Issues Home About Contact Us Issue 8 - December 2013 عربى
Editorial

Land Policies under Rights Review

As we approach the end of another year, Land Times reflects on the state of the land and the people. The period covered in this issue is one of review and evaluation of the performance of states and public institutions at all levels in the management of people’s land and natural resources amid popular calls for reform, revolution and transitional justice.                              

The contents of this 8th issue update the reader on the smoldering issues that led to regime-changing uprisings three years ago in the Middle East/North Africa. Egypt’s performance of the human rights Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights is covered in an article reporting the UN treaty body’s critical conclusions of its review, focusing on those rights related to habitat. Egypt is featured also in its civil society commemorating “Egyptian Housing Rights Day,” a new tradition since 2008. Constitutional reform was a theme of this year’s commemoration, followed by an initiative of several local organizations to formulate their vision of habitat rights for the new Constitution, localizing the right to the city. Finally, a legal commentary on “adverse possession” reviews the evolution of squatters’ rights through succeeding governments since the last century.

The militarization of land management is a familiar feature in the MENA region, and the subject of a comparative article on the role of the military in two Arab Spring countries: Yemen and Egypt. This phenomenon has run parallel to the civilian administration of real estate and has involved notorious disputes over land tenure.

Taking in the wider scope of the African continent, this issue of LT assesses the values at stake for the world’s newest state, South Sudan, where foreign acquisitions of land raise questions about the meaning of self-determination in that context. The land and development dynamics in Ethiopia come under scrutiny in that country’s upcoming Universal Periodic Review by the UN Human Rights Council. As reported from research of HIC-HLRN and Oakland Institute, this issue highlights the human rights consequences of Ethiopia’s “villagization” policy that is transforming forever the lives of land-based communities.

A similar process is the subject of mounting resistance from the Palestinian citizens of Israel in the Naqab region of the country’s south. This time, the developments in applying Israel’s dispossession-and-displacement policy against the Naqab Bedouin community coincides with the Israeli Supreme Court decision reaffirming the privileged status of “Jewish nationality,” which replaces any common citizenship basis for the equal enjoyment of rights within the state.

In the pursuit of good practices in urban governance, HIC-HLRN reports on its contributions to the 4th Congress of United Cities and Local Government (UCLG), which advanced the discourse on the right to the city to the MENA region. In a related development, this Land Times brings you up to date on the proposed global study on the human rights dimensions of municipal government and anticipates outcomes that will help codify the public duties that relate to the local task of upholding human rights.

The progress toward a human rights approach to managing land and natural resources is rarely linear. The course of events and developments reported here bear that out. Nonetheless, this reflection helps us see where we have come, and how.


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