Property
Competing claims under statute, custom and religion after decades of dispossession
Pre-1991 legislation nationalised land and records have largely been destroyed or falsified. Claims now rest on a mixture of old titles, customary occupation, Islamic principles and possession, and urban land disputes are pervasive.
Key rules
- Jurisdiction — Federal member states and municipalities administer land; customary and sharia forums resolve many disputes.
Governing law
- Agricultural Land Law 73/1975 — nationalisation of land
- Civil Code 1973 — property provisions
- Urban Land Management Law and Mogadishu municipal regulations
In practice
The 1975 Agricultural Land Law vested land in the state and granted leasehold, and it was used before 1991 to transfer productive riverine land away from minority agricultural communities, particularly in the Shabelle and Juba valleys. Collapse of the state in 1991 was followed by widespread forcible occupation, destruction of registries and the creation of fraudulent titles, so multiple parties frequently hold apparently valid documents for the same parcel. Urban land in Mogadishu is among the most contested property anywhere, with returning diaspora claims, displaced-person settlement, and evictions from informal settlements. Dispute resolution runs through a mixture of municipal authorities, sharia courts, xeer elders and, in some areas, al-Shabaab courts, which are widely reported to be used because they are fast and enforce their decisions. No verifiable unified tenure system exists.