This book explores various contemporary aspects of the growing field of housing, land and property (HLP) rights. HLP rights have undergone a major transformation in recent decades, but much remains to be done to bring their promise to the billions of people who have yet to access them. This work presents several innovative ways by which the entire field of HLP rights can be strengthened in support of those to whom they are promised by human rights laws. It outlines the author’s suggestions for creating a new World Restitution Agency, expanding our understanding of the term ‘internationally wrongful act’ to HLP crimes, the links between mine action and HLP rights in post-conflict societies and the need to include HLP issues in peace agreements. The book concludes with several chapters that outline suggestions for better addressing climate displacement, including the need for national climate land banks, the role of the courts and how to redistribute global wealth towards rehousing the millions set to be displaced from their homes and lands due to the effects of climate change. The volume will be essential reading for academics, researchers and policymakers working in the areas of international human rights law, housing, land and property issues, humanitarian issues and climate change.

Climate change, sometimes thought of as a problem for the future, is already impacting people's lives around the world: families are losing their homes, lands and livelihoods as a result of sea level rise, increased frequency and intensity of storms, drought and other phenomena. Following several years of preparatory work across the globe, legal scholars, judges, UN officials and climate change experts from 11 countries came together to finalise a new normative framework aiming to strengthen the right of climate-displaced persons, households and communities. This resulted in the approval of the Peninsula Principles on Climate Displacement within States in August 2013. This book provides detailed explanations and interpretations of the Peninsula Principles and includes in-depth discussion of the legal, policy and programmatic efforts needed to uphold the standards and norms embedded in the Principles. The book provides policy-makers with the conceptual understanding necessary to ensure that national-level policies are in place to respond to the climate displacement challenge, as well as a firm sense of the programme-level approaches that can be taken to anticipate, reduce and manage climate displacement. It also provides students and policy advocates with the necessary information to debate and critique responses to climate displacement at different levels. Drawing together key thinkers in the field, this volume will be of great relevance to scholars, lawyers, legal advisors and policy-makers with an interest in climate change, environmental policy, disaster management and human rights law and policy.

The threat of climate displacement looms large over a growing number of countries. Based on the more than six years of work by Displacement Solutions in ten climate-affected countries, academic work on displacement and climate adaptation, and the country-level efforts of civil society groups in several frontline countries, this report explores the key contention that land will be at the core of any major strategy aimed at preventing and resolving climate displacement. This innovative and timely volume coordinated and edited by the Founder of Displacement Solutions, Scott Leckie, examines a range of legal, policy and practical issues relating to the role of land in actively addressing the displacement consequences of climate change. It reveals the inevitable truth that climate displacement is already underway and being tackled in countries such as Bangladesh, Kiribati, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu and the United States, and proposes a series of possible land solution tools that can be employed to protect the rights of people and communities everywhere should they be forced to flee the places they call home.

The threat of climate displacement looms large over a growing number of countries. Based on the more than six years of work by Displacement Solutions in ten climate-affected countries, academic work on displacement and climate adaptation, and the country-level efforts of civil society groups in several frontline countries, this report explores the key contention that land will be at the core of any major strategy aimed at preventing and resolving climate displacement. This innovative and timely volume coordinated and edited by the Founder of Displacement Solutions, Scott Leckie, examines a range of legal, policy and practical issues relating to the role of land in actively addressing the displacement consequences of climate change. It reveals the inevitable truth that climate displacement is already underway and being tackled in countries such as Bangladesh, Kiribati, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu and the United States, and proposes a series of possible land solution tools that can be employed to protect the rights of people and communities everywhere should they be forced to flee the places they call home.

Official estimates put the future scale of human displacement as a result of climate change at anywhere from 150 million to one billion people. Despite this crisis in the making, few countries or international institutions are adequately prepared to address and resolve this emerging human rights crisis. This compilation brings together fifty-one of the leading texts on climate change and displacement. It provides a consolidated source and substantive overview of the key issues relating to climate change and displacement, including: the reality of climate displacement; the shape of current and proposed international law on this matter; the institutional and governance framework that will address and respond to this crisis; and an analysis of what a cross-section of governments and civil society organizations are already doing to prepare for and act against climate displacement. This volume is an indispensable resource for academics researching this issue, community and international advocates, officials of the United Nations and international human rights and humanitarian organizations; national and municipal governments as well as all people concerned about the human rights of climate displaced persons throughout the world.

Official estimates put the future scale of human displacement as a result of climate change at anywhere from 150 million to one billion people. Despite this crisis in the making, few countries or international institutions are adequately prepared to address and resolve this emerging human rights crisis.

This compilation brings together fifty-one of the leading texts on climate change and displacement. It provides a consolidated source and substantive overview of the key issues relating to climate change and displacement, including: the reality of climate displacement; the shape of current and proposed international law on this matter; the institutional and governance framework that will address and respond to this crisis; and an analysis of what a cross-section of governments and civil society organizations are already doing to prepare for and act against climate displacement. This volume is an indispensable resource for academics researching this issue, community and international advocates, officials of the United Nations and international human rights and humanitarian organizations; national and municipal governments as well as all people concerned about the human rights of climate displaced persons throughout the world.

Housing, land, and property (HLP) rights, as rights, are widely recognized throughout international human rights and humanitarian law and provide a clear and consistent legal normative framework for developing better approaches to the HLP challenges faced by the UN and others seeking to build long-term peace. This book analyses the ubiquitous HLP challenges present in all conflict and post-conflict settings. It will bridge the worlds of the practitioner and the theorist by combining an overview of the international legal and policy frameworks on HLP rights with dozens of detailed case studies demonstrating country experiences from around the world. The book will be of particular interest to professors and students of international relations, law, human rights, and peace and conflict studies but will have a wider readership among practitioners working for international institutions such as the United Nations and the World Bank, non-governmental organizations, and national agencies in the developing world.

In response to a growing global awareness of human poverty and the increasing potential of human rights law as a tool that can be used by the poor to achieve their basic rights, the international body of law, policy and relevant standards on economic, social, and cultural rights has expanded markedly in recent years. Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights: A Legal Resource Guide provides, for the first time, a comprehensive, consolidated source of most major international agreements recognizing economic, social and cultural rights. Readers interested in workers' rights, trade union rights, the right to an adequate standard of living, the right to housing, the right to food, the right to health, the right to education, and the right to culture will find this book a vital source of information on the exact legal sources, definitions, and enforcement possibilities associated with these rights. The guide contains key treaties, declarations, general comments, interpretive texts, and charters. Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights: A Legal Resource Guide is an indispensable reference work for all those working in the field of international human rights law. Lawyers, researchers, governmental civil servants, ministerial officials, NGO staff, United Nations and other international officials, aid agencies, community-based organizations, students, and others will find this consolidated source of materials on economic, social, and cultural rights a useful addition to any reference library. Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights: A Legal Resource Guide is organized in an easy-to-use format and is accessible to both lawyers and nonlawyers. The inclusion of legal, policy, and explanatory standards on economic, social, and cultural rights will enable the reader to know not only the law on these rights but the actual meaning accorded these rights under the law.

For more than sixty years, the blue helmets of the United Nations peacekeeping missions have come to symbolize both the promise and the fragility of the UN. Though beset with unresolved conflicts, underfunded, and invariably burdened with sentiments of over-expectation, UN peace operations have made a difference with their 'peacebuilding' initiatives. While peacebuilding has been extensively analysed and critiqued, the UN's role in addressing and ameliorating housing, land, and property rights challenges has not. This volume seeks to fill the void by examining the UN's experience grappling with the immense and inevitable housing, land, and property rights crises that emerge in all countries during and after conflict. Through analysis of UN peace missions in Burundi, Cambodia, Iraq, Kosovo, Rwanda, Sudan and elsewhere, this volume provides a unique array of perspectives on what the UN has done right, what it has done wrong, and what it should do in the future.

Climate change, sometimes thought of as a problem for the future, is already impacting people's lives around the world: families are losing their homes, lands and livelihoods as a result of sea level rise, increased frequency and intensity of storms, drought and other phenomena. Following several years of preparatory work across the globe, legal scholars, judges, UN officials and climate change experts from 11 countries came together to finalise a new normative framework aiming to strengthen the right of climate-displaced persons, households and communities. This resulted in the approval of the Peninsula Principles on Climate Displacement within States in August 2013. This book provides detailed explanations and interpretations of the Peninsula Principles and includes in-depth discussion of the legal, policy and programmatic efforts needed to uphold the standards and norms embedded in the Principles. The book provides policy-makers with the conceptual understanding necessary to ensure that national-level policies are in place to respond to the climate displacement challenge, as well as a firm sense of the programme-level approaches that can be taken to anticipate, reduce and manage climate displacement. It also provides students and policy advocates with the necessary information to debate and critique responses to climate displacement at different levels. Drawing together key thinkers in the field, this volume will be of great relevance to scholars, lawyers, legal advisors and policy-makers with an interest in climate change, environmental policy, disaster management and human rights law and policy.

In the first Commentary on the United Nations Principles on Housing and Property Restitution for Refugees and Displaced Persons - known colloquially as the Pinheiro Principles - Khaled Hassine and Scott Leckie outline the restitution rights of persons who have faced forced displacement and the loss of their homes, lands and properties. The Commentary compiles and analyzes in considerable detail the legal contents of the Pinheiro Principles - a consolidated international instrument generated by the United Nations in 2005 to provide a solid normative framework on these questions and which legal duties exist for states and the international community to secure them. The book will be of vital interest for all actors concerned with applying restitution rights in practice.

The legal recognition of the housing, land, and property rights of refugees and displaced persons has expanded steadily in recent years as the realization has grown that securing these rights will be beneficial to long-term peace, stability, economic vitality and justice. This volume, first published in 2007, contains more than 240 of the laws, cases and materials that have been adopted during the past century, which accord those unjustly and arbitrarily displaced from their homes and lands with rights: not simply to return to their countries or places of origin, but to return to the original home, land or property from which they were initially forced to flee. The breadth of the restitution standards found within this volume, combined with selected examples of case law and other materials, are a clear indication that a right to housing, land, and property restitution for refugees and displaced persons has emerged within the global legal domain.

For more than sixty years, the blue helmets of the United Nations peacekeeping missions have come to symbolize both the promise and the fragility of the UN. Though beset with unresolved conflicts, underfunded, and invariably burdened with sentiments of over-expectation, UN peace operations have made a difference with their 'peacebuilding' initiatives. While peacebuilding has been extensively analysed and critiqued, the UN's role in addressing and ameliorating housing, land, and property rights challenges has not. This volume seeks to fill the void by examining the UN's experience grappling with the immense and inevitable housing, land, and property rights crises that emerge in all countries during and after conflict. Through analysis of UN peace missions in Burundi, Cambodia, Iraq, Kosovo, Rwanda, Sudan and elsewhere, this volume provides a unique array of perspectives on what the UN has done right, what it has done wrong, and what it should do in the future.

Housing, land and property (HLP) rights, as rights, are widely recognized throughout international human rights and humanitarian law and provide a clear and consistent legal normative framework for developing better approaches to the HLP challenges faced by the UN and others seeking to build long-term peace. This book analyses the ubiquitous HLP challenges present in all conflict and post-conflict settings. It will bridge the worlds of the practitioner and the theorist by combining an overview of the international legal and policy frameworks on HLP rights with dozens of detailed case studies demonstrating country experiences from around the world. The book will be of particular interest to professors and students of international relations, law, human rights, and peace and conflict studies but will have a wider readership among practitioners working for international institutions such as the United Nations and the World Bank, non-governmental organizations, and national agencies in the developing world.