Urgent call for safeguarding legitimate tenure rights

In a context of population growth and climate change, the demand for land is increasing to achieve food security, carbon neutrality and biodiversity protection. As the competition over limited arable land resources grows, land conflicts are likely to increase as well. This will have a significant impact on land tenure across the globe. Failure to secure legitimate rights can lead to land conflicts and human rights violations, as the recent notorious land conflict case of eviction of over 80.000 Maasai in Ngorongoro, Tanzania, shows. The call for responsible land governance and the protection of legitimate tenure rights, is, therefore, more urgent than ever before.

Strengthening tenure rights by building on the international human rights framework

The Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries, and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (VGGT), endorsed by the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS) in 2012, has provided universally agreed principles of responsive land governance that build on human rights standards and principles. But despite the impact of the guidelines on policy reforms and global discourse, its application at the local level needs to be strengthened, as tenure insecurity and human rights violations due to land conflicts still remain. As the VGGT are a voluntary international framework, considered as a soft-law instrument without legal obligation, holding governments accountable for its application is challenging. However, States do have an obligation to respect, protect and fulfil the human rights standards, such as the right to food or the right to housing. For most people in rural areas, these rights can only be realized when access to land and its resources is secured. By building on these human rights obligations, governments can be held accountable for the implementation of the VGGT and respecting legitimate tenure rights.

National Human Rights Institutions (NHRI) can play a key role in promoting land-related human rights and support land claims of vulnerable people. They have the mandate to advocate for the alignment of national (land) policies with the State’s human rights obligations, to investigate cases of alleged human rights violations, and to report on human rights issues in monitoring mechanisms of international human rights instruments. However, their involvement in promoting land rights and addressing land issues is often limited; land conflicts are not always reported to NHRIs, only a few land conflict cases exist at the level of human rights courts and little synergies exist between human rights and land actors. If NHRIs and land CSOs join hands, synergies can be created for more effective efforts to promote land rights of vulnerable people.

Human Rights and Land Navigator

To enable land actors to build on the human rights system, and support NHRIs to engage in the promotion of land rights and responsible land governance, TMG, the Danish Institute of Human Right (DIHR) and the Malawi Human Rights Commission (MHRC), developed the Human Rights and Land Navigator. It isa reference tool showing how binding human rights obligations underpin the voluntary guidelines on responsible land governance (VGGT). Linkages with more than 20 human rights categories and 12 human rights instruments, such as CESCR, UNDROP and CEDAW, have been established.

The Navigator allows land and human rights actors (NHRIs, CSO, research institutes, and governmental organizations) to better understand which human rights are at risk in specific land conflicts or related to land governance in general. This can inform policy advocacy for improved protection of land rights, inform reports on land rights to international human rights mechanisms, or help prepare litigation in land, property, and natural resource-related cases.

Collecting land data with the Landex Tool

The International land coalition developed a land governance tool known as Landex. The tool captures the shifting status of land governance by monitoring the implementation of land indicators in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries, and Forests (VGGTs). Landex indicators inform about the implementation of legal frameworks and the impacts realized at country level. The session will focus on providing an overview of existing data of the Landex Tool, how it is linked to human rights standards and how it is used by land and environment defenders to promote land rights.