WSSD Excerpt from the Global People's Forum

PROGRAMME OF ACTION
A Sustainable World is Possible

 Relevant paragraphs on Access to Land

Land

1. Governments, relevant United Nations (UN) agencies and international bodies (including the World Court) must commit themselves to ensure access to land for all landless peoples, by prioritising and promoting access to land as the cornerstone of sustainable development.

2. There should be a review of all national and international instruments intended to ensure access to, and retention of, land by the indigenous people.

3. Governments should return land to dispossessed communities through new laws that are accessible to communities and do not hinder land restitution. Specific policies, programmes and projects with clear timeframes and budgets must be developed to address landlessness.

4. Customary and national land laws should be subjected to international human rights principles of equality, including gender equity. Government should accept land tenure rights and land-use decisions made by democratically elected village committees.

5. Governments and civil society should prioritise women's indigenous and disabled people's needs in relation to land ownership, usage and distribution.

6. Land should remain the property of citizens and only be used by foreign investors through equal partnership agreements with those citizens.

7. Civil Society should educate, mobilise and campaign for land redistribution
(a) to ensure that all who want and need land have access to it by 2015;
(b) to prevent governments from unscrupulously selling our natural resources; and
(c) to build solidarity in defence of our natural heritage.