Losing Land and Livelihood: Commercial Farming and Displacement in Rural Zambia
Juliana Nnoko-Mewanu, Janet Walsh
The Zambian government regards agriculture as a “panacea” for rural poverty, and the country’s leaders have been promoting agribusiness investments on huge swaths of land. However, flaws in the government’s regulation of commercial agriculture, and its poor efforts at protecting the rights of vulnerable people, instead of helping people climb out of the poverty mire, are actually hurting them. Families that have lived and farmed for generations on land now allocated to commercial farms are being displaced without due process or compensation. Some have been left hungry and homeless. This paper examines the human rights impacts of the activities of commercial farms on residents, including the distinctive impacts on women as a result of their social roles and status, and the fact that they have the least opportunity to negotiate and assert their rights.
Event: Land Governance in an Interconnected World_Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty_2018
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