RECONSTRUCTION OF ACEH LAND ADMINISTRATION: THE MULTI-DONOR

RESPONSE AND PROGRESS SO FAR

Keith Clifford BellWorld Bank, Sustainable Development DepartmentEast Asia Pacific Region

Workshop: Aceh Indonesia POST-TSUNAMI and Post-Conflict: Building a Better land administration system

On July 14, 2005, UN Special Envoy for Tsunami, Mr. Clinton presented his first report on Aceh to the UN Economic and Social Council, (ECOSOC) in New York City, and advised:

“Those of you familiar with the work of Mr. (Hernando) de Soto around the world and similar projects know that the world’s poor people have roughly 5 trillion dollars in assets that are totally unusable for economic growth because they don’t have title to them so they can’t get credit using what they own as collateral. This is going to be done through the World Bank grant in Aceh. It is very forward thinking on both the part of the World Bank and Indonesia but I hope that the other countries affected will do that and in its pursuit of the Millennium Development Goals, I hope that you, Mr. President and ECOSOC, can have an influence in urging this sort of project to be done in other countries outside the tsunami affected areas.”

Outline

• RALAS Overview

• Design Considerations

• Key Milestones

• Progress to date

• Challenges and lessons learned

• Concluding remarks

RALAS - Overview

Development Objectives: (i) to recover and protect ownership land rights of the

people in the affected and surrounding areas; and (ii) to rebuild land administration system.

Components• Component A: Reconstruction of Property Rights and

Issuance of Land Titles (US$22.10 million). • Component B: Reconstruction of BPN Institutions in

Aceh (US$2.20 million .• Component C: Project Management (US$1.50

million). .

What is RALAS designed to deliver?

A. Reconstruction of property rights and issuance of land title certificates.

B. Reconstruction/development of BPN (land) institutions in Aceh and rebuilding land administration system in the province.

What does RALAS not do?

• Re-location and re-settlement

• Spatial planning

• Land consolidation

Specific Design Considerations

• Decentralized project management• High level of civil society engagement and oversight• High level of community engagement through CDA• Protection of the rights of widows, orphans and

disadvantaged• Recognition that titling would generally follow housing

and community reconstruction• Use of non-organic provincial staff• Limited local private sector. Security concerns

precluded use of private sector from other provinces

Outline damage AssessmentNature of damage Quantification of Damage

Significant loss of BPN staff

In Aceh Province, more than forty BPN staff lost their lives. Most of the deceased were from the Kota Banda Aceh Land Office (which lost 30% of its staff).

Destroyed and damaged land offices

Six BPN Land Offices, including the District Land Office in Banda Aceh were completely demolished or severely damaged.

Damage to Government land books (the official register of land)

BPN estimates that about 10% of land books were lost. However, a significant amount of the remaining 90% of land books were found in a critical condition (e.g., flooded with sea water and mud) requiring urgent (within a short period of time) conservation and restoration work. In addition to the land books, there was also a serious loss of other land documents.

Destruction of official land documents, including cadastral maps

BPN assessed that about 80% of land documents were lost, including almost all cadastral maps

Serious shortage of office facilities There was a severe damage and destruction of office facilities, and currently, there is a shortage of computers, photocopiers, scanners, digital cameras, printers, and stationery to support urgent record recovery

Damage and disappearance of property rights evidence: The tsunami destroyed much of the physical evidence of property boundaries. Moreover, the disaster also washed away the witness evidence held in the minds of many of the land occupants, who were among the hundreds of thousands of human lives lost in the tsunami

Number of parcels affected: Total Number of Parcels: Approximately 300,000 land parcels have been affected by the tsunami. These comprise 170,000 urban land parcels and 130,000 rural land parcels. Registered Land Parcels: As is the case in many areas of Indonesia, less than 25% of land parcels can be expected to be titled. Therefore, of the total number of affected land parcels, approximately 60,000 have been titled (40,000 being urban and 20,000 being rural). Informal Land Parcels: Up to 250,000 Mortgaged Land: It is also estimated that 5% of titled land parcels were mortgaged, and these mortgages have been registered by BPN

Challenges• Financial and Budgetary

• Legal

• Social

• Cultural/religious

• Technical

• Political

• Capacity

• Conflict/post-conflict

• Security

• Civil Society Engagement

• Coordination of civil society efforts

• Expectations

• Monitoring

Some Key Milestones (1)

2004• Dec 26 tsunami

2005

• Jan GOI requested WB support for land administration reconstruction in Aceh and North Sumatra (Nias)

• Jan BPN Decree prohibiting land transfers in Aceh

• Feb Bank mission – to assess damage and design project

• Mar Devastating earthquakes

• April Damage assessment confirmed. Design confirmed. Donor found. TTL deployed to Indonesia full-time

• Jun MDF Grant US$ 28.5 million approved

• Jun EU provision of US$500k in satellite imagery and technical support

• Jul CDA Manual prepared. Issued as BPN decree

• Jul UN Special Envoy, Bill Clinton – presentation on Aceh (including RALAS) to UN ECOSOC, NY

• Jul + Training of civil society facilitators

• Jul new Head BPN appointed

Some Key Milestones (2)

2005 (continued)

• Aug Peace Agreement signed Helsinki

• Aug First fulltime monitor/advisor deployed to Aceh

• Sep UNDP approved funding for training facilitators, outreach materials and some equipment

• Sep RALAS project manager deployed to Banda Aceh

• Oct Issuance of MOF instruction to waive all fees and charges for titling. RALAS became effective, field teams deployed to Aceh

2006

• Mar First titles issued

• Aug Fulltime monitoring team deployed

• Dec Final Visit by UN Special Envoy, Bill Clinton

2007

• Sep Presidential Perpu on Aceh signed

• Oct Performance audit - BPKP

2008

• Jun Revised CDA Manual

• Dec Grant extended until mid-2009

Results to date

• Trained approximately 700 facilitators (for community land mapping and community driven adjudication process).

• Trained more than 480 BPN personnel on systematic registration and community driven adjudication.

• Training of Shariah Court officials

• Community land mapping completed: about: 120,000 land parcels.

• Cumulative progress, as of January 2009:

Total number of title certificates distributed: 114,737 titles.

Total number of land parcels adjudicated: 223,105 parcels

Total number of land parcels surveyed: 211,829 parcels

• BPN building renovated/constructed: So far, 8 BPN office buildings rehabilitated (7 completed and put to use while one partially completed).

• About 50,000 land records damaged by tsunami were recovered (by end 2006; courtesy JICA) and data-bases established.

Other Outputs

Key Policy outputs have included:

• Dissemination of guidelines on inheritance in accordance with Syariah law• PERPU: Treatment of mortgages of properties already destroyed by

tsunami (presidential decree, issued in Sep 2007) and protection of pre-

tsunami property rights• Waiver of taxes, fees and charges for land titles issued in the tsunami

affected areas (MOF regulation of Oct 2005) • Surveying regulations widely disseminated• CDA (RALAS) Manual –prepared and revised

Some Independent Reviews of RALAS Perceived strengths

• Broader contributions in preventing land grabbing and speculation, joint titling (gender concerns) and overall signal sent on land policy issues through information campaigns.

• Training provided (by the Bank) to NGOs helped to jump-start community land mapping and adjudication of land ownership rights as a village/community based exercise.

• More than 120,000 houses constructed using community land mapping techniques.

• Facilitated resolution of land disputes at the local level.

Perceived Weaknesses

• Slower than expected pace of land titling program.

• Adequacy of engagement with NGOs/CSOs.

Key Reviews

• Regular WB Supervision mission reports (6 monthly reviews)

• Various reviews undertaken by external agencies, but generally all based anecdotal evidence and lacking in detailed data collection directly from field

• MDF funded Project Implementation and Beneficiary Assessment (PIBA) completed in Jan 2009

• MDF Mid-Term Review of all MDF-funded projects

• Review of Study on Gender Impacts of Land Titling in Aceh, will commence March 2009, funded by World Bank Gender Action Plan (GAP)

Concluding Remarks• Emergency nature of the project has passed. Focus on reconstruction.

• Contributions to longer-term stability to the Aceh land administration system

• Impact of new Law on Governing Aceh and provincial priorities

• Longer term - Land Market developments:

“I can think of nothing that will generate more income over the long run for average families in this region than actually having title to the land they own. Then, they will be able to borrow money and build a much more diversified, much more modern economy.” UN Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery,

former US President Mr. Bill Clinton, Aceh, 23 May 2005

Terima Kasih

Terima Kasih