plan, and I was not made aware of the draft plan during my mission to Liberia in November 2009.
The key text discussing the implications for post-conflict (and other like situations) land administration is van der Walt (2009), to which I am greatly indebted for the evolution of my thinking on this issue.
“beneficial occupier” means, in relation to the occupation of land in a land development area where land development takes the form of upgrading an existing settlement, any person who has been in peaceful and undisturbed occupation of such land for a continuous period of not less than 5 years. Section 1 Development Facilitation Act, No. 67 of 1995.
A rigid application of a restitution approach to urban land problems in Monrovia would see thousands of squatters removed from land privately owned by some of the large landowners in Monrovia. Liberia has a land policy and land practices not dissimilar to apartheid South Africa: Americano-Liberians have rights to own land denied to rural ‘natives’ on the basis of laws dating from the nineteenth century (the latest of these laws is a 1956 law which permits ‘civilised natives’ to own land) including acquiring freehold ownership of land in rural areas occupied by ‘natives’ on the basis of Presidential grants. It does seem quite astonishing that this system and set of laws remains in place.
I have done this in developing a Mogadishu City Law in a UNDP project. The thrust of that law is that the city council is basically a discussion forum for all the civil society organisations that are providing services to the residents of Mogadishu to come together and plan their respective activities; the City Council does not attempt to compete with or take over the role of civil society organisations.
Very oddly, one might think, there has been little thinking or writing at an official or even unofficial level on local government in a post-conflict state. One of the few ‘official’ documents is the UNDP/Oslo Governance (2007). Of the first 76 articles in the new Journal of Conflict and Peacebuilding, founded in 2004, only two are on local government.
Two other possible reasons for inaction are, first, that the senior UN-Habitat official proceeded on maternity leave shortly after she arrived. Second, the Land Commission, appointed by the President in October 2009 to get to grips with the land issue, seems pretty moribund (private communication). That second reason would, however, chime in with a deliberate policy of inaction on land matters.
It may also be pointed out that in my report I had quoted the relevant section in the 1996 Constitution of Uganda which had conferred ownership rights on all those persons occupying land under customary tenure who up to that point were in law tenants at will of the state—the single most transformative action—post-conflict or otherwise—any government in Africa has taken with respect to persons occupying land under customary tenure. This action was a direct result of promises President Museveni made to peasants when he was fighting the Obote 2 regime in the early 1980s in the bush. Suggesting that all peasants in Liberia should at the stroke of a pen receive freehold ownership of their land was not calculated to garner much support in Liberian governing circles.
An equally, if not more challenging, transformational approach to land issues in Liberia was put forward by Alden Wily (2007) in So owns the Forest in Liberia? An investigation into forest ownership and customary land rights in Liberia. SDI Liberia and FERN which developed clear recommendations towards solving potential conflicts over natural resources and suggested that Liberia could set a precedent by returning ownership of land to communities which would lead to improved forest governance, control of illegal logging and remedial action against historical injustices. That too has not been acted upon. Forests are very big business in Liberia both for foreign investors and for the Americano-Liberian elite. Community forestry is a common phenomenon in many African countries.
References
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Nothing in this paper must be taken to reflect the ideas or policies of UN-Habitat on whose behalf I undertook a mission to Liberia in 2009. My mission to Liberia was principally to participate in the Orientation Programme for Land Commissioners of the newly established Land Commission. I was also commissioned to write a report on the urban land and governance situation in Monrovia.
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McAuslan, P. Urban Planning Law in Liberia: The Case for a Transformational Approach. Urban Forum 22, 283–297 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12132-011-9122-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12132-011-9122-0