Rupture
Some 3,100 years ago, complex crises are credited with the collapse of Bronze Age civilizations across the eastern Mediterranean within a single lifetime. That rupture ushered in four centuries of de-development, where people even forgot how to read and write. As a result, that dark period produced no records where those civilizations fell.
Three millennia later, “we the peoples of the United Nations” have been “determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind.” However, that promise and the legal and institutional architecture to honor it have given rise to—or, rather, never deviated from—the repetitive scourge of war and genocide. Our Coalition denounces the ongoing war and those governments whose aggression has plunged the planet into this all-too-familiar cycle of destruction.
The barbarism inflicted on the cradle of civilization since the UN’s founding belies the lofty principles espoused by its Western authors. While the 2030 Agenda still articulates a development vision, it remains estranged from its human rights prerequisites. The promised transformation instead has become—as in the recent World Economic Forum address by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney—a rupture.
While the US-Israeli war on Iran crescendos, it is dawning on other states that negotiating with the hegemon is not sovereignty. We need more honesty, not just adaptation to the prevailing trend. The towering sentries of international law seem to have betrayed us.
The US-Israel axis has especially distorted the security, development and human rights pillars of the UN Charter so that they bend to a predatory imperial order. Even humanitarian service has been perverted to form a circuitry that generates only fleeting moments of relief, only to yield in service of sustainable genocide: the sadistic and incremental process (e.g., “mowing the lawn”) that inflicts the greatest possible harm on the persecuted people—in perpetuity. The axis of forces reminds us that history did not begin on 7 October 2023; neither did the genocide they perpetrate.
We are reminded also of what we have achieved over the last century, if only in the conceptual and theoretical realm. Among the present commemorations is this year’s 50th anniversary of Habitat International Coalition and the foundational first UN Conference on Human Settlements. Here, “HIC @ 50: Advancing Norms” reflects on the long road to habitat-related standard setting in the half century preceding the current rupture. It invites questions about the prospects going forward.
One big one is the codification of domicide, with further specificity provided in the UN Commission of Inquiry’s late-2025 report, as explained in “Domicide Dimensions of Genocide.” That is followed by an update on the disposition of land in war-torn Sudan. Minding the pattern of intense land concentration in a country during conflict, this article highlights predatory extraterritorial state interests. This finding underscores the urgency of a recommendation from the regional CSO consultations and Land Forum in 2024 to establish a set of principles for responsible agricultural investment specific to the MENA region.
The norm setting process continues also in the Human Rights System. In this period, LT reports the contributions of HIC Member organizations collaborating to advise the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights on drafting a new General Comment on the Covenant obligations in conflict situations.
On this 50th commemoration of Palestine’s National Day of the Land (30 March), an essay by Jamal Talab al-Amleh explains the metaphysical and existential value of the olive tree, and why it is a primary target of Israel’s colonial destruction of the land and its people.
The Global Developments section emphasizes land issues in the global system, which is so much subject to the present rupture. While commemorating the 50 years of HIC and Habitat I, “Food Focus on Land” highlights the contributions of UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food Michael Fakhri’s final report.
It also celebrates the Global Land Observatory’s new global Status of Land Tenure findings, but cautions about some Digitalization Dangers to avoid. These developments coincide with the ICARRD+20 conference from a HIC perspective, where the UN’s remedy and reparations framework should have grounded a better outcome.
Developments toward repairing loss and damage, including housing, land and property, due to climate change are the subject of “Approaching Remedy for Loss and Damage.”
Also, on a positive note, the Women’s Spaces project hosted a learning exercise in “Achieving Housing and Land Policy Coherence in Uganda.” HLRN reports its perspective on this inspiring development.
As this Land Times/ أحوال الأرض bears witness to the rupture of our present-day, its contributors also seek to be part of the remedy.
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