Taking advantage of the presence of more than 20 000 official delegates at the Summit and about 30 000 delegates at the Global People’s Forum (GPF), the Coalition held a number of parallel events for the purpose of launching the LAND Partnerships initiative and obtaining further support for A Common Platform on Access to Land. The Coalition sponsored activities both in parallel with the Summit and with civil-society events centred on the GPF. The ensuing discussions, dialogue and debates were extremely useful. While spending time together, Coalition partners and staff of the secretariat had the chance to reflect on and discuss a number of issues, opportunities and strategies for the Coalition’s future work. Details of these discussions are available on request from the Secretariat.

Event 1 Launching of LAND Partnerships: 29 August 2002

The WSSD Secretariat’s call for partnership initiatives inspired the Coalition to develop, on the basis of its experience, a multi-stakeholder framework for Land Alliances for National Development, or LAND Partnerships. The development of LAND Partnerships emerged from negotiations to further country-level collaboration between state, civil-society, and bilateral and international actors.

In its efforts to obtain political support commitment from stakeholders — at both the country and international levels — for increasing poor rural people’s access to land, the Coalition invited the governments of Indonesia, The Philippines and South Africa to launch Land Partnerships. The choice of these countries was dictated by the experience of Coalition nodes at the country level and their response to the principles of LAND Partnerships as explored and discussed at the PrepComs.

More than 70 participants from grass-roots organizations, national and international CSOs and networks, governments, bilateral institutions and intergovernmental organizations attended the event, which was chaired by Miguel Urioste of Fundación Tierra (Bolivia). The President of IFAD opened the event and gave an inspiring address on LAND Partnerships. Bruce Moore described the processes leading up to the development of LAND Partnerships.

The event stimulated great interest and support, as evidenced by the announcement that the governments of Indonesia and The Philippines intended to establish LAND Partnerships. Two caucus representatives, Jocelyn Dow (WEDO) and Vicky Tauli-Corpus (Tebtebba Foundation), and Coalition partners from Egypt, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, The Philippines and Zimbabwe , delivered statements in support of LAND Partnerships. These statements are attached as Annex 1.

Representatives of the Coalition’s country partners, IFAD, FAO and bilateral partners (United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the European Union (EU)) expressed their support for making LAND Partnerships happen at the country level.

Considerable support was received for country-level operationalization of LAND Partnerships. However, there was some concern about the complexity of the agenda on access to land and the contrasting values among constituencies, politics and vested interests. Representatives of the International Federation of Surveyors (Holder Magel), Country Women of Nigeria (Chief Bisi Ogunleye), Iwokrama Rainforest Programme in Guyana (Vanda Radzik) and others commended the Coalition’s work and stressed the importance of working together, especially among and between governments and CSOs.

Statements by International Land Coalition Partners and Collaborators at the Launching of LAND Partnerships 29 August 2002

Ms. Jocelyn Dow, President of WEDO and Member of the High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons of the Secretary-General of WSSD:

While the issue of access to land has been in the forefront of women’s concerns since Rio the issue is still distorted mainly because governments by-and-large are taking weaker positions. At the WSSD, it is disappointing (even though Agenda 21 already agreed women’s rights and gender equity language across the document) that women’s groups are still arguing at this point on a paragraph (61b) on women’s inheritance rights. Women’s groups are ready to work with the Popular Coalition to ensure that the whole issue of land is addressing a wider gender sensitive framework. This can be done through joint programmes and linking resources to ensure the nexus. There is already a knowledge base out there in this regard, however, there is still an ultimate disconnect in the rhetorics, i.e. in financing system, housing, food security -- all aspects of public and private spheres leading to women’s rights. One example to move forward, if indeed donors are interested, is to access decision-makers such as in PRSPs where all of these issues should be taken into account.

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Ms. Victoria Tauli-Corpus, a leader of Indigenous Peoples (IP) Caucus from Tebtebba, The Philippines:

Another issue in relation this is, as shown in Bangladesh and in The Philippines, where the landless are real victims of policies. If we want to have meaning and really change the lives of those fighting on the daily basis to get by these are the kinds of issues that we should give priority. While we know that we have to look into this, we know that is not an easy job because of different disparities in power and vested interest that you have to go against. In The Philippines, we have an ancestral and IPs rights acts which gives rights to indigenous peoples. However, some people were killed because they were delineating their lands. This happen on a daily basis. I would like to see the Coalition succeed and wish all the luck. Definitely with government being there and international organisations it might work.I hope that your starting point would be the poorest and marginalised. We would be interested to see what we can do together in the future.

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Miguel Urioste, Fundación Tierra, Bolivia

The members of the Popular Coalition , as part of the civil society of 40 developing countries, we have participated during the past two years in the discussions of the Common Platform on Access to Land, that we want now to share with you.

Our aim is to bring together different actors of the civil society. We know that civil society is not uniform. That is why building consensus among land owners and landless people requires a strong role of public institutions and the empowerment of the landless, peasant and indigenous people.

As a response to the globalization process, several social movements of grass roots are actively promoting their rights to the land.

After ten years of different experiences on land market assisted agrarian reforms we can conclude that land markets can not replace the role of the institutions, local governments and public policies. We all agree that secure access to land and clear and strong property rights, especially to women, are a pre condition for Sustainable Agricultural and Rural Development. The challenge is how to bring together contradictory interests of the landless and those of the big land owners.

Sometimes certain consensus can be reached at local levels such as communal or municipal, in other cases the national participation is required. As civil society actors, we can help to build bridges among them.

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Noer Fauzi Rachman, KPA, Indonesia

KPA is composed of networks and peoples organisations whose task is to work on access to land and to amplify people’s voices. With support from the peasant and indigenous groups and other NGOs and some academics, KPA has succeeded in their struggle to change the agrarian policy with the new issuance of the MPR (the People's Consultative Assembly) Decree of Agrarian Reform and Natural Resources Management which was enacted in November 2001. This is very important because it now gives the mandate and obligation to Parliaments with the President to review all existing laws, especially those with contradicting principles of agrarian reform and natural resource managements, and to revise and/or amend in order to synchronize all existing laws. Thanks to the joint advocacy work of KPA together with its members peasant organisations who have been responsible for amplifying the local people's voices in order to influence policy and law reform processes. That mandate means implementing land reform and sustainable land resource management.

In terms of LAND partnership experience, one of our achievements is that today KPA sits in a Working Group on Tenure in the Department of Forest that have the task to produce relevant measures to overcome tenurial insecurity of local peoples as mandated by MPR Decree. KPA is also part of the "learning circle" in the National Land Board that produces land reform measures. KPA continues to influence governments and parliaments, with its next proposal to promote a National Committee with ambitious tasks to integrate strategies and programmes on land reform and natural resource management.

We realize that there are three problems: the contradiction between laws and regulation, the problem of unequal resource and land distribution, and the problem of conflicts. We think that from LAND partnership we are trying to put together governmental institutions like the National Land Board and the Department of Forestry. This is very important because access to land for the people in the forest is a big issue in Indonesia. Also, we are currently promoting land reform research with the National Land Board.

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Byron Garoz of CONGCOOP (Coordination of NGOs and Cooperatives), Guatemala

In Guatemala, there are very strong differences among stakeholders. There are big differences between landless, peasants, small-holders and big landlords. In fact, there has been a war because of the land. A lot of processes are taking place right now. Peasants and indigenous peoples are demanding access to land. Guatemalan government has responded in a very limited way that is why the LAND Partnership initiative is very important for us. It could be an important mechanism and contribution to the discussions among civil society and representatives of the government. There needs to be an evaluation to this Initiative in the future. This (Johannesburg) is a very important place because from here we can survey and check what our governments are saying to accomplish. Later, we could write to them to challenge what they have accomplished based on the Summit declaration. It is in this regard that we have to be with the Popular Coalition and be in different land discussions.

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Remarks of Biplap Halim, Institute for Motivating Self Employment (IMSE), India

IMSE is working for the landless in the Eastern part of India. In the Declaration of the World Food Summit in 1996 it was stated that more than 840 million population of the world suffer from malnutrition, basically which means they remain hungry. What was not mentioned was out of which 350 million of the population live in India alone. As per census conducted in India in 1991 more than 158 million people in India are landless or semi-landless marginalised farmers which constitute 85% of total rural workforce but own only 17% of the total cultivable land in the country. On the other hand, 15% non-cultivating owners own more than 64% of the total land under cultivation in India. This clearly shows that the core of rural poverty in India is created by the present pattern of land ownership. Therefore, in order to avert poverty and hunger, genuine agrarian reform is the central means to provide landless or semi-landless peasants with access to land and other productive resources which would abolish the existing inequitable production relationship and ensure the household food security, sustainable agriculture and all-round rural development.

However, it is needless to mention here that the genuine agrarian reforms should have gender perspective and based on organic farming. Dialogues between multi-stakeholders might play a meaningful role to facilitate this process. I am not sure whether through LAND partnership it would be possible for us to reach a consensus for implementation of the genuine agrarian reform which would enable the toiling masses to establish their rights over land and other productive resources free of charge, due to exploitative class relationship, different views and interests. However, I think that the LAND Partnership process might bring more people or say the majority of the stakeholders of civil society together which would definitely make those vested interest exposed and isolated who are not genuinely interested to implement this programme. It might sound impossible to some of us but in the light of our experiences in our state in West Bengal in India, we have seen that it is possible. We see much hope in this process. By introducing the LAND partnership there is a possibility to highlight the real problems which are effecting the life of the people and build consensus among the majority of the stakeholders of the civil society to remove the same.

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Mohammed Mohyeldin Ismail, General Trade Union of Workers in Agriculture, Egypt

The Egyptian experience in agrarian reform is considered the most important social issue that has been changed the pattern of social life in Egypt. Recalling that before 1952 in Egypt there were 5% of the population used to own 70% of the land and those people mainly came from affluent families of princes and princesses. Right after the 1952 revolution, our great leader Gamaml Abdel Naser accomplished a lot of changes in Egypt. At the current time, while the President insists on achieving democracy, can the issue of the land reform a principle of, land is owned by the one who cultivates, has been the thrust of the land distribution legislation. In 1954, agrarian reform legislation has been limited only on property rights 200 feddans for each family.

Accordingly, in 1961, there have been restructuring on property rights to 50 feddans for each family. After that, the government has issued the most important restructuring issue and distributed land to agricultural workers. This led to increase in agricultural production by 25%, raise living standards, higher levels of education among school children and universities, so that the number of experts, scientists, teachers and lecturers has increased. On the other hand, Egypt has 5 million agricultural workers who are still landless and who only own less than one feddan.

In this regard, GTUAW in Egypt exerts more efforts for serving the agricultural workers, and it cooperate with Popular Coalition in doing that. For example, through our joint negotiations with the states to grant these workers a part of the newly reclaimed land like in Toshki zone, Elawinat East zone, west and north Suez zones (this can be done by our governors). The next step to be taken is to acquire the modern methods of cultivating land which applied in other countries. We have already observed from the African context such as in Sudan and other countries and we hope to learn more from others. If state takes positive steps to achieve sustainable development, we should cooperate with other developing and developed countries. By this occasion, I seize the opportunity to express our great appreciation to your efforts you all made to the success of the International Land Coalition.

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Nathaniel Don Marquez, Asian NGO Coalition for Agrarian Reform and Rural Development, The Philippines

The gravity of poverty in Asia is forcing NGOs and other sectors to join hands in addressing the problem. Perhaps this is a recognition that no single sector can claim to have substantially reduced poverty and that there is a need for everybody to work together. We continue to struggle for land and agrarian reforms because some 56% of the total Asian population still depends on agriculture for a living and two-thirds of the world’s 800 billion poor are in Asia. Here, land continues to be the principal source of livelihood, security and status. About six out of every 10 families are still engaged in agriculture. Yet, around 100 million agricultural families make their living principally from land they do NOT own.

The ANGOC network thus has found the multistakeholder approach significant in pushing the agenda on land. It is perhaps civil society’s opportunity to "globalize" a small community’s quest for access to tenurial rights and productive resources. This initiative of LAND Partnerships provides opportunities for different stakeholders to discuss options in advancing agrarian reforms.

However building such partnerships and networks at any level can be a formidable task, fraught with risks of the rights of stakeholders not being properly involved or of important stakeholders deciding not to participate in the process of networking. Crucial to the success of the multi-stakeholder approach is representation. Care should be taken against the tendency to exclude other potential stakeholders because
(1) they are non-traditional partners or
(2) they represent conflicting interests. Ways must be found to incorporate the input of these non-traditional stakeholders to the process if the dialogue is to be truly inclusive and comprehensive.

It is important to recognize that stakeholders have their respective interests, constituents, perspectives, commitments and levels of understanding. In the past, these differences have often led to incompatibility and wariness. However, these differences have also served to make stakeholders aware of different perspectives, sharpened their negotiating skills and promoted consensus building.

Multi-stakeholder planning, action and learning require more time and energy than initiatives involving single stakeholders. The demand for investment in managing differences is particularly crucial in the initial stages of the process if participants are to generate mutual understanding, coordinated action and effective learning.

Although multi-stakeholder partnerships have advantages for pushing sustainable development forward, we must remain vigilant against initiatives that hide the failure of governments to honour their commitments. ANGOC is one with other coalitions in resounding that the primary WSSD mandate is for governments to agree with action-oriented, time-bound measures to realize poverty eradication and ecosystem security.

The people and other sectors must be part of global to local governance to effect change. Partnerships for implementation must be linked to international goals agreed on by governments to achieve this desired result. Capacity-building efforts especially for community-based groups and NGOs to be able to leverage in these partnerships should be undertaken to bring the discussion to par.

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