Land Rights

Land Rights

Concept of Land Rights

Land Rights may be defined as: Refers to the rights of people to land, either individually or collectively. These rights include the rights of access, withdrawal, management, exclusion, alienation, and others. They can also include the rights to various natural resources on and below the surface of the land. Land rights, particularly in the context of agrarian countries, are inextricably linked with the right to food and a host of other human rights. In many instances, the right to land is bound up with a community's identity, culture, religion and spirituality, its livelihood and thus its very survival. Analysis shows that despite a history of customary use and ownership of over 50 percent of the world's land area, the world's Indigenous Peoples and local communities – up to 2.5 billion women and men – possess ownership rights to just one-fifth of the land that is rightfully theirs. This gap is the cause of much of the disenfranchisement, poverty, human rights violations and conflict found across the world.(1) See more related entries to Land Rights in this legal encyclopedia.

Resources

See Also

  • Civil Liberty
  • Civil Right
  • Legal Right
  • Citizen Freedom
  • Political Liberty
  • Constitutional Right
  • Political Right
  • Freedom of Speech

Resources

Notes

  1. From “Common Ground: Securing Land Rights and Safeguarding the Earth,” (Oxfam International, International Land Coalition and Rights and Resources Initiative 2016), .

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