Land disputes rock Rwanda

Rwandans march in Kigali in April to pay tribute to the more than one million people who died during the 1994 genocide. The country is facing a land wrangle crisis. Photo by Agencies 

By AGENCIES

KIGALI- Rwanda is facing a challenge of land-related disputes as Rwandans continue returning back from exile, months after the signing of the cessation clause.

The latest report by the Office of the Ombudsman, says 15 per cent of murder cases in the country in the last fiscal year were related to property, mainly land. Of the 894 complaints the Office of the Ombudsman received, 256 (28 per cent) were related to land.

On June 30, the cessation clause concerning Rwandan refugees came into effect, meaning that Rwandans who fled the country between 1959 and 1998 have lost their refugee status across the world.

This move follows a process that began in 2002 where the Rwandan government approached the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), saying the reasons that caused Rwandans to flee were no longer applied and that Rwanda was ready to receive all refugees.

New land law




“I returned recently from Zambia and found my land occupied by people I don’t know. I really want my land back,” Jeanne d’arc Mugakwaya, a mother of five, told Xinhua. The 56-year-old said she needs her ancestral land back and she sought assistance from the local leaders.

Mugakwaya went to Zambia immediately after the 1994 genocide in Rwanda that claimed the lives of more than 1 million Rwandan Tutsis and moderate Hutus. She owns a five-acre land in Kicukiro District within Rwandan, Capital Kigali suburbs.

In 2004, the Rwandan government enacted an organic law on land to guarantee a safe and stable form of land tenure. Before that, the country never had a proper land policy.

In order to define and decide how the land registration process should be carried out, a ministerial decree determining modalities of registration was enacted in 2008 and a year later, land registration process kicked off.

Article 30 of the Land Law stipulates that registration of land any person owns is obligatory. It allows owners to get legal documents and clarify their land rights, which increases their land tenure security.

“My plot has been claimed by the people who are neither my relatives nor friends. They used the opportunity that we are not around and confiscated my plot,” said Thomas Kalisa, a returnee from Malawi.

He claims to own a two-acre land in Gasabo District in the outskirts of Kigali City. The 40-year-old and a father of three children has gone to local courts seeking help to evict people from his plot.

According to Eng Didier Sagashya, the Rwanda Deputy Director General for Land and Mapping, out of 10.3 million cases registered, 11,840 families with land wrangles were recorded in a book dedicated to land disputes.




“The conflicts are being solved at the local level and the complicated ones have been taken to courts,” he said.

Most of the land disputes encountered are largely among family members who fail to agree on sharing their land, especially in polygamous families and cases from returnees who claim back their land.

One of the benefits of land registration is efficient, transparent and equitable system of land administration where people use their own land as security to acquire loans from banks.

Government forms mediation committees