Prindex is a joint initiative of the Global Land Alliance and Overseas Development Institute, with staff from both organisations working on the project alongside expert consultants.

Around the world, insecure property rights prevent families from feeling confident about the future, businesses from investing, and communities from becoming more productive. Hundreds of millions of us lack property security. This makes the world poorer, less free, and less just.

There is a growing recognition of the need for change, but without accurate information, governments, business and civil society can’t understand the nature of the challenge or how to overcome it.

Prindex will provide that information, and make possible the changes that will bring about more secure, productive and dignified societies.Perceptions determine behaviour and make accurate comparisons of property security under different legal frameworks possible. That’s also why perceptions of property security are included in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Representative surveys allow us to include women and young adults in the land rights conversation. The Prindex 2020 global dataset covers 140 countries and finds that almost 1 billion people are living in fear of eviction.

We’re a resource for researchers, governments, entrepreneurs, and the global land rights movement.
1 in 5 adults — around 1 billion people — feel insecure about their right to stay on their land, according to a new global survey by the land rights initiative Prindex. The International Land Coalition further finds that land inequality directly threatens the livelihoods of world’s poorest 1.4 billion.

Three quarters of work in developing countries is self-employed – mostly farm work in rural areas or small businesses in towns and cities. The only chance these workers have to escape poverty is by making their labor more profitable, or by finding a better paid wage job, usually through education.

Unfortunately, the unequal distribution of land ownership and insecure land rights make both very difficult for poor people – especially women.

The relationship of land rights to work is not obvious, but it runs deep. If you fear being moved on from your land or property, it’s risky to invest the little money you have in expanding your farm or business. Yet if you can’t plan for the future, it’s almost impossible to raise your returns.
Between 2000 and 2015 land was an element in over half of violent conflicts, and land is likely to become an even more important factor in conflict. Climate change, population growth and the youth bulge are all likely to intensify competition over land, and potentially exacerbate land-related conflict.

Building a deeper understanding of the roles which land play in conflict is important in supporting work to mitigate, manage and prevent violent conflict. By 2030, more than half of the world’s poor and up to two-thirds of the world’s extreme poor will live in conditions of fragility, conflict and violence. The costs of violence and its containment are enormous, reaching an all-time high of US$14.8 trillion in 2017 — equivalent to 13% of world GDP.

We already have some understanding of how land can play a part in conflict:

● Longstanding structural inequalities in access to land can be a starting point in contextualising grievances or establishing patterns of tenure insecurity.

● Weak or captured institutions and governance can compound grievances, if they do not enforce legitimate rights or arbitrate disputes effectively.

● Proximate factors can further exacerbate instability, for example intensifying competition for land, perceptions of electoral fraud or increasing perceptions of capture of judicial or regulatory bodies.

● Voice and agency can articulate grievances around land, at times employed as a rallying cry by conflict entrepreneurs to mobilise action through violence.

● Conflict triggers or sudden changes, especially against backdrops of increasing existing tensions, can spark tinders of conflict (for example, large-scale land concessions or the replacement of customary authorities).

A missed opportunity to link to land?
Yet, few conflict analysis and forecasting tools recognise the roles which land and property issues can play in instigating, sustaining and re-igniting conflict. Even fewer acknowledge or integrate the concept of tenure security, or the ability to control and manage one’s land or property, use it, dispose of its produce and engage in transactions with it.

Still less considered is perceived tenure security (PTS), or how people assess or view their level of tenure security and the risk that they will lose their right to use land or property in the future.

It is increasingly apparent that perceptions matter in violent conflict — they determine how people behave and make decisions, and sometimes more than actual reality — as is the case for land and property. For example, it is often assumed that a legal title confers tenure security, which is frequently used as a proxy for tenure security in conflict analysis. Yet, a legal title can be meaningless if a government can revoke it at a moment’s notice or if an overwhelmed court system doesn’t allow it to be defended. Conversely, some customary or informal property rights systems can provide enormous security, particularly if they are trusted to be fair.

Measuring PTS can capture people’s sense of security, whatever the tenure system; and tracking PTS regularly can monitor changes in security and signal rising tensions related to land. PTS can also help to identify what might be undermining people’s confidence in their ability to hold onto their land.