Academic Cooperation between the Chair of Land Management and Birzeit University of Palestine

We are very proud to announce that the Chair of Land Management has been selected to participate in a high-rank academic cooperation programme with the Birzeit University of Palestine.

Most land rights in the West Bank and Gaza are not secure and not registered or registration has not been updated and modernised in times of political conflicts. Secure land registration, proper land management procedures, transparent land markets and land use planning are not operational but essential for making best use of scarce land and secure peoples land rights.

In this context, the Palestinian Liberation Organization for the benefit of the Palestinian Authority has received a “Learning and Innovation Grant” from the World Bank and the Finnish Government for the implementation of a Land Administration Project in the West Bank and Gaza. The project is underway since 2005 and will be completed by the end of this year.

Meanwhile, preparations for phase 2 of the project have begun with more donors and new partners joining the initiative. The responsible authority is the Palestinian Ministry of Planning, which intends to apply part of the proceeds for establishing a master’s programme at Birzeit University in Land Management and Valuation in partnership with accredited international academic institutions.

The Palestinian Ministry of Planning thus invited eligible academic institutions (those who already have an existing programme in the field of land management or a closely related field) to indicate their interest in joining phase 2 of the Land Administration Project by providing the following main services:

1.- Assist the Faculty of Engineering at Birzeit University in establishing a master’s programme in Land Management and Valuation, including curriculum development and training of faculty.

2.- Partner with Birzeit University in teaching and research, especially exchange of professors and students.

The Chair of Land Management of the Technische Universität München has been selected by the Palestinian authorities to provide these services!

The Faculty of Engineering of the Birzeit University has been selected to host the master’s programme in Land Management and Valuation. The new programme will use the infrastructure as well as part of the curriculums of the existing master’s programmes. Birzeit’s Faculty of Engineering has 5 undergraduate programmes and 2 master’s programmes, namely “Water and Environment” and “Urban Planning and Landscape Architecture”.

The project will finance many of the joint activities between Birzeit University and the international academic partner institutions for a 4 years period, especially the exchange of professors and students and the acquisition of books, computers and software.

The first activity of this cooperation is scheduled at the end of October 2008 and will consist of a Workshop in Birzeit in which the first steps for the implementation of the project will be discussed.