The Right to Land

Abstract

Following in the footsteps of local-to-global advocacy led by international agrarian movements, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP) marks significant departures from the established human rights canon. This chapter discusses the right to land, which features prominently in the Declaration and was a major concern in the advocacy that led to its adoption. The right to land correlates with the important place of land in supporting rural livelihoods and, more generally, in constituting agriculture and food systems. The close relation between land and human rights has long been recognised, but it has often been mediated by the ways in which land sustains food, housing or the foundations of culture. The right to land, instead, establishes a more direct relationship, affirming peasants’ connection to land as a defining feature of their identity; defending this bond in the face of encroachment and dispossession; and fulfilling it by providing the normative basis for redistributive reforms inspired by principles of social justice. The central role of agrarian movements in shaping the right to land provides insights for wider struggles to rethink human rights from the bottom up. The normative configuration of that right has far-reaching implications for reforming national policies, laws and institutions and for reconsidering the theory and practice of human rights.