An Overview of Land Tenure in the Near East Region

This review of land tenure in West Asia and North Africa (WANA or the Near

East region) places contemporary developments in their historical context. Land

tenure in the region has its origins in state, customary or religious law, or more often a

combination of the three. With the ascendancy of the nation state over the past

century, official legal systems has sought to entrench sovereignty over land with the

abolition of customary law and the evolution of

Shari’ah to deal with modern needs of

economic development. Often this has meant a degree of secularisation in property

rights law with western legal concepts gaining influence across the whole of the region.

With rapidly rising human populations across the region, the area of arable land and

pasture per capita has decreased in all countries during the past thirty years. These

growing pressures has prompted a policy shift in most counties in the region towards

finding new, adapted or novel combinations of property rights alternatives to enhance

productivity, technology adoption and better resource management practices.