According to the United Nations (UN) Refugee Agency, there were 79.5 million forcibly displaced people worldwide by the end of 2019. Evictions from homes and land are often linked to protracted violent conflict. Land administration (LA) can be a small part of UN peace-building programs addressing these conflicts. Through the lens of the UN and seven country cases, the problem being addressed is: what are the key features of fit-for-purpose land administration (FFP LA) in violent conflict contexts?

FFP LA involves the same LA elements found in conventional LA and FFP LA, and LA in post conflict contexts, as it supports peace building and conflict resolution. However, in the contexts being examined, FFP LA also has novel features as well, such as extra-legal transitional justice mechanisms to protect people and their land rights and to address historical injustices and the politics of exclusion that are the root causes of conflict. In addition, there are land governance and power relations’ implications, as FFP LA is part of larger UN peace-building programs. This impacts the FFP LA design. The cases discussed are from Darfur/Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Honduras, Iraq, Jubaland/Somalia, Peru and South Sudan.

The UN was created from the outset to build peace in violent conflict contexts. As acknowledged by the Secretary-General’s Guidance Note on land and conflict [3], land is a major root cause of conflict and hence of interest to the UN in its peace building. We have examined the types of FFP LA-related activities that the UN has undertaken in seven different countries. The FFP LA it used is the same as that found in conventional settings, but it has novel characteristics. They range from peacekeeping missions protecting people and their access to land and legitimate land rights, to technical assistance to plan for large-scale voluntary returns of people who have been displaced.

The cases demonstrate how the UN has used what we have shown to be FFP LA extra-legal transitional justice mechanisms, as part of larger peace-building programs, to start addressing land-related historical injustices and the politics of exclusion, which are some of the root causes of conflict. In these contexts, land governance is of particular importance because of the way the land-related power dynamics play out across the conflict cycle. The cases demonstrate that the UN uses its power and capacity to strengthen land governance, including around women’s land rights.

The UN does this by using its good offices and convening power and security assets. This is a critical component of the FFP LA design in these settings. In the seven country cases, the UN’s power was used to manage the competing interests in land. Its power was an important contributory factor concerning which FFP LA rules and processes were used, and the manner in which FFP LA was implemented. The cases also give early insights into how the UN’s convening power and good offices’ roles can be used to move transitional justice FFP LA mechanisms into more formal LAS arrangements.

Finally, the type of FFP LA approaches described here, found across multiple countries and sites, give practical options to support peace-building operations by the UN and other stakeholders. The cases overturn the view that it is not possible to undertake LA interventions in violent conflict settings. On the contrary, FFP LA approaches are a critical component of peace building and are often designed to serve as a basis for future work on LA in the post conflict and development phases.