Legal Aspects of Land Rights and the Use of Land in Asia, Africa, and Europe (Maastricht Series in Human Rights) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 178068441X ISBN 13: 9781780684413

Publisher: Intersentia, 2016

Synopsis

The right to land plays a key role in the realisation of a plethora of human rights, including the right to food, water, housing, employment, a clean and healthy environment, an adequate standard of living, social status and the power to make decisions. Property rights over land can take many forms, from mere access rights to ownership. Due to a growing world population and various global crises and developments such as agrarian reform, land is becoming scarce. The result is that land prices increase and the poorest sectors of society are deprived of access to land whilst State authorities and foreign investors practise land grabbing to make way for palm oil, animal feed and biofuel plantations, tourist resorts, or as speculative investment. In addition, arable land is not only claimed for residential purposes, but also by industries that in turn pollute the soil and water. Many groups in society, especially in developing States, need access to land for their subsistence. It is these smallholders, landless farmers, rural youths, indigenous peoples and women who often suffer the worst consequences of land reform schemes and land grabbing practices. They are not well protected by the existing forms of land tenure and State authorities often fail to live up to their human rights obligations to respect and protect the land rights of people in all sectors of their society.Legal Aspects of Land Rights is the result of the cooperation of scholars from five Indonesian faculties of law, the Maastricht Centre for Human Rights, and the Maastricht European Transnational Research Institute (METRO), together known as the Land Rights Consortium.

About this title

About the Author

While reading law at the Open University of the Netherlands, Ingrid Westendorp has worked as the coordinator of the Maastricht Centre for Human Rights of the Faculty of Law of the University of Maastricht. After she graduated in 1998, she was appointed lecturer in law with the International and European Law Department. In 2007 she finished her PhD thesis on the right to housing for women.

Edition details

• Publisher: Intersentia
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 178068441X
• ISBN 13: 9781780684413
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 152
• Editor: Westendorp Ingrid