Housing, Land, and Property Rights in Post-Conflict United Nations and Other Peace Operations: A Comparative Survey and Proposal for Reform

For more than sixty years, the blue helmets of United Nations Peacekeeping missions around the world have come to symbolize both the promise and the fragility of the UN. Beset with unresolved conflicts and underfunding, and invariably burdened with sentiments of over expectation, more times than not UN missions to keep the peace have made a difference. In recent years, frequent allegations of corruption, fraud, and abuse have tarnished the image of the UN as not only overly ineffectual, but as something to be skeptical of, rather than the obvious place to turn for help in resolving contentious challenges that affect many nations.

Scott Leckie is the director of Displacement Solutions and the founder of the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE). He is an international human rights lawyer, advocate, and researcher with some twenty years of experience in the international protection and promotion of human rights. He has carried out human rights work in more than sixty countries and has worked in expert and advisory capacities with many United Nations and other international agencies, including the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the UN Habitat Programme, the UN Development Programme (UNDP), and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). He has worked in both the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) and UN Transitional Authority in East Timor (UNTAET). He has written extensively on various human rights issues and lectures regularly at law schools in Switzerland, Thailand, and the United States.