Vanuatu’s Land History

In 1906, due to pressure from many French and British planters, Britain and France formed the Condominium of the New Hebrides where they jointly administered the islands from the northern Torres group to the southern island of Aneityum. During the colonial period in the New Hebrides, much of the land was taken over by French and English plantation companies, and many of the indigenous people were alienated from their land. The plantations were usually located away from villages on clan lands, hence people had reduced access to garden lands. Plantation workers were from the nearby villages, although sometimes people from other islands were also brought in to work on the larger plantations. When the Republic of Vanuatu declared itself an independent nation in July 1980 one of the new government’s main priorities was to reverse the land alienation, and return all land to the customary owners. Foreign planters, of course, were unsatisfied with this outcome. However, they were allowed to continue occupation of the land through the 75-year lease law passed by the new Vanuatu’s government. This law declares that no land in Vanuatu may be bought or sold to outsiders, although it may be leased for up to 75 years. At the end of the lease all the development that has taken place on the land becomes the property of the customary owner (who may have died but whose son now oversees the clan land). This reflects the attitude towards land tenure in Vanuatu where the resources and the actual ownership of the land are viewed separately. That is, for example, if I were to plant a tree on someone else’s property that tree and all its fruit would belong to me until I died, at which point the tree would now belong to the custom landowner. This is what made it possible for the colonial planters to occupy vast areas of land without too much protest from the indigenous people, they were just waiting for the planters to die before the land returned to them! The only area of Vanuatu where land is viewed in a more Western-type, freehold, manner is in the urban areas of Port Vila and Luganville.

In the towns, land is bought and sold as it is in Hawaii. After Independence the Vanuatu government negotiated with the custom owners of these lands to compensate them for indefinite loss of rights to their clan lands. So not all ni-Vanuatu still have rights to land. Port Vila, the capital, sits on land originally belonging to the Ifirans, who live on an island in the harbour. The Ifirans have always lived on the smaller island, although land for gardens is on the mainland. When the Vila settlement was established during the colonial period (through an agreement between the Chief of Ifira and the colonial administrators) many Ifirans were alienated from their garden lands. In the urban peripheries, however, where Ifira islanders still have some land, there are new problems with squatter settlements comprised of immigrants from other islands looking for jobs in the town.

| Back |