A/HRC/16/63 they owned the land in a governmental agreement dated 7 April 2003 and a Constitutional Court decision dated 4 May 2004.36 In 2005, Amnesty International noted that, “A particular characteristic of agrarian disputes in Guatemala is that the full weight of the law and judicial system is often levied in order to enforce evictions, but not to issues relating to labour rights of rural workers or land tenure of rural communities.”37 22. In many other countries, smallholder farmers are forcibly displaced from their land as a consequence of development projects, often in the case of large-scale commercial exploitation of the resources of smallholder farmers, including mining for minerals, oil or gas, logging, building dams and highways, or expanding industrial agriculture. Authorities rarely assess the likely impact of such projects or do they take timely corrective action. In India, for example, many cases of the forced displacement of rural communities without adequate resettlement and rehabilitation have been documented. The case of the Narmada dams is of particular concern; despite clear directions by the Supreme Court in 2000,38 thousands of affected people have still not been adequately resettled and rehabilitated. In 2005, a report by the Indian People’s Tribunal on Environment and Human Rights found that 11,000 families in Madhya Pradesh, 1,500 families in Maharashtra and 200 families in Gujarat were still to be rehabilitated, although their villages had already been submerged.39 In November 2008, given that the situation had not improved, 20,000 people affected by the Narmada dams participated in a march for displaced peoples’ rights and dignity in Khandwa, Madhya Pradesh.40 23. The global “land grab” (see paragraph 21 above) has the potential to involve an unprecedented amount of land expropriation, forced evictions and displacements.41 With the expansion of biofuels production since 2003 and the global food crisis in 2008, the revival of the strategy of foreign investors, both Governments and companies, to buy or secure long-term leases of productive land in other countries can have detrimental effects on local farmers if the land they use is sold or leased to foreign investors.42 24. The most famous case of the above-mentioned phenomenon was the deal struck between the company Daewoo and the Government of Madagascar on a lease of 1.3 million hectares of land, a third of the arable land of that country. The same phenomenon has been witnessed in many other countries; today, an estimated number of 180 land deals exist at varying stage of negotiation.42 In five countries of sub-Saharan Africa only, a total of 2.5 million hectares of land were allocated between 2004 and 2008.43 It is estimated that the Republic of Korea signed deals for 690,000 hectares, the United Arab Emirates for 400,000 hectares in the Sudan, and that a group of Saudi investors are spending $100 million in Ethiopia to grow wheat, barley and rice on land leased to them by the Government.44 In 2009 alone, investors are said to have expressed interest in buying or leasing an additional 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 Amnesty International, Memorandum to the Government of Guatemala. Supreme Court, Narmada Bachao Andolan v. Union of India, 2000. Report of the Indian People’s Tribunal on Environment and Human Rights, 2005. Available from www.narmada.org/IPT_Report.pdf. See www.narmada.org (civil society) and www.nvda.nic.in (Government). A/HRC/13/33/Add.2. Carin Smaller and Howard Mann, “A thirst for distant lands: foreign investment in agricultural land and water” (Winnipeg, International Institute for Sustainable Development, 2009). Lorenzo Cotula and others, Land grab or development opportunity? Agricultural investment and international land deals in Africa (London/Rome, IIED/FAO/IFAD, 2009). “Outsourcing-s third wave. Rich food importers are acquiring vast tracts of poor countries’ farmland. Is this beneficial foreign investment or neocolonialism?”, The Economist, 21 May 2009. Available from www.economist.com/node/13692889. 9