Rapid Response Mechanisms: Supporting resolution of community-investor conflicts related to Land-Based Investments
Toolkit available here.
Rapid response mechanisms (RRMs) are a new, proactive legal approach designed to provide legal and technical support to communities facing nascent conflicts related to land-based investments. RRMs provide preventative rather than reactive legal help the moment a conflict arises or community members’ rights are threatened, rather than trying to reverse rights violations once they have already occurred.
o seasoned land rights advocates, it is an all-too-familiar story: investors arrive in a village and claim land in bad faith without having properly consulted with the local community.
They may have paid bribes, or made elaborate promises of community benefits that were not put into writing (and never materialise), or come hand-in-hand with government officials who threatened or intimidated villagers into consenting to a proposed investment. They then, in the course of operations, desecrate local ecosystems, violate human rights and destroy sacred sites.
Legal advocates usually get involved after such rights violations have already taken place; reacting to what has become a significant conflict, rather than trying to prevent it from happening. Legal support arrives after lives have been lost, properties destroyed, families displaced or evicted, local waters and soils polluted, and whole communities devastated.
Under such circumstances, legal support has a limited chance of reversing the damage. Rather, efforts are geared towards seeking reparations, advocating for community members to be released from jail and demanding compensation.
Rapid response mechanisms (RRMs) allow advocates to respond quickly and preventatively to resolve potential conflicts before they escalate and before major harm is done.
RRMs are particularly useful in areas where the likelihood of a community-investor conflict is high, for example when there is sudden land or resource scarcity – whether due to a drastic reduction in the area of land available to local communities, a drastic change in the quality of land or resources available (due to pollution, deforestation or a company claiming resources that local families depend on for their livelihood or survival), or investors limiting or cutting community access to water and other resources – and the remaining land and resources cannot meet the community’s needs and other available land or resources are limited.
RRMs allow advocates, working together with community members and local leaders, to identify these kinds of ‘hotspots’, then resolve or diffuse conflicts and remedy underlying violations before major conflicts erupt. Such preventative support may also serve government and investor interests by preserving peace and increasing overall stability in a region.
A new toolkit
Based on direct field experience, the new RRM toolkit co-produced by IIED, CED and LEMU offers practical guidance to advocacy organisations on how to create and run RRMs in a wide range of contexts. It covers:
What RRMs are and how they might be useful
The logistics of setting up an RRM
Tactics for researching and understanding community–investor conflicts
Strategies for keeping organisations and community members safe
Legal and technical strategies for resolving conflicts, addressing rights violations and establishing protections for affected communities
How to use the media to report cases of investor violations, and
How to work collaboratively with lawyers in investors’ home countries (who may not face personal danger from taking a case).
Packed with case examples, practitioner experiences, cautionary warnings and strategy tips like the example below, the guide aims to help advocacy organisations around the world working with communities affected by land investments to promote preventive legal empowerment approaches, rather than simply respond to harm after it has been done.