From Displacement to Remedy
HLRN’s eighth periodic Land Forum in 2024 explored synergies with HIC Members and allies in the MENA region to achieve “Remedies for Protracted Displacement due to Conflict and Climate Change [AR].” Both drivers of MENA displacement are urgent priorities requiring greater capabilities to document, quantify and durably solve the displacement of nearly 40 million persons entitled to reparation, including housing, land and property (HLP) restitution. Regional Developments in this 31st issue of Land Times/أحوال الأرض echo that theme with the focus on both underlying root causes and integrated restorative justice not only to remedy the gross violations involved, but also to deter and prevent further violations that persist when neglecting international norms such as human rights obligations.
With Israel and its policies forming the central injustice in the region, their resulting atrocities do not deter the resistance of their victims, nor “Envisioning Gaza Reconstruction” [“AR”] after the material and intangible destruction and the “Structural Weaponization of Food” [“AR”]. In that context, civil society addresses the horrors and untold losses incurred by “Palestinian Farmers One Year of Israeli Genocide” [“AR,”] fighting for survival within their struggle for food sovereignty. Analogies with the loss of land and food sovereignty in Kashmir [AR] are not lost with India’s land grabbing schemes across occupied Kashmir, published here under International Developments.
Famine rages across the region, including in Sudan, where perpetrators also remain unaccountable without comprehensive approaches toward restorative justice, and housing, land and property (HLP) restitution for displaced persons. Perpetuating conflicts and neglecting displacement across Sudan [AR] also meet the neglect of the racialized and neglected displaced marginalized communities [AR] in Yemen. Linked not only by proximity and common deprivation, both Sudanese and Yemeni suffering is also perpetuated by extraterritorial actors in the region, especially the United Arab Emirates government, enabled by more distant Western powers and Russia.
Despite International Criminal Court arrest warrants for Sudan’s former dictator `Umar Bashir, current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant, the impunity of such actors looms as a longer-term humanitarian challenge toward durable peace and development.
The failure to learn historic lessons and correct errors of the past are recurring themes in this LT31 with the article by Cihan Baysal,“Istanbul Should Not Be an Olympic City – 2” [“AR”] and the lessons arising from HLRN’s study on “Financing the Green Transition in Tunisia,” [“AR”] latest in a series of analyses of multilateral climate finance mechanism projects in the Arab states.
Also at the convergence of human rights and development are International Developments within the High-level Political Forum [AR], HIC at the World Urban Forum 12 [AR], CoP29 [AR] and Fund for responding to Loss and Damage [AR] arising from climate change.
With all these recent developments, we also look back at the 50 years of women’s rights and development work of HIC Member, the National Union of Sahrawi Women (NUSW) [AR]. While we celebrate NUSW’s achievements, HLRN also commemorates the half century of the Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara, which HLRN and SAUSA memorialize in last year’s Human Right to Habitat in Western Sahara.
Lessons from these cases, as well as the preventive and remedial initiatives of civil society organizations, are indispensable to any hope for progress and justice going into the New Year 2025.
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