# **3.3 Maintenance of registry books and legal knowledge**

While the above data provide encouraging evidence regarding the inclusive and in some regions gendersensitive nature of first-time registration, positive impacts from this intervention will be sustained only if records are kept up to date on a self-sustaining basis. Answers to community-level questions on this, as summarized in table 6, raise some issues. While almost 60% of kebeles report cases of inheritance,<sup>24</sup> new certificates were issued or registrations changed in only a quarter of cases. Lack of guidelines on updating of records could be one reason for such gaps, consistent with the wide variation in user fees charged -from nothing in most kebeles to B33 for those that charge in the South. Household data also point towards large shares of non-reported leases.<sup>25</sup> As such gaps will decrease the value of land ownership records or undermine the scope for land markets in the future, having a policy to address them would be important.

Households’ ability to exploit the opportunities afforded by certificates is affected by their and officials’ awareness of the legal situation. A measure of legal knowledge will thus be important in its own right, in addition to allowing identification of gaps between perceptions and the law. We thus include questions on tenure security, land transfers, and gender, asked to males and females in the household, as well as kebele officials. Tenure security questions aim to assess awareness of the scope to leave the kebele without loosing land, the possibility of inheriting land to individuals other than direct offspring, and the extent to which mortgaging of land is allowed.<sup>26</sup> Land transfer questions ask for the number of years for which land can be leased and the minimum length of rental that requires registration.<sup>27</sup> On gender, we ask whether the respondent is aware of the proper (50/50) division of land assets in case of divorce.

Responses at the household level point towards variation across issues and regions.<sup>28</sup> While some 90% are confident that migrants’ land can not be taken back provided they do not have a full-time job and the household remains resident in the kebele, only 53% do so in Tigray and 78% in the South.<sup>29</sup> About 87% are aware of the proper division of land in case of divorce. The fact that only 44% know that mortgaging is prohibited points towards high levels of dissonance between beliefs and legal provisions, something that is also true for the possibility to inherit to non-children, which is known to less than 40% (and less than 10% and 20% in Tigray and Amhara). Awareness of households’ transfer rights is even lower. Less than 2%

> 24 Respondents seem to have understood these questions as referring to cases of inheritance actually reported to the authorities rather than the total universe of cases occurred; having 25% of kebeles without any inheritance in Tigray is implausible given that all of them had completed issuance of certificates about a decade ago. While the figures are thus likely to be an underestimate, they illustrate the lack of follow-up.

> 25 Household level evidence highlights that 56% of rented plots (866 out of 1533) were transferred under a fixed term contract and 28% (246 plots) with a rental term longer than the minimum required for registration out of which 55% (134 plots) were not registered.

> 26 Questions (correct answers in parentheses) are: “The head of the household has left the kebele where the land is located for 10 years. Does this affect the land use rights of the family?” (No everywhere); “Can a person bequeath land through inheritance to individuals who are neither his/her direct nor adopted children (No in Tigray; allowed everywhere else); “Is it legal for a household to mortgage the use right for its land?” (No). 27 Questions read “What is the maximum number of years for which households can lease their use rights to others who will use modern technology” (20 in Tigray, 25 in Amhara, 15 in Oromia, and 10 in SNNPR) and “Rental contracts for a period longer than __ years have to be registered (2 in Tigray and the South, and 3 in Amhara and Oromia).

> 28 As responses by males and females in the same household were quite consistent, we report knowledge at the household level, defined as the maximum level in a simple ‘right-wrong’ classification.

> 29 The comparatively high level of tenure insecurity in Tigray may be due to the fact that the regional government has announced plans indicating that land of households who have left the village for more than 2 years will be taken away.

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