What is the challenge

In displacement and disaster contexts, access to land and housing is essential for safety, recovery, and self-reliance. However, land administration systems are rarely equipped to function in these environments.

Land rights are often governed through informal arrangements such as verbal agreements, customary inheritance, and informal payments. These arrangements determine who occupies land, but they are rarely reflected in formal documentation. Even where documentation exists, it rarely reflects the realities of displacement and informality.

As a result, people with informal land and property rights, including displaced populations, women, and other marginalised groups, are frequently excluded from assistance and recovery programmes. Humanitarian actors also face operational risks when they lack reliable information about land occupancy and tenure arrangements. This gap undermines effective response, prolongs tenure insecurity, and can exacerbate tensions in fragile settings.

What is innovative about the project

LandLedger introduces a new approach to documenting land and tenure rights in crisis settings by shifting from rigid, technical recordation systems to a narrative-led and community centred methodology.

Rather than relying on formal surveys, specialist equipment, or legal documentation, LandLedger enables community members to record their land relationships through stories that explain how land is accessed, shared, inherited, or disputed.

These narratives are captured through simple, low-tech interactions and processed using artificial intelligence to extract structured and actionable information on land use, claims, vulnerabilities, and disputes. A single interaction can reveal information that would otherwise require multiple surveys or legal processes. Importantly, the data is returned to communities through household profiles and community dashboards, allowing residents to access, update, and manage their information over time.

LandLedger is designed to be lightweight, easily trainable, and adaptable across contexts, making it suitable for integration into humanitarian operations across sectors. Partnerships with private sector actors support secure systems, scalable technology, and user centred design, ensuring the solution remains locally relevant while being deployable at scale. This combination of narrative engagement, AI enabled structuring, and institutional usability represents a significant shift in how informal tenure is made visible and actionable in humanitarian response.

What are the expected outcomes

During the project period, LandLedger will deliver a tested and operational methodology and digital platform that enables humanitarian actors and local authorities to document informal land and tenure arrangements in displacement affected communities in a consistent and trusted way.

Households will be able to create secure and accessible land and housing profiles that consolidate evidence of land use, claims, and vulnerabilities, even in the absence of formal documentation. This will improve visibility for individuals and communities with unregistered rights, enabling more inclusive and better-targeted assistance and recovery efforts.

As the project moves into the scale-up phase, LandLedger will focus on improving technical integration and interoperability for efficient workflows, as well as introducing biometric verification to add an additional layer of certainty, while remaining appropriate for crisis settings. These enhancements are intended to improve deployability and increase confidence in LandLedger data for operational decision making.

Local authorities and disaster risk reduction actors will be able to use LandLedger data to inform preparedness, response, and recovery planning, reducing operational risks linked to unclear tenure arrangements. At the community level, access to household profiles and community dashboards will strengthen participation, transparency, and trust, enabling residents to manage their own data over time and engage more effectively in land governance processes.

In the longer term, the project aims to promote narrative-led tenure documentation as a scalable complement to formal land systems in crisis contexts, contributing to stronger tenure security, more equitable assistance, and improved pathways to durable solutions.

Who are the project partners

The project is led by the International Organization for Migration (IOM). LandLedger is implemented through strategic partnerships that combine technical, institutional, and operational expertise.

Monday.com provides the backend infrastructure, enabling structured data intake, workflow automation, and real-time collaboration through its low-code environment.

United Nations Development Programme, through its Digital Studio, supports design and innovation guidance to ensure alignment with inclusive digital principles.

UN Habitat provides advisory expertise on land governance and recordation systems.

The Norwegian Refugee Council contributes legal and operational expertise on housing, land and property rights in humanitarian contexts.

Autodesk provides in-kind support through AutoCAD tools, strengthening mapping and geospatial integration for settlement planning and response.