Criminalization of Land Conflicts, Last Resort Principle, and Human Rights Protection: A Systematic Literature Review

This systematic literature review examines how the literature conceptualizes the criminalization of land conflicts, how the use of criminal law should be constrained by the ultima ratio principle, the human rights implications arising from criminalization, and the forms of state responsibility and compensation discussed when criminal justice mechanisms are wrongfully applied. The review follows a PRISMA-based design and draws on Scopus searches structured around four research questions. The screening process began with 1,855 records and, following initial filtering, title and abstract screening, open-access retrieval, and full-text eligibility assessment, resulted in a final corpus of 70 journal articles published between 2021 and 2026. Thirteen (13) articles informed RQ1, twenty-nine (29) informed RQ2, twelve (12) informed RQ3, and sixteen (16) informed RQ4. The findings demonstrate that land conflicts become criminalized when administrative, civil, customary, and sociopolitical disputes are reframed through criminal law, particularly in contexts involving land grabbing, extractivism, Indigenous marginalization, and state-corporate alliances. The review further indicates that the ultima ratio principle is best operationalized through the prior use of non-penal remedies, proportionality, minimal intervention, restorative justice mechanisms, and strict procedural safeguards. The identified human rights implications include threats to land rights, Indigenous peoples’ rights, livelihoods, participation, the right to a fair trial, and access to justice. The final strand of the literature demonstrates that wrongful criminalization may give rise to state obligations concerning judicial or administrative review, exoneration, compensation, rehabilitation, and institutional reform. Based on these findings, this article proposes a Land Conflict Criminalization and Human Rights Protection Framework that prioritizes non-penal dispute resolution, subjects the use of criminal law to an ultima ratio test, centers human rights protection, and requires effective state remedies when punitive powers are misused.