On 4 July, the Equal Rights Trust’s Head of Research. Sam Barnes, presented our new research on the links between discrimination and corruption in the land sector at an event at the LANDac Conference, in Utrecht, Netherlands.
Sam is the lead author of This Beautiful Land: Corruption, Discrimination and Land Rights in Sub-Saharan Africa, a report developed by the Trust in partnership with Transparency International, the global anti-corruption organisation. This Beautiful Land examines the dynamics of discriminatory corruption in the land sector – a sector where both discrimination and corruption pose significant barriers for the enjoyment of rights – through examining case studies drawn seven countries – Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, South Africa Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
This Beautiful Land is the latest output of a long-term partnership between Trust and Transparency International to document and analyse the links between discrimination and corruption. Our first report on the subject, Defying Exclusion: Stories and insights on the links between discrimination and corruption, published in 2021, identified the different ways in which discrimination and corruption fuel one another and defined “discriminatory corruption” for the first time.
At the LANDac conference, Sam participated in a session entitled Exposing land Corruption: Strengthening Solidarities or Justice which sought to examine the challenges of land corruption and poor land governance and their impacts on marginalised groups. He was joined on the panel by Jonathan Ochom, Transparency International Land Governance Lead; Janine Erasmus, Corruption Watch South Africa; Sonwabile Mnwana, Professor of Development Studies in the Department of Sociology at Rhodes University; and Frances Birungi-Odong, Executive Director of UCOBAC Uganda. The session examined case studies from South Africa – where corruption undermines land equity schemes – and Kenya – where the land rights of the Nubian community have been violated as a result of discriminatory corruption. Sam presented the findings of the Trust’s research, discussing how the dynamics of discriminatory corruption act as barriers to effective land governance.
To learn more about discriminatory corruption, read our 2021 study, Defying Exclusion: Stories and insights on the links between discrimination and corruption.
