[HOT] Advice from HOT for controversial land reclamation - Ghana

[Sam Larsen]

Hi Hotties,

I'm looking for a little development mapping advice.

I'm working on a development mapping project in Tamale, Northern Ghana [1] and while communicating with some locals to gather their specific mapping needs I was made aware of the following scenario and asked how our work (OSM Development Mapping) can help them.

"the military had claimed some land back after 40 years of no use. In Ghana, the law states that if a government organisation doesn't use the land for 20years it should be handed back to the community. This is why there was such uproar when the military came in and reclaimed the land, that and the manor it was completed - intimidatingly destroying 100 homes"

Now i realise - OSM is probably not the best tool to help local communities in this case.  But i would guess that someone on this list has come across and advised on how mapping in general can help similar scenarios.

Aside from mapping what is on the ground now (i.e. the new military base or whatever) - there's not much that can be done directly with OSM here.
However, tools like Ushahidi & Taarifa spring to mind as a means of communicating local injustices, potentially collecting locations of pre-existing residences, or at least provide a mechanism to capture the info as it happens.

I would like to be able to advise Ali on how mapping & GIS in general can help, but i would like to canvas a few opinions from this group before i reply.

Some initial suggestions for long-term reconciliation support as opposed to real-time help:
1) We could attempt to access satellite/aerial imagery from before the land seizure and map in detail the dwellings - collecting information about the inhabitants.
2) Use any number of web mapping tools (MapBox, GeoCommons, ArcGIS, Custom via Leaflet, Google et al...) to present web maps (without including individual names)
3) Generate printed PDFs
4) Use 2) & 3) above to support any legal claim for justice/compensation to local/national government
5) As 2) & 3) could create public facing web content, attempt to gain traction via local & national social/traditional media to support 4)

Any other angles are welcome.

[1] http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=9.4055&lon=-0.838&zoom=14&layers=M


Thanks,

Sam Larsen

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:Samlarsen1