Togo: Government organizes workshop to better handle land conflicts

Justice

Thursday, 29 March 2018 16:08

Togo: Government organizes workshop to better handle land conflicts

(Togo First) - In Togo, 70% of cases submitted to courts and tribunals are related to land conflicts. To better tackle the latter, the ministry of justice started last Tuesday a workshop dedicated to their settlement.

Subjects discussed at the meeting revolved around five main axes, namely : recurrent legal procedures related to land ; magistrate’s obligations in regards to land conflicts ; legal handling of land conflicts involving the State ; judicial processing of land affairs and jurisprudence of Supreme Court.

These talks will help elaborate legal guidelines that will help better settle land conflicts.

The workshop occurs in a context where court’s decisions in land cases are often contested and sometimes even lead to fratricidal tensions. To palliate this, the government wants to improve legal framework by equipping magistrates with skills required to asses and interpret legislations and decide on how best to deal with the conflicts. “Often, conflicts cause relatives from the same family and friends from the same community to hate one another. This workshop aims at developing a better legal approach to satisfy various complainants that contest court’s decisions,” said the Keeper of the Seals, Kokouvi Pius Agbetomey.

Fiacre E. Kakpo

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