Statement by the Assistant President
International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD)
and Co-chair of the ILC Assembly of Members
Jim Carruthers

Your Excellency, Dr Carols Mesa, ministers and official of the Government of Bolivia, Director of the International Land Coalition, members and partners of the International Land Coalition, representatives of civil society, the private sector, friends and colleagues. As co-Chair of this assembly and the council of the ILC, and on behalf of my organization, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and, indeed, of the whole UN family, I am pleased to welcome you to the Global Assembly of the International Land Coalition. This is the first time that this assembly has been held outside of Rome .

Mr President, our members and partners are delighted to be able to hold this meeting in Bolivia and because of that this meeting holds many expectations for those gathered here from more than 40 countries and from your fellow citizens and interested groups and organizations that are represented. We hope to be successful in meeting these expectations because, first of all, the dynamic environment in Bolivia at the moment, this is an important turning point in the history of the ILC and this meeting will set some important directions. Secondly, this is a great opportunity to learn from each other and this event will reinforce our commitment to land reform and to the importance to land resource management.

By learning and sharing we gain a wide repertoire of new ideas and innovations to take back to our own organizations. Mr President, I represent IFAD in the ILC and IFAD is a very strong supporter of the Land Coalition and is a founding member. We believe in what the Land Coalition is doing - for that reason the ILC is housed at IFAD's headquarters in Rome and the IFAD is the ILC's largest financial contributor. We are also convinced that the ILC is doing a good job and is achieving its objectives of capacity-building and creating space for participatory discussion and debate, not only on land reform but on the broad issue of land use management. In our view, this is vital because without land reform and sustainable land use management, we will not be able to overcome rural poverty and I think all of us realize that most of the world's poor - over nine hundred million of them - live in the rural areas. We must overcome rural poverty to meet the Millennium Development Goals in 2015. Mr President IFAD is very much in solidarity with the ILC and its Bolivian partners, as well as with our partners around the world, because the ILC is an alliance for collective action and not just for a classical service provider or resource providers. Its mandate to empower rural people, particularly rural women, and its commitment to this collective action is what is required.

Mr President I would also like to highlight that IFAD has a strong and long-standing partnership with the Government of Bolivia in addressing directly the issues around world poverty. IFAD has had nine major projects in Bolivia worth over 81 million dollars and new projects are underway to strengthen our partnership. Mr President, we are very proud to be a partner with Bolivia in this endeavour. And, indeed, in the end it is all about partnership. And I sincerely hope that IFAD and the ILC, along with the Government of Bolivia, will continue to build an even stronger partnership over the next years.