Land, Property and Spatial Justice in International Law

ongoing

This project will scrutinize the concept, definition and interpretation of property rights in international law as they relate to land. It will not only examine the international human rights, environmental and cultural heritage law frameworks, but also specific areas of international economic law, including investment, that converge and diverge with spatial justice in the realm of land-based projects and policies. Lastly, the project will also include a strong conceptual component, by ascertaining to what extent a reconceptualization of property can contribute to transforming international law from ‘tool of empire’ to vehicle for change. Globalization has significantly affected the ways in which communities in many parts of the world interact with and access land and resources – from changing farming patterns due to international trade agreements, to collective tenure and customary rights in landscapes that are simultaneously the location of large-scale resource extraction projects. At the same time, normative developments in the field of human rights and environmental protection provide for the recognition of communities’ rights to ancestral and communal lands, as well as the free, prior and informed consent of communities in order to conduct activities on such lands (e.g. UNDRIP). Yet the abstract notion of ‘property’ rights in international investment law (land as commercial asset) often collides with the ‘lived-in’ property rights of people and communities on the ground (land as the basis for social, cultural and ecological life). As noted by Cotula, “far from being relegated to the exclusive domain of national law, property has long been and remains an important issue in international legal ordering” (2017, 234). Yet despite its centrality, its impact on people-place relations remains under-scrutinized in the international law scholarship. This project aims to fill this lacuna.