Land titling: 20% of Guyana’s lands to be owned by Indigenous communities

Amerindian Affairs Minister Pauline Sukhai has announced that when outstanding applications are processed for land titling or expansion, some 20 per cent of Guyana’s lands will be owned by Indigenous peoples.
She shared that in the pre-Independence era, 74 villages were identified for titling but this number has increased over the decades.

“Now, we’re speaking about 112 villages that we have advanced forward. We have added to what was legislated. Now that we’ve added to that, we’re also extending…Our projection is that by the time we complete extensions of all the applications we have, we’d be close to about 20 per cent of Guyana’s land mass is owned absolutely by Indigenous people,” Sukhai explained at a recent press conference.
She also asserted that Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC), which is a specific right that pertains to Indigenous peoples and is recognised in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), is always adhered to by Government.
“The lack of FPIC is a non-issue basically because you can’t have an Amerindian Affairs Ministry with a whole established staff that does not speak with the Indigenous people or does not work with them or does not engage them. We don’t work in isolation. We work as a true partnership with the National Toshaos Council, village councils and the people themselves.”
A $500 million allocation was made in Budget 2023 for land titling in Amerindian communities. During the debates, Minister Sukhai quoted former Indigenous People’s Affairs Minister Sydney Allicock accepting that the former Government had not issued titles in three years, and due to this failure, the Administration had sought extensions.

At that time, she reported that her Ministry demarcated seven villages and issued five certificates of title to villages in under two years. In addition, it has completed a revision of 23 investigative reports to date. The Ministry will be pursuing 19 demarcations and 11 land extensions in 2023.
“The land tenure for Amerindians was simply not a priority. Upon our resumption of office, the PPP/C Government has reaffirmed its commitment towards ensuring the fulfilment of our manifesto commitment and governmental obligation to ensure that we complete the land tenure project, which will benefit numerous Amerindian villages,” the Minister was quoted saying.
The PPP/C had promised in its manifesto to resuscitate the Amerindian Land Titling (ALT) Unit that was disbanded by the coalition Administration, and did so in 2021.