156
C. Rights to land
Questions related to the possession of various rights to land were asked of respondents. For
each right, enumerators recorded whether household heads and spouses had unilateral (or unfettered)
ability to exercise the right or whether the right was conditional on the permission of others (e.g., the
spouse, father, other relative, chief or headman, state, or other). 16 The answers should not be
construed as definitive evidence of the existence of various rights. In some cases, the responses were
hypothetical, since the respondents were talking about rights they had not exercised. Nonetheless, the
responses are indicative of the respondents' sense of security or control over the use and transfer of
the land.
Rights of use, transfer, and exclusion are distinguished and discussed first at the level of the
household—that is, whether the household head claims certain rights over any farmland." The data
reflect the percentage of male-headed households in each region who claim the unfettered ability to
exercise each particular right. This data is presented for all enumerated rights in table 5.3. Further
analysis is then made with respect to some of these rights in order to compare the involvement in
decisions of husbands and their wives (again within male-headed households). This material is
presented in table 5.4 only for all male-headed households; 18 the number of female household heads
was too small to undertake special statistical analysis on this subgroup.
1. Use rights
Rights of use are highly privatized in both provinces. Table 5.3 shows that rights to cultivate,
use inputs, plant trees, and harvest tree products are enjoyed by all but a couple of households in
either province. With respect to the right to fence in Eastern province and the right to cut trees in
Southern province there is less than unanimity on the ability to exercise use rights. The data also show
that respondents were less certain of the right to fallow without losing other rights to the land. While
over 80 percent of respondents in Eastern province felt secure19in their ability to retain land after long
fallows, only 53 percent felt similarly in Southern province.
Household heads have more rights over land use than their spouses. Wives have to get
permission from the household head in the majority of cases and are altogether denied rights in many
others (see table 5.4). Spouses in Southern province appear to be completely excluded from fencing
and tree planting decisions in about half of households. Women are more active in land-use decisions
in Eastern province; males appear to involve their wives in most decisions unlike their Southern
province counterparts. In about 11 percent of male-headed households, women were able to plant trees
without asking permission. Further, women were allowed to plant following permission of the husband
in another two-thirds of households.
16 Usually, only one respondent answered for both the husband and wife.
17 The analysis is at the household level. Although land rights were collected at the parcel level, respondents claimed
to have the same rights over all their parcels.
Is Sometimes only men were interviewed, sometimes only wives, and sometimes both. Regardless of the gender of the
respondent, rights of both husbands and spouses were queried.
19 This was in contrast to discussions during informal interviews where this concern was not raised.