Terra Nullius
A blog on:
-housing, land and property (HLP) issues
-human rights law and humanitarian policy
-transitional justice and rule of law
-early recovery and development
-self-determination and minority rights.
Open and notorious since February 2010.
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Suggested citation: Author's Name, "Name of Post", TerraNullius Weblog (posted on [date]), available at [URL], accessed on [date].
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Antipodean caveat: The author does not condone imperialist land-grabbing under cover of obscure latin phrases.-
Recent Posts
- Lost in transition – EU financed legal aid programme between Serbia and Kosovo falters
- Sargsyan and Chiragov: The Strasbourg Court takes aim at frozen conflicts?
- Context really is everything
- TN takes a sabbatical at six
- Property issues in Libya: A reminder that the road to sustainable peace still goes via root causes
Recent Posts (roll over for more info)
May 2015 S M T W T F S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Follow TN on Twitter…
- @EricGordy What, you never tried a Turkish forebear? Bit thick with bitter sediment for my taste. 1 year ago
- Central America's most important post-conflict success story risks being the latest domino in the new round of Lati… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 2 years ago
- @troyhitch Bring out ... the harmaceuticals! 2 years ago
- @devonprof @sashazernova @SueWillman @TheLawSociety Context is everything. ijmonitor.org/2013/08/judgin… 2 years ago
- Venezuela, Honduras, Nicaragua. It would be a godawful shame to add Guatemala to the list. twitter.com/ILAC_rebuild/s… 2 years ago
Archives
Tags
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Blogs I (aspire to) read
- A view from the cave
- African Arguments
- Al-Bab
- Alejandro Reyes Posada
- Blood and Milk
- CAPRi blog
- Chris Blattman blog
- East Ethnia
- ECHR Blog
- EJIL Talk!
- Failed Architecture
- Florian Bieber blog
- Forced Migration Current Awareness Blog
- Fragile States Resource Center
- Greater Surbiton
- Hearabout
- How Matters
- Human Rights Briefs Blog
- IDMC blog
- iLawyer
- Intercross
- International Law Observer
- IntLawGrrls
- Isthmus and Strait
- Justice in Conflict
- Justice Matters in Africa
- Land Matters
- Land of the Blind
- LSESU Terra
- Modern Young Ladies' Guide …
- MRG – Minorities in Focus
- Natural Justice
- Nordic Africa Institute Forum
- NYR Blog
- NYT Borderlines
- Opinio Juris
- Peacefare.net
- PhD Studies in Human Rights
- Politics of poverty
- Property Law Professor Blog (USA)
- Qunfuz
- Reinventing the Rules
- South American Law and Policy
- Springtime of Nations
- Stuff Expat Aid Workers Like
- The Afternoon Map
- The Development Blog
- The Franco-American Flophouse
- Turtle Bay
- WhyDev
HLP Institutions
HLP Online Books
- ACTS – From the Ground Up: Land Rights, Conflict and Peace in Sub-Saharan Africa (2005)
- Displacement Solutions – Housing, Land and Property Rights in Burma: The Current Legal Framework (2010)
- Environmental Peacebuilding, vol. 1 – High Value Natural Resources (2012)
- FICHL – Distributive Justice in Transitions (2010)
- Forum of Federations – Access to Property Rights: Integrating Indigenous communities into the Federal scheme (2010)
- HIC-HLRN, The Land and Its People – Natural Resources in the MENA Region (2015)
- ODI – Uncharted Territory: Land, Conflict and Humanitarian Action (2009)
HLP Resources
- ARD Land Tenure & Property Rights
- Brookings-Bern Project on IDPs
- CGIAR – CAPRi
- Chris Huggins – Land Research
- COHRE HLP Restitution
- Cultural Survival
- Development from Disasters Network
- Displacement Research and Action Network
- Displacement Solutions
- ESCR-Net
- ETOs Consortium
- FAO Land Tenure
- FERN
- FIAN International
- Former ILS – now Thomson Reuters
- Geoffrey Payne – Housing and Urban Development
- Global Initiative for ESC Rights
- Global Land Tool Network
- Grain
- Haki Legal Empowerment Network
- Housing is a Human Right
- Humanitarian Reform
- IDLO Land Law
- IDMC Land, Housing and Property
- IFRC International Disaster Response
- Inclusive Development International
- Indigenous Peoples' Issues & Resources
- Inter-Agency Standing Committee
- International Accountability Project
- International Alliance of Inhabitants
- International Federation of Surveyors
- International Land Coalition
- International Network on Displacement & Resettlement
- International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs
- IOM Reparations Programmes
- Land Equity International
- Land Research Action Network
- Landesa (former RDI)
- Landpedia
- Lincoln Institute of Land Policy
- Namati
- Norwegian Refugee Council – HLP
- OHCHR Right to Housing Toolkit
- One Response
- Other Worlds
- Rights and Resources Initiative
- Solutions Alliance
- Survival International
- Terra Institute
- The Global Urbanist
- UN Habitat GCST
- UN HABITAT Land and Housing
- UN Housing Rights Program
- UN Independent Expert on Minorities
- UN RSG on IDPs
- UN Special Rapporteur on Food
- UN Special Rapporteur on Housing
- UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food
- UN SR on Indigenous Peoples
- UNDP Crisis Prevention and Recovery
- UNDP Legal Empowerment
- UNHCR Protection
- Univ. of Oxford Refugee Studies Centre
- Univ. of Wisconsin Land Tenure Center
- USAID Land Tenure Portal
- Van Vollenhoven Institute
- World Bank Justice for the Poor
- You.Me.We. Disaster Law Center
Int'l law & standards
- "Pinheiro principles" on housing and property restitution for refugees and displaced persons
- African Development Bank Involuntary Resettlement Policy
- Asian Development Bank Involuntary Resettlement Policy
- CEDAW
- CoE Framework Convention on National Minorities
- Dana Declaration on Mobile Peoples
- FAO Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure
- HLP Checklist for Humanitarian and Resident Coordinators
- IASC Framework for Durable Solutions for IDPs
- ILO Convention No. 169
- Kothari Principles on Development-Based Evictions
- Maastricht Principles on ETOs
- Nairobi Declaration on Women's and Girls' Right to Reparations
- NYU Law School Global Legal Research Tools
- PACE Resolution 1708 (2010) – Property Issues of Displaced Persons
- Refugee Convention and Protocol
- UN Audiovisual Library of International Law
- UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
- UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to … Minorities
- UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement
- UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement – Annotations
- UNHCR Exec Comm Conclusion No. 101 (LV) – 2004 – Voluntary Repatriation
- UNHCR Exec Comm Conclusion No. 109 (LXI) – 2009 – Protracted Refugee Situations
- Van Boven/Bassiouni Principles
- World Bank Involuntary Resettlement Policy
- World Bank OP on Indigenous Peoples
My recent work
- 7th Course on the Law of Internal Dislacement
- IDMC Overview on Displacement in Serbia, Dec. 2010
- Incorporating the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement into Domestic Law: Issues and Challenges
- Land and Natural Disasters: Guidance for Practitioners
- Post-Conflict Land Guidelines
- Post-Conflict Natural Resource Management Project
- Protecting Internally Displaced Persons: A Manual for Law and Policymakers
- Report on Solving Property Issues of Refugees and Displaced Persons, CoE PACE
- Second Expert Seminar on Protracted Internal Displacement: Is Local Integration a Solution?
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Top Posts
- Lost in transition - EU financed legal aid programme between Serbia and Kosovo falters
- Sargsyan and Chiragov: The Strasbourg Court takes aim at frozen conflicts?
- Context really is everything
- TN takes a sabbatical at six
- Property issues in Libya: A reminder that the road to sustainable peace still goes via root causes
- Legal precedents for fighting dispossession of land - the Community Land Rights CaseBase
- How quickly a year goes when the international architecture is coming down around your ears
- Article on HLP rights and durable solutions in GPC Digest
- TN mellows out at five
- New book review on "the Åland example": Balancing engagement and exclusion in autonomy regimes
Property issues in Libya: A reminder that the road to sustainable peace still goes via root causes
by Rhodri C. Williams
What to say about Libya? Despite the slide from the country’s post-revolutionary and chaotic new normal to civil war, it is still too early to give up hope. While Libya may have yet to scrape bottom, many of the factors that argued for a sustainable recovery from Gaddafi’s long nihilistic night remain latent. And despite the increasing subordination of Libya’s politics to the influence of regional competitions and actors, the country still remains to some degree a case apart, churning in the region’s ideological divisions without the despair-inducing ethnic and sectarian fractures that threaten the Mashriq.
It seems a very long time since my work in Libya, on property issues that stalled (at best), displacement issues that exploded, and rule of law issues that have descended to a near farce, with mass trials of senior Gaddafi regime officials wrapping up amid power cuts and procedural irregularities. By all accounts, Ibrahim Sharqieh’s grim prediction that the lustration law forced through in 2013 would be the equivalent of the Iraqi de-Baathification process has been vindicated, as the heavily militarized winners of the revolution collapsed into open conflict with each other. Then comes IS in Sirte, refugee catastrophes in the Mediterranean, and the needless death of good and selflessly devoted Libyans.
The temptation is strong in such situations to cut losses and contain damage. For Europe, for instance, earlier efforts to build up a Libyan state that could be a responsible partner on migration issues have now given way to desperate proposals to unilaterally stem migration that bypass and undermine what remains of the Libyan state. Fortunately, the UN Special Envoy to Libya, Bernardino Leon, has shown extraordinary persistence, chivvying two sides that refuse to recognize each other into 80% of a peace deal even as economic collapse looms. Another refusal to write Libya off came last month, when the Legatum Institute revived the moribund debate over property issues in Libya.
The Transitions Forum of the Legatum Institute is run by the prominent historian Anne Applebaum and is devoted to “the study of radical political and economic change … offering lessons learned for current and future transitions across the globe”. Questions of property and territory have been a consistent theme in Ms. Applebaum’s work, ranging from her nuanced treatment of post-World War II ethnic cleansing, reparations and nationalizations in her 2012 book on Eastern Europe to the depiction of how property confiscations undermined Georgian judicial reform in a more recent Legatum report.
Beginning late last year, I had the privilege of working with Libyan analyst Tarek Megerisi and Irish journalist Mary Fitzgerald on a report on property issues in Libya. The report built on earlier Legatum work on Libya’s financial sector in setting out an updated picture of how Gaddafi’s simultaneously calculated and cavalier approach to property rights underlie many of the grievances that continue to drive the country’s conflict. I was also invited to participate in the launch event for the report last month and enjoyed the chance to reengage with a community of Libyans and international Libya observers that still see the potential for a future that transcends the country’s past.
In both the panel discussion (embedded above) and a prior interview with Anne Applebaum (see below), I focused on the problem of the zero-sum political tradition engineered by Gaddafi himself that continues to infect both the immediate issue of finding a fair solution to property conflicts and the larger issue of negotiating peace between the factions in Libya. As the ICG pointed out in its latest Libya report, for instance, the mutually exclusive claims of both parties to the current Libyan conflict to international legitimacy have come to constitute one of the single greatest obstacles to finding a way forward.
In discussing how the impasse might be resolved, I used the example of Cyprus, where recent rulings by the European Court of Human Rights have pushed both parties toward a solution to the property issues that balances the rights and legitimate interests of both sides. While the Cyprus case remains contentious and differs from Libya in numerous important respects, it stands for the idea that the resolution of long-standing, infected property conflicts must include protections for and concessions by both sides.
The Legatum report represents an important update in a steady, if sparse, chain of reports and analyses on property issues in Libya. These include my own report for UNHCR, an excellent analysis by Suliman Ibrahim and Jessica Carlisle in a broader study of access to justice in Libya by a Leiden University research project, and a USAID land tenure country analysis including both a report on property rights in relation to justice and security sector reform and a translation and analysis of draft legislation floated in 2013 to reverse Gaddafi-era appropriations.
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