An investigation into forest ownership and customary land ... - Fern

Chapter 3 – Customary land tenure today
Table 14 – Demographic data in the study areas
mean hh size in
county (vam 2006)*
mean hh size (study
2007)
mean # house
members (study
2007)
mean # hh in towns
(study 2007)
range of no. hh in
towns (study 2007)
% hh never
displaced (WFP
2006)
currently displaced
(VAM 2006)
% hh has member
working outside
(WFP 2006)
overall
average
5.6
(national)
Rivercess Gbarpolu Cape
Mount
Grand
Gedeh
Nimba
5.5 4.9 4.6 6.1 6.1
7.8 5.5 6 8 9.6 8
15 17 10 11 13.8 18.3
101
(73)**
24 81 62 57 268**
4-1104 4-63 21-200 32-125 13-114 36-1104
14 8 7 8 9 18
7 8 3 5 5 6
15 6 11 14 13 15
* WFP uses Household as the family. One House may contain several generations or ‘families’. This Study
2007 defined Household as all persons living under one roof and cooking and sharing food together.
** This includes one very large village of 1,104 households.
159
1.2 Settlements are in flux
It will also be observed that figures from this study, such as they are, are significantly
higher than town sizes collected by WFP in its larger survey in 2006. While
sampling explains some of the discrepancy it is also a fact that settlements are
still in flux. Over 80% of the population was displaced during the conflict years
and by no means all have returned to their home areas, or intend to return. 152
Table 15 gives a snapshot of the difference in pre and post war population in
eleven study villages. Even by March 2007, these communities still had respectively
one third and 19% fewer people than they said had lived in the villages
prior to the war.
152 A main reason given to this study was the better work and educational opportunities in larger towns
and cities. The main reason identified by the WFP survey a year earlier was lack of funds to make the journey
home.