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The United Nations has released a blockchain-based solution to help the Afghan government deal with property ownership problems in the country’s urban areas.
According to a December 2 announcement, the United Nations Human Settlements Program, or UN-Habitat, will present its new digital land registry solution to the Ministry of Urban and Land Development in Afghanistan in December 2020.
The United Nations first launched its blockchain project for sustainable urban development in Afghanistan in 2019.
Now, with its new blockchain-enabled digital land registry tool, the United Nations wants to help Afghanistan address major challenges in informal urban settlements – otherwise known as slums or slums – such as land grabbing, land use inefficient land and insecure land ownership in informal settlements.
According to the United Nations, more than 80% of properties in Afghan cities “are not registered with the municipal or national authorities of the territory and the occupants have no formal ownership documents”.
Known as “goLandRegistry”, the new system is designed to record all ownership documents on a blockchain, as well as to issue employment certificates. This will reportedly allow property owners to independently prove the authenticity of occupancy certificates using an open source blockchain verification tool.
The tool is based on a hybrid blockchain platform managed by the European startup LTO Network. LTO CEO Rick Schmitz said hybrid blockchain solutions enable optimized and decentralized data exchange between stakeholders in the land registry process, eliminating the need for costly IT audits.
“Using Live Contracts, the data can be automatically distributed to different stakeholders and systems to facilitate cadastral transfers, tax automations, lending, etc.,” said Schmitz.
Maurizio Gazzola, Head of Strategic Solutions at the United Nations Office of Information and Communications Technologies – a partner agency of the project – said the UN wants to provide its digital cadastral solution to more countries:
“The plug-and-play design of the LTO network blockchain and the contribution of transaction tokens to the Afghanistan project has enabled the development of the blockchain anchoring mechanisms and the Open Source Certificate of Ownership Verification Tool which is now available for any country a blockchain add-on to their existing cadastral systems. “
