Equitable Treatment of All Land Users

As Vietnam’s National Assembly is deliberating changes to its Land Law, the United Nations (UN) in Vietnam, the World Bank (WB), the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID), Oxfam, the EU Delegation in Vietnam, and the Embassies of Australia, Canada, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Norway, New Zealand, Switzerland and the United States of America have released Joint Recommendations and a Policy Brief on “Revising the 2003 Law on Land in Vietnam: Creating Equitable Treatment for Land Use Right Holders.”

 

“Equitable treatment of all land users is essential for more inclusive growth and human development in Vietnam,” said Pratibha Mehta, United Nations Resident Coordinator in Vietnam. “The revisions of the Land Law provide a key opportunity to ensure a fair balance between the interests of developers and land users, especially farmers, and to promote greater transparency and accountability in Vietnam’s land governance.” 

 

The joint recommendations address the most critical areas in which reforms are needed, including land recovery and compensation, strengthening protection of farmers’ land use rights, transparent and participatory land governance, gender equality, community land rights, the issuance of land use rights certificates, and increased consistency and transparency of the Land Law.

 

On land recovery, development partners recommend that compulsory land recovery by the State (including for the Land Fund) be limited to cases of national defence, security and the public interest, not for economic investment projects; and Land should be recovered only after completion of transparent procedures, including prior public notification, public hearings for affected parties, and a free right of appeal to the court. Besides, compensation should reflect loss of livelihood and resettlement costs as well as the market value of the land; and the market value should be defined using independent and objective professional mechanisms.

 

Farmers are subject to multiple disadvantages compared to other land users. The land is granted on shorter terms; farmers require permission to change the land use for more production; they are subject to lower limits on how much agricultural land an individual farm family may hold. These rules are inequitable to farmers and are inefficient. They now post a constraint to the development of a more modern, flexible and climate-resilient agricultural sector and no longer serve Vietnam’s evolving food and nutritional security needs.

 

In order to strengthen protection of farmers’ land rights, the recommendations call for household agricultural land use rights to be granted for an unlimited term. Farmers of rice lands should be free to change to more economically productive uses of the land, or to receive a subsidy, if they are required to farm rice; and upper limits on land ownership should be eased for individual farming households.

 

The legal framework for land in Vietnam is made up of a huge, overlapping and inconsistent body of administrative regulation, undermining both effectiveness and transparency. Land governance is not yet sufficiently transparent. There is no clear right of public access to information about land holdings and land governance; planning and other land governance processes often take place with inadequate public consultation and participation

 

To improve transparency and participation in land governance, development partners recommend that a comprehensive national registration system of land use rights derived from the land records of the provincial agencies, based on individual land parcels; public access to all information related to land; active participation of all stakeholders in land administration and management; and a reform of land planning based on spatial land use zoning.

 

To promote greater gender equality, development partners recommend retention of the provision for joint names of husband and wife on land use rights certificates, and for more effective implementation of that provision.

 

In addition, the recommendations called for improved recognition of customary land use and management practices of local ethnic minority communities in land allocation, planning and policies, including establishment of a legal framework and criteria for issuance of land use rights certificates to the communities. Further recommendations seek a simplification of the system for issuance of land use rights certificates, with full authority and responsibility granted to Land Registration Offices, etc.

 

“The consistency and transparency of the Land Law should be improved by harmonising all relevant laws and subordinate legislation, following an open and transparent consultation process,” development partners recommend.