This report presents the results of the perception of land tenure security—the Prindex survey—in 10 municipalities1 across Colombia which were selected for the implementation of the Land for Prosperity (LFP) Activity as some of the most vulnerable areas affected by the armed conflict.

Understanding what drives perceived security can help policymakers and urban planners make better choices. Shahd Mustafa shares new findings from Prindex’s report on land rights in the Arab region.

Prindex is the first ever measure of land and property rights that is comparable between countries and is truly global. The data demonstrates the sobering scale of insecurity in how people perceive their property rights. Prindex data and analysis opens key pathways for accountability, transparency, targeting, and, especially with global COVID-19 housing and economic crises, makes monitoring all the more important.

In June 2019 we conducted a review of academic literature that uses the term “perceived” or “perceptions” in conjunction with “tenure security” or “secure tenure”. We limited the review to the 33 countries covered by the baseline Prindex survey in 2018. The aim is to benchmark the Prindex findings against existing quantitative evidence of perceived tenure security.

When people feel secure about their land and property rights, it gives them the freedom to think about, and invest in, their future. This is why secure land and property rights are the essential building blocks of social justice and economic development.

This past October, the Prindex team, a joint effort by the Global Land Alliance and the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), alongside funders Omidyar Network and DFID, launched its first 15 countries worth of data on the sidelines of the Committee for Food Security’s 45th meeting at the Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome.

The Global Property Rights Index (PRIndex) initiative aims at filling gaps in basic data about citizen’s perception of the security of their property rights in a global comparative framework. Individuals’ perceptions are a basic and critical element of tenure security because they drive behavior, and critical data element because they illuminate how policies for tenure security are impacting citizens’ own understandings of their rights.