The UN Framework for Action in this Note helps to identify potential entry points to integrate land in conflict analyses, planning and assessment processes, supports engagement of UN leadership and outlines key activities to consider in areas of UN work - such as support to peace agreements and mediation, human rights, gender equality, rule of law and governance. This Note provides guidance on partnership and the use of practical tools for analysis, coordination and programming.

The aim of the study is to investigate the land-related causes of conflict in the Jubaland State of Somalia. The study findings are expected to guide the work of the UN in peace building and land conflicts management and to inform land policy processes and other land governance interventions in Jubaland and Somalia as a whole.

The study has three specific objectives:

Land is a key driver of conflicts and is a bottleneck to recovery. Although increasingly acknowledged as a critical factor in peace-making and peacebuilding, land-related issues are often linked to the development agenda but are not properly addressed in post-conflict and peacebuilding. Neither are they inserted in the conflict cycle analysis. Conflicts are often not linear in character and phases of insecurity and partial stability can alternate.

This guide is intended for practitioners who are confronted with land conflicts in the course of their work or are in a position to prevent them and/or include land governance as one pillar in their policies. It aims to broaden the understanding of the complexity of causes that lead to land conflicts in order to provide for better-targeted ways of addressing such conflicts, and provides a number of tools with which to analyse land disputes. In addition, this guidebook discusses a wide variety of options and tools for settling ongoing land conflicts and for preventing new ones.

Sierra Leone's conflict has often been characterized as a 'crisis of youth'. For some, the post-war resurgence of grassroots associational life represents the unleashing of long-suppressed youth egalitarianism, yet this analysis tends to ignore the role of international aid in providing an economic incentive for impoverished Sierra Leoneans to embrace formal association. Case study evidence also shows that politics of 'community' identification and moral economies of patronage continue to affect postwar aid.

Responding to the academic void on the impact of socio-ecological conflicts on peacebuilding and conflict transformation, I turn to resistance against large-scale land acquisitions in post-war contexts. Promising in terms of reconstruction and economic prosperity, the recent rush on land may, however, entail risks for reconciliation processes and long-term peace prospects.

Recent critical analyses of global land grabs have variously invoked global capitalism and neocolonialism to account for this trend. One line of inquiry approaches land grabs as instances of “primitive accumulation of capital” whereby lands in the Global South are “enclosed” and brought within the ambit of global capitalism. Another perspective invokes the history of Anglo‐American colonialism for critiquing the developmentalist discourse that depicts Africa as the “last frontier” to be tamed by the techno‐industrial civilization of the North.

Multinational companies are increasingly promoted as peacebuilders. Major arguments in support of such a position emphasise both interest-based and norm/socialisation-based factors. This article uses research on large mining MNCs in eastern DRC – those that, arguably, should be most likely to build peace according to the above positions – to engage critically with the business for peace agenda. First it demonstrates the limited peacemaking, as well as active peacebuilding, activities in broader society that companies undertake.

This contribution suggests how to identify and deal with ex-combatants in (un)peaceful post-war environments from a methodological perspective. While it is obvious that large-N studies or standardized interviews fall too short to depict post-war dynamics and related conflict risks, ethnographic methods face numerous challenges, too. First, the identification of and access to former combatants may prove to be difficult. Often being stigmatized or perceived as outlaws they may not wish to get in touch with ‘outsiders’, like academics.

Much has been written on land deals, their impact and challenges of contestation in the Global South. Multiple studies show that communities are high-spirited as long as they oppose the actual conversion of their land. My findings illustrate, however, how companies, local authorities, communities, civil society and the government mitigate conflicts, re-shape resource governance, and negotiate terms of development in operating plantations and local-global dynamics thereof.

The international community has recently hailed the restoration of property rights for people uprooted by armed conflict as a means of remedying forced displacement. Proponents of property restitution assert that this remedy can enhance the rule of law in a post-conflict society by promoting reconciliation and bolstering economic and social stability. A United Nations (U.N.) subcommission has endorsed a set of legal and technical guidelines for constructing a property restitution scheme.

Sierra Leone recently attracted significant inflows of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in export-oriented mining and agribusiness. These investments have usually involved large-scale land deals with local communities that have been facilitated and brokered by government officials, local politicians, and paramount chiefs. Affected people and communities were supposed to receive compensations for lost land and, in addition, they expected to find gainful employment opportunities with multinational companies.