By Luis Luna
In the aftermath of the mega-disaster caused by the Haiti earthquake of 12 January 2010, governmental agencies and humanitarian and developmental organisations seeking to provide emergency shelter and housing programmes for the 1.5 million homeless persons were confronted with numerous and complex issues regarding land property and land tenure conflicts. These arose both inside the affected communities and between them and the self-identified owners and tenants of the plots of land on which emergency camps, transitional shelters and permanent houses were to be erected.
These challenges arose not only from working within Haiti’s extensive web of pertinent constitutional, legislative and regulatory provisions at the national, regional and local levels but also from significant gaps in the implementation and enforcement of key rules. Responders were further burdened by the prevalence of complicated and expensive legal procedures for the application of the formal, written, system of law, and the preference by most of the population, particularly in rural areas, for informal, ancestral, non-written, customary, solutions, largely based on the traditional voodoo culture and religion.
Even as Haiti continues to work on long-term recovery from the earthquake, it is clear that it remains exposed to many future hazards, in particular from the annual storm season. In order to reduce these kinds of problems in future disasters, and with support from the Haitian Red Cross and Haitian Civil Protection Directorate, the IFRC has developed an analysis of relevant laws, rules and procedures that may influence future shelter programming.
The study identified a number of good practices, including:
•By the public authorities: The preparation by the National Office of Cadastre (“ONACA”) of a draft law clarifying the land rights’ registration and titling; the preparation by the Inter-ministerial Committee for Territorial Planning (“CIAT”) of a strategy for land tenure and planning reform; -the preparation of contingency plans (national, departmental and municipal) to address issues of shelter assistance; the use of short guides to construction and repairs to small buildings; the adoption in 2012 of a law bearing a national building code, setting standards of construction for seismic, wind and flood resistance; the adoption of anti-corruption legislation in 2014; and the adoption of the disabled persons integration law in 2012, which can reduce exclusionary practices.
• By shelter agencies and other humanitarian actors: Development of simple, standard-form documentation, to support construction of shelters; participatory community-based techniques for settling usage rights; efforts by the cluster system that closed gaps in government capacity and coordinated the shelter actors; diligent screening of beneficiaries and simple dispute resolution to prevent or overcome corrupted practices; priority given by a number of shelter actors to the most vulnerable, among which the disabled people.
It also identified a number of ongoing regulatory barriers for shelter assistance, including issues surrounding housing, land and property rights, the fact that the majority of rights exist only in the informal / customary sphere, the lack of an effective procedure to deal with the temporary requisition of land, the lack of effective dispute-resolution mechanisms, the lack of a transparent and effective system of title registration, the weak implementation of the protective provisions against forced evictions, the failure to establish coordination mechanisms as proposed in the national risk and disaster-management plan and the National emergency-response plan, and the delays in the importation of materials for shelter construction due to complicated or non-transparent procedures.
The report proposes a number of short-term recommendations to be integrated into a revised draft of the national intervention plan. They refer to: increased use of community-based mapping of needs and solutions; guidelines prohibiting grossly disproportionate levels of resources from being applied to the different categories of tenure status; guidelines for a rapid dispute resolution procedure; delegating authority for the management of land disputes to temporary tribunals; authorisation of temporary use of unoccupied land for emergency shelter; integrating safe temporary shelter sites into risk-management plans and contingency plans; application of shelter construction standards in post-disaster settings. It also sets out a number of long-term recommendations related to larger changes in cadastral and other procedures.