Why Kill Over Land When We Can Dwell on Water?

In  our corner of the world, land ownership issues continue to remain a very sticky affair. Take for instance the case of Liberia. That country continues to grapple with many of the legacies of its protracted civil conflict, as it seeks to move forward with its recovery efforts: reforming governance, establishing the rule of law, etc. One of the most visible legacies of the Liberian civil war is this issue of informal settlements throughout the country.

The nation's capital, Monrovia, is currently teeming with over 1.4 million inhabitants, nearly three times its intended capacity of 500,000. It may be recalled that at the height of the conflict, Monrovia became a place of refuge; nearly tripling its population as waves of internally displaced persons (IDPs) arrived from rural combat zones in search of safety. 


Well, in this post-conflict context, majority of these internally displaced persons, who either could not return to their communities of origin or chose to locally integrate in the capital, are busy establishing mushrooming slum neighborhoods across the city. Sadly, these slum dwellers enjoy little security of tenure and remain vulnerable to development-induced evictions/displacements.

Also, hundreds of thousands of Liberians who fled across borders during the war have returned to their homes of origin in recent years, only to find their land occupied by others. Well, that's an entire discussion all by itself. The Sirleaf-Administration in 2009,  established a Land Commission to tackle conflicts over land sales, secure people’s land tenure and modernize the country’s land laws. Yet, there is still a lot MORE to be done.

And that's the Liberian case for you. Elsewhere, people would rather dwell on water, instead of having to deal with all that land dispute headaches. 

In Cambodia, for instance, at least 80,000 people, due to poverty and 'hard-to-deal-with' standards and cost of living on land, simply live on a lake. The Chong Khneas Commune is a major floating village on the Tonle Sap Lake in Siem Riep, Cambodia, and inhabitants of these 170 unique floating villages see the lake as their sole source of livelihood. They have been dwelling on this vast body of water for centuries and thus, refer to the Lake, the mother of all lakes in southeast Asia, as their ancestral domain.

"It (the lake) is our source of everything. In this country, land is the most difficult thing to acquire. And….look at us! We hardly get it (money) to eat. Where are we to get millions of Riel from to buy a piece of land? We prefer living on this lake and depending on it [heavily] for living. At least no one will evict us from here," a local of the Chong Khneas Commune, told me in a 2009 interview, through an interpreter. 

These mobile villages move according to the flow or level of water. Wherever the water flows, that's where they will be located until they are moved again. And the good news is that there is high quality of fish productivity in the Tonle Sap Lake, making fishing the sole livelihood of these people. For the record, Tonle Sap is the largest inland fishery in southeast Asia. At least 400,000 tons of fish are caught annually for commercial purpose.

So why endure all that drama over land?