Securing land rights for women requires comprehensive approaches to address the specific legal and sociocultural contexts—including legal, administrative, management information systems, and social and behavior change dimensions. Improving women’s tenure security was a critical outcome for MCC. Many people in Cabo Verde are in informal, unregistered relationships. The Land Management for Investment (LMI) project encouraged registration of recognizable de-facto unions or donations of land to unnamed partners in such unions as a way to strengthen women’s land rights; if these steps were taken then women and men’s joint rights to land could be jointly titled. However, there were substantial cultural and logistical barriers to taking those steps that the project was not designed to address. For example, identification documents for a person in a recognizable but unregistered union would show that partner’s marital status as “single.” If the partner wanted to change this status, s/he would need to take legal steps to recognize the union. This would require a partner to go to the Civil Registrar’s Office and change the relationship status (which took time). Then to have the property rights registered in the names of both partners, the partners would have had to then ensure that the cadaster work for the parcel was completed and both names were listed on the title. It is rare that couples would take these steps before the LMI because of the belief that getting legally married is a better option, but marriage costs more money than many can afford. Because of the time and complexity of the process, and because there was no other compelling reason to do it, the majority of couples in recognizable de facto unions did not change their relationship status. This had the effect of reducing the number of land parcels that were registered jointly, despite these land parcels being owned jointly under the law. Future projects should consider linking the cadaster work to the civil registry to facilitate changes for individuals that might better protect their land rights. The projects should also include sensitization campaigns related to the benefits of having legal rights documented and the potential future risks if they are not. Any such campaigns should be carefully crafted to focus on the legal, social, administrative, and cultural context and ensure that activities align with what is feasible and desirable in that context.
Lesson Learned