Azerbaijan hosts UNECE workshop on transparent and efficient land management

Geneva
Transparent and efficient land management is a pre-requisite for the correct functioning of land and real estate markets, both of which play a fundamental role in guaranteeing a country’s prosperity and sustainable development. Transparent institutions can reduce the costs of access to credit for people and increase the overall trust of society in public authorities. In order to enhance efficiency in the use of information, data on real estate objects should be collected timely, administrative costs for citizens should be minimized, fraud should be monitored and prevented and the right to access information on land and real estate should be guaranteed for the general public.
These are some of the principles recently discussed in a workshop on “Efficient and Transparent Land Management in ECE Countries”, held on 4 and 5 March 2010 in Baku, Azerbaijan, which was organized by UNECE’s Working Party on Land Administration (WPLA) and hosted by The State Committee on Property Issues of the Republic of Azerbaijan. The workshop took place at the time of the implementation of ongoing reforms of the real estate registration system in the Republic of Azerbaijan and in a period when many other countries, in particular in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia are carrying out reforms of their land administrations systems.
At present, Azerbaijan faces a series of challenges that include the need to correct discrepancies between land maps and the actual location of land parcels, the absence of adequate institutions to regulate real estate markets and the need to adopt objective methodologies for real estate valuation.  To address these issues and guarantee security of tenure for all citizens, the government approved in 2007 a Real Estate Registration Project (RER) worth 38.5 million US dollars that seeks to create a single automated system for real estate registration to be finalized by year 2013. Presentations by the host authorities and delegates from other countries in the UNECE region showcased the advantages of adopting the “one-stop shop” mechanism in land administration to facilitate registration, promote the merging of databases on land and real estate, increase the use of information technologies and reduce costs of real property transactions for consumers.
The workshop also addressed the need to promote transparency and public access to information on land. Participants were updated on a WPLA ongoing study on fraud in real estate registration and conveyancing, which maps the best practices available to monitor and prevent unlawful transactions in real property. Preliminary findings have shown that not only fraud is a real threat to the public good, but also that solutions are available to ensure the security of transactions through better monitoring, training schemes for civil servants and restrictions in access to information for anonymous users. The question of transparency as it relates to justice and fairness was also considered as addressed by pertinent legal instruments of inter-governmental organizations, including the UNECE Aarhus Convention and the FAO voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land and Other Natural Resources.
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Ref: ECE/ENV/10/P05