Housing, Land and Property (HLP)-Sensitive Urban Law: Enhancing urban law to protect HLP across the conflict cycle (Conflict Prevention)

As the world continues to urbanize, cities face greater challenges in responding to humanitarian crises and achieving sustainable post-conflict development that upholds everyone’s right to adequate housing. The impacts of conflict are increasingly being experienced in urban areas around the world – as seen in modern crises such as those in Ukraine, the Gaza Strip, Yemen and Syria – putting the housing, land and property (HLP) rights of civilians at risk. HLP issues arise in conflict contexts, but many of the challenges surrounding these issues, such as return, restitution, adjudication and dispute-resolution, can be traced back to tenure insecurity caused by poor governance, chaotic urbanization, weak land administration and inadequate housing law and policy. For this reason, urban law has a critical role to play in preventing conflicts and their collateral impacts on people’s access to their HLP. In establishing the legal frameworks for the governance, management and development of urban areas, urban law can strengthen tenure security and reduce the likelihood of land being a root cause or trigger of conflict. As the first publication in the “Urban Law and Conflict Series”, this report examines how urban law can support accountable, inclusive and responsive urban governance, spatial planning, land administration and housing law and policy to prevent conflict and mitigate the adverse impacts of conflict on HLP rights.