Transparency in Land Administration
Training of trainers, Kathmandu, Nepal, 2-4 November 2010
On 2-4 November 2010 a Training of Trainers Workshop on Transparency in Land Administration was held in Kathmandu, Nepal. The event was hosted by the Kathmandu University, strategic academic partner of ITC in the field of capacity building in land administration.
This workshop is part of a programme of activities organized in South and Southeast Asia under the aegis of the Global Land Tool Network (GLTN) which is implemented by the Training and Capacity Building Branch (TCBB) of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) and the United Nations University School for Land Administration Studies (UNU-LAS) of the Faculty of Geo-information Science and Earth Observation of the University of Twente (ITC). A first component of the programme was an Expert Group Meeting which took place on 20-21 July 2010 at the campus of the Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, another partner of ITC in the network of strategic academic partners in land administration capacity building.
The Training Workshop in Kathmandu, hosted by the School of Engineering of Kathmandu University covered a three day programme with as major aim to build human capacity to replicate the training in the countries concerned.
The event was officially opened by the Honourable Minister of Land Reform and Management, Mr. Dambar Shrestha. In his Opening Address the Minister emphasized the importance of transparency, referring to the most recent Corruption Perception Index published by Transparency International in which South Asian countries featured rather negatively. He explicitly mentioned Nepal having slid down in terms of corruption perception from last year to 146th position of 178 countries. He stated that vigilance was required in every aspect of governance to control corruption, emphasizing the need for improvements in the fields of law and order administration, particularly land administration.
The training focused on South Asia countries and was attended by 17 participants originating from Nepal (6), Pakistan (3), Bangladesh (4) and Sri Lanka (4); representatives of the ITC/UNU-LAS strategic network partners of Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, Indonesia and Hanoi University of Science in Hanoi, Vietnam; representatives of UN HABITAT National Office Nepal, Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific and Headquarters; and ITC/UNU-LAS.
Transparency in Land Administration in South and Southeast Asia
The Training Workshop comprised presentations on Tools to Improve Transparency including:
Land Governance and Transparency; incl.
Governance principles, Elements of Transparency, Effects of either good or poor Governance and Success Criteria- Tools to Assess Transparency in Land Administration; incl.
Formal Surveys, Vulnerability Assessment, Rapid Anti-Corruption Assessment and Report Cards - Tools to Improve Access to Information; incl.
Front- and Back Office systems and One-Stop-shop Principles - Tools to improve Public Participation; incl.
Information Sharing, Active Involvement and the
Role of Media 
Tools to improve Professional Ethics and Integrity; incl.
Conflict of Interest Laws, Code of Conduct, Whistleblower Protection and Training in Ethics- Tools to bring about Institutional and Organizational Reforms;
Legislation, Mandates, Service Charters, Organizational restructuring, Process redesign and Helpdesk Principles - Ways of Building Human Capacity to improve Transparency in Land Administration; incl.
Training, Education, Awareness Raising Campaigns and the Role of Media
Break out group discussions allowed the participants to discuss in detail case studies of transparency issues in land administration in each of the four countries participating in the workshop. These real story cases comprised short stories concentrated on dilemmas and long stories that triggered the participants to identify tools for improvement in transparency.
The third day of the workshop was allocated to have the participants prepare a Country Level Action Plan and an Individual Action Plan, describing the activities they envisage implementing as a Group and as Individuals in terms of building human capacity in their home countries.
The Country Action Plans were discussed in a plenary session, addressing such issues as relevance, reality and performance indicators.
It was eventually agreed that an e-group would be established to exchange experiences and keep each other informed of the implementation of the action plans.
A second training event is scheduled to be held in Hanoi from 7-9 December 2010, focusing on Southeast Asian countries, i.e. Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Philippines and Indonesia.
For more photographs of the event, see the Photo gallery TLA South Asia.