Deep Roots

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The International Land Coalition:

upholding the land rights of family farmers

Michael Taylor and Jan Cherlet, International Land Coalition Secretariat

“We will work together as a coalition to … ensure equitable land

distribution and public investment that supports small-scale

farming systems”

– Antigua Declaration of the International Land Coalition,

2013

“Negotiation, negotiation, negotiation. It works.”

– Esther Obaikol, former Uganda Land Alliance Executive Director

he International Land Coalition (ILC)

is a global

alliance of over 150 organizations, spanning from

peasant and indigenous people’s movements to

global multilateral organizations. Despite wide differences

in perspectives and methods of working, ILC members

share a common perspective that the developmental chal-

lenges facing our planet – food security, reducing poverty

and inequality, environmental stewardship and adapting to

climate change – can only be overcome with a strong focus

on equitable and secure land and natural resource rights.

When ILC’s members came together in 2013 for their biennial

assembly in Antigua, Guatemala, the host national peasant

organizations provided a glimpse into the critical role of family

farmers in a country where two-thirds of the population lives

below the poverty line. Members visited dynamic cooperatives

in which family farmers worked together to market their high-

quality produce to markets within the country and beyond.

ILC members also heard from families in Guatemala who

had been forcibly removed from their land to make way

for corporate agricultural production – for instance in the

Polochic valley. The context of Guatemala showcases the

dramatic challenges that are common to family farmers in

agrarian economies across the world:

Agrarian economies are profoundly affected by corporate

and other interests that are external to local territories,

taking control of land, productive resources and food value

chains, alienating land-users from their environment, and

posing great risks of marginalizing small-scale producers

and family farmers.

Despite some cases where investments create opportunities,

the global rush for land is transforming vast swathes of land

previously used or accessed by smallholders at a severe cost to

local family farmers, including their dispossession. Evidence

suggests that a key determinant of whether family farmers

gain or lose in this context of rural transformation is whether

or not they have secure land rights.

An estimated 2 billion people on this planet, the majority of

which are family farmers, live and produce their food on land to

which they enjoy customary rights, but on which national law

does not recognize or defend their tenure.

Although in many

cases they have been using the land for generations, in the eyes of

the law they are seen as nothingmore than ‘squatters’ on state land.

The urgency of recognizing land rights has attracted global

attention. A significant step towards this has been the devel-

opment and adoption in 2012 by governments, civil society

and the private sector of the

Voluntary Guidelines on the

Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests

by the Committee for World Food Security.

The following six case studies illustrate some of the ways in

which ILC and its members have successfully worked together,

at local, national, regional and global levels, to support family

farmers to secure their land, water and natural resource rights,

an important step in securing the future of family farming.

Women are often denied land rights, and this is a key area of activity for ILC

Image: Image: ILC Secretariat

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