Background
- Mozambique's Land Law
- Indigenous Territories
MOZAMBIQUE'S LAND LAW
When Mozambique's civil war ended in 1990, it marked the close of nearly 30 years of military conflict. The end of hostilities also created opportunities. Like most of Africa, only a small fraction of the land in Mozambique was held in title by specific owners. With pressure from international donors and investors to grant legal title, and strong demand for the land from recently repatriated refugees, the government needed to tighten up its land policies.
The danger to poor farmers—many of whom were and continue to be illiterate women—is that the new land rules would force them out: either because they could not prove they had title to their land, or because they would not understand and carry out the new requirements to establish ownership.
Civil society organizations in Mozambique pushed to use the traditional system of land title, which is based on oral testimony that would allow family farmers to make claims to their land. By the time the new land law was passed in Mozambique, there was a system to allow farmers to make their claims and stay on their land. Oxfam America helped fund several organizations that worked on the legislation and trained farmers in the proper procedures to file their land claims.