A new 76-page report prepared by DS Director Scott Leckie with the collaboration of Jose Arraiza of NRC, with the support of the Joint Peace Fund, outlines the components of what an eventual agreement in Myanmar on housing, land and property restitution could look like. The report, entitled BUILDING AGREEMENT ON RESTITUTION RIGHTS WITH THE MYANMAR PEACE PROCESS AND NATIONAL LEGAL FRAMEWORK examines all of the necessary components that would need to find recognition within an eventual national agreement designed to ensure that everyone with a viable HLP restitution claim could submit these to an independent judicial body with enforcement powers strong enough to ensure the full enjoyment of restitution rights throughout all corners of the country. Millions of people with legitimate restitution claims have yet to be able to have these claims heard by judicial bodies with the power to enforce these claims to return to, recover and/or re-inhabit the homes and lands from which they have been forced to flee over the past several decades. The report points out that HLP restitution rights are widely recognised in international law, and that many other countries have adopted restitution laws and procedures as key elements within peace processes and the context of post-conflict peace-building. The practically-oriented report contains a full draft of a National Restitution Agreement which could serve as a model for peace negotiators and government officials as they continue to search for ways to secure a sustainable peace and strengthened democracy throughout the country as a whole. The full report is available here: Building Agreement on Restitution Rights in Myanmar (March 2019).
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DS Designs World's First HLP Restitution SmartPhone App
DS and our partners Tech Solutions Human Rights (www.tshr.io) continue our collaborative work on developing a Mobile phone App which will, for the first time, enable any refugee or IDP with outstanding or unresolved housing, land or property restitution issues to formulate a claim through use of the My Home App ©. The My Home App © will link to a secure database which will enable your organisation to run custom data analytics that could be used for both qualitative and quantitative advocacy. The design of the data system enables users to gain meaningful insight without having to have a background in IT. We are continuing this work that has been underway since 2018 and we are currently seeking partners to work with us to bring the My Home App © into use. If your UN agency, government or other organisation would be interested in working with us to make the My Home App © functional, please be in touch - info@displacementsolutions.org. ...
Commemorating 10 Years of Action - the 2016 DS Annual Report
Ten Years of Action It is hard to believe that DS has now been active for ten busy and eventful years. This has been quite a ride for our (intentionally) small and flexible organisation, and one involving an wonderful team of dedicated HLP experts from around the world working in a range of displacement hotspots. From developing the Peninsula Principles, to spearheading global efforts to obtain land for climate displaced people, developing IDP return designs in Timor Leste, Somalia, Colombia, Bhutan and many more, carrying on-site investigations in Tuvalu, Solomon Islands, Panama, Kiribati, Bangladesh and other climate change-affected areas, to conducting HLP rights analysis and restitution design work in Myanmar, advising the UN on HLP issues in Syria, publishing several books, inaugurating the world’s first law school courses on climate displacement, and writing DS reports, producing films, building homes for climate displaced families in Chittagong, and so much more, this first DS decade has been an exhilarating one. Since our founding on 28 December 2006, DS has worked in some 35 countries to assist in finding rights-based solutions to forced displacement in all of its forms. Besides our legal experts, we have had the honour of working with villagers, community…...
New DS Report (!) - Courtrooms and Climate Change
New DS Report (!) - Courtrooms and Climate Change: The Current State of Play - Global attention to the question of climate change, including climate displacement, has expanded dramatically over the 15 years since Displacement Solutions initiated our efforts to find concrete, rights-based and land-based solutions to this crisis. One area, in particular, that has seen considerable advancement in recent years is the growing scope of judicial attention to various aspects of the climate change question, spanning international, regional and national institutions. More than 1,500 cases have been filed addressing various aspects of the climate crisis over the past several years, and as a result, a rapidly growing body of case law is emerging from judicial organs that collectively give a sense of which climate change issues adjudicative bodies are willing to address, as well as the extent to which such judicial (and quasi-judicial) decisions are having a real world impact on the environmental and human impacts of global warming and all of its effects. Our new 218-page report - Courtrooms and Climate Change: The Current State of Play - explores some of the leading cases decided thus far and how judges and lawyers in countries as diverse as the Netherlands,…...
Climate Change and Human Rights Law School Course Goes Digital
DS Director Scott Leckie recently completed teaching his popular law school course at Monash Law School in Melbourne on Climate Change and Human Rights (LAW5454), this time using Zoom. After some initial reluctance to teach a complex law course using Zoom because of the COVD-19 lockdown, after a few minutes all was well and the two-week course was a pure joy to teach - great and clearly dedicated students always makes a big difference! If you would like to have Scott teach this course at your law school or as an undergraduate course, please contact us anytime at info@displacementsolutions.org to discuss possibilities. This is the world's first law school course on climate change and human rights, and has been taught by Scott at various leading law schools since 2007 when he first designed and presented the course in Australia....
