War-Induced Displacement: Hard Choices in Land Governance (original) (raw)
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Land Policy and Transitional Justice After Armed Conflicts
2014
Conflict often brings about dynamic changes in land distribution and governance systems. Vulnerable populations are displaced, secondary occupants complicate title, and political elites capitalize on the breakdown of governance to consolidate control over land. As a result, land policy plays an important role in recovering from the effects of conflict, as well as ensuring that further conflict does not follow. However, land-related challenges are rarely addressed holistically because land is a cross-cutting issue which implicates siloed domains of peacekeeping, humanitarian relief, and development assistance. Moreover, international law paradigms of rights to housing, land, and property can complicate the question of how to provide effective remedies for past human rights violations. A focus on universalized rights, or ‘best practice’ models, may obscure the likelihood of shortfalls in the adoption of effective land policy, because of resistance from political elites or challenges posed by inter-agency coordination and institutional capacity. This chapter focuses on dynamic changes in land governance systems resulting from armed conflicts, and their effect on the modalities of land policy as an instrument of transitional justice. It suggests, in particular, the need for a contextualized ‘systems’ approach to post-conflict land policy as an alternative to rights-based models of property restitution to dispossessed persons.
Land Rights and Peacebuilding: Challenges and Responses for the International Community
Rectifying land rights in war-torn settings are among the most daunting challenges of peacebuilding. War-torn land tenure situations are unique settings in their combination of a weakened and chaotic formal (statutory) system, vigorous but very fluid informal tenure activity, along with the presence of political demands regarding land, and international actors that have a large interest and influence in the success of any improvement or recovery. While this combination carries risks, it also represents real opportunity for practical and policy reform in the formal and customary land tenure sectors of countries recovering from armed conflict. In this regard the statutory tenure reorganization and reform efforts supported by the UN need to assess how the development of informal tenure institutions, problems, and processes are proceeding 'on the ground,' so as to draw legitimacy from these processes into reformulating national tenure structure, policy, law, and enforcement; the...
Practical Action Publishing eBooks, 2009
This chapter provides an overview of the land and property issues confronting postconfl ict administrations. Its main argument is that the focus of the humanitarian sector upon restitution of property lost during war is too narrow and potentially obstructive to resolve given that in more and more cases thorough reform of prewar land and property relations is required in order to keep and sustain peace. This is especially so as most wars today are civil wars and largely confi ned to agrarian states, where access to land is critical for the survival of most of the population, and post-colonial or post-feudal deprivation of land rights a common reality. The author concludes with practical suggestions for focusing action by the assisting humanitarian and reconstruction sector.
Land Tenure and Legal Pluralism in the Peace Process
Peace & Change, 2003
Land tenure has proven to be one of the most vexing issues in a peace process. The disintegration of land and property rights institutions during armed conflict yet the importance of land and property to the conduct of conflict present particular dilemmas for a peace process attempting to reconfigure aspects of societal relations important to recovery. In this regard understanding what happens to land tenure as a set of social relations during and subsequent to armed conflict is important to the derivation of useful tools for managing tenure issues in a peace process. This article examines the development of multiple, informal "normative orders" regarding land tenure during armed conflict and how these are brought together in problematic form in a peace process. While there can be significant development of tenurial legal pluralism during armed conflict, it is during a peace process that problems associated with different approaches to land claim, access, use, and disputing become especially acute, because an end to hostilities drives land issues to the fore for large numbers of people over a short time frame.
Housing, Land and Property in Conflict and Displacement Settings
Deusto Journal of Human Rights, 2017
Housing and land are the main things that displaced persons lose when they are forced to leave their places of origin. Once peace and security has been restored in the country, IDPs often find it difficult to reclaim their homes and lands that have been either destroyed or occupied by others. This is a common feature in almost all post-conflict situations. And it is a major obstacle to the establishment of other durable solutions. The tensions in property disputes pose a serious threat to post-conflict stabilisation. This article discusses the importance of issues relating to housing, land and property throughout the displacement cycle. Violations of the rights to housing, land and property are at the same time, both cause and consequence of displacement. The loss of shelter and soil brings new vulnerabilities for displaced populations that may jeopardize their health and physical safety and limit their opportunities to earn a living. The restitution of housing and property is also a key element to achieving durable solutions. The existence of effective mechanisms for conflict resolution plays an important role in consolidating peace. This paper will examine specific challenges to address land disputes in the context of informal occupation of land and will provide an overview of how humanitarian actors address this issue.
Land Administration for Post-Conflict Contexts
New thinking on post-conflict state building argues that land administration has a fundamental role to play. This relation is explored empirically through evaluating the post-conflict state building process in Rwanda. Rwanda witnessed violent conflicts in 1959 and in 1994. These conflicts resulted in mass displacement of population. Tackling issues relating to housing, land and property, and land administration was a very sensitive activity that could very easily have sparked new conflict. This chapter starts from the premise that core land administration elements can be built into broader state building processes; land sharing processes, village settlement projects, allocation of state land for the returnees, and land registration programs can be interrelated with other programs. The aim of this chapter is to increase the understanding of the characteristics of postconflict state building with focus on housing, land and property and land administration. For the case of Rwanda, part of the answer lies in the historical background of the violent conflict, and in further understanding the original displacement and the challenges faced by returnees. Overcoming both types of predicaments adds to the overall process of post-conflict state-building, and the land administration development process in Rwanda.