Afghanistan continues to struggle to overcome decades of war and civil strife. Its political context remains complex and dominated by the Taliban insurgency, narcotics production, weak governance and incomplete rule of law. After more than fifteen years of state building Afghanistan remains a fragile state.

This paper reviews the formal treatment of land rights in Afghanistan over the post-Bonn decade (2002 - 2012). The objective is to document the developments in the recent past to better understand present and possible future trends.

While there is no right to land codified in international human rights law, the Convention for the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), provides for women’s right to own and inherit property without discrimination on the basis of sex. Afghanistan ratified CEDAW in 2003, without reservations. CEDAW (Article 14) also calls for rural women to have equal access to economic opportunities, to credit and loans, social security programs, and to adequate living conditions, including access to housing.

ABSTRACTED FROM INTRODUCTION: 

At the beginning of this textbook, the authors would like to make two suggestions about how to approach the study of property law.

From colonial to modern times, Brazilian agricultural property has remained immersed in a chaotic vortex of deregulation. Attempts of institutional reform - such as the Lei de Terras (Land Law) of 1850 - have been largely unsuccessful, whilst providing legal grounds for land grab by large estates and narrowing the scope of possibilities open for legitimate reevaluations of the first institutional landmark on land use and ownership in the country - the sesmarias.

Since a century ago, there have been many efforts to attract foreign investment in Afghanistan. These efforts include the codification of laws and policies and the provision of facilities for participation of foreign companies in the Afghan economy through partnership with the government and partnership with private sector in this country.

‘A Guide on Land and Property Rights in Pakistan’ was designed and prepared to facilitate the basic understanding of the complex principles of the Pakistani land and revenue administration system. The first edition, printed in December 2011, was warmly received by lawyers, national civil society organisations, community leaders, local authorities, donor agencies, and international affairs organisations, engaged in relief, rehabilitation, development or other similar works that necessitate some basic understanding of the land administration system in Pakistan.

Women have largely been excluded from the ownership and control of land in Pakistan, which is the single most important source of income and status in the agricultural economy. This systematic exclusion stems from multiple factors at both the policy and societal level, which include multiple and contradictory sources of law that fail to resolve the issue of women’s right to property as well as cultural bias and discriminatory practices that arise from the prevalent male-dominant mindset in rural areas.

Internationally there are an alarming number of violations of indigenous peoples’ land and human rights. Brazil is currently under the spotlight as the heightening of the political crisis that led to the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff brings national and international concerns over the uncertainty related to changes in policy that may be adopted by the interim Government in relation to indigenous peoples land rights.

Why do activist groups representing some of society’s most marginalized employ legalistic forms of ‘rights talk’ when the reality of securing rights via the judicial system is almost unimaginable? The article considers this question in relation to the work of the Malaysian non-governmental organisation (NGO) EMPOWER who, in 2011, produced the Malaysian Women’s Human Rights Report focusing attention on the rights of informal sector workers, refugees, sexual minorities and women’s rights under non-Islamic family law.

Drawing on original survey research, this study examines how lay Muslims in Malaysia understand foundational concepts in Islamic law. The survey finds a substantial disjuncture between popular legal consciousness and core epistemological commitments in Islamic legal theory. In its classic form, Islamic legal theory was marked by its commitment to pluralism and the centrality of human agency in Islamic jurisprudence. Yet in contemporary Malaysia, lay Muslims tend to understand Islamic law as being purely divine, with a single “correct” answer to any given question.

Transforming a pluralistic tenure system into unified statutory rights has been a major objective of the development of property law in many developing countries. Many law and development scholars have assumed that unified land rights are a pre-condition to development and that a pluralistic tenure land system is a major source of uncertainty and insecurity. This article challenges this commonly held assumption by way of a case study of Indonesia's effort to unify the laws governing land.