23 Feb Land Governance Assessment Framework (LGAF)
The Land Governance Assessment Framework (LGAF), developed by the World Bank in partnership with FAO, IFAD, IFPRI, UN Habitat, the African Union, and numerous bilateral partners, is a diagnostic tool to assess the status of land governance at country level using a participatory process that draws systematically on existing evidence and local expertise rather than on outsiders. There are nine key general areas of a country’s good land governance that LGAF focuses on. These areas have traditionally often been dealt with in separation from each other. LGAF aims to bring these into one framework. The areas are (1) Land Rights Recognition (2) Rights to Forest and Common Lands & Rural Land Use Regulations; (3) Urban Land Use, Planning, and Development (4) Public Land Management (5) Transfer of Large Tracts of Land to Investors, (6) Public Provision of Land Information: Registry and Cadastre, (7) Land Valuation and Taxation, (8) Dispute Resolution and (9) Institutional Arrangements and Policies. For these nine focus areas, a series of land governance indicators, each divided into several dimensions, have been selected based on international experience. For each dimension, pre-coded statements are given for scoring (from best practice = A to weak practice = D) again based on international experience. In the section 9 the findings of this study will be presented based in each of the nine areas and the scores will be provided based on the consensus of the technical experts on land governance in Afghanistan. While the section 9 serves as an assessment of the above mentioned subject-areas, the next section will provide the conclusions and recommendations.