April 2004
CIEL and the Lawyers’ Environmental Action Team (Tanzania), in coordination with the World Resources Institute and the International Association for the Study of Common Property, hosted a successful workshop on Public Interest Law and Community-Based Property Rights in Usa River (near Arusha), Tanzania from August 1 – 4, 2000. Financial support came from the Ford Foundation and USAID’s Africa Bureau.
Fifty-three participants from nineteen countries (including eleven African nations) attended the workshop. They included lawyers, social scientists, academicians and policy experts from both non-governmental and governmental organizations.
The workshop was designed to help develop, strengthen and broaden the pool of African legal and social science expertise on community-based property rights issues (CBPRs) related to conservation and sustainable development. It focused on legal aspects of property rights relationships between southern African nation states and local communities. The more detailed objectives were to:
- Strategize on ways to use national and international law to amplify the voices of Africa’s rural majorities;
- Highlight the interconnections between human rights and environmental issues;
- Foster skill sharing and collaboration in support of CBPRs among public interest lawyers and social scientists;
- Reflect on theory and practice concerning CBPR issues in Africa;
- Raise awareness within the African legal profession of the importance of CBPRs to substantive democracy and sustainable development;
- Promote African public interest law expertise in the field of CBPRs; and,
- Inspire lawyers and law students to pursue CBPR legal careers.
The recurring and enduring failure of national and international laws to address the interests and rights of rural people, especially with regards to recognition of community-based property rights was evident in all the workshop presentations. The need for lawyers to work with other sectors was often noted, as was the demand for, and limited supply of, public interest lawyers working on behalf of rural communities directly dependent on natural resources.
The last two days of the workshop focused on broader theoretical issues such as the legal personality of communities, alternative legal strategies, trends in national laws and jurisprudence, networking and developing and the role of law, and on developing future strategies, which included institution building, developing alternative law careers, drafting legislative alternatives, and networking.