Recommendations To the President, Prime Minister, and National Assembly • Consult with local populations around Côte d’Ivoire, through a formal process, before further modifying laws or drafting decrees related to the reform of land tenure. Ensure that all political and ethnic groups, women, and youth are included in consultations. • Recognize that the August 2013 reforms to laws on nationality and rural land tenure will not resolve the thousands of land conflicts caused by the post-election crisis, and commit publicly to ensure restitution for refugees and displaced persons whose land was illegally sold or seized during their displacement.  Prioritize restitution in the form of people returning to their own land, in accordance with the Pinheiro Principles. • Support with adequate financial, human, and other resources existing customary, administrative, and judicial mechanisms involved in resolving claims of land dispossession linked to the crisis, to better facilitate just and timely restitution. • Ensure that a legal mechanism is in place to effectively resolve land ownership claims and disputes and to assist landowners in registering their property with the cadastre and in obtaining the demarcation of their property lines. This may involve modifying or better supporting the current administrative mechanisms, particularly the sub-prefectural land committees, or may require creating a new mechanism.  Ensure that any legal mechanism for resolving land ownership claims and disputes is accessible to local populations.  Consider examining the experience of other countries, including Bosnia, that have had success in determining property ownership in the aftermath of mass displacement during an armed conflict. • Ensure by law or decree that people can appeal to the court system decisions made by a sub-prefectural land committee or other administrative body, particularly in regards to disputes over land ownership. • Issue a decree or pass a law clarifying that displacement as a result of intercommunal violence or armed conflict does not negate a person’s ability to 7 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH | OCTOBER 2013