Scaling Community Land Protection in the face of Large-scale Investments in Sierra Leone

Namati champions a method – grassroots legal advocates, or “community paralegals” – for putting the power of law in the hands of people. Grassroots legal advocates work with communities to activate laws that offer pathways towards formalization of customary tenure. When investors do seek to engage a potential community, a frontline of paralegals support community committees to engage in negotiations, educating them about the contents of proposed agreements and the process for agreeing on a deal. Finally, grassroots legal advocates can also play a vital role in supporting communities to secure remedies when these commitments are breached. Over the course of the grant, we piloted the community land protection (CLP) process in a total of 18 communities in three different phases, each testing different elements of the approach. While there are policy provisions committing to recognizing community land rights, in the absence of a clear legal framework or a system for registering rights, the CLP process is intended to demonstrate a viable pathway for formalizing community rights that also helps make the case for policy action. Working in partnership with the Ministry of Lands, we drew on our experience to shape the national tenure and to develop specific draft legislation for two bills: the Customary Land Act and the National Land Commission Act. In addition, we also supported communities in nearly 40 investment sites to address issues related to FPIC and grievances from large-scale investments. Namati Sierra Leone worked with affected communities to engage a range of public agencies to shape policy and processes for investment approval and oversight, including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the National Minerals Agency (NMA), and the Sierra Leone Investment and Export Promotion Agency (SLIEPA). Successes include shaping the agricultural investment approval process and increasing commitments to public access to information among key regulators.