Land Rights

This research aimed to investigate the implications of changing agricultural land use from food production towards increased cashew cultivation for food security and poverty alleviation in Jaman North District, Brong-Ahafo Region of Ghana. Based on qualitative, participatory research with a total of 60 participants, the research found that increased cashew production had led to improvements in living standards for many farmers and their children over recent years. Global demand for cashew is projected to continue to grow rapidly in the immediate future and cashew-growing areas of Ghana are well placed to respond to this demand. Cashew farmers however were subject to price fluctuations in the value of Raw Cashew Nuts (RCN) due to unequal power relations with intermediaries and export buyer companies and global markets, in addition to other vulnerabilities that constrained the quality and quantity of cashew and food crops they could produce. The expansion of cashew plantations was leading to pressure on the remaining family lands available for food crop production, which community members feared could potentially compromise the food security of rural communities and the land inheritance of future generations.

This article provides an update for 2019.

The indigenous peoples of Namibia include the San, the Ovatue and Ovatjimba, and potentially a number of other peoples including the Ovahimba and Nama. Taken together, the indigenous peoples of Namibia represent some 8% of the total population of the country which was 2,533,244 in 2018. The San (Bushmen) number between 27,000 and 34,000, and represent between 1.06% and 1.3% of the national population. They include the Khwe, the Hai||om, the Ju|’hoansi, the !Kung, the !Xun, the Kao||Aesi, the Naro, and the !Xóõ. Each of the San groups speaks its own language and has distinct customs, traditions and histories. The San were mainly hunter-gatherers in the past but, today, many have diversified livelihoods. Over 80% of the San have been dispossessed of their ancestral lands and resources, and are now some of the poorest and most marginalised peoples in the country.

The Ovatjimba and Ovatue (Ovatwa) are largely pastoral people, formerly also relying on hunting and gathering, residing in the semi-arid and mountainous north-west (Kunene Region) and across the border in southern Angola. The Ovatue are considered to have traditionally inhabited the more remote mountainous areas. The Ovahimba are a larger and locally dominant pastoralist group who reside over a greater area of Kunene. Closely related but separate to the Ovahimba is a smaller group called the Ovazemba. The Ovahimba, Ovatue, Ovatjimba and Ovazemba number some 26,000 in total. The Nama, a Khoe-speaking group, number over 100,000 and live mainly in central and southern Namibia and the northwest of South Africa. Related to the Nama are the Topnaars (≠Aonin) who number approximately 2,600 and who reside in the Kuiseb River Valley, in Dorob National Park, and in the area in and around Walvis Bay in the Erongo Region.

The Namibian government prefers to use the term “marginalised communities” when referring to the San, Otavue and Ovatjimba, support for whom falls under the Office of the President: Division Marginalised Communities. The Constitution of Namibia prohibits discrimination on the grounds of ethnic or tribal affiliation but does not specifically recognise the rights of indigenous peoples, and there is currently no national legislation dealing directly with indigenous peoples, though there is a new draft white paper on the rights of indigenous and marginalised communities that is to be brought before the Cabinet soon. Namibia voted in favour of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) when it was adopted in 2007 but has not ratified ILO Convention No. 169. Namibia is a signatory to several other binding international agreements that affirm the norms represented in UNDRIP, such as the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The Namibia government office responsible for indigenous peoples and minorities is the Division for Marginalised Communities (DMC), now under the Office of the President. The office considers its main objective to be integrating marginalised communities into the mainstream national economy and improving their livelihoods.

The host of negative effects of animal agriculture on the immediate environment, workers, and local communities are well- documented, yet little is known about the global repercussions of animal agriculture, especially on human rights guarantees. This contribution attempts to begin filling this soaring gap. It examines the nexus between industrial animal agriculture (with a focus on concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs)) on the one hand, and specific international human rights violations on the other hand. Our emphasis is on the role of government in producing these violations, rather than on the agribusiness itself. Laws originally designed to govern small family farms—so-called “farmers’ rights” laws, including right-to-farm laws and exemptions from environmental and animal law—now protect corporate giants, many of which are multinationals. Governments enacting and upholding farmers’ rights shield agribusiness activities that are damaging to the environment and humans’ livelihoods from regulation. While they are prima facie at liberty to do so under domestic law, their laws are subject to the scrutiny of international law, particularly the human rights regime that promises to put a halt to the ongoing insulation of animal agriculture. The human rights perspective adds valuable dynamics to the ongoing debate, is novel in application to the issue, and opens new pathways for academic inquiries and legal strategies because—unlike nuisance laws, environmental laws, and animal protection laws, which de facto exempt the issue from judicial scrutiny—these laws can be used to hold governments accountable. The human rights discourse also gives rise to community empowerment and innovative forms of advocacy and forges connections between the different social justice issues implicated in animal agriculture. Finally, we show how scholars, researchers, stakeholders, and the public concerned about human rights issues can bring animal agriculture into the conversation and prompt their governments to address the issue proactively.

This article provides an update for 2019.

Chad is one of the six member states of the Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC). Its population is estimated at 14 million inhabitants living across an area covering 1,284,000 km2. The country is divided into three broad ecosystems: desert in the north, savannah in the centre and forest in the south.

Two peoples are considered indigenous to Chad: the Mbororo sub-group of the Fulani people and the Toubou. The Mbororo Fulani live primarily from pastoralism and subsistence farming. According to the 1993 census, they number some 250,000 clustered in the dry centre and tropical south where there is pasture for their livestock. It is estimated that they make up some 10% of the Chadian population. Many of the Fulani have emigrated to neighbouring Cameroon, the Central African Republic or Niger. They can be recognised by their way of life, culture, language, and by the discrimination they suffer. The Fulani are often poor, the majority of them are illiterate and they have no political representation at the national level.

The Toubous are considered one of the oldest groups currently living in the Sahara. Their origin remains a mystery and they have always been an enigma in the eyes of others. Warriors and pastoralists like many other Saharan peoples, these nomads are feared by their neighbours, and owe their reputation to their legendary capacity for adaptation and survival in the particularly arid environment of the Tibesti mountains. They rear camels and cattle and live largely in northern Chad, with the exception of small communities settled in Niger, Libya and Egypt.

Chad was absent on the day of the vote on the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in the UN General Assembly.

Due to a lack of available information on the Toubou, this article will limit itself to the situation of the Mbororo.

While much has been written on various aspects of the 1948 War, the story of the Negev Bedouin's role and their relations with the newly formed Jewish state has drawn little attention. This article focuses on a short but important episode in the establishment of Israeli–Bedouin relations. It examines the Negev Bedouin involvement in the 1948 War, predominantly on the side of the Arab armies, and the circumstances of their departure. It focuses on the Bedouin request, towards the end of war, to return to the Negev. It explores the Israeli authorities' deliberations, and the approval for thousands of Bedouin to return to the Negev, which was unique in light of the overall 'no return' policy concerning Arab refugees. The findings contradict previous academic arguments regarding Bedouin–Israeli relations, including an alleged unfulfilled promise by the Israeli authorities to recognize Bedouin claims to land rights.

A diverse set of land tenure forms has emerged in the past 40 years in what we define as a land titling ‘revolution’, with statutory land rights or exclusive and non-exclusive forms of native title recognised over more than 30 per cent of the Australian continent. Yet the response to this land restoration has been muted, in part because of inequity between Indigenous groups depending on level of ‘invadedness’; in part because the leverage provided by these various regimes to negotiate beneficial commercial outcomes has been limited in many situations; and in part because limited beneficial outcomes, as measured by official statistics, have been evident.

In this chapter we do three things. First, we document the extent of Indigenous landholdings in 2013. Second, we assess some of the diverse values of Indigenous lands using Geographic Information System (GIS) techniques to overlay a template of these holdings onto a selection of resource atlas maps, as well as making some spatial correlations with 2011 census data. We list our sources of information in the Appendix to this chapter. Third, we raise some questions about the potentiality of these lands to deliver various forms of economic development to land owners and residents. We identify a set of paradoxes inherent in the current Indigenous landholding system that may hamper the contemporary deployment of land rights as, to paraphrase James Scott, a developmental ‘weapon of the weak’.

This article provides an update for 2019.

Indigenous peoples in Canada are collectively referred to as “Aboriginal peoples”. The Constitution Act of 1982 recognizes three groups of Aboriginal peoples: Indians, Inuit and Métis. According to the 2016 Canadian Census, there were 1,673,785 Aboriginal people in Canada, accounting for 4.9% of the total population. 1 977,230 people identified as a First Nations person. First Nations (referred to as “Indians” in the Constitution) are diverse Nations and peoples, representing more than 600 distinct First Nations and encompassing more than 60 languages. The Métis constitute a distinct Aboriginal nation, numbering 587,545 in 2016, many of whom live in urban centres. Canada’s Constitution Act of 1982 recognizes and affirms the existing aboriginal and treaty rights of Aboriginal peoples. The Supreme Court has called the protection of these rights “an important underlying constitutional value” and “a national commitment.” In 2010, the Canadian government announced its endorsement of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), and in 2016 Canada re-affirmed its support “without qualification”. Canada has not ratified ILO Convention 169.

This paper explores autodemarcations on the Tapajós River, Brazilian Amazonia, wherein a traditional communitythe beiradeiros (riverbank inhabitants)-and the Indigenous Munduruku together mark the boundaries of their lands and remove invaders in their struggles for the recognition of territorial rights from the state. We approach autodemarcations on the Tapajós as a form of co-becoming: unseating colonial identities and generating mutual recognition within and between these two peoples (turning inwards) while also claiming rights from the state (turning outwards) in the face of expanding extractive frontiers. While legal recognition is well represented in the literature on Indigenous peoples' and traditional communities' struggles over land and countermapping, intersubjective recognition is an omission. Our contribution is to show the importance of the turn inward and contend that it is within this 'turn' that autodemarcations hold radical potential. Such possibility lies in challenging colonial categorizations through novel forms of relationality, namely "wuyḡuybuḡun," a Munduruku neologism meaning "those who live like us, plant like us, fish like us, but cannot hear like us" which began to be used by the Munduruku to refer to the beiradeiros during autodemarcations. We argue that what matters more than the physical boundary (autodemarcation), or the map (countermapping), is the emergent set of social relations: the co-becoming of two distinct peoples. Autodemarcation and other struggles for recognition of territorial and civil rights form part of larger acts of community resistance and popular political participation. They are grassroots democratic state-building processes that should be supported by state institutions.