Issue Brief: The Future of Customary Tenure

The first section of this issue brief reviews the concept and characteristics of customary tenure systems. It next summarizes the factors contributing to the evolution of customary tenure in response to a wide range of institutional and economic pressures. This is followed by a brief assessment of how statutory and customary rights systems interact, the circumstances that propel one or the other to dominate, and examples of where and why the two are likely to come into conflict. The brief concludes with a short summary of the types of interventions that USAID projects have implemented in this domain.

Author(s): Dr. Mark S. Freudenberger , Dr. John Bruce , Beatrice Mawalma , Paul de Witt , Karol Boudreaux

CustomaryTenure April 27 2011 FINAL.PDF — PDF document, 352 kB (360666 bytes)