Gemma van der Haar

• PhD
• Professor (Assistant) at Wageningen University & Research

The last two decades, a variety of-mostly donor-led-initiatives have aimed at 'localizing' land tenure registration , specifically in conflict-affected settings, making the registration of land rights more accessible to rural smallholders. In such settings, land registration is seen not just as instrumental to tenure security and economic developme...

Literature on transformations to sustainability increasingly recognizes transformation as inherently political, but the field still struggles to study these politics. Our research project ‘Securing Tenure, Sustainable Peace?’ on efforts to localize land registration in conflict-affected settings, both illustrates and contributes to understanding th...

Land disputes in conflict-affected settings are often considered as a security threat, to be addressed through mediation and strengthening the rule of law. This overlooks the roots of land conflicts in longer-term processes of agrarian development and worsening conditions of land and labour access. A case-study of a dispute between former plantatio...

There is a growing interest in localized land registration, in which user rights are acknowledged and recorded through a community‐based procedure, as an alternative to centralized titling to promote secure tenure in sub‐Saharan Africa. Localized land registration is expected to reduce land disputes, yet it remains unclear how it impacts disputes i...

Women have long remained invisible in representations of artisanal mining in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Based on original field data, this paper seeks to fill that gap. It shows how women come to mining sites with the hope of finding a degree of security, economic possibilities and the start of a new life. Contrary to what dominant disco...

This paper is an introduction to a special issue of Geo-forum that explores the multiple ways in which people seek to define their claims on land and defend their stakes vis-à-vis others, and how this structures resource access, land governance and land conflict in sub-Saharan Africa. The paper introduces the notion of claim-making to land as situa...

Civil war and violence often force large numbers of people to leave their lands. Multiple waves of displacement and (partial) return generate complex overlapping claims that are not easily solved. As people return to their regions of origin—sometimes after decades—they tend to find their land occupied by other settlers, some of whom hold legal enti...

Studies of women’s participation in civil conflict as armed combatants have attributed diverse motivations to such participation and examined the implications of participation for women’s empowerment in the aftermath. The authors contribute to these studies through an in-depth analysis of female combatants’ struggles for equality and empowerment du...

This paper explores claim-making to land in Burundi, where civil war and multiple waves of displacement and return have resulted in complex disputes over land. Zooming in on two different regions, the paper shows that, as people articulate their claims and defend their interests in land disputes, they strategically draw on a diversity of arguments,...

This article examines how the Maoist conflict in Nepal affected women ex-combatants and non-combatants, looking at shifts in gender roles during and after the conflict particularly from the standpoint of current livelihood challenges. We argue changing gender roles largely depends upon everyday practice of gender division of labour and power as it...

The link between public administration and conflict resolution is traditionally understood through the ‘democratic peace’ thesis, which holds that war is less likely in democracies than in non-democracies. Limited success with post-conflict democratisation missions has opened space for renewed research on three strands of ‘deeper democracy’: decent...

p>An estimated 2 billion people live in countries affected by fragility, conflict and violence. Extreme poverty is increasingly concentrated in these areas, and governments and international agencies seek avenues to enable socio-economic recovery and to support people as they try to rebuild their lives and livelihoods. People, Aid and Institutions...

This paper documents opposition to mining in Honduras, a country at the verge of an attempted ‘mining boom’ since the ratification of a new mining law in April 2013. It analyses how a broad movement – involving NGOs, social movements and local communities – engages in opposition to the extractive industry, declared a national development priority b...

While disputes over land are prominent in many situations of protracted violent conflict, questions remain about the precise relationships between land and violent conflict. Political ecology and legal anthropology have rightly questioned dominant approaches in theorizing land-related conflict that are centered on scarcity and institutional failure...

This working paper seeks to contribute to our knowledge on regulation and governance of commercial pressures on land by focusing on the role of local-level governments in rural areas in Africa. Recent processes of decentralization in many African countries suggest that – at least in theory – it is at this level where a growing capacity and interest...

This article attempts to understand how control over land (power in practice) is built, achieved and contested in the context of land transfers involving pressures over possession rights in Santiago del Estero in northern Argentina. Here new forms of land control – due to expansion of the speculative, soy and cattle frontiers – are changing and inv...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to contribute to debates on the value of indigenous knowledge for disaster risk reduction. Recent international policy papers advocate the importance of indigenous knowledge and calls for its recognition. The paper aims to explore these issues in the everyday practices of disaster response by indigenous people...

Community-driven reconstruction (CDR) has become a new paradigm in post-conflict development. It combines infrastructure restoration with introducing good governance at the local level. Recent evaluations show that governance objectives are not easily met and significant change cannot be demonstrated. This paper adds to this argument on the basis o...

This research project explores the link between programmes and policy initiatives on land governance and the broader question of state building in the DR Congo’s eastern Kivu Provinces. Our starting point was that land governance programmes do not only impact tenure security and land conflict on the ground, but can also contribute to the establishm...

Willem Assies died in 2010 at the age of 55. The various stages of his career as a political anthropologist of Latin American illustrate how astute a researcher he was. He had a keen eye for the contradictions he observed during his fieldwork but also enjoyed theoretical debate. A distrust of power led him not only to attempt to understand "people...

Community-driven reconstruction (CDR) has become a new paradigm in post-conflict development. It combines infrastructure restoration with introducing good governance at the local level. Recent evaluations show that governance objectives are not easily met and significant change cannot be demonstrated. This paper adds to this argument on the basis o...

This paper contributes to ongoing debates about the possibilities/impossibilities and particular challenges related to conducting field research in conflict settings by addressing a particular topic of concern: collaboration between researchers, organisations, respondents, and other actors present in the field. Whereas collaboration with local acto...

This report presents our findings on local governance in Štrpce/Shtërpcë, Kosovo. It is one of a series of three case-studies conducted within the framework of the Working Group on Local Governance, on Kosovo, Burundi and South Sudan. i With the case study on Kosovo we hoped to understand how a situation of parallel governance to the background of...

This article examines an emerging approach, called 'reconstruction from below', and its growing body of practice. The article argues that interventions for post-war reconstruction increasingly espouse a commitment to be bottom-up and contextually relevant, to look beyond state institutions, and to provide space for local ownership. The article trac...

This report is the outcome of a peer review of partnership in crisis-related interventions jointly realized by Cordaid, ICCO and Kerk in Actie, the Netherlands Red Cross, Oxfam Novib and War Child Holland and supported by PSO and Disaster Studies

This article connects the land reform process in eastern Chiapas to the Zapatista uprising. It argues that land reform was one of the main avenues of State formation during the twentieth century and had far-reaching social and political implications that are crucial to our understanding of the political project developed by the Zapatistas. More par...

– Mayan lives, Mayan Utopias: The Indigenous Peoples of Chiapas and the Zapatista Rebellion, edited by Jan Rus, Rosalva Aída Hernández Castillo, and Shannan L. Mattiace. Lanham etc: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2003. – To See with Two Eyes: Peasant Activism and Indian Autonomy in Chiapas, Mexico, by Shannan L. Mattiace. Albuquerque: Universit...

1 the uprising forcefully exposed the conditions of poverty and marginalization under which much of Mexico's in- digenous population lived, the humiliation and discrimination they suffered, and the political exclusion which kept them from enjoying full citizenship. Though the EZLN had not initially presented itself as an indigenous movement, it did...

El reconocimiento constitucional de los derechos indígenas en América Latina, así como la ratificación del Convenio 169 de la OTI hacen surgir varios interrogantes. En este artículo examinamos algunas cuestiones en debate. Para contextualizar, iniciamos el artículo indicando la imbricación de las luchas indígenas en los procesos de reforma del Esta...

Thesis (doctoral)--Wageningen University, 2001.