Part of a series produced by KNCHR and KLA to enhance the protection of public resources and help the public demand greater accountability and transparency. Focuses on the plunder of Karura, Ngong Road, and Kiptagich Forests. Suggests a loss of public resources of Ksh.18.47bn. Offers an account of the human rights dimensions of land grabbing. Attempts to unmask those who did particularly well from the plunder. Urges the recovery of all monies unjustly got through illegal allocation of public land.

Issa Shivji is Professor of Law at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Executive Director of the Land Rights Research and Resources Institute (LARRRI) or Hakiardhi (in Swahili). He is an acknowledged authority on land law in Africa and chaired the 1991-2 Presidential Commission of Enquiry into Land Matters. Here he examines the new Land Acts, including fundamental principles, land administration and allocation, village titling, land grabbing, dispute settlements, gender, youth and children, and concludes with the ’virtues’ of the Acts.

Article from his regular column in The African, in which Shivji discusses villagisation, land grabbing, village titling, dispute settlement, and radical title. Argues that MPs should be given a free vote of the Land Bills.

Includes current trends � levels of activity, crops and markets, sources of investment, contract transparency, geographical distribution; focus of existing discourse; land and security; weaving land into conflict narratives; risks; conclusion. Argues that access to accurate information about the extent and nature of large-scale foreign investment in Ethiopian and Sudanese land is extremely limited, so broader narratives of ‘land grabbing’ are a potentially misleading oversimplification.

Includes regional context, history of land tenure in Angola, the 1992 land law and its implementation, the draft Land Act of 2002 and its approval, review of post conflict potential fracture points – resettlement of IDPs and refugees, land grabbing, peri-urban land, food security and revival of agriculture, and prerequisites for a new policy.

The seizure of land by those with no legal title to it is what was done a thousand times over by pioneers, colonists and builders of empire. There is nothing new in the transformation of pirates into legitimate landholders who then invoke the law to protect what they have stolen. It all depends when history starts. The powerful have always grabbed land, but when the poor do it, all hell breaks loose.

Looks at how the ESRC STEPS Centre intervened in debates on land grabbing following the financial crisis in 2007 and 2008, and how its work led it on to explore the impacts of ‘green grabs’ and ‘water grabs’, carbon offsetting, the green economy, the financialisation of nature, the Anthropocene and other aspects of ‘resource politics’.

Following a workshop in Benin in February, details examples of land grabbing in Cameroon, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Mali, Congo, DRC, Gabon, Benin.

Includes customary law in South Sudan, statutory land law, customary land tenure, interface of customary and statutory systems, women’s land rights, access to land for returnees, land disputes, land grabbing and other challenges, recommendations.

Discusses the human rights issues raised by large-scale land deals for plantation agriculture (‘land grabbing’) in low and middle-income countries. Finds that it is a serious issue requiring urgent attention. Conceptualises the link between land deals and human rights, reviews relevant international human rights law and discusses evidence on actual and potential human rights impacts. Finds that important human rights dimensions are at stake and that compressions of human rights have been documented in some contexts.

Includes key issues in land and development patterns; land tenure in Africa: theory and practice; debates about ‘land grabbing’ in sub-Saharan Africa; outcomes of and responses to ‘land grabbing’; ways to mitigate conflict, social and political unrest.

Includes growing pressures on land and water rights, growing conflict; different pressures on land and water; availability of agricultural land and water throughout the world; distribution of access rights; socio-economic, legal and political variables; conflict over land tenure and water rights; demographic and climate factors; land grabbing a burning question; are we headed for global crisis?