• Ensure that village land committees include representatives from all communities, including immigrant populations, non-native Ivorian ethnic groups, women, and youth. To the Minister of Agriculture • Undertake promptly the demarcation of village boundaries. Prioritize areas where land and inter-communal conflict are closely linked, including in western Côte d’Ivoire. • Consider reducing the fees associated with obtaining a land certificate (certificat foncier) and registering land ownership in the cadastre, to better ensure that these processes are accessible to everyone. • Ensure that, throughout the country, local offices of the agriculture ministry are adequately staffed and supported to provide guidance, assistance, and all necessary paperwork related to the various steps of the process to formalize customary rights to land. • Ensure through assistance or alternative means of completing paperwork that people who are illiterate are not discriminated against in formalizing their customary claims to land. • Take steps to increase the pool of qualified experts who can determine and demarcate rural land boundaries, in an effort to accelerate the process and to reduce costs for landowners trying to register their land with the cadastre. Consider whether trained experts from other professional fields could assist in the demarcation process and, if appropriate, modify relevant laws and decrees that have granted the Order of Expert Surveyors a monopoly on performing these tasks. To the Minister of Defense and the Authority for Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reinsertion (ADDR) • Accelerate efforts to disarm former combatants who fought on both sides of the politico-military crisis, as the presence of armed men has emboldened fraudulent activity and intimidated some people trying to return to their land or to file claims related to land dispossession. 9 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH | OCTOBER 2013