XXIII Congress San Jose, Costa Rica 2024
The XXIII International Congress on Registration Law IPRA-CINDER was held in San José, Costa Rica, from December 4 to 6, 2024
The topics of the congress were as follows:
- TOPIC 1: The land registry of the 21st century: Opportunities and challenges. Emergent requirements and new legal, organisational and technological challenges.
- TOPIC 2: Registration of the maritime-terrestrial zone. Prohibitions and limitations imposed by the public maritime-terrestrial domain. Historical enclaves and easements. Contribution of the land registry to environmental protection. International sustainability goals.
Wednesday 4
The opening session of the XXIII IPRA-CINDER Congress was attended by the Minister of Justice and Peace of Costa Rica, Mr. Gerald Campos, who emphasized the institutional and legal importance of this Congress for Costa Rica, the Director of the National Registry of Costa Rica, Mr. Agustín Meléndez García, who subscribed to the Minister’s words, and the Secretary General of IPRA-CINDER, Mr. Alfonso Candau Pérez.
The inaugural conference was given by Klaus Deininger, chief economist of the World Bank, who highlighted the need for countries to have a real estate registry that provides legal certainty to transactions and ownership of real rights in order to avoid litigation and mobilize territorial credit, with a clear commitment to digitization that allows the identification of areas with real estate growth.
He emphasizes the need for digitalization in areas such as Africa and says that the use of technology promotes transparency and justice.
This was followed by a speech by the Secretary of State for Justice of Spain, Manuel Olmedo Palacios, who described the digitalization carried out in the field of justice in Spain.
In the sessions that took place during the day, different speakers from Brazil, Canada, Costa Rica, Estonia, the Netherlands and Peru analyzed the application of Artificial Intelligence in the Land Registry, identifying it as a technological tool that requires reliable data and supervision by a Registrar.
And the problems in the regulation of the MTZ, its demarcation and special determination by the legislations of different countries. Several comparative law studies of the legislations of Costa Rica, Spain, France, Dominican Republic and Peru were presented. The first of the sessions on this topic was moderated by the Director of Legal Security and Public Faith of Spain, Ms. Ester Pérez Jerez.
Madalena Teixeira, Portuguese Land Registrar, and Luis Benavides, member of the graphic bases of the Registradores of Spain, have intervened as keyspeakers.
The Secretary General of Cinder, the Deputy Secretary and the Coordinator of the Scientific Commission met with the Chinese delegation, which has applied for membership in IPRA-CINDER.
Finally, the round table on Digitalization and land registry traffic within the EU took place. In this table has intervened the president of ELRA, Enrique Maside Páramo, member of the European Union and the Deputy Director General of Legal Security and Public Faith Antonio de Fuentes Paniagua.
Thursday 5
The second session of the IPRA-CINDER Congress consisted of two round tables and four sessions.
The first round table dealt with Indigenous Lands. Moderated by Ms. Eugenia Zamora Chavarría, President of the Supreme Court of Elections of Costa Rica, the speakers were Ms. Stacy Maurier representing the Nisga’a Community in Canada, Mr. Fabián Stachiotti from Argentina and Ms. Nathalie Artavia Chavarría from Costa Rica.
The defense of the rights of indigenous minorities necessarily requires the recognition of the territory they have been occupying as native peoples, and this recognition is neither complete nor effective if the properties are not registered in the Land Registry. This is an issue that arises throughout the American continent.
The Nisga’a community in British Columbia manages its own Land Registry, based on the Torrens system, in which their lands are registered independently from the British Columbia Title Registry and with government recognition. There are other Indian tribes in the same State and the goal is the creation of federal Registries in the other Indian nations. This poses a major challenge in mobilizing land credit and funding.
The sessions were attended by China, which is facing the challenge of legislative unification and, in particular, the regulation of natural areas, and Turkey, which is in the process of digital transformation to achieve a more efficient system, starting with a single window, where citizens can go to any of the Registries of the territory, even to the headquarters in Berlin (Germany) to submit documentation or obtain publicity.
Representatives from Brazil, El Salvador, Spain, Peru and Puerto Rico will present their work on technological development and ethics, as well as the role of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea and the Land Registry in contributing to the protection of the environment.
The second round table of the day dealt with Real Estate Registries and the challenge of Artificial Intelligence. Moderated by Mr. Enrique Maside Páramo, the speakers were Mr. Mihai Taus from Romania and President of ELRA, Mr. Jacques Vos from the Netherlands and Mr. Manfred Buric from Austria.
It is exposed that the AI tool can be applied, but only if it is going to imply some benefit, creating the application and nurturing it with specific data for the Registry “behind closed doors” to avoid data leakage and manipulation, avoiding applications such as ChatGPT that feeds on user data and opens a security breach.
AI has been put into practice in the registers of the Netherlands for the identification of solar panels on the roofs of buildings or the transcription of old handwritten and often unintelligible folios into mechanized handwriting. But in the field of legality control decisions, the possibility of its use does not arise, since these decisions can never cease to be human.
Friday 6
On the last day of the Congress, two sessions and a round table were held.
The first of the sessions was entitled people, data and technology, with speakers from Brazil, Chile, Spain, Peru and Puerto Rico. It analyzed the impact of the electronic management of legal registries in those countries that have implemented this transformation, demonstrating that it has not changed the substantive principles of civil law, nor the effectiveness of registry law. The use of artificial intelligence in the different phases of the registry procedure in application of the European Regulation on Artificial Intelligence 2024/1689 of June 13 is considered, and the problems that this issue raises in relation to personal data are dealt with.
In the second session, the incorporation of international ISO-IEC standardizations in the Registries was proposed and its advantages were analyzed.
The question of the relationship between the right to property and the right to housing was addressed, with the understanding that there is no real collision between the right to property and the right to housing, since both concepts belong to different worlds.
Finally, the legal configuration that can be given to the rights to use the roofs and facades of buildings for various installations, such as communications antennas, etc., was analyzed.
This second session included speakers from Brazil, Chile and Mexico.
The round table discussed the effects of the legal registries of the Argentinean automobile, the Brazilian registry of persons and the Costa Rican registry of legal persons and concluded that all three support a system of guarantees and legal certainty.
Finally, the General Assembly of IPRA-CINDER was held, in which the conclusions of the Congress were approved, the adhesion of new members to the IPRA-CINDER Advisory Committee was approved: The Administrative Registry Court of Costa Rica, The Registry of the Nisga’a Community (Canada) and the Argentinean Civil Association of Registry Law, as well as the incorporation to IPRA-CINDER of two new members: The Real Estate Registry of the People’s Republic of China and the Public Registry of Property and Commerce of Quintana Roo(Mexico).
The venue for the XXIV IPRA-CINDER Congress to be held in South Africa in 2026 was designated.
Finally, Mr. Eduardo Martínez García, who leaves the vice-secretariat after more than twenty years of service to CINDER, ceased as vice-secretary and the election of the general secretary took place. Mr. Alfonso Candau Pérez was re-elected secretary general of IPRA-CINDER, and Ms. Carmen Miquel Lasso de la Vega, who has been coordinator of the Scientific Commission of this Congress, was elected as vice-secretary.
