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I had the pleasure and honor of participating in the 12th annual Human Rights Institute, “Land Rights in the Era of Land Grabbing: The Land Tenure Security Index”, hosted by the Program on Human Rights and the Global Economy (PHRGE) at Northeastern University School of Law. The 2017 Human Rights Institute focused on land rights, paying special attention to proposals to develop a Land Tenure Security Index as a tool to help vulnerable rural populations secure their land tenure. PHRGE Visiting Scholar, Alfred Brownell, hosted the 2017 Institute. Alfred is a Liberian human rights lawyer and founder of Green Advocates.

Alfred Brownell and PHRGE convened an impressive group of community land rights advocates, who on the first day laid out the range of initiatives currently underway to track land tenure, including the International Land Coalition‘s Dashboard under development, Rights and Resources Initiative’s tenure data tool, the Global Property Rights Index, LandMark, and the African Community Land Transparency Index, to name just a few. Liz Alden Wily shared an especially thoughtful and comprehensive review of the challenges and obstacles in developing a land tenure security index. Chris Jochnick of Landesa delivered the keynote address, “Land Rights is the Human Rights Issue of the 21st Century.” On the second day, I facilitated a wide-ranging discussion, starting with reflections on why it is felt a new index is needed, how we can encourage a more informed assessment of the many initiatives already underway, and the significance of a community empowerment process in any such initiative. Most notably, of all the different indices discussed, only one of them – the Africa Community Rights Network’s African Community Land Transparency Index – included a strong focus on community empowerment, yet this index faced funding and other challenges to carry out those planned community empowerment activities.