The Right to Land as Human Right in the CIDH Jurisprudence: The “Awas Tingni” Case

Monday 26^th February, 2024

Chaired by Professor Ann Genovese, this seminar presented by Professor Carlotta Latini explored an example from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the “Awa Tingni” case. This case is similar in importance to that of Mabo. However, it is less well known and has had less impact locally, despite the recognition of the right to land as a human right.

Carlotta is currently working on a project on collective and community property in comparative historical perspective, financed by the Italian Ministry of the University. The research started by questioning the experience of Italian municipalities in relation to civic uses and collective properties, with the case of her own location, the mountain and rural communities around Camerino. Working with the thought of twentieth-century Italian jurist, Giacomo Venezian, Carlotta began to extend the project to observe and trace how juridical concepts from Roman law informed the colonial project for Italy (in Ethiopia, Libia, etc.), France (in Tunisia), Spain (in multiple South American countries) and now, as a common law comparator, Britain (in Australia). Although the focus across different jurisdictions recognises these are different colonial stories on an historical, legal and political level, it is possible to observe similar repercussions with respect to the right to land. The seminar will discuss how the land rights of Indigenous people and communities, as legitimate and ancestral rights to enjoy the land, have been destroyed by this inherited common European law. This places a focus onto the role and task of legal historians to make these forms of colonial and juridical inheritance clearer, to understand better what happens in contemporary cases about rights to land.