Is land a human rights issue? approaching land reform in South Africa
This essay briefly explores South African post-apartheid land reform as a human rights issue. 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.