Contains framing human rights in the global land rush; the impact of land grabbing on human rights; EU actors’ involvement in land grabbing; understanding investment webs; 5 mechanisms linking the EU to land grabs; the extraterritorial obligations of the EU and its member states; the EU’s response to land grabbing; conclusions and recommendations.

Contains a human rights framework to analyze foreign land grabbing – the rights to adequate food, housing and standard of living, the rights to work, self-determination and not to be deprived of one’s means of subsistence, and the rights of indigenous peoples. Followed by case studies of Kenya and Mozambique and concluding remarks about land grabbing and human rights violations.

Includes ABP in Mozambique, Bioshape in Tanzania, Addax Bioenergy in Sierra Leone, the Dutch Government’s position on land grabbing.

Fears of food insecurity, water scarcity and the search for diminishing natural resources are making land our most precious asset. This edition of Food Ethics takes a closer look at some of these pressures on land in the UK and the developing world, and assesses the best ways of tackling them. Includes short articles on global land grabbing, Zimbabwe’s land reform, gender and land reforms.

Investigates cases of land grabbing in Uganda, focusing in particular on oil palm plantations in Kalangala, Lake Victoria. Argues that land grabbing in Uganda is intensifying and spreading throughout the country, depriving local communities of access to natural resources, exacerbating rural poverty and aggravating the risk of food crises.

Includes background to women’s land rights in Zambia; policy and legal reforms of the1990s; key findings – gender insensitivity on land laws and policies, the high cost of legal fees to handle land disputes, the limited benefits of title deeds for women, lack of awareness on land policy process, land grabbing and disinheritance, lack of security of tenure, lack of access to justice; conclusions and recommendations.

Asks how can poor people protect their land rights? Stresses importance of land in the social, economic and political life of Africa and fact that land is contested all over Africa, with women’s rights particularly at risk. Land registration is inaccessible to most. African governments have often muddied the water, with land frequently used to reward political loyalty. The commons are especially important for poorer people, but everywhere are under growing pressure as privatisation and enclosure continue.

AFJN travelled to Brewaniase, a town in Ghana’s Volta Region, to learn more about a potential land grab deal by Herakles Farms, a New York based agribusiness. Informed that Herakles Farm had acquired a large tract of land in the Volta Region. Less than a year ago the property was sold to a British company, Volta Red. This story is a warning to landowners in Africa and irresponsible African leaders who are carelessly mortgaging future generations’ inheritance during this global rush for land in Africa.

This paper discusses Cambodia’s legal framework relating to Economic Land Concessions (ELCs) and looks at the implementation gaps. It argues that despite Cambodian’s legal framework governing land and ELCs being well-developed, its social benefits, such as protecting the rights of the poor and vulnerable and contributing to transparency and accountability, are almost non-existent.

Large-scale land acquisition are not new in the Mekong region but have been encouraged and have gathered momentum since the end of the 90s, particularly Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar. These acquisitions are realized by national and foreign companies from the region, particularly China, Vietnam, and Thailand in a movement strongly associated with economic globalization and neo-liberal policies which promote free flow of capital at the regional and global level and the adaptation of national spaces to the requirement of liberal and global markets (Peemans, 2013).

Since small-scale farmers manage most of the cultivated land worldwide, the ongoing shift in systems of production associated with large-scale land acquisitions (LSLAs) may dramatically reshape the world's agrarian landscape, significantly impacting rural populations and their livelihoods. The societal, hydrological and environmental implications resulting from the expansion of large-scale agricultural production, through LSLAs, make their ultimate sustainability questionable.

In economics, land has been traditionally assumed to be a fixed production factor, both in terms of quantity supplied and mobility, as opposed to capital and labor, which are usually considered to be mobile factors, at least to some extent. Yet, in the last decade, international investors have expressed an unexpected interest in farmland and in land-related investments, with the demand for land brusquely rising at an unprecedented pace.