FIAN, 2010
Land grabbing in Kenya and Mozambique
Over the past years vast tracks of agricultural lands have been taken over by foreign firms. The total area probably surpasses the farmland of France. Much of this land is located in African countries with fast increasing populations suffering hunger and under-nourishment. Such land acquisition has been happening outside public scrutiny and many details are still hidden. This land grabbing has sparked debates in the media, in developmental institutions, in UN organisations and in civil society. FIAN International has been working for more than twenty years against forced evictions of rural communities from their agricultural lands, pastures, forests or fishing grounds. In these two decades FIAN International has witnessed how peasant farming and pastoralism got increasingly marginalized as a matter of international and national policies. They are now faced with losses of lands to an extent reminiscent of colonial times. The current publication contributes to the debate about land grabbing and in particular to a human rights framework dealing with this phenomenon. In May and August/September 2009 FIAN investigated four cases of land grabbing in Kenya and Mozambique in detail on the spot.
