7.1 Technical aspects of land administration, such as the establishment of registration and cadastre systems, are not ends in themselves but are the means to respond to the needs of people for more secure access to land. It will be necessary to ask if the policies being implemented are working. Processes should be developed to monitor and evaluate the implementation of policies for access to land. Because of the complexity of the situation, the effectiveness of policies is likely to be mixed. The measurement of the procedures and outputs of policies should produce more accurate data on which to base future policy initiatives.
7.2 The ability to monitor and evaluate policies for access to land may be limited in the early stages of the post-conflict administration. Pressures for the rapid implementation of policies for access to land may mean that there is no time to review the effectiveness of the policies and their procedures. There is also likely to be a shortage of staff with expertise in monitoring and evaluation.
7.3 There may be methodological problems in monitoring and evaluating programmes to provide access to land and security of tenure. Establishing the appropriate indicators for analysis may be the subject of considerable debate. In the post-conflict setting difficulties are magnified as factors such as the destruction of land records are added to the general problems. Simple quantitative analysis is often impossible or is of limited value. Attempts to obtain useful data from the field can be complicated if it is too dangerous to collect data in some areas. Other difficulties include a continuing fear within the population to speak to authorities, the circumstances being too changeable to produce reliable data, and limited resources available to collect data.
7.4 What indicators should be looked to when assessing the effectiveness of the implementation of strategies to improve access to land? Because of the complementary but individually specialized aspects of the various strategies for access to land, there are likely to be variable indicators for the purposes of monitoring and evaluation. Indicators should be of a type that adequately identify the true circumstances of access to land for women and other vulnerable groups. This implies that qualitative indicators should apply as well as quantitative ones. See Box 11.
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BOX 11 Preliminary evaluations and indicators There may be a lack of reliable data in the post-conflict setting from which to make proper assessments of land tenure problems. Some quantitative data such as land records may have been destroyed in conflict thus preventing the ability to make a quick assessment of official rights before the time of conflict. Qualitative data such as assessments of the fairness of land laws and the nature of security afforded by land tenure systems may be important for the purposes of policy development and re-establishing the operations of government. However, they may be practically irrelevant if the laws are ignored and the only type of security of tenure is dependent on occupation and the amount of force required to maintain it. Indicators for policy implementation A variety of policies for access to land may be applied. The appropriate indicators to assess the effectiveness of policies will depend on the type of strategies being implemented. In some post-conflict settings, policies on access to land have employed some or all of the following approaches:
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7.5 Policies may not be effective because they have been poorly designed or are trying to do the wrong thing. Monitoring and evaluation should provide signals that such policies should be reconsidered. But even good policies may not be effective if there are difficulties in implementing them. These difficulties may arise because of limitations with human resources, or because information on the policies has not been adequately conveyed. Monitoring and evaluation should address these issues.
7.6 Generally, the human resources available will not be adequate to deal with the implementation of policy in all areas. There are likely to be constant problems of staffing. The capacity of local staff to implement policy may be limited. Training courses should be held at regular intervals. Policies such as decentralization may affect the requirements for staffing. For example, a decision to establish offices in all districts of a country will be unsustainable in the short-term if resources are not available. Geography, along with inadequate transportation and communication infrastructure, may make it difficult to monitor what is happening at regional offices. In practice, a decentralization policy may be forced to restrict implementation to a few areas initially in order to achieve results.
7.7 The effectiveness of the communication campaigns should be monitored. Initial efforts to inform people of their rights and of programmes to provide access to land may have limited success. Awareness of policies and actions may take a long time to establish, and activities may need to be repeated frequently. The messages may need to be continually refined for particular audiences.
