This year’s conference ‘Governing land for the future – what (r)evolutions do we need?’ focuses on the future of land governance.

Ten Years after the Voluntary Guidelines on the Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests (VGGT) were adopted, their implementation is lagging. Smallholder farmers, rural women, indigenous communities and local communities are all threatened by insecure tenure and recent studies and reports (e.g. Uneven Ground by ILC) do not indicate any significant changes towards improvements but rather show increased inequalities and violations of land rights.

The key question is: how can this change? Which tools, processes or (r)evolutions are needed to ensure marginalized and tenure insecure people can claim and protect their land rights?

The session organized by TMG Research starts out with the question if a stronger grounding of land governance and land related projects, lobby and advocacy in Human Rights can be a gamechanger. Can a more explicit embedding of land rights work in Human Rights correct overly simplistic, technical framings? Can it reaffirm the legally binding human rights foundation of voluntary responsible land governance(i.e. the VGGT)? Could this lead to greater and better enforceable accountability of states and private actors? Which actors would need to be involved? What would be their role? How can vulnerable populations use Human Rights to defend their land rights?

A starting point for the discussion will be the presentation of the Human Rights & Land Navigator developed by TMG Research and the Danish Institute for Human Rights in collaboration with the Malawi Human Rights Commission. This tool explicitly links the VGGT to binding Human Rights instruments. It can be used by states and the defenders of land, environment and people as well as researchers to underpin land governance and other land related work with explicit Human Rights obligations.

The panel and the audience will critically examine the usefulness and usability of the tool and discuss use cases and limitations. Additional panel members will bring insights from their own practical and academic work and broaden the scope of the discussion towards further needs and opportunities related to the intersection of land rights and Human Rights. Can this be a revolution or is it an evolution at best?