Political leaders and concerned individuals in French Polynesia have welcomed a vote in the French parliament to set up a land tribunal in Tahiti.
This follows calls to help settle complex land disputes which over the years have swelled in numbers.
Walter Zweifel reports.
"French Polynesia's government says it is encouraged that the French justice minister, Christiane Taubira, will set in train law changes to resolve land problems. They have been described as a time bomb because of the abolition of indigenous courts and the administrative problems related to genealogical documents. The Indigenous Customary Council in Tahiti says the 1880 treaty with France which laid out land matters has not been abrogated. But decades of transactions recorded by French-run courts have created ownership papers that are contested by thousands of claimants."