Introduction
At its October 2003 meeting the ILC’s Coalition Council, started discussion on the value in developing a Land Watch or Land Poverty Index. This was a result of its participation in various global events. Among these was the role of the ILC as a convener of Ministerial Roundtables on land access at the High Level Segments of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) in 2003, 2004 and 2005. ECOSOC / DESA encouraged the ILC to develop indicators and a reporting system that the UN could incorporate into its existing reporting methods and mechanisms.

Today, the need for indicators is getting more attention and a collaborative initiative to develop indicators has often been proposed. It is thought that cooperation is more likely if the indicators are based on a multi-stakeholder effort and not intended to further the interests of any one organization. However, achieving a global consensus on a unified monitoring system and a single set of land indicators has always been a very ambitious goal. This is especially the case given the diversity of organisations involved, from governments to intergovernmental organisations and CSOs. In the meantime, a number of organisations have developed, or are developing, sets of land indicators that reflect their particular monitoring and evaluation needs.

Therefore the task for the ILC in developing a Land Reporting Initiative has become a more complex one in which we must consider how the coalition can support and build upon the existing efforts of its members. In November 2007, the Coalition Council instructed the secretariat to prepare a background paper to take stock of the development of land indicators to date, and to initiate discussions to redefine the role that ILC can and should play in this area.

Rationale for the LRI
Among various international legally binding instruments, the example of two agreements gives insight into the potential to develop a Land Watch / Index. The International Covenant of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), recognize the rights of all people to an adequate standard of living, including the right to adequate food and housing, and affirm the responsibility of the state to develop or reform agrarian systems, a responsibility that includes ensuring the equal treatment of women. The land policy measures implicated by government commitments to implement the right to food have been further elaborated by the

Voluntary Guidelines on the Right to Food developed by FAO. 
Governments and international organizations also took commitments to improving poor rural peoples’ access to land and related productive resources at the United Nations Summits of the 1990s (in Rio de Janeiro, Beijing, Istanbul, Cairo, Copenhagen and Rome), including during their five- and 10-year reviews. Similar commitments were also entered into under the Convention to Combat Desertification and at the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002. More recently there have been the unifying commitments of the MDGs and the 2006 ICARRD.

In spite of repeated government commitments to improving poor rural people’s access to land, only sporadic efforts have been made to monitor (at either national or global levels) implementation efforts aimed at fulfilling these commitments.

The aim of a Land Watch/Index would be to address the major concern of international agencies and civil-society organizations that land issues are at risk of being neglected due to limited opportunities for stakeholder participation in country-level processes to promote the land agenda. It is often stated that there is limited, if any, incorporation of land policies and programmes in country development plans such as PRSPs and National Action Programmes.

The original Land Watch concept
The Land Watch/Index was envisioned to be a global effort to develop and implement a system of agreed standards and related indicators for monitoring legal frameworks, policies and practices on access to land. The aim would be to systematically engage all stakeholders, in particular governments, country-level representatives of civil-society, academia/researchers plus multilateral and bilateral organizations operating within countries. The indicators could promote benchmarks: (i) against which governments would be encouraged to set strategies toward their achievement; and, also (ii) advocate for compliance by countries that are not meeting international agreements.

Key components of this monitoring system would include:

• a set of internationally-agreed Land Indicators;
• a database of agreements, international and country reports, statistical data and socio-economic and political information;
• a Land Reporting Protocol for engaging governments through a signed Memorandum of Understanding;
• a set of guidelines and related training materials for use and implementation at the country-level;
• a framework for interpretation and action / follow-up by international bodies to whom Land Reports are submitted and made public;
• a plan on how the reporting indicators can be incorporated into existing reports and obligations of governments to submit progress to UN and other international bodies.