1. EXPOSING CORRUPTION BEHIND MID-SCALE LAND APPROPRIATIONS Elizabeth Donger & Rachael Knight Namati: Innovations in Legal Empowerment

2.  National elites often forcibly appropriate areas of ranging from 20 hectares to 1,000 hectares with broad impunity.  These mid-level land appropriations may present the greatest and most frequent threat to communities’ customary and indigenous land rights.  Yet no one is tracking them, and they receive little to no international attention.

3. Existing efforts to combat global trends in land grabbing do not comprehensively address: 1)The role of local and national elites in land seizure. 2)The prevalence of medium-scale land appropriations. 3)The relationship between land appropriation and corruption. This study is an initial effort to cast light on this under- examined problem and give voice to affected communities.

4.  36 cases of mid-scale land appropriation.  31 semi-structured interviews with land rights activists and global experts in 17 countries across Asia, Latin America and Africa.  Desk research on media coverage and academic literature.

5.  Government  Business  Law enforcement  The military  The judiciary  Powerful religious leaders  Traditional authorities.

6.  Speculation  Access to valuable natural resources (water, forests, wildlife, minerals)  Agricultural production  Tourism  Forced assimilation and destruction of ethnic or indigenous groups  Territorial control and political power during conflict or post-conflict situations  Private urban development  Benefit from large scale foreign investments

7.  Harassment, intimidation, threats and violence  Illegal fencing  Encroachment  Occupation of underused land  Illegally issued land titles  Fraudulent land titles  Manipulation of community land administration  Misuse of compulsory acquisition / eminent domain  Misallocation of protected land to private interests  Illegal allocation of state land to private interests  Abuse of government settlement schemes Illegal Quasi- Legal

8. 2010/2013: Pitalito, Huila Department

9. 2011/2013: Lake Kariba, Siavonga District

10. 2014: O’Chra village, Keo Seima District

11. Immediate, transformative impacts:  Bodily harm  Displacement  Loss of livelihood  Loss of personal property. These dispossessions concentrate land in the hands of elites, which can lead to conflict and structural instability. Medium-term impacts:  Chronic food insecurity  The breakdown of traditional communities  Unemployment  Exposure to discrimination in all areas of civil and economic life.

12.  Direct negotiation  Petitioning local or national government  Petitioning foreign governments or international institutions  Litigation through domestic courts  Legal action through international courts  Demonstrations  Reoccupation of the land  Armed response  Media coverage

13. The international community has yet to develop strategies to resist these kinds of land appropriations. Successful strategies to combat bad faith elite land appropriation will combine both top- down and bottom-up advocacy tools:  Increased media coverage;  Robust institutional reforms to hold elites accountable;  Meaningful empowerment of local communities to understand their land rights and develop tools to collectively defend them.

14.  Awareness and public dialogue  Non-profit reports  Data collection by governments and advocacy groups.  Community paralegal programs  Accountable, organized land administration  Community land documentation and protection  Mapping initiatives  International legal frameworks for responsible investment that can be applied nationally  Early warning systems  Direct community action  Litigation