This article investigates the concept of tenure security within international law, emphasizing the global legal architectures that influence and shape land tenure governance at the intersections of international human rights law and development. By tracing the evolution of tenure security from colonial practices to modern development paradigms, the article contends that international development and human rights frameworks often perpetuate dispossession and inequality. It critiques the convergence of human rights and development narratives around the formalization of land tenure, demonstrating how this practice reinforces Western legal frameworks and ontologies of land. The article examines a range of instruments including various UN CESCR General Comments, Reports and Guidelines issued by UN Special Rapporteurs, the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure, and the Sustainable Development Goals and indicators. It explores the mechanisms through which these international frameworks propose solutions for securing land tenure based on a resource ontology, highlighting how they perpetuate land commodification, marginalize and displace vulnerable populations, and contribute to the proliferation of racial capitalism. It further underscores the limitations of international human rights law mechanisms in addressing the complexities of land tenure security, dispossession, and the neoliberal agendas underlying and driving global land governance. Advocating for a decolonial approach, it challenges some of the foundational assumptions of international law and calls for the unsettling of Eurocentric and capitalist ontologies of land embraced by international development and international human rights law alike.
Winter
2025