The extractive industry can be an important source of human development, economic growth, government revenues and foreign investments. When well-managed, the sector provides possibility to create employment, build human capital, advance peoples mobility by improving infrastructure, and ultimately enhance the overall human development with a positive impact on poverty reduction efforts.
The challenges faced by more than five and a half million Afghan refugees who have returned since 2002 receive scant regard in most international media or official proceedings concerning Afghanistan. Attention is primarily focused on Afghanistan’s intensified armed conflict, NATO’s withdrawal planning, and faltering peace efforts. Moreover, despite the millions of refugees who have returned in the past ten years, Afghans still comprise the world’s largest refugee population.
In Afghanistan, insecurity over land and water rights hampers investments in food production and irrigation. In rural areas, customary tenure systems, partly based on religious law, are the most relevant but suffer from weak recognition and offer little protection to rights holders. The land policy reform is on-going but remains slow. Moreover, land administration capacity is weak and improvements mostly take place in urban areas. In this context, land disputes are common and often violent.
While there is no right to land codified in international human rights law, the Convention for the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), provides for women’s right to own and inherit property without discrimination on the basis of sex. Afghanistan ratified CEDAW in 2003, without reservations. CEDAW (Article 14) also calls for rural women to have equal access to economic opportunities, to credit and loans, social security programs, and to adequate living conditions, including access to housing.
The longest-running barometer of Afghan opinion, the Survey of the Afghan People is a map of social change over time, presenting a clear picture of the gains and gaps that Afghans perceive in a rapidly transforming nation.
Women have largely been excluded from the ownership and control of land in Pakistan, which is the single most important source of income and status in the agricultural economy. This systematic exclusion stems from multiple factors at both the policy and societal level, which include multiple and contradictory sources of law that fail to resolve the issue of women’s right to property as well as cultural bias and discriminatory practices that arise from the prevalent male-dominant mindset in rural areas.
‘A Guide on Land and Property Rights in Pakistan’ was designed and prepared to facilitate the basic understanding of the complex principles of the Pakistani land and revenue administration system. The first edition, printed in December 2011, was warmly received by lawyers, national civil society organisations, community leaders, local authorities, donor agencies, and international affairs organisations, engaged in relief, rehabilitation, development or other similar works that necessitate some basic understanding of the land administration system in Pakistan.
This note provides country of origin information (COI) and policy guidance to Home Office decision makers on handling particular types of protection and human rights claims. This includes whether claims are likely to justify the granting of asylum, humanitarian protection or discretionary leave and whether – in the event of a claim being refused – it is likely to be certifiable as ‘clearly unfounded’ under s94 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002.
Drawing on original survey research, this study examines how lay Muslims in Malaysia understand foundational concepts in Islamic law. The survey finds a substantial disjuncture between popular legal consciousness and core epistemological commitments in Islamic legal theory. In its classic form, Islamic legal theory was marked by its commitment to pluralism and the centrality of human agency in Islamic jurisprudence. Yet in contemporary Malaysia, lay Muslims tend to understand Islamic law as being purely divine, with a single “correct” answer to any given question.
Why do activist groups representing some of society’s most marginalized employ legalistic forms of ‘rights talk’ when the reality of securing rights via the judicial system is almost unimaginable? The article considers this question in relation to the work of the Malaysian non-governmental organisation (NGO) EMPOWER who, in 2011, produced the Malaysian Women’s Human Rights Report focusing attention on the rights of informal sector workers, refugees, sexual minorities and women’s rights under non-Islamic family law.
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