Decentralized Good Governance in Rural Land Administration: The Case of Hawzen Woreda

  Weldeabrha Niguse G/slassie

Governance is the exercise of political, economic and administrative authority in the management of a country’s affairs at all levels. Land governance in particular can be understood as “The process by which decisions are made regarding the access to, and use of, land, the manner in which those decisions are implemented, and the way that conflicting interests in land are reconciled.” Whether it is at the heart of a conflict or gets dragged into it, land requires a careful approach by policy makers and enforcing agents to sustain good governance because it is a central element in the evolution of a given society particularly viewed in bottom up approach. Nevertheless, most of the discussions on good governance are customarily focused on the macro level and there is still a lack of focus on good governance at local level especially in conflict prone-rural land administration. Thus, Local good Governance in rural land administration is an important topic of research in agrarian society like Ethiopia because of the ever existing unresolved land and land related issues. Hence, this research was undertaken to assess and understand local good governance in rural land administration with an emphasis on Transparency and Accountability. So the purpose of this research is to describe the existing application of good governance condition in land administration system in case of in Hawzen Woreda, Tigray National Regional State. The paper used descriptive research method as well as both primary and secondary sources in order to touch its objectives. Questionnaires, interview and different documents were used as research tools to collect data. Due to less institutionalization and capacity limitations of public institutions at the local level as deducted from the key informants, violations of law in the study worda was found common phenomena. The study also revealed that land judges and administrators did not have the knowledge, and even interest to know about the policies, laws and regulations for being they are serving for free and they saw it as part time activity. With all the limitations in their supporting role of the local government structures, the degree of reaching to poor and marginalized groups was also not found satisfactory. In sum, it was found that local land governance structures and institutions were weak in terms of the coverage, and capability to reach and serve the community. Therefore, as land administration is a cross cutting issue and culturally, political and economically as well sensitive sector, significant attention need to be given in institutionalization and staffing of its offices in all the hierarchies.

Keywords- Good Governance, Local Governance, Land administration, Transparency, Accountability

Unique Identification Number - IJEDR1702023
Page Number(s) - 131-142
Pubished in - Volume 5 | Issue 2 | April 2017
DOI (Digital Object Identifier) -   
Publisher - IJEDR (ISSN - 2321-9939)

  Weldeabrha Niguse G/slassie,   "Decentralized Good Governance in Rural Land Administration: The Case of Hawzen Woreda ", International Journal of Engineering Development and Research (IJEDR), ISSN:2321-9939, Volume.5, Issue 2, pp.131-142, April 2017, Available at :http://www.ijedr.org/papers/IJEDR1702023.pdf