Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Acknowledgements
- Contents
- Introduction
- A Human Rights-Based Approach to Food and Land Issues – A Normative Analysis
- Pollution, Takings and Access to Justice in East and West
- Land Grabbing, Land Struggles and the Human Right to Food
- Women's Right to Land: A Comparison between International Legal Obligations and Customary Laws in Bali (Indonesia) and in Acholi (Uganda)
- Agrarian Reform and Smallholder Rights in Indonesia: Alternatives to Corporate, Customary and Private Ownership
- Note on Contributors
- Maastricht Series in Human rights
Land Grabbing, Land Struggles and the Human Right to Food
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 September 2018
- Frontmatter
- Acknowledgements
- Contents
- Introduction
- A Human Rights-Based Approach to Food and Land Issues – A Normative Analysis
- Pollution, Takings and Access to Justice in East and West
- Land Grabbing, Land Struggles and the Human Right to Food
- Women's Right to Land: A Comparison between International Legal Obligations and Customary Laws in Bali (Indonesia) and in Acholi (Uganda)
- Agrarian Reform and Smallholder Rights in Indonesia: Alternatives to Corporate, Customary and Private Ownership
- Note on Contributors
- Maastricht Series in Human rights
Summary
A HISTORIC STARTING POINT
‘International Human Rights law is written with the indelible ink made of the blood and sweat of women, men and children who struggle individually or collectively against abuses and for justice.’
The historic reality of this statement is typically underpinned with references to the United States Bill of Rights (1776) and the French Revolution (1789). In the context of the discussion of land struggles and a human right to land, another, older historic event refers more directly to these issues. The so called Great Peasants’ War (German: Großer Deutscher Bauernkrieg) was a widespread popular revolt in the German-speaking areas of Central Europe, especially southwestern Germany between 1524 and 1525. It was preceded by more local peasant revolts in the second half of the 15th century like the Bundschuh movement. The historic background of these revolts was the renaissance of Roman law in many parts of Europe – especially Roman property law. In this context, the ruling elites appropriated common lands, forests and waters. The resulting systematic deprivation of access to these resources together with arbitrary corvée has been a key cause for the spreading of rural revolts in Central Europe. In March 1525 representatives of 50 southern German peasant groups (so called Haufen) gathered in Memmingen to elaborate a set of demands, the ‘12 Articles’, that can be seen as an articulation of their human rights. Articles 5 and 10 aptly highlight the context of their struggle:
Article 5:
‘The high gentlemen have taken sole possession of the woods. If the poor man needs something, he has to buy it for double money. Therefore, all the woods that were not bought (relates to former community woods, which many rulers had simply appropriated) shall be given back to the municipality so that anybody can satisfy his needs for timber and firewood thereof.’
Article 10:
‘Several have appropriated meadows and acres (community land that was at the disposition of all members), that belong to the municipality. Those we want back to our common hands.’
The uprising against this appropriation and privatization of natural resources ended in a bloody war in 1525, where some 300,000 poorly armed peasants were slaughtered by the soldiers of the aristocracy. This revolt is a relevant but rarely referred to example of social struggle for basic human rights in the context of access to and control over natural resources.
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- Publisher: IntersentiaPrint publication year: 2016