Beaches, Leases and the State Domain: Uncertainty and Irregularities

Haiti's beaches sit in the state domain, and the Direction Générale des Impôts leases them to private operators. This presentation is by an official of that directorate, and it says plainly that the practice is marked by uncertainty and irregularities. The uncertainty is the same one the rest of the workshop kept returning to: if the extent of the state domain is not established, then neither is the authority to lease a given stretch of shore, nor the identity of anyone with a competing claim to it. The irregularities are the consequence, in the form of leases that do not correspond cleanly to what is actually occupied or to what the state can properly convey. For an urban and territorial library, this matters because the Haitian coast is where tourism investment, urban waterfronts and informal occupation compete for the same ground, and this paper describes the legal instrument through which that competition is currently mediated.