Contesting land grabs, negotiating statehood: the politics of international accountability mechanisms and land disputes in rural Cambodia

A feminist methodology for implementing the right to food in agrarian communities: reflections from Cambodia and Ghana

“…The empirical approach is further informed by insights gleaned in each context through comparative constitutionalism (Appendix 2). In addition, findings from the DEMETER research which usedquantitative household surveys, qualitative interviews and focus group discussions with a variety of different respondents on questions of agricultural and land commercialization, gender equality and food security provide examples of inequalities inherent in current food systems along with the ways in which these could be transformed (Joshi 2019(Joshi , 2020Adu-Ankrah et al 2020;Dzanku and Tsikata 2021;Gironde et al 2021). 1 The categories used to organize the information about what a feminist approach to the right to food might require are adapted from a number of different sources including: the Montréal Principles on Women's Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (2004), the CEDAW Committee General Recommendation no.…”

“…In both countries, our qualitative interviews indicate a widespread perception that women are more adept than men at negotiating peaceful settlements to conflicts over land and natural resources (DEMETER 2020). This view that women are less likely to intensify social conflict persists, in spite of evidence from Cambodia that the government frequently employs various forms of violence to suppress land rights claims from smallholder farmers, even when these are advanced by women (Beban, Schoenberger, and Lamb 2019;Park 2019;Joshi 2020).…”

“…In general, social resistance to agricultural and land commercialization in each country has tended to be ad hoc and localized in nature and has not yet served as a springboard for broader discussions at the national level, or even within communities and families, concerning gender equal rights to food and land (Adu-Ankrah et al 2020;Joshi 2020). In Cambodia, government repression of civil society means that many forms of human rightsbased organizing such as contributions to legislative and policy processes, legal challenges, peaceful protests and public debate are not available to women's rights groups working on issues of food, land and natural resources (Lamb et al 2017;Beban, Schoenberger, and Lamb 2019;DEMETER 2020).…”

“…Another consequence of the absence of direct legal recognition of most economic, social and cultural rights in Ghana and Cambodia is that there are relatively low levels of awareness of the right to food amongst local communities and civil society organizations working on other women's rights issues in each of our study countries (Adu-Ankrah et al 2020). In Cambodia, litigation-based strategies for claiming human rights in domestic courts have proven dangerous, counter-productive or ineffective for people without connections to the ruling political élite (Adler and So 2012;Brickell and Springer 2017;Joshi 2020). In Ghana, while courts have recognized the rights of local communities to access fisheries and other food resources as a component of the right to life, these cases have not acted as catalysts for larger advocacy campaigns about gender equality in relation to food and land rights (Adu-Ankrah et al 2020;Atudiwe 2014).…”

Agricultural and land commercialization – feminist and rights perspectives

“…Thus, in South-East Asia, gender-mainstreamed fisheries management policies inadvertently reinforced traditionally male-dominated networks of patronage (Resurreccion 2008). And in the contentious politics of land commercialization in Cambodia, resources are distributed through party-based clientelism, which also circumscribes mechanisms for conflict resolution (Joshi 2020).…”