Category: News

Dr. Carolien Jacobs & Bernardo Almeida, Land and climate change: Rights and environmental displacement in Mozambique, Van Vollenhoven Institute for Law, Governance and Society, Leiden, The Netherlands, 2020

Using the aftermath of Cyclone Idai in Mozambique as a case study, this socio-legal research report aims to provide a better understanding of how the dynamics of environmental displacement impact land rights and conflict, and the role of international and national legal frameworks in addressing land-related problems caused by this displacement.

Mozambique is a country prone to natural disasters such as floods and cyclones – risks which are increasing with climate change. Resettlement is the major solution undertaken by the government to reduce the number of people living in high-risk areas. But how does resettlement take place? Are people satisfied with their new places of living? Are they compensated for their loss of property and livelihoods? And what about the people who were already using the land allocated for resettlement?

This report, based on both a desk study and empirical research in Mozambique, discusses these questions and shows the realities on the ground. The authors argue that:

• Gaps in legal protection frameworks should be addressed, especially in relation to expropriation processes;
• People’s longer-term needs in displacement should be addressed to ensure that resettlement is a durable solution;
• Collaboration between humanitarian and development actors, as well as considerable resources, are required to address these needs; and
• Close attention should be paid to relations between old and new settlers at resettlement sites to avoid tensions.

Dr. Carolien Jacobs, an LDRN member, is Assistant Professor at the Van Vollenhoven Institute for Law, Governance and Society at Leiden Law School, an LDRN partner institution. Bernardo Almeida is a PhD candidate at the Van Vollenhoven Institute.

The report is available on the Leiden University website.

Children’s Rights and Business: Governing Obligations and Responsibility, Gamze Erdem Türkelli (Cambridge University Press, 2020)

Children’s Rights and Business: Governing Obligations and Responsibility is a comprehensive legal inquiry into children’s rights and business. Relying on insights from various disciplines, the book illustrates the need for a children-focused inquiry on business and human rights. An analysis of the norm legalization process around the regulation of business and human rights, particularly of children’s rights follows the inquiry into existing hard and soft law regulatory frameworks on children’s rights and business. The book goes on to evaluate the promise of these frameworks in light of globalized business transactions through the lens of in-depth case illustrations on children’s rights in cotton and mineral supply chains and children’s rights in large-scale energy and transport investment projects. Finally, it concludes with a normative outlook on governing the children’s rights obligations of businesses and responsibility when violations occur, drawing on global governance approaches.

Dr. Gamze Erdem Türkelli, an LDRN member, is a Research Foundation-Flanders (FWO) appointed post-doctoral researcher at the University of Antwerp Law Faculty – Law and Development Research Group (an LDRN partner institution).

Concessionaires, Financiers and Communities: Implementing Indigenous Peoples’ Rights to Land in Transnational Development Projects, Kinnari Bhatt (Cambridge University Press, 2020)

Unrelenting demands for energy, infrastructure and natural resources, and the need for developing states to augment income and signal an ‘enterprise-ready’ attitude mean that transnational development projects remain a common tool for economic development. Yet little is known about the fragmented legal framework of private financial mechanisms, contractual clauses and discretionary behaviours that shape modern development projects. How do gaps and biases in formal laws cope with the might of concessionaires and financiers and their algorithmic contractual and policy technicalities negotiated in private offices? What impacts do private legal devices have for the visibility and implementation of Indigenous peoples’ rights to land? This original perspective on transnational development projects explains how the patterns of poor rights recognition and implementation, power(lessness), vulnerability and, ultimately, conflict routinely seen in development projects will only be fully appreciated by acknowledging and remedying the pivotal role and priority enjoyed by private mechanisms, documentation and expertise. This book: