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- The high cost of registration: the registration of land requires costs which the Burundian families
cannot afford due to poverty. It involves the production of proof of identity, the purchase and
transportation of the boundary stones, the moving of a surveyor and his assistant, the production of
a land-survey and boundary marking report, the payment of a community tax and sometimes the
payment of a contribution for the locals, not to mention other expenditure linked to the allocation of
the plot.
- Lack of knowledge about all state land and of up-to-date cartography: the Burundian State and its
Services do not currently have sufficient information on state land to allow its equitable
management and the allocation of land to the needy, the Batwa and the Repatriates included. All
State land has not been demarcated, due to the lack of a satisfactory inventory and effective taking
of ownership;
- Absence of a land distribution policy for the landless Batwa: the current trend of allocating land to
the Batwa is entangled with the policy of re-integration of repatriates and displaced persons.
14.2. The solutions to the land problems of landless persons
To deal with the land problem, the Government of Burundi has set up a Lands and other Assets
Commission (CNTB) by the law n° 1/018 of 14 May 2006 on the mandate, organization and
functioning with the perspective of regulating land disputes and other assets of disaster victims. This
law defines the disaster victim as any natural person or legal entity despoiled of his property as a
result of the tragic events that took place in the country since independence. The same law
empowers the CNTB to allocate land to the landless disaster victims in collaboration with the
competent authorities.
The final Report of the draft review of the Land Code of 1986 has already been submitted since 31
December 2008 and it has been observed that no provision projects the free assignment of rural land
which has already been allocated to the repatriates, to war victims and to vulnerable groups who do
not have land like the Batwa. Yet from the practical point of view there are free land transfers which
unfortunately are not covered by legal guarantees.
Today, with the large scale return of the repatriates some of whom have neither land nor references,
integrated rural villages have been fitted out for them following a procedure of identification of the