Pakistan—Land Registration in Merged Areas (LRMA) Activity

The Government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Tribal Decade Strategy commits to providing the economic, social, and gender equity benefits of secure land tenure and property rights to the people of the Merged Areas of northwestern Pakistan.

The Land Registration in Merged Areas (LRMA) Activity contributes to this strategy by establishing a land record and registration system in seven districts of the Merged Areas (formerly the Federally Administered Tribal Areas) so that citizens, families, landowners, investors, banks, and government actors have access to accurate, understandable, and current records of their land rights.

LRMA strengthens the legal framework that supports access to accurate ownership and title records, equitable rights recognition, dispute resolution systems (both formal and informal), collateralization of land, and the private use of government land for revenue generation and economic development.

Sample Activities

• Advise the client on deploying innovative information and communications technology and survey technologies. In so doing, however, we will reinforce the use of “fit-for-purpose” technology—technology that balances speed, accuracy, and affordability.
• Engage women and other marginalized groups in the design of activities to promote their rights in land settlement processes.
• Build capacity to implement land settlement and deliver land records management services.
• Develop specific communication messages around the maintenance of land records to generate public buy-in and ownership.

Select Results

• Trained 15 young lawyers from the Women Lawyers Forum on how to write laws that protect women’s inheritance rights and to assist them in learning more about land settlement and registration procedures.
• Provided specialized training for 117 staff from settlement offices and district revenue staff of Merged Areas on building capacity to implement land settlement and deliver land records management services records. During this training course, a tailored session on gender sensitization was designed and rolled out to introduce basic concepts of gender and associated terms to present key aspects of gender awareness in land registration activity.
• Establishing a formal relationship with Ombudsperson KP for the Protection against Harassment of Women at the workplace, a key stakeholder in ensuring women’s right to inheritance in land.
• Provided a customized 2-day awareness course on legal drafting and land settlement and registration for 15 young women lawyers of Women Lawyers Forum (from tribal areas), the first of its kind.
• Developed a messaging framework on women’s right to inheritance for women of newly formed merged districts.
• Four villages in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan participate in land registration.
• Provided GIS equipment to resolve the boundaries of four villages and helped the government establish a Boundary Commission to engage tribal elders to initiate reconciliation.