Rajasthan, India – The International Land Coalition (ILC) Asia, in which the Asian Farmers’ Association (AFA) is a member, conducted its annual regional land forum and regional assembly on 30 September to 4 October 2019 in Udaipur, Rajasthan, India. Among the matters discussed are the land forum for the national land issues in India, cross-cutting issues in Asia, and regional assembly to discuss internal issues and matters with the coalition members.
AFA members Farmer and Nature Net (Cambodia), National Land Rights Forum (Nepal), National Union of Water Users Association (NUWUA), and PAKISAMA (Philippines) as well as Land Rights Program Coordinator Lorraine Ablan and UN Decade of Family Farming & Young Farmers’ Agenda Coordinator Lorenzo Espacio participated in the forum. AFA’s participation aims to forward the voice of farmer organizations on various issues of smallholder farmers in attaining and defending their rights to their land and to promote the UN Decade of Family Farming to the ILC members and other partners of the network. AFA is also the regional co-convenor of the second Commitment Based Initiative (CBI) pertaining to the strengthening of small scale farmers and a member of the fifth CBI on the rights of Indigenous people.
During this five-day activity, members of the coalition directly interacted with the local community in India through the organized field visits to different areas in Udaipur that are facing struggles on claiming and defending their lands. Four communities opened their doors and shared their experiences on their struggles and their success in having locally managed forest, agriculture, and pastoral areas. The visits aimed to provide the members of the coalition with a deeper understanding of the situation of the people that are struggling for their land rights in the country.
During the forum for the land issues in India themed, “India for Asia: Land Reform for Justice and Peace,” one of the common issues raised by the speakers is the existing conflicts on the rights of tribal people on both the forest and agricultural land and the pastoralist community on animal husbandry. Cross-cutting issues such as agrarian reform, youth on agriculture, gender on land rights, SDGs, land rights defenders, rights of pastoralist communities and the local management of Indigenous Peoples were covered in the Asia regional forum. The forum was concluded with the “Udaipur Declaration”, which includes issues the members identified and agreed upon to address.
Side meetings were also conducted by different commitment based initiative platforms. As the co-convenor of CBI 2 on strengthening small scale farmers, AFA and AR Now! held a regional consultation for the three-year work plan of the platform. AFA members that are members of the ILC are also part of the said platform. AFA representatives also attended the meeting for the Global Mapping Initiative held by CADASTA, to gauge the needs of the coalition in each region on the management and gathering and spatial data.
On the last day of the assembly, the participants went to New Delhi to join the celebration of the launching of Jai Jagat, a month-long activity where the participants will march from New Delhi to Geneva for the World Peace congress to call the attention of people to focus on issues involving land, farmers, and indigenous peoples. For this leg, the participants walked three kilometers to the shrine of Mahatma Gandhi to officially start the long march to Geneva and sent off the marchers. #
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