Abstract:
The government of Sri Lanka has recognized the title registration as a tool against insecure land
tenure. However, global experience reveals that success of such projects depends on several factors.
As such, it is of primary importance for the country to investigate the effectiveness of title registration
in providing secure land tenure under the local conditions. With the above mentioned background,
the objective of the paper is to investigate the effectiveness of title registration in Sri Lanka in areas
where service tenure exists. Service tenure system is one of the very complex tenure systems in Sri
Lanka and thus allows a better judgment of the effectiveness of the title registration. A case study
method was adopted to investigate the service tenure system. An identified analytical framework
from a wide literature survey has been used to analyse the service tenure system. The outcome of the
study reveals that most of the land tenure insecurity is caused by institutional inconsistencies and
also that focusing on individual titling alone would not eliminate these inconsistencies.
