Land Governance in Support of Peace? Insights and Debates on Land Governance Strategies in “Post-War” Settings

Dear Colleagues,

Peace agreements do not always put an end to land conflicts. In many so-called “post-war” settings, land issues continue to be highly conflictive and a potential source for renewed violence. This may deepen land tenure insecurity and hamper recovery and peacebuilding. In this context, land governance is seen as key to make peace ‘stick’. Post-conflict development and peacebuilding policies typically feature investments in land law reforms and the modernization of land administration systems, as well as localized forms of land registration and dispute resolution. In this Special Issue, we take a critical look at these developments in the emerging field of ‘post-war land governance’, while questioning the notion of the war–peace distinction itself. We take stock of emerging insights in this field and ask critical questions about the impacts of land governance strategies on land access and land tenure security, as well as on conflict transformation. We are particularly interested in addressing some of the more fundamental questions: Does post-war land governance overcome or deepen war-time dispossession of specific groups? Does it contribute to structural transformation or rather serve to contain violence and conflict, while leaving more fundamental injustices untouched? What assumptions on ‘war’ and ‘peace’ do land governance strategies work with and do these lead to misinterpretation of the nature of conflict on the ground? How does land governance affect the important peacebuilding challenge of constructing legitimate and effective public authority?

For this Special Issue, we welcome papers based on fieldwork of particular cases or comparative work, at different levels (from micro to macro) and across different contexts. We aim to offer a combination of in-depth empirical contributions and theoretical reflection.

Papers may address topics such as:

• The impacts of land governance strategies on patterns of inclusion and exclusion in land access and land tenure (in)security;
• The impacts of land governance strategies on dispute resolution and conflict transformation, including the potential generation of new conflicts;
• The interaction of land governance strategies with existing state and nonstate authorities and notions of property, and in particular, the issue of competing legitimacies;
• The role of international policy discourses in shaping land governance strategies on the ground, and the social construction of the ‘success’ or ‘failure’ of land governance programs;
• The role and impact of ‘pro-poor’ technologies for land registration in conflict-affected settings.
  

Dr. Gemma van der Haar
Dr. Mathijs van Leeuwen
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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• land governance
• land conflict
• post-war settings
• land tenure security
• land registration
• land administration
• post-war policy