Corporate accountability in agricultural land governance: Vietnam’s 2024 Land Law and selected comparative insights

Resumen

Vietnam’s 2024 Land Law marks an important reform in the governance of agricultural land-use rights by expanding the conditions under which economic organisations may access agricultural land while maintaining the constitutional principle that land belongs to the entire people and is uniformly managed by the State. This article examines whether the new legal framework can function not only as a system of land administration, but also as a framework for corporate accountability in agricultural land governance. Drawing on doctrinal legal analysis, international business and human rights standards, responsible tenure governance, and selected comparative insights, the article argues that corporate access to agricultural land in Vietnam should not be assessed solely through the formal validity of contracts, notarisation, or registration. It should also be evaluated by reference to the identification of legitimate land-use right holders, verification of corporate land-use conditions, transparency of land data, monitoring of approved agricultural land-use plans, and effective remedies for affected farmers, household members, spouses, heirs, and rural communities. The article identifies four accountability gaps in the current framework: uncertainty in determining legitimate right holders; weak verification of corporate land-use conditions; fragmented links among notarisation, registration, and land information systems; and insufficiently operational remedies. It concludes that Vietnam’s 2024 Land Law provides an important statutory foundation, but further regulatory refinement is required to transform land transaction rules into enforceable mechanisms of corporate due diligence, transparency, public supervision, and access to remedy.