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Land: Commodity or Human Right?

Promoting Rights-based Land Reform through European Land Policies for Development Cooperation

Seminar Final Statement from the European Farmers Coordination Bureau, La Via Campesina (International), 11.11.11(Belgium), War on Want (UK) and FIAN (International).

Brussels, 13th and 14th April 2004

We welcome the initiative of the European Union in embarking on a process of drafting common land policy guidelines for development cooperation. The development of a distinctive "European approach" to land reform offers good chances to contribute to the realisation of the human rights of rural populations and to guarantee the food sovereignty of all peoples.

The commoditisation of Land

Across the world today, land is being transformed from being the base of communities' life into a commodity. Governments and transnational corporations condemn the majority of the rural population to lives of poverty and social exclusion. The policies of market-led land reform promoted by the World Bank and associated bilateral and multilateral agencies have been instrumental in privatising and concentrating land in few hands at an accelerated pace. Of the 842 million people who are hungry in the world today, three quarters live in rural areas. These market-led land reform policies are part of wider neo-liberal disenfranchisement and landlessness of millions of people. In Brazil 950,000 small farms have disappeared over the past 15 years. In Colombia three million people have been forcibly displaced since 1985, while a very small minority of the official landowners, 0.4 percent now owns 61 percent of the land compared to 35 percent of the land 10 years ago.

Fuelling Land conflicts and despair

The implementation of neo-liberal policies has fuelled land conflicts and violence in many rural areas throughout the world. Peasants, indigenous people and rural women are often facing political persecution, harassment, death threats and killings because of their struggle for land and for a smallholder-based agriculture that guarantees economic and social rights of the rural population. While we were holding our seminar in Brussels, for instance, 62 members of the peaceful Landless Peoples Movement of South Africa were arrested on April 14, election day, for criticising land and rural development policies of the government, while they had in no way interfered with the electoral process or violated any law.

It is equally violent when thousands of small family farms disappear and entire families are forced to migrate to the slums of the cities. Especially dramatic are the massive suicide cases of indebted small farmers in India. In the federal state of Karnataka alone, last year more than 10,000 desperate peasants saw no other alternative but to commit suicide.

The alarming effects of neo-liberal policies are present not only in Southern countries, but also in North America and Europe. Policies like the US Farm Bill and the European Common Agricultural Policy are responsible in these parts of the world for forcing thousands of small farmers out of agriculture and for concentrating food production and land ownership in few hands with disastrous results like several animal disease outbreaks and food scandals illustrate.

European Land Policy Guideline opportunities and weaknesses

Given this situation the drafting process of the European land policy guidelines for development cooperation are an excellent opportunity to contribute to the implementation of one key step for the eradication of poverty and hunger and for the realisation of international commitments like the 1996 World Food Summit and the 2000 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)

However, the draft land policy guidelines are flawed, in both substance and process. The draft largely ignores the interaction between land policies, trade rules, socio-economic polices, investment and macro-economic policies. It is not possible for the European Union to maintain its positions on international trade and investment, and allow corporations to commit human rights abuses, while still claiming to act in defence of peasants' collective rights.

The draft ignores the relationship between land and human rights issues. This relationship is crucial in setting standards, in determining the role of different actors and the necessary and priority of certain reforms and policies. These rights bind not only the governments of the South, but the European Union as well.

The European Union land policy guidelines need to clearly and unequivocally adopt pro-poor standards, and exclude any land policy that will result in or even encourage elite-to-elite transfers, or worse, poor-to-elite transfers of resources under the guise of land reform. Furthermore, the support of land reform goes beyond physical infrastructure projects. The European Union should implement land and agricultural policies that strengthen small farmers' economies and safeguard peasants, indigenous and communities land from being commoditised and taken over by landlords and agribusiness interests. Without unconditional legal assistance and services, and funding for political mobilising, the social capital-building vital for successful land reform is impossible.

The drafting process has been technocratic and opaque, marginalising peasants, indigenous people, women and other constituencies. In the document, peasants are mentioned only three times, yet they are the policy's key actors. Moreover, no single peasant or landless people's organisation participated in the electronic consultation on the draft guidelines held in March 2004.

Creating a democratic and consultative process

We demand that the European Union process be opened up to landless people's movements, peasants, rural women, indigenous peoples, minorities and civil society organisations that support the rights of peasant families. The land policy guidelines should not be approved without having taken the views of these key actors into account. Therefore a prolonged period of consultation, with transparent and clear rules of procedure, and a commitment of resources sufficient to ensure adequate coverage, are necessary. The terms of consultation should be drawn up democratically; the consultation should enable discussion at regional and international level and include actual meetings between the European Union task force on land and the stakeholders.

We urge the executive, legislative and judiciary powers of the European Union to comply with their human rights obligations related to land and to an adequate standard of living of rural populations. We call on the European Union to support a land policy that contributes to free the rural population of violence and repression. The rights to produce and to live in dignity and the rights to food sovereignty of all peoples should be guaranteed. This is the only way the European Union can live up to its commitment of a development policy that eradicates the structural causes of poverty.

Further Information

For a pdf file copy of the 26th January 2004 draft EU Land Policy Guidelines - Guidelines for support to land policy design and land reform processes in developing countries visit the site map section of the International Land Coalition website.

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