PROJECT OVERVIEW
The past decades have witnessed a renewed increase in land acquisitions for food production, resource extraction and development on a global scale. International law plays a multifarious, sometimes contradictory, role in this regard. On the one hand, it facilitates the treatment of land as commodity through trade and investment, while on the other, it recognises the importance of land(scape) as the mainstay for peoples’ livelihoods, culture, environment, and way of life. Despite the recognition of the collective right to property for indigenous peoples, access to justice remains a major challenge for many communities facing destruction of their local landscapes worldwide. PROPERTY[IN]JUSTICE (2020-2025) investigates the role of international law in creating spatial justice and injustice through its conception of property rights in land. In going beyond traditional legal analysis to include interdisciplinary and cross-cultural perspectives, the project aims to push the boundaries of property and advocate for more place-based understandings of land across international law. It does this through three main objectives:
1. Analyse the synergies and antagonisms between different spheres of international law affecting access to land and assess the impact of these areas on domestic practice;
2. Assess the use and adaptation of international norms by local communities to access land, claim land or reject development affecting their land; and
3. Apply interdisciplinary and cross-cultural perspectives to advocate for more socially-just interpretations of property in land.
The team is combining traditional legal methods, such as the analysis of international and national instruments, jurisprudence, travaux préparatoires (drafting histories), and case law, with socio-legal methods, including semi-structured interviews with key actors involved in selected case studies in Ireland, Kenya, South Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. The choice of countries reflects the experience and heritage of the project team, who come from Ireland, Kenya, South Africa, and Grenada, respectively. There is also an important historical dimension since land law in our respective jurisdictions was heavily influenced by (British) colonial law. To what extent is international law perpetuating or confronting colonial understandings of land?
The project is funded by the European Research Council (ERC), led by Amy Strecker, and hosted by the Sutherland School of Law, University College Dublin.
