News on Land

Tribal group reignite protest on anniversary of attack that saw members killed, thousands 'evicted from ancestral lands'

Rights activists and Santals have renewed calls on the government to return large swathes of disputed land to the ethnic minority community in northern Bangladesh.

The call was made at a protest attended by hundreds of Santal people in the Govindaganj area of Gaibandha district on Nov. 6.

As extreme rainfall brings more landslides, farmers are turning to bamboo to protect their land - and making an income from it

MAKOMBOKI, Kenya - Lunch at Macharia Mirara's house in the village of Makomboki used to be a cheery occasion as his children chattered about their morning at school. But these days, no one is home.

The family is absent because of the threat from an adjacent loose earth slope, which runs about a kilometre down to the valley floor in central Kenya's Murang'a County.

By most accounts, Benjamin Ramos died doing exactly what he had always done as a human rights lawyer: helping his clients free of charge.

LOS CEDROS, Ecuador (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Ecuador is facing a lawsuit this week for giving mining companies exploration rights to a protected forest in one of the country’s most biodiverse regions without local consultation.

Brought by the local Cotacachi government, the lawsuit requests the regional court place an injunction on all mining activity within Los Cedros in the Intag Valley, a lush area of rivers and Andean tropical forest.

Forest ownership is changing across Europe. New community and private forest owners are bringing fresh interest and new objectives to forest management[1]. According to the COST Action FP1201 “Forest land ownership changes in Europe” report 2015[2], common property regimes, such as rural common ownership/rural communities have been identified in 16 EU, including all Mediterranean countries.

• The struggle for access to safe and sufficient water for drinking and irrigation defines life for the indigenous Wayuu of La Guajira, Colombia’s northernmost department.
• Activists have described the Wayuu as being in the throes of a humanitarian crisis, with Wayuu children suffering high rates of malnutrition and death as a result of water and food scarcity.

The actions of a national bank and an influential politician — in alienating a small community from their land — amounts to corruption, says Transparency International Sierra Leone. The fallout includes five community members imprisoned for murder and scores of residents forced to flee their impoverished community.

Five years ago people were evicted from their shacks in Durban to make way for housing for members of the African National Congress

DURBAN, South Africa - Five years ago Ndabo Mzimela was evicted from a cramped backyard shack in Durban to make way for the construction of subsidised government housing.

Those houses, he and other residents said, were allocated exclusively to paying members of the African National Congress (ANC), the South African ruling party that has been beset in recent years by allegations of widespread corruption.

Kolkata: The Mamata Banerjee government will introduce a Bill in the state Assembly to ensure land rights to the residents of enclaves (Chitmahal) in Cooch Behar.

It may be mentioned that 14,854 people had become Indian citizens with 51 enclaves of Chitmahal coming within the country's jurisdiction in July 2015. But still, land rights issues have not been settled yet for thousands of enclave dwellers.

Now, in a bid to give relief to them, the state government is going to table the Bill in the forthcoming Assembly session.

The planned prosecution of Supreme Court judges who acquitted 11 peasant farmers jailed over the death of police officers during a violent land eviction in 2012, known as the Curuguaty Massacre”, could undermine the rule of law, a UN expert said on Monday.

“These are fundamental elements in the full enjoyment of human rights,” UN Special Rapporteur on independence of judges and lawyers, Diego García-Sayán, said in a press release.

KUCHING, Nov 5 — Works Minister Baru Bian today defended the Pakatan Harapan (PH) government against criticisms for not giving a specific allocation in the federal Budget 2019 for the perimeter survey of native customary rights (NCR) land in Sarawak.

He said the critics were implying that the PH government is not concerned about NCR land and not treating it as an important issue.

Baru pointed out that land matters are not under the purview of the federal government and nor does it have any say in state land matters.