AEGIS ECAS 2007 - View abstract

Panel	61. Autochtony, citizenship and exclusion - struggles over resources and belonging
Paper ID	186
Author(s)	Gausset, Quentin
Paper	No paper submitted
Abstract	In the past decades, South-Western Burkina Faso has welcomed a high number of internal migrants, mainly Mossi from the central plateau, to the point that people considered as “migrants” begin to outnumber people belonging to the host communities. In parallel to this process, the economy of the region has evolved and mango or cashew plantations now constitute one of the main sources of cash. Land is generally controlled by “earth priests” (chefs de terre) belonging to autochthonous communities. Migrants are welcome to borrow land to grow annual crops to secure their subsistence but they are prevented from planting trees in order to prevent a shift of land ownership (by owning planted trees, migrants would have a much better claim to the land on which the trees are planted). These conflicts bear an enormous potential for violence and are of great concern for the Burkinabe administration, the situation being not so different from what is known in some parts of Ivory Coast. The present paper intends to discuss the causes of these conflicts and the way they are framed by different actors in terms of property rights and autochthony. It will then compare different types of solutions (“gestion des terroirs”, land allotment, contracts, or “might is right”), discuss how they approach land rights and autochthony, and see the consequences of their implementation. It will defend the contractual approach (based on the recognition and securisation of existing arrangements between owners and borrowers) as the best way to prevent future conflicts. In case this paper was not accepted in the panel No 61, I could like to submit a revised version of it to panel No 26 on decentralization and natural resource control

Autochthony and conflict on land and tree tenure in South-Western Burkina Faso