Securing Rights to Communal Land in Zimbabwe: Finding Human-Rights-Based Solutions

A human rights approach has the potential to secure rights to communal land in ways that have not been possible through conventional state enforcement of the law. However, the lack of experimentation with human-rights-based models for restitution of communities dispossessed of land by the state has exposed them to perpetual tenure insecurity in the face of land investments. To highlight the potential usefulness of a human-rights-based approach, this paper provides an explanatory investigation of displacement of communities to pave way for land investments in Zimbabwe. For this, a human rights approach is applied to the analysis of community displacements by agricultural, mining, and urban development projects. Data sources include a thorough literature review, documentary analysis, and court judgements. Injustices arising from community displacement with inadequate or without compensation are analysed. In recent years, countries have increasingly come up with restitution solutions that look beyond constraints posed by existing legal frameworks. Although innovative restitution solutions seek to make displaced communities 'better off'-thus addressing the ethical principle of restitution-that is at the core of a human rights approach-the results reveal options that transcend the narrow focus on the prompt payment of just and fair compensation. Furthermore, besides emerging options for restitution of communities that get displaced by land investments, international best practice offers principles that shape future win-win solutions to land investments.