After unsuccessfully trying for more than 22 years to lay claim to a portion of SA’s most expensive and prestigious school, labour tenants from the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands are one step closer to becoming land owners. 

The constitutional court on Tuesday ordered the reinstatement of a land claims court (LCC) order to appoint a special master to oversee claims by families who laboured on farms in lieu of payments and permission to live on a portion of the farm.

The project has long been lamented by residents in the southern region of Arequipa where farmers say the mine will pollute their fields and affect water supplies

LIMA - Protesters blocked a portion of Peru's main coastal highway on Monday in the start of a new challenge to a billion-dollar copper mining project that has been a lightning rod for conflict.

WINDHOEK – The Presidential Commission into Claims on Ancestral Land Rights and Restitution yesterday told President Hage Geingob that there is strong opposition to the proposed sale of Namibia’s biggest privately-owned game reserve, Erindi.

Some communities have called for the sale to be put on hold pending the outcome of the commission’s work, commissioners told the Head of State. 

Soaring temperatures and a long delay to the start of the monsoon season are behind some of the most severe water shortages in New Delhi's history – and the water scarcity is even leading to violence.

The shortages and rising prices for this precious commodity mean that the Indian capital's residents are easy prey to criminal gangs, known as the ‘water mafia’, who are attempting to fill the gap in supplies. 

Fights are breaking out when the tankers reach parched neighbourhoods as residents are desperate to get the first drops.

In August 2018, the local government of Accra, Ghana, in West Africa, appropriated 1,800 homes for demolition to make way for, among others, tomato retailers. Officials had already begun plotting the land for its new use when residents of the largely poor neighborhood erupted in protest, to no avail.

The extreme usurpation of land wasn't entirely illegal—nor was it entirely legal. And therein lies a new "idiom of planning" overtaking many African cities as they navigate rapid urbanization under competing land ownership and use laws that date back to British Colonial rule.

Countries and regions devastated by war and civil strife remain fragile and vulnerable for decades after the fighting has ceased. In this post-conflict period, as social, political, and economic institutions are rebuilt, reconfigured or established anew, land is increasingly acknowledged as not only a key driver or root cause for conflicts, but as a critical factor for relapse and a bottleneck to recovery.

Hundreds of protesters gathered in front of the Borey Kang Meng construction site in the capital’s Dangkor district on Monday to demand the developer honour its promise to divide the site into plots and give them land titles.

One protester from the 140 families locked in the dispute said they had sent a letter to Kaing Yu Meng, the director of Leang Heng Trading and owner of the Borey Kang Meng gated community, demanding he explains why it was taking so long to distribute plots and issue the land titles.

The drugs trade is often portrayed as populated by wealthy individuals. The reality is poor communities targeted for repression, criminalisation and even the death penalty.

Amidst media furore over illicit drug use, Tory leadership favourite Boris Johnson dodged questions today over past drug use, whilst the wheels of Michael Gove’s campaign for the premiership are careering to a halt. Eight of the eleven candidates have admitted to some form of drug consumption, from Hunt’s cannabis infused lassi, to Rory Stewart’s opium smoking in Iran.

It is difficult to traverse the muddy terrain of the colony’s settlements. Truckloads of soil are being deposited by huge cranes in the distance; vast stretches of marshy land stare back in defiance. A short spell of rain and the place turns back into the flood channel that it once was. Uninhabitable concrete structures lie abandoned with cracks in their walls and ceilings. Sewer spills emanate an acrid smell.

Indigenous communities in Nicaragua are facing violence and displacement, but agroecology is helping empower the Miskito people.

What do you do when your access to rivers, sacred sites, and forests, is cut off, especially when your whole identity has grown from a spiritual connection to nature?

When you face displacement from your native lands, discrimination, and human rights abuses, how do you survive?

This article was first published at The Lush Times.

Land redistribution through just and equitable means remains contentious in the South African political and judicial landscape. Under the apartheid rule, the distribution of land was aligned to race, with the minority white population allocated about 90% of arable and habitable land, while the majority black population was allocated the minute remainder, mainly in the homelands. Transitioning from an apartheid to a democratic state brought about the human rights laden Constitution which contains section 25 – the right property.