The ‘Evidentiary Bind’ in Postwar Land Restitution: The Case of Sri Lanka

The enormity of the world’s dislocated population generated by contemporary conflicts has brought significant attention to a complicated process of returning housing, land and property (HLP) to their rightful occupants once conditions permit. As the complexity of large-scale HLP restitution becomes increasingly apparent, significant obstacles emerge that require examination. This article describes how the ‘evidentiary bind’ is such an obstacle. This bind emerges when large-scale HLP restitution processes require titles and deeds to be in the possession of the population who are the least likely to have them—the forcibly displaced. The technical, legal and political inability to acknowledge and accept alternative, informal, customary, or hybrid evidence for finding rightful owners means that the ‘evidentiary bind’ prevents returns, leaves a large amount of land in a state of limbo, produces grievances in the war-affected population, and invites corruption and the use of potentially destabilizing means to regain one’s HLP. This article looks at the case of Sri Lanka where the current HLP restitution process faces a particularly acute form of the ‘evidentiary bind.

The Role of Land Conflict and Land Conflict Resolution in a Peace Process: Mozambique's Return to Agriculture

The massive return and reintegration of refugees and displaced persons in Mozambique (the largest in the histoy of Africa) has pushed land tenure issues to the fore in the county's peace process. While land re-access for the six million dislocatees is critical for food, security and political stability, conflict over land resources has become a primary concern of the government and both the regional and international community participating in Mozambique's recovery. Based on data recently collected over a year-and-a-half in Mozambique, this paper will look at the problematic issues of land access, land conflict, and land conflict resolution emerging from the recent 16 year war, and highlight the role of organizations from the national to the international, in land conflict resolution.Le retour massif et la réintégration des réfugiés et des personnes déplacées au Mozambique (la plus vaste entreprise de réintégration de toute l'histoire de l'Afrique) a mis la question de la propriété terrienne au centre du processus de paix dans ce pays. Alors que l'accès renouvelé à la terre apparaît crucial pour les six millions de personnes relocalisées pour des raisons alimentaires, de sécurité, et de stabilité politique, les conflits en matière de ressources terriennes sont devenus la principale inquiétude du gouvernement et des communautés régionales et internationales impliquées dans la reconstruction du Mozambique. S'appuyant sur des données colligées sur le terrain lors d'un séjour d'un an et demi au Mozambique, le présent article étudie la question problématique de l'accès à la terre, des contentieux fonciers, et de leur résolution, suite à la récente guerre de 16 ans. Sera mis en relief le rôle des organisations nationales et internationales dans la résolution des contentieux fonciers

Land dispute resolution in Mozambique: institutions and evidence of agroforestry technology adoption

Successful adoption of natural resource management technologies requires that important fundamentals of property rights be established. Because disputes over property rights occur universally, the ability to successfully defend one's rights to property exercises a central influence on the tenure security necessary for technology adoption. However, defending rights to property rests upon the possession of evidence that is readily available and widely regarded as legitimate. This paper presents work carried out in postwar Mozambique on the availability and legitimacy of evidence pertaining to land tenure dispute resolution. What is unusual about the Mozambique case is that the physical presence of a natural resource management technology—agroforestry trees in this case—also serves as one of the most widely available and legitimate forms of evidence in the postwar period. Such an arrangement reveals important aspects about the reverse relationship between property rights and technology adoption. While such an evidence role for a technology may at first appear to encourage further adoption of agroforestry, important influences on property rights in the postwar setting serve to discourage full adoption and jeopardize the long-term presence of existing agroforestry trees. It remains to be seen if recent legislative changes regarding property rights will successfully engage customary forms of evidence and encourage full adoption of agroforestry in Mozambique.Conflict management.,

Land Rights in Mine-affected Countries

Land rights in conflict and post-conflict environments is an increasing area of concern within humanitarian and development communities. When conflicts end, land rights may be threatened, especially for women, subsistence farmers and other marginalized populations. Secure land rights are, therefore, a critical issue for humanitarian response, sustainable peace-building and longer-term economic recovery, particularly in countries where agriculture is key to livelihoods. While mine-action activities such as priority-setting, survey and clearance bring mine-action organizations into direct contact with land-rights issues, most tend to avoid these issues. This article looks at how mine-action organizations can better address land issues

The Fulling-Unruh effect in general stationary accelerated frames

We study the generalized Unruh effect for accelerated reference frames that include rotation in addition to acceleration. We focus particularly on the case where the motion is planar, with presence of a static limit in addition to the event horizon. Possible definitions of an accelerated vacuum state are examined and the interpretation of the Minkowski vacuum state as a thermodynamic state is discussed. Such athermodynamic state is shown to depend on two parameters, the acceleration temperature and a drift velocity, which are determined by the acceleration and angular velocity of the accelerated frame. We relate the properties of Minkowski vacuum in the accelerated frame to the excitation spectrum of a detector that is stationary in this frame. The detector can be excited both by absorbing positive energy quanta in the "hot" vacuum state and by emitting negative energy quanta into the "ergosphere" between the horizon and the static limit. The effects are related to similar effects in the gravitational field of a rotating black hole.Comment: Latex, 39 pages, 5 figure

Addressing conflict through collective action in natural resource management

The food security crisis and international “land grabs” have drawn renewed attention to the role of natural resource competition in the livelihoods of the rural poor. While significant empirical research has focused on diagnosing the links between natural resource competition and (violent) conflict, much less has focused on the dynamics of whether and how resource competition can be transformed to strengthen social-ecological resilience and mitigate conflict. Focusing on this latter theme, this review synthesizes evidence from cases in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Building on an analytical framework designed to enable such comparative analysis, we present several propositions about the dynamics of conflict and collective action in natural resource management, and a series of recommendations for action. These propositions are: that collective action in natural resource management is influenced by the social-ecological and governance context, that natural resource management institutions affect the incentives for conflict or cooperation, and that the outcomes of these interactions influence future conflict risk, livelihoods, and resource sustainability. Action recommendations concern policies addressing resource tenure, conflict resolution mechanisms, and social inequalities, as well as strategies to strengthen collective action institutions in the natural resource sectors and to enable more equitable engagement by marginalized groups in dialogue and negotiation over resource access and use

TS 1.1 -People, Cadastre and Land Governance for Society Use of Upgraded Evidence in Cadaster Approaches for Syrian Refugee Return Use of Upgraded Evidence in Cadaster Approaches for Syrian Refugee Return

SUMMARY The enormity of the Syrian refugee crisis in Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon, together with the difficulties of their livelihoods and the burden placed on host countries, highlights the importance of planning now for the eventual return of refugees to their housing, land and property (HLP) in Syria. As in all refugee generating scenarios, the manner in which most Syrians departed their HLP resulted in little opportunity to obtain, prepare or bring, the documentation needed prove ownership, occupation, or claim to their properties to which they must one day return. Further, in a great many cases such documentation, if it existed, was incomplete, inaccurate, contested, confused, improperly recorded and of uncertain legal standing. Overlain on this situation is a long history of land and property confiscations, dispossession, grievance, corruption and patronage, which has meant that many HLP assets will be reclaimed anew when their former occupants return. While the social and legal challenges for reattaching returning refugees to their HLP is difficult in any postwar situation, this will be particularly so in the Syrian case due to the absence of documentation and the contested, confused and aggrieved land rights system in the country's history. Past research has highlighted the need to move quickly in refugee situations, so as to be able to effectively capture such recognition and recollection of land and property features before they are lost. Waiting until a war is over before establishing a program for how refugees will reclaim HLP is an expensive and protracted process that marginalizes those who have lost important evidence over time, resulting in a reluctance to return from refugee hosting countries. This paper examines the prospect for examining the primarily informal, customary evidence that refugees do have and how this evidence can be gathered, upgraded, combined and corroborated, and then inserted into useful types of cadasters for use in their return to (and restitution of) lands, properties and areas of origin

Land tenure and the peace process in Mozambique: The role of land dispute resolution in "critical resource" areas

The recent 16 year civil war in Mozambique dislocated approximately six million people (primarily small-scale agriculturalists) from land resources to which they are now returning and re-claiming; comprising the largest return and re-integration of refugees and displaced persons in the history of Africa. The UN expects to continue its resettlement activities in Mozambique until the year 2000. However re-access to land resources is problematic due to overlapping land claims stemming from the reforming state land tenure system, including a reformulating land law. Land concessions are being granted from different ministries at the national, provincial, and district level with no coordination, enforcement, or mechanisms to resolve competing claims between smallholders and concessionaires. Disputes over land resources between participants in a national versus customary tenure system, and the inability of the two to connect in terms of how such disputes are resolved in ways that are viewed as secure and legitimate (and therefore respected) by participants in both systems, can have especially serious repercussions in periods of recovery from armed conflict. The intersection of land tenure system (including formal and customary "laws") and identity is crucial in this regard. This dissertation examines the role "critical resource" tenure following Mozambique's war, and how the conflict between reformulating customary and state land tenure systems aggravates the 'disconnect' between state and customary identities, and works against the peace process underway in the country. In the wake of the Somalia debacle, the UN and the international community are compelled to examine new operational modalities that specifically address the issues that can jeopardize a peace process. This dissertation makes the argument that land tenure in critical resource areas following armed conflict is such a problematic issue, and that attention to this issue needs to become an integral part of the peace process in societies where agriculture is fundamental to recovery

Land Dispute Resolution in Mozambique: institutions and evidence of agroforestry technology adoption

Successful adoption of natural resource management technologies requires that important fundamentals of property rights be established. Because disputes over property rights occur universally, the ability to successfully defend one’s rights to property exercises a central influence on the tenure security necessary for technology adoption. However, defending rights to property rests upon the possession of evidence that is readily available and widely regarded as legitimate. This paper presents work carried out in postwar Mozambique on the availability and legitimacy of evidence pertaining to land tenure dispute resolution. What is unusual about the Mozambique case is that the physical presence of a natural resource management technology—agroforestry trees in this case—also serves as one of the most widely available and legitimate forms of evidence in the postwar period. Such an arrangement reveals important aspects about the reverse relationship between property rights and technology adoption. While such an evidence role for a technology may at first appear to encourage further adoption of agroforestry, important influences on property rights in the postwar setting serve to discourage full adoption and jeopardize the long-term presence of existing agroforestry trees. It remains to be seen if recent legislative changes regarding property rights will successfully engage customary forms of evidence and encourage full adoption of agroforestry in Mozambique