The first issue of LEAD Journal (Law, Environment And Development) has now been published and is already attracting nice comments. UNITAR will collaborate on future issue of LEAD to promote the dissemination of information on environmental law. More on lead website at www.lead-journal.org
or click here.

The Swiss National Fund awards IELRC a Partnership Grant for a three- year research project entitled Legal Issues Related to Water Sector Restructuring: Human Rights, Environment, Agriculture and Socio-Economic Aspects.

This project will bring together leading researchers from Switzerland and India who will study ongoing changes in the water

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IELRC was invited by the Ministry of Environment and Forest (Government of India) in association with the Research and Information System (RIS, India) to a national consultation conference on the 'Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety: Issues before MoP2'. 

IELRC Geneva Director, Dr P. Cullet, spoke on the issue of Liability and Redress: International Trends and Domestic Policy Options.

Tuesday, May 24, Causuarina Hall , India Habitat Centre, New Delhi

Sustainable Management of Wildlife Resources in East Africa: A Critical Analysis of the Legal, Policy and Institutional Frameworks
This paper looks at the national legal and institutional regimes for wildlife management in East African countries and the interface between these and international conventions dealing with wildlife management. A critical analysis of the regimes is carried out to look at the extent to which they provide mechanisms for sustainable wildlife management.

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Land Tenure, Land Use and Sustainability in Kenya: Towards Innovative Use of Property Rights in Wildlife Management

 It is argued that private property rights and current wildlife conservation and management laws and policies in Kenya fail to provide the solution to wildlife biodiversity

erosion partly because of their preoccupation with a monolithic system of property ownership favouring the state and individuals and neglecting communities and/or groups.

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Human Rights, Formalisation and Women’s Land Rights in Southern and Eastern Africa.

Land is a vital resource for rural livelihoods. Establishing and clarifying land rights through formalisation has become a key issue in development policies that aim to promote more productive uses of land. This report looks at some land reform initiatives from a gendered human rights

perspective.The human rights-based approach (HRBA) has a direct bearing on international and national land reform policies, facilitating gender equality through elimination of discrimination against women. The overall aim of this report is to make a contribution to the operationalisation of the HRBA.

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Demolition Drive

Even as the poor are kept teetering on the precipice of demolition and destruction of habitat, the assumption of powers by the state that can be exercised selectively and arbitrarily, based on a legality that it manufactures, has continued to flourish in contradiction of the inclusive interpretations developed in

human rights jurisprudence. The right to housing has been rendered invisible, even non-existent, in this exertion of power, and the evolving meaning of 'housing' and 'adequate housing', and the injunction in the matter of forced evictions has been thrown into a cauldron of callous neglect.

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India and the ICC

The Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC Statute) would have been more acceptable to India if it had contained an opt-in provision whereby a state could accept the jurisdiction of the ICC by declaration (possibly for a specified period), and this might be limited to particular conduct or to conduct committed during a particular period of time. The lack of such a provision, and the

inherent jurisdiction which replaced it, are perceived as representing a violation of the consent of states, and thus a threat to sovereignty. India’s resistance to accepting the inherent jurisdiction of the ICC is explained, in part, by anxieties about how investigation, prosecution and criminal proceedings in the Indian system may be judged by an international court…

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Seeds Regulation, Food Security and Sustainable Development

This article analyses the Seeds Bill, 2004 which is being proposed as a replacement for the existing Seeds Act, 1966. The Bill has proved very controversial because it threatens to upset the carefully attained compromise found in the context of

the Plant Variety and Farmers’ Rights Act and because it would lead to undermining rules concerning biosafety, for instance. This article analyses the Bill’s main provisions and provides an analysis of the broader regulatory impacts that its adoption would bring.

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