Contesting displacement in urban settlements around Port Vila, Vanuatu: the failure of the plural legal system

In the Pacific island country of Vanuatu, as in many other developing countries there is increasing migration to urban areas. Where most land is held under customary tenure rather than state law this means that these migrants settle on the land of others, often under informal arrangements based on custom. Custom owners wishing to realise the economic value of their need to lease it under the formal law. Consequently settlers face eviction as the land is cleared for development. Court cases show that settlers’ claims to rights created in custom struggle to find support in a system where legal positivist approaches dominate procedures and decisions about urban tenure arrangements. Empirical research highlights the gap between de jure reasoning and the de facto ways that people establish rights to be on the land. In particular those in occupation struggle to bring their claims within the protective provisions of the Land Leases Act relating to those in actual occupation. This paper combines social science research and a critical analysis of reported cases, in order to illustrate the lived realities of Vanuatu’s plural legal system and to suggest how this could be strengthened in order to achieve greater justice.