Box 1.1 UN-Habitat’s Legal and Institutional Framework Index The Legal and Institutional Framework Index (LIFI) is a tool, designed under UN-Habitat’s Strategy to Monitor Security of Tenure, to assess land tenure in urban areas using a tenure security indicator. It aggregates information regarding a country’s legal, institutional, administrative, and policy environment relevant to tenure security. The focus of the Strategy to Monitor Security of Tenure is on assessing the dynamics of tenure security as an incremental process. The tool includes an assessment of two processes: to progressively acquire tenure security and to move from informality toward formality (by strengthening institutional capacities). The process to acquire tenure security is decomposed into access to land (equality and distribution), land documentation, land transfers, and the institutional and legal framework. The process to move toward formality is decomposed into evictions, remedies, land administration practices, and land market interventions and transferability. Each process item is then broken down into dimensions that are scored depending on observed practices. For instance, the score on evictions is computed on a 25-point scale depending on stakeholders’ involvement in eviction decisions at the community level (maximum 5 points); on the processes prior to eviction, that is, on consultation, justification, notification, recording, and compensation and relocation (3 points each, maximum 5 points); and on the legal aid support to the potential evictee (maximum 5 points). Scores are established based on data collected during a two-day working session with land experts of various sectors, including nongovernmental organizations, the media, lawyers, land administrators, surveyors, urban planners, and professionals from the real estate and construction sectors. A summary rating is also computed, ranging from 0 (reflecting lack of tenure security) to 1 (reflecting maximum tenure security). The assessment allows a diagnosis of the existence of laws and institutions relating to tenure rights and of inheritance and evictions, as well as a discussion on the levels of applicability of these laws. Source: http://www.uneca.org/eca_programmes/sdd/documents/land-policy/LIFI%20 power%20point_Moreno_Habitat.ppt
blueprint, an additional set of 48 standards is also used to assess the following five functions: the ability to use rights in property as collateral (security interest), the ability to transfer rights in property (primary transactions), the publicity of rights in property (registry), the legal description of property (tenure), and the physical description of property (cadastre). These indicators are organized in a matrix. For instance, an indicator of equity under the tenure principle is whether property rights of all individuals and ethnic groups are recognized. Another recent initiative to assess land governance is from the
WHY IS A LAND GOVERNANCE FRAMEWORK NEEDED?
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