A woman shows off her receipt after making a land claim.
You must wait for Data Collectors to come to you. Data Collectors will come to your land and help you or your representative to make a claim. To make a claim, you or your representative must identify your land boundaries with your neighbors and, with the help of the Data Collectors, fill-in a Form that identifies you as a claimant for the land. If you are not on your land at the time that data is being collected, you should ensure that your Representative is there so that you claim can be made.
The claims process is simple and an overview can be viewed in the following video.
For additional videos, please see our YouTube page
Land claims collection in Timor-Leste will be undertaken systematically – therefore a claim can only be made when the DNTPSC opens a particular area. The process includes the following key steps:
Public Information and community meetings
Notification of the date and time of claims collection
Surveying the land parcel and making a claim
Ongoing mediation of disputes
Public display for verification of all claims, during which time people can make changes or corrections to their claim, or submit a counter-claim.
Once the public display period is closed, people can no longer make a new claim or a counter-claim, but their claim information can always be updated at the local Land and Property Office.
The final data will be entered into the National Cadastre, which will be open to the public.
For a more detailed view on the process, please download our poster on Land Collection Process (in Tetum) [.pdf600K]
Two former disputants embrace after resolving their dispute in Manatuto.
Ita Nia Rai promotes dispute resolution through public information campaigns.
3. Dispute Resolution
When disputes over boundaries or land are encountered, the Ita Nia Rai project strongly encourages claimants to look for solutions locally. All forms of traditional dispute resolution are accepted, but the project and the district DNTPSC offices specifically promote mediation as a way of solving disputes peacefully.
The project believes that the majority of disputes can be solved locally, and supports this goal through community meetings and public information campaigns. Some of the advantages of mediation are that it is relatively quick, and disputants do not need to pay any fees. During mediation, a neutral third party facilitates discussion. This mediator may not make decisions about the dispute, but creates an atmosphere in which the disputing parties can talk to each other and come to a mutual agreement.
However, it is always within a claimant’s right to seek a solution through the courts, and to this extent, the Land Law will be crucial to creating a formal system for solving land disputes.
4. Strengthening Women’s Rights to Land and Property
A wife and husband make a land claim together.
During the land claims process, the program is taking steps to ensure that women and men have equal opportunities to make land claims. Article 54 of the Constitution of Timor-Leste guarantees every Timorese citizen equal rights to private property. However, strong evidence indicates that in reality, the majority of women in Timor-Leste have limited opportunities to actually obtain land ownership as land is typically registered in the name of the head of household (typically considered to be a man). For the majority of women who lack land rights, the implications can be potentially devastating, perpetuating gender discrimination and posing a threat to the ability of women and men, daughters and sons, and families to improve their livelihoods.
Therefore, the program is increasing awareness to strongly encourage wives and husbands, and sisters and brothers, in particular, to make joint claims to land together. Currently, data in the national cadastral database is also sex-disaggregated to monitor progress in attaining a relative equal number of individual male claimants versus individual female claimants, and in increasing the number of husbands and wives making joint claims.
For additional information please download our brochure on Gender Rights (Tetum) [.pdf 1.0MB]
The information provided on this Web site is official Government of Timor-Leste information through Direcção Nacional Terras, Propriedades e Serviços Cadastrais
The information provided on this Web site is not official U.S. Government information and does not represent the views or positions of the U.S. Agency for International Development or the U.S. Government. Strengthening Property Rights in Timor-Leste is funded by USAID under contract EPP-I-03-06-00008-00.
To view the Ita Nia Rai YouTube page, click here: 
