Advocacy Events preparatory process for the substantive session of ECOSOC

Recommendations to the High Level Segment of the ECOSOC
From the Participants of the
International Workshop on Gender, Land and Water
29 June 2003, John Knox Centre, Geneva

The International Land Coalition in conjunction with IFAD on 29 June 2003 organized an international Workshop on Integrated Approaches towards Gender, Land and Water.  

The international participants of the workshop want to stress that the Ministerial Declaration of the ECOSOC High Level Segment ought to be revisited on gender mainstreaming, which is not well integrated in the draft document.  The Declaration needs to call on the challenges on political issues that need to be addressed at political level; presently, the global challenges are mostly obscured as technical issues. Political will to really bring about necessary changes and take adequate steps is essential.

The workshop came up with the following recommendations:

1. When we speak of land and water, it is the understanding of the participants that land and water should be viewed as inter-related and linked to each other. They should not be viewed as mere physical elements of space, but should include their vertical (surface and subsurface), ecosystem and social contexts. Land and water are the unalienable bases of communities' natural resources base, sustaining rural livelihoods of the rural poor.  Land and water are not only part of sedentary agricultural production, but also of forestry, fisheries, cultural and other purposes.

2. Land reform is overdue; it should have already taken place.  This is a political and not a technical issue, which needs urgent attention. It calls for the recognition of integrated agrarian reform and the allocation of financial and institutional resources. ODA should specifically benefit the rural and urban poor.

3. In addition to legal security of tenure, legal dimensions have important historical backgrounds which have to be understood.  The historical roles of local stewardship of local peoples of their natural resource base has not been sufficiently taken into account in the development of legislation and policies governing access to, control, ownership and benefits of the  allocation of the user  rights to the resource base  in all its spatial and time dimensions. Such dimensions should be included and understood.

4. Existing international human rights instruments like the Economic and Social and Cultural Rights and the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) which should be domesticated or incorporated into national legislation

5. We need to prevent new poverty.   Poverty reduction is an element of human development.  People's development should be at the fore -- not just poverty reduction. The basic right that we are talking about is the right of people to self-development. It is the basic policy requirement which enables people to use their own resources to improve their lives.  

6. One of the consequences of the increasing land and water crisis is the increasing threats of conflicts.  We recognize the need to diffuse actual and upcoming conflicts over allocation of the natural resource base to the rural poor by  embedding social equitable mediation  and negotiation mechanisms in local, national, sub-regional and international institutional and organizational framework and to develop/strength their  corresponding capacities.

7. Land, water and health are inseparably linked. We have to incorporate the health aspects of rural development as omnipresent element of poverty eradication, with clear linkages to the natural resource base and socio-economic circumstances.  The links are apparent, e.g. in water born diseases, water sanitation and in the HIV/AIDS pandemic. 

8. Rural people are a heterogeneous group: women and men, rich and poor, generations of ages; sedentary farmers, nomads/pastoralists, fisher folk, landless, migrants and internally displaced populations. In order to create equity and equality on access and control and natural resource benefits, we have to take a differentiated perspective.   

9. Affirmative action on gender equality is a top priority.  History, tradition, culture and discrimination against women are still a worldwide phenomenon.  Laws based on culture which discriminate against women cannot be accepted.  

10. Governments and other institutions should recognize the importance of participation on equal terms of poor rural women and men of all generations and value systems in decision making, implementation management, monitoring of inclusive, coherent and transparent pro-poor rural policy and legislative development.  

11. Capacity building, knowledge sharing, skills development  and empowerment pay-off in all circumstances, and should be mainstreamed in all activities.  We encourage that delegates ensure that there are references to these in the text at the Ministerial Declaration of ECOSOC.

12. In international debates we must hear local perspectives.  Linking the global with the local vice versa is essential. This is one aspect of participation where local, national and international voices benefit from each other in decision making, learning and sharing knowledge.

13. We want governments to recognize the competence of CBOS, CSOs and NGOs (civil society in its broadest sense) in the debates that lead to policy making as an input into decision making. These organizations should be consulted in every stage of policy decision making and implementation.  Civil society organizations should not only fill gaps but rather be considered as the association of peoples. The cooperation with civil society should lead to a transformation process of government policies and society, enhancing a bottom-up process to which everybody contributes and feels responsible. 

All the above issues require forging partnerships between civil society, governments, inter-governmental organizations for participation in decision making in policy development, implementation of programmes, management of resources and monitoring of the processes.  This will foster and strengthen enabling frameworks that corresponds to the transformation processes as foreseen under international conventions, i.e., International Covenant on Economic and Social Rights, CEDAW and other legal frameworks and regulations.