Land reform can be a complex, costly and conflictual process in countries throughout the Global South. The land reform process itself can be varied and involve a range of initiatives such as colonization programs on public lands, land registration, the consolidation of fragmented holdings, improvements to tenancy, and land taxation and redistribution. Though often seen as critical for promoting economic development, land reform is a deeply political process. Considering the symbolic and material significance of land to the hundreds of millions of rural inhabitants in the Global South, the stakes involved in agrarian reform are often high and the process is sometimes politically explosive. As the case of Côte d’Ivoire in West Africa reveals, land reform can indeed contribute to both fueling and resolving violent conflict.
The politics around land reform are particularly notable in the context of post-conflict societies. Faced with the pressure to deal with the root causes of conflict, many peacebuilding campaigns must navigate the challenges of tackling land reform in a politically volatile environment. This can require a delicate balancing act. While the failure to resolve the land-related sources of a conflict can contribute to prolonging tensions and prevent the bridging of societal divides, aggressive attempts to promote agrarian reform can fan the flames of unresolved conflicts. This is precisely the case in countries like Rwanda and South Sudan, which have both attempted to implement land reforms in the wake of brutal episodes of violent conflict.
Despite the relative dearth of research on the land reform-peacebuilding nexus, there is evidence that land reform can indeed be a potential remedy for unrest. Through the implementation of comprehensive and wide-reaching reforms, land reform can dampen subsequent conflict in conflict-wracked regions. As a recent study on late twentieth-century conflict in Peru concludes, areas that experienced more intense land reforms experienced less conflict. Finally, quantitative work reveals that the inclusion of land reform provisions in post-war peace processes has been shown to dramatically reduce the likelihood of renewed conflict.
Yet research simultaneously reveals that the road to conflict can also be paved with good (land reform) intentions. For example, when reforms only target a limited number of groups this can lead to open protests and even fuel insurgencies given the antagonism this can engender between beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries. The decline in peasants’ earnings and the prospect of a surge of landlessness can breed disgruntled populations and fuel socialist revolutions and violent rebellions. Finally, land reforms have been used in partisan and starkly redistributive ways, which has generated heated debates around citizenship and belonging in many communities. This raises the question: how should land reform be approached in politically divided post-conflict contexts characterized by a state of fragile peace?
In a recent study, I consider this question by examining the case of Côte d’Ivoire. Once a beacon of economic and political stability, Côte d’Ivoire descended into violent conflict in the early 2000s. Following a ten-year period of ‘neither war nor peace’, a post-electoral crisis in 2010-2011 led to the death of over 3,000 people and the displacement of thousands.
Although land grievances have been widely recognized as a major contributing cause of the protracted conflict, the Ivorian government and international actors such as the United Nations largely sidestepped the question of land reform in the early years of the post-conflict period. As my research argues, the case of Côte d’Ivoire highlights a central feature of the land reform-peacebuilding paradox: while the failure to address the agrarian dimensions of longstanding conflict undermines prospects for long-term peace, the privileging of land reform in the wake of the post-electoral violence may have threatened the fragile peace and wider attempts to promote peacebuilding.
How, then, might diverse stakeholders navigate the potential minefield of land reform in their attempts to promote peacebuilding? While drawing upon the case of Côte d’Ivoire, I provide four recommendations for improving the prospects for peace through land reform.
First, relevant actors must strive to promote greater public awareness about existing land laws and proposed land reforms. Education campaigns, for example, can go a long way to preventing spoilers from mobilizing land grievances for divisive purposes and ultimately undermining peacebuilding efforts. This has already been flagged as a key strategy for implementing existing land law and improving future land policies in Côte d’Ivoire.
Second, land reforms must be simplified, and revised land policies rendered financially feasible for local populations. Whereas costly and complex land policies can thwart progress in the governance of land, affordable and minimally bureaucratic land tenure policies that are user-friendly are more likely to generate positive outcomes. The World Bank-funded project to improve and implement land reform in Côte d’Ivoire could indeed help to simplify and reduce the financial burden associated with proposed reforms.
Third, despite the seeming urgency to push for land reform, this process should not be done in a hasty manner. Instead, stakeholders need to balance the urgency of reforms with financial, temporal, and political constraints. In short, land reform may be navigated better over la longue durée than overnight. While time will tell if agrarian reforms will increase or decrease political stability and peace in Côte d’Ivoire, elites cannot sidestep the land question indefinitely.
Finally, for meaningful reconciliation and sustainable peacebuilding to occur, the reform process must be inclusive, involve diverse representation, and solicit widespread consultation and debate. As one expert notes in regards to the reform process in Côte d’Ivoire, “any changes to the Rural Land Law should be made through an inclusive popular consultation process.” While there is a clear role here for the state, affected local populations must also play a prominent role in driving the reform agenda and process. By truly recognizing the agency and wisdom of local populations, actors may just avoid the potential minefield of land reform in the peacebuilding process.
Matthew Mitchell
Matthew I. Mitchell is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Studies at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada.
