Moving from ‘land titling’ to ‘land governance’: The case of the Kyrgyz Republic

There is a growing recognition that well-defined and enforceable property rights to land are important for a range of economic and social functions. To assess land governance at the country level, the World Bank has elaborated a diagnostic tool based on empirical indicators that aims to identify areas for improvement and that could be used to monitor progress in the land sector. This tool, the Land Governance Assessment Framework (LGAF), was first tested in Peru, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Indonesia and in the Kyrgyz Republic, and is currently being implemented in a number of other countries worldwide. The present paper summarizes the main results obtained from the Kyrgyz pilot to illustrate the case of land governance issues that arise in a post-transition economy formerly influenced by Soviet-style land administration and which made the transition towards private ownership of land over a decade ago. Policy recommendations are derived based on the assessment.