Is land a human rights issue? approaching land reform in South Africa

It suggests that land reform has an ethically, politically and strategically important interface with international human rights. This refers both to the context-dependent livelihood role of land and to context-independent principles regarding land ownership and governance, involving several types of rights (allocation, protection, provision, procedure and development).

It discusses the merit and limitation of a state-centric perspective on human rights and development. This places “human rights” in a social, contested process of rights- and land-based development. A state-centric human rights system has an important role in this process, but rights-based development requires a broader vision of how people realise rights in social dynamics.