Musahar families gain land rights after four-year wait
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In Rupandehi district, Nepal, 16 Musahar families, a traditionally marginalized group, received legal ownership of the land they have lived on for years.
The families from Gaidahawa Rural Municipality received the land ownership certificates on Friday, ending a wait of over four years. Ward representatives actively located some families working in fields to ensure they could attend the ceremony.
The process to grant the certificates began in 2020, following a government policy to provide land titles to landless people and squatters. Gaidahawa Rural Municipality allocated 10 million Nepali rupees annually to the effort, navigating seven stages of surveys, mapping, and verification. The local government prioritized the initiative, even redirecting funds from development projects to support the land certification process. While this distribution represents a breakthrough in Rupandehi, a much larger number of people still lack land rights.
The district has 82,000 registered landless people and informal settlers, with around 4,500 in Gaidahawa alone. Local governments in other municipalities are also preparing to distribute certificates, but thousands across the district continue to wait for legal ownership.
