Rapid response mechanisms (RRMs) are a new, proactive legal approach designed to provide legal and technical support to communities facing nascent conflicts related to land-based investments. RRMs provide preventative rather than reactive legal help the moment a conflict arises or community members’ rights are threatened, rather than trying to reverse rights violations once they have already occurred.
In Cambodia, a recent Human Rights Watch report documents how Indigenous Chong people have faced eviction and criminal charges following the establishment of a carbon offsetting project on their lands. In Kenya, “the world’s largest soil carbon removal project”, whose credits have been used to offset the emissions of global corporations including Meta and Netflix, has been accused of dispossessing Indigenous Peoples of economically and culturally significant land, and reducing the climate resilience of thousands of people.
CALPI received information that the community of Wilú has been attacked by settlers on March 11, 2023 and that on March 10, 2023, three Mayangna community members and two children members of the Mískitu indigenous people were kidnapped; the kidnapped people were on their way from the community of Musawás to the community of Betlehem in the Mayangna Sauni As territory, in the Bosawás Biosphere Reserve, within the Autonomous Region of the Northern Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua.
During the Annual Conference hosted by the Knowledge Platform Security and Rule of Law (KPSRL), the LAND-at-scale knowledge management organised a session exploring how land registration might impact relations between local governments and the populations they are expected to serve. Land registration interventions today often follow a path of decentralisation in which local land offices are tasked with additional responsibilities, or new entities are being created. These local offices give local authorities an important role in land mapping, registration, administration and adjudication.
On 15 December 2022 the LAND-at-scale Knowledge Management team hosted a webinar Land tenure security revisited: Do we know what we need to know? that presented the preliminary findings of a study on tenure security authored by Guus van Westen, and Jaap Zevenbergen. The presentation of the study was followed by breakout sessions on tenure security and its relationship to women's land rights, the role of the state, land conflicts, and economic development facilitated by land experts and panelists who reported back to the plenary on the discussions with their respective reflections on the findings of the study.
On 27-28 June 2022, RVO organized the first annual LAND-at-scale exchange, bringing together over fifty LAND-at-scale project partners, knowledge management partners, Committee members as well as representatives from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs for an in-depth introduction of all LAND-at-scale stakeholders and facilitate a learning exchange.
Lucas Yamat and Pablo Manzano
The future of Ngorongoro has been the subject of hot debate among various stakeholders following a proposal by the government of Tanzania to relocate pastoralists from the district in order to conserve this important World Heritage site.
The proposal is based on claims that wildlife in the reserve faces extinction due to a sharp increase in human and livestock populations. Discussions about the proposal have caused concern among the residents of Ngorongoro who fear that they face eviction.
Abraço ao Cemitério do Povo Negro escravizado, em Santa Luzia, MG. Foto: Alenice Baeta
Blog written by AYJAZ WANI for Observer Research Foundation
Originally posted at https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/kazakhstan-on-the-brink/
Main photo: Getty
