Topic: land reform

UNORKA's General Secretary, Enrico “Eric” Cabanit Assassinated
Evangeline Mendoza, UNORKA
April 28, 2006 - It is with deep and most profound sorrow and anger that we condemn in the strongest terms possible the senseless assassination of peasant leader Enrico “Eric” Cabanit, current Secretary General of Pambansang Ugnayan ng mga Nagsasariling Lokal na Organisasyon sa Kanayunan (UNORKA, National Coordination of Autonomous Local Rural People's Organizations), the biggest organization of landless and poor peasants in the Philippines fighting for social justice and land reform at around 6:10 last night (24 April 2006). Ka Eric was at the public market of the municipality of Panabo (his hometown), when he was assassinated by two masked men. His daughter was also seriously wounded due to gunshot wounds and is in critical condition at the Tagum General Hospital.

Redistributive land reform in ‘public’ (forest) lands? Lessons from the Philippines and their implications for land reform theory and practice
Saturnino M. Borras, Jr
March 30, 2006 - The conventional view in the land reform literature does not consider distribution of‘public’lands to landless and near-landless peasants as redistributive land reform. Questioning the (formal) private property bias in land reform theory and practice, this paper rethinks some fundamental concepts and re-examines actual distribution in public lands in the Philippines. Itconcludes that redistributive reform can, in fact, occur in this type of land and the political process through which this outcome can be achieved could be highly contentious.

Broadening the Discourse of “Negotiated Land Reform”: A Comparison Between Land Reform Projects in South Africa and Brazil
Isabella Kenfield, ICARRD
February 13, 2006 - Mainstream agrarian reform policymakers construct discourse of “negotiated land reform” to describe market-led agrarian reform (MLAR). This discourse constrains the terms of negotiation over land reform to a purely market-oriented lexicon. MLAR proponents believe the purpose of land reform is to boost agricultural efficiency in order to promote economic equity. Through MLAR’s adherence to the willing-seller, willing-buyer principle, the terms of negotiation over the mechanism for land reform are limited to private land transactions. MLAR’s reference point of the market for its definition of “negotiation” relegates the tactics practiced by rural social movements such as the Landless Workers Movement of Brazil (MST), in particular the occupation of unproductive land, as non-negotiated land reform. This paper will critique MLAR’s discourse of “negotiation” to highlight its limitations, and argues that the MST is creating and participating in a genuine negotiated agrarian reform. Through a comparison of research and experiences from agrarian reform projects in South Africa and Brazil, this paper will describe the negative impacts of MLAR’s limited scope of negotiation, and will highlight how the MST’s broadening of the terms of negotiation of agrarian reform, in relation to both purpose and mechanism, is resulting in successful land reform. This paper calls for an expanded margin of discourse of land reform negotiation in order to create successful agrarian reform policies, and social and economic justice for the rural poor.

Why Do The Landless Remain Landless?
Susan Tilley, Surplus People Project (SPP)
November 10, 2005 - This is an examination of land acquisition and the extent to which the land market and land redistribution mechanisms serve the needs of land-seeking people in South Africa.

FONTIERRAS: Structural Adjustment and access to land in Guatemala
Byron Garoz, Susana Gauster
September 20, 2005 - Agriculture is central to the Guatemalan economy and society, representing 23% of the Gross National Product in 1997, and with 61.4 % of the population living in rural areas in 2000. Agriculture in Guatemala is characterized by extremely unequal land distribution In 1998, according to the Ministry for Agriculture, Grains and Food (MAGA in Spanish ), 96% of producers cultivated 20% of the land mass and lived in subsistence conditions. At the same time 0.2% of producers possessed 70% of the land, with large areas of land used for production of agricultural exports. After more than thirty years of different government policies, the genocide of indigenous people and the peace accords of the 1990s, land access and distribution in Guatemala remains highly exclusionary.

Mexico: Impacts of demarcation and titling by PROCEDE on agrarian conflicts and land concentration
Ana de Ita, Centro de Estudios para el Cambio en el Campo Mexicano (CECCAM); LRAN
September 20, 2005 - In many countries, the World Bank promotes so-called market-based agrarian reform—the neoliberal avenue for granting peasants access to land. In the case of Mexico, where a profound agrarian reform followed the revolution of 1910, and where half of the country’s surface area is the property of ejidos and communities—constituting the social sector—neoliberal planners, as of 1992, and under World Bank recommendations, drove a series of counter-reforms to the agrarian legislation established in Article 27 of the Constitution, with the objectives of making land tenancy more secure in terms of private property, and legally disentangle all land owned by the social sector to promote its placement in the market.

Reforming Land Rights: The World Bank and the Globalization of Agriculture
Elizabeth Fortin, Institute of Development Studies, UK
September 20, 2005 - Since independence, landholdings in Southern Africa have remained highly skewed between the rich and poor, reflecting the land and agricultural policies adopted in colonial times and after independence. More recently, agricultural policies have been prescribed by the World Bank as conditionalities of multilateral loans which have both facilitated and also driven the growing integration of such countries in the world economy. This article argues that such integration is being played out on an increasingly unequal global playing field, structured by global agricultural commodity chains and international trade, and strengthened by those very policy prescriptions of the World Bank.

Violence in the Countryside and Land Reform
Maria Luisa Mendonça and Roberto Rainha
September 20, 2005 - This article analyzes violence in the countryside and land reform during 2003 and part of 2004. In 2003, the inauguration of the Lula government created great expectations. According to the Pastoral Commission on Land (CPT), “The year 2003 began with the euphoria of hope that can overcome fear. The rural workers believed that the time had come for a profound change, that Land Reform would finally happen.”

Land For Those Who Work It: Can committing a crime be the only way to uphold the constitution?
Pauline Bartolone, Clamor Magazine
September 05, 2005 - "On the news they say, 'we invaded.' The word invade is theirs. The land is everybody's. So there's no such thing as invading land that is everybody's." Hilario is part of Brazil's landless workers movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem-Terra, MST) . The backbone of their movement is land occupation. Today, 47 percent of Brazil's land is owned by just 1 percent of the population, making the country's land distribution the second most unequal in the world. As a result, a class of four and a half million people are left on the verge of starvation, without land of their own.

The Global Campaign for Agrarian Reform and the Struggle for Gender Equality
Sofía Monsalve Suárez, FIAN International / LRAN
September 05, 2005 - One of the dangers in presenting analyses around gender and land is that it can too easily be compartmentalized, with the analysis plucked away from the patriarchal mainstream of land politics. Once they have been de-contextualized, free-floating ideas about ‘gender and land’ lend themselves to policy interventions that attempt to ‘mainstream’ them once again. Yet gender politics in debates around land are not supplementary analyses to be ‘mainstreamed’, nor ahistorical complaints about power, but actively constructed through existing institutional politics. In order to address this concern, this chapter begins with a short introduction to the institutional context and location of the gender politics that I address, specifically looking at Via Campesina and the Global Campaign for Agrarian Reform, before moving to consider the gendered land politics that have been addressed through these forums.

Indigenous Peoples: An Essay on Land, Territory, Autonomy and Self-Determination
Rodolfo Stavenhagen
September 05, 2005 - While many analysts of land issues tend to treat land the way that farmers often see it — as a productive resource — indigenous peoples’ tend see land as part of something greater, called territory. Territory includes the productive function of land, but also encompasses the concepts of homeland, culture, religion, spiritual sites, ancestors, the natural environment, other resources like water, forests, below-ground minerals, etc. Agrarian reform directed at non-indigenous farmers in many cases may reasonably seek to redistribute “any and all” arable land to the landless, irrespective of where the landless come from. For example, the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) of Brazil demands and occupies land all over the country, and the members of their land reform settlements sometimes come from states far away from the land the occupy. In contrast, indigenous peoples’ movements do not demand just any land, but rather their land, and they want control over their land and territories. Thus, closely linked to the concept of territory, are the demands by organizations and movements of indigenous people for autonomy and self-determination. This essay lays out the key issues and controversies associated with these concepts.

The Underlying Assumptions, Theory, and Practice of Neoliberal Land Policies
Saturnino M. Borras Jr.
September 05, 2005 - In the early 1990s, neoliberal land policies emerged within, and became an important aspect of, mainstream thinking and development policy agendas. These policies have increased in prevalence since their inception at the end of the Cold War. Neoliberal land policies emerge from a pro-market critique of conventional (generally state-directed) land policies. Using various experiences from different countries, it is argued here that the pro-market critique of conventional land reforms is theoretically flawed and is unsupported by empirical evidence, and that initial outcomes of pro-market land policies show that they do not significantly reform pre-existing agrarian structures in favour of the rural poor.

Colombia: Agrarian Reform, Fake and Genuine
Héctor Mondragón, Economic Advisor to the National Campesino Council
September 05, 2005 - The World Bank and the Colombian government have, over the past thirty years, brought about a variety of initiatives under the guise of agrarian reform. In this chapter, we track the failures of the agrarian reform project, and show that these disappointments are yet more tragic than they first appear, given that genuine agrarian reform has the promise to address directly a range of ills that persist in Colombia today.

The right to food
Jean Ziegler, Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on the right to food, United Nations Organization
August 26, 2005 - The right to food is a human right that is protected by international law. It is the right to have regular, permanent and unobstructed access, either directly or by means of financial purchases, to quantitatively and qualitatively adequate and sufficient food corresponding to the cultural traditions of the people to which the consumer belongs, and ensuring a physical and mental, individual and collective, fulfilling and dignified life free from anxiety. Governments have a legal obligation to respect, protect and fulfil the right to food.

Landless Peasants March in Brazil, Build a new Road by Walking
Deborah James, Common Dreams News Center
July 20, 2005 - On May 17th, Brazilian news media reported that 50 people were injured as landless peasants clashed with police. Like our corporate media in the U.S., this focus overshadowed the real story; that 12,000 poor landless peasants had recently completed a Herculean 150 mile, 17 day-long march across the country to raise awareness about the crucial need for land reform in Brazil.

Interview with Peter Rosset of CECCAM and Land Research Action Network: Agrarian Reform, Land Reform, Food Sovereignty
Nic Paget-Clarke (In Motion Magazine) and Peter Rosset (LRAN, CECCAM), In Motion Magazine
July 20, 2005 - This interview for In Motion Magazine, April 15, 2005, was held in San Felipe, Yaracuy, Venezuela during a workshop on land reform held as part of a nationwide conference called “The 3rd International Gathering in Solidarity with the Bolivarian Revolution”. The Via Campesina delegation was doing a followup on an agreement (Chavez, Los Tapes y Las Semillas) that President Hugo Chavez signed at the MST settlement of Tapas in Rio Grande Do Sul, Brazil during the (2004) World Social Forum. This was a historic agreement between a government, the Chavez government, and a social movement, the Landless Social Movement, the MST, in Brazil, plus the Via Campesina, as the global alliance of peasant organizations, and a university and a state government in Brazil to create a Latin American School of Agroecology for peasant movements.

Venezuela Embarks on New Land Reform
Dow Jones Newswires
June 21, 2005 - The government of President Hugo Chavez is moving
aggressively in a plan to overhaul landownership in the
Andean nation, where about 80% of the population lives
in poverty. A new land titling effort aims to address inequality in the countryside. The efforts are part of a more comprehensive "land revolution" to be implemented over several years.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: The Land Policies of the World Bank
Peter Rosset
November 22, 2004 - This December representatives from peasant movements around the world will gather together with each other and with specialists in land reform policies, at the World Forum on Agrarian Reform, to be held in Valencia, Spain. On the top of their agenda will be debunking the hype emanating from the World Bank on the topic of land reform, and organizing a global campaign to fight the pernicious impacts of the Bank's land policies.

Land Occupation in Bolivia
Econoticiasbolivia.com
September 02, 2004 - The occupation of Bolivian oil field marks the beginning of a new wave of protests, which developed in the rural areas of the country. Further actions are being carried out in the south of the country, and marches to La Paz are being prepared by landless farmers from different regions. The landless movements explained that the occupation of the oil field was a direct action against the government for the acquisition of the just entitlements [ titulación ] to their properties.

Land Tenure in the United States: Returning African-Americans to the Land
Spencer D. Wood & Jess Gilbert
July 23, 2004 - The authors provide a study of the land tenure pattern of Black farmers in the rual Southeastern U.S. Drawing from data on land tenure patterns in the South and in communities of color in particular, an aging population of black land owners emerges and suggests larger trends in U.S. agriculture towards a decline of African-Americans in the farming sector. A case study of the Mississippi Delta provides strong evidence of the need for policy to address unequal tenancy patterns and the continued role that policy can play in correcting for persistent inequality in the access to resources and land.

Declaration of the Via Campesina's 4th International Conference
Via Campesina
July 19, 2004 - "We, members of Via Campesina, a world-wide organization of rural women, peasants, small farmers, rural workers, indigenous people and afro-descendants, from Asia, Europe, America and Africa, met in Itaici, Brazil, from 14-19 June 2004, for our 4th International Conference. We were welcomed warmly, fraternally and in a combative spirit by our hosts, the member organizations of Via Campesina in Brazil. We gathered to confirm our determination to defend our cultures and our right to continue living as peasants and peoples with our own identity. . . . . Read More

Philippine Agrarian Reform Gives Land to the Wealthy
Luz Rimban, Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ)
July 13, 2004 - This report focuses on the 220-hectare Hacienda Tinang in Tarlac, once owned by Benigno Aquino Sr. and sold to the wealthy de Leon family of Pampanga. It narrates how the de Leon heirs circumvented land reform by faking a voluntary offer of sale where the land was supposedly sold, in smaller parcels, to “farmer-beneficiaries.” These beneficiaries, however, were actually members of the clan, which includes some of the country’s wealthiest bankers, businesspeople, and socialites. The story is much more than that of the circumvention of the law or the loopholes in the land reform program. It is really a story of power and wealth in the country, and how the families that own land and wield power are able to protect their interests.

Land Reform Ridden with Loopholes
Luz Rimban, Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ)
July 13, 2004 - When she outlined a 10-point program of government in her inaugural speech on Wednesday, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo made no mention of land reform or rural poverty. No one has made note of the omission, itself a sign that 16 years after the signing of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law, the issue of land redistribution is no longer considered a matter of urgent concern. . . . Learn more about how small farmers have been impacted by land reform in the Philippines

Post-apartheid Development, Landlessness and the Reproduction of Exclusion in South Africa
Stephen Greenberg, Center for Civil Society
July 10, 2004 - In this 43 page report on development and landlessness in post-apartheid South Africa, Greenberg explores the emergence of the Landless People's Movment (LPM) in response to the market assisted land reform emphasis of the World Bank and the South African state. Greenberg writes, "the LPM is perhaps unique amongst the independent grassroot movements in that its active membership is found in both urban and rural parts of the country." The report explores the ways that both historical and structural contradictions have shaped the response of grassroots movements in the struggle over the scope and direction of South African development . . . . .Read More

A Place in the Country
Judy Coode, Sojourners Magazine
July 09, 2004 - A broad grassroots movement seeks land, equity, and dignity in Brazil. In the past 20 years, more than a million people in Brazil have participated in the most vibrant, well-organized, and far-reaching grassroots association in Latin America, the Landless Workers' Movement. In a country of profound economic disparity and poverty, the movement has emerged as a significant force for agrarian reform, as well as progress in education, health care, agricultural production, promotion of women's rights, and democratic participation. . . . . Read More

Agrarian Crisis Sparks Nationwide Strike
Rebecca Brigham, Americas Program, Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC)
July 09, 2004 - More than one hundred indigenous rights groups, women's organizations, human rights groups, campesino organizations, and labor unions organized the 12-hour strike that impacted most of the country, which paralyzed Guatemala. Guatemalan civil society organizations were also protesting the newly proposed regressive tax and the recent signing of the Central American FreeTrade Agreement (CAFTA). . . . Find out More

Backgrounder: Land Reform in Venezuela
Global Exchange
July 07, 2004 - This two page overview of Venezuelan land reform foucuses on the current policies of President Hugo Chavez and the renewed emphasis on rural development in the early part of the 21st century. A brief background and summary of land reform policy and rural development in Venezuela since 1492 is provided along with consideration of the current challenges that landless Venezuelan's face in an age of international economic pressures and agribusiness.

Colombia: Decades of War Over Land
Constanza Vieira, Inter Press Service (IPS)
July 07, 2004 - In many rural areas of Colombia, life is measured from war to war, the first of which broke out in 1948, the second in 1954, the third in 1962 and the fourth, which is still raging, in 1964. The war that began in May 1964 produced an army of peasant origin to defend themselves against the attacks of armed gangs created by the land-hungry elites with backing from the State. . . . Read More

Agrarian Reform: The Promise and The Reality
Marissa de Guzman, Marco Garrido & Mary Ann Manahan
June 23, 2004 - An updated and revised background report on land reform in the Philippines. The authors have provided a comprehensive critical analysis of the history and reality of agrarian reform in the Philippines. This 59 page paper is also featured as a chapter in, Anti-development State: Political Economy of Permanent Crisis by Walden Bello

Farmer is Face of Land Reform's Success at 16
Christine A. Gaylican, Inquirer News Service
June 23, 2004 - After sixteen years the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program ( better known as CARP ) has transformed thousands of tenant-farmers in the Philippines into small farmer-entrepreneurs. This article discusses the experiences of one farmer, Mang Pio, a direct beneficiary of the Asian Development Bank's training for farmers called the Agrarian Reform Communities Project (ARCP) which seeks to provide agrarian reform beneficiaries the right tools to manage their farm lands. . . . .Read More

Brazil : Agrarian Reform for Informal Lands
Mario Osava, Inter Press Service (IPS)
June 03, 2004 - Nearly a quarter of Brazilian territory (200 million hectares, equivalent to the area of Mexico) does not have known landowners because there is no legal register of titles. During the previous administration, of Fernando Henrique Cardoso, the annual average number of families settled reached 80,000, while last year, under Lula's watch the total was 37,000. In addition to these formal efforts by the Brazilian government, peasant organizations have continued to push for more immediate land access in ways that have proven to be as successful. . . . . Read More

Scoping Study on Land Policy Research in Latin America
Stephen Baranyi, Carmen Diana Deere & Manuel Morales, Baranyi-The North-South Institute (NSI)-Canada
May 21, 2004 - After being relegated to the margins of development debates for over a decase, land policy has moved rapidly up the international agenda in recent years. In Latin America, a wave of market-oriented land policy reforms were adopted in the 1990s, from Mexico through Honduras and Nicaragua to Brazil, Ecuador and Peru. At the same time less visible yet important innovations were taking place on a number of fronts: joint titling to couples to promote gender equity; the regulariazation of indigenous peoples' titles to communal lands. . . . . Yet by the turn of the century frustrations with the uneven pace of change led certain social movmements and political parties to revive the banner of redistributive land reform. . . . Read More

A Voice Unheard: Frustration takes its toll
Pennapa Hongthong, The Nation
May 17, 2004 - Hai Khanjanta, 76, cannot estimate how many nights she has spent camping in front of Government House in Bangkok over the past 27 years, demanding compensation for the paddy fields she lost when waters from a government-built dyke flooded her family's land. The Thai government seized her land for the public[interest], but won't allow Khanjanta to stay on public space to seek compensation. . . . . Read More

Peasants of the World Need. . . .
Via Campesina
April 29, 2004 - Via Campesina is pressuring the United Nations Human Rights Commission to reconginze the rights and needs of peasants around the world. This list of 5 demands was presented at the 60th session meeting. We, the peasants are the producers of food that feed the peoples . . . .Read More

Land: Merchandise or Human Right?
April 27, 2004 - Across the world today, land is being transformed from being the base of communities’ life into a commodity. 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 issues offers good chances to contribute to the realisation of the human rights of rural populations and to guarantee the food sovereignty of all peoples. This formal statement is drafted jointly by small farmer and peasant organizations as an endorsement of European Union land policies.

LPM Members Arrested on Election Day
Landless People's Movement (LPM)
April 17, 2004 - Fifty-seven members of the Gauteng Landless People's Movement (LPM) have been arrested in Thembelihle, south of Johannesburg, for wanting to hold a peaceful protest as part of the national LPM's No Land, No Vote campaign. The LPM condemns the arrest of its core leadership and its other members under spurious charges and a violation of their fundamental civil and political rights.

Tides Shift on Agrarian Reform: New Movements Show the Way
Peter Rosset, Co-Director, Food First
April 15, 2004 - Peasant organizations around the world have been pushing for land reform on their terms in new ways. In early 2000 the landless members of the Honduran Peasant Movement of Aguán decided to take matters into their own hands. Some 900 families occupied a 5000 hectare site of state owned land in Colón. The land was the former base of the Regional Center for Military Training (CREM) during the 1980's where the U.S. trained the contra forces against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.

Globalization and Social Movements: A Brazilian Perspective
Joao Pedro Stedile, MST (Landless Workers Movement)
March 09, 2004 - On October 20, 2003, one of the leading spokespersons of the MST (Landless Wokrers Movement) of Brazil, Joao Pedro Stedile, presented a public lecture in Toronto. Mr.Stedile provided an overview of the present crisis of neoliberalism, gauging the strategic responses of dominant institutions to this crisis as well as the challenges and opportunities that the momet affords social movments mobilizing for progressive change. Mr.Stedile addresses matters related specifically to Brazil and Latin America in general.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: World Bank Land Policies
Peter Rosset, Co-Director, Food First
February 17, 2004 - Peter Rosset provides an overview of the World Bank's approach to land reform in this paper presented at the Seminar on “The Negative Impacts of the World Bank’s Policies on Market-Based Land Reform.” George Washington University, Washington, DC, April 15 -17, 2002. Rosset provides a compelling argument for why the World Bank's "one market, one world" policies result in unitended consequences for landless people around the world. A model for understanding the systematic efforts of the World Bank to move nations towards markets and privatization is provided.

Access To Land: Land Reform and Security of Tenure
Peter Rosset, Co-Director
February 17, 2004 - Access to land and security of tenure are critical elements in alleviating rural poverty and moving toward a world where food security and the absence of hunger are a reality for all. At the 1996 World Food Summit in Rome, the governments of the world agreed upon a declaration to reduce hunger by one half in the year 2015. This paper reviews the original commitments made in 1996, and the overall lack of progress by governments in meeting them.

TAKE ACTION-Landless Youth Activists face Life Sentences Without Proper Defense
Landless People's Movement
January 31, 2004 - The Landless People's Movement (LPM)-An independent national movement of poor and landless people struggling for land reform - requests all social movement and civil society activists with regular incomes to assist us to ensure that seven of our strongest youth comrades will be able to pay for a decent legal defence in the upcoming Johannesburg High Court murder case against the LPM "Protea 7".

The Politics of Land Reform in Southern Africa
Edward Lehoff, Institute of Development Studies
January 27, 2004 - Across Southern Africa the legacy of settler colonialism lives on in a dualistic agricultural system that has been perpetuated first by deliberate state policies and, more recently, by the forces of free market capitalism. Small-scale farming, which provides a precarious living to million of poor rural households, remains severely neglected by policy makers in the region. Recent seizures of commercial farms and other land in Zimbabwe and increasing militancy among land activists in the region, suggests that a radical demand for land remains strong among much of the rural population. This paper explores the dynamics of land reform and land policy in Southern Africa with special consideration of the radical struggles for access to land and resources.

Monitoring Paper Part I: Land Occupation in South Africa
Mfaniseni Fana Sihlongonyane, National Land Committee (NLC)
November 20, 2003 - This paper discusses the state of land occupation, its social origins, composition and dynamics in South Africa. The focus is on the social, political and geographical issues that have influenced land occupation during the 2Oth Century while paying special attention to patterns of gender, political alliance and NGO linkage. Finally, the authors consider the varying impact of economic class and the material conditions that landless South Africans continue to face in the continuing struggle for land.

Monitoring Paper Part II- Land Occupation in South Africa
Mfaniseni Fana Sihlongonyane, National Land Committee (NLC)
November 20, 2003 - Part II of this paper concludes with a final evaluation of South African social, political and challenges of geography that have influenced land occupation over the decades. In closing, the author identifies key issues and lessons for the future.

Backgrounder Part II-The World Bank and Land Reform in Brazil
Sérgio Sauer, National Forum on Agrarian Reform and Rural Justice
November 06, 2003 - The second of a three part report on the history and status of land reform in Brazil. In this section of the report Sérgio Sauer focuses on the role of the World Bank in shaping land reform policy at the national level and its emphasis on the establishment of land markets.

Backgrounder Part III-Learning to participate, the MST experience
Mônica Dias Martins, University of Ceará
November 06, 2003 - In the third and final part of this report on land reform in Brazil, Monica Martins explores the impact of World Bank land policies on peasants and the landless. Focusing on the struggles of the MST, Martins provides a brief history of political and economic forces that have mobilized the MST and continue to shape their stuggle for land.

Agrarian Change , Gender and Land Reform: A South African Case Study
Cherryl Walker, UNRISD
November 05, 2003 - A paper exploring the history of land reform in South Africa since its democratic transition in 1993/94 up until 2000. The report explores how parallel movements towards land reform and women's rights failed to create opportunities for realizing gender equity in the rural sector.

I'm a Landless Peasant, I've Got Land but it's in the Graveyard
Maurice Lemoine, Le Monde Diplomatique
October 23, 2003 - Venezuela's opposition particularly loathes the crucial agricultural reforms of President Hugo Chávez, which have begun to return parts of enormous,barely used land-holdings to poor landless peasants and to encourage them to grow their own food and build working communities.

Land Rights for Women Still Far From Becoming a Reality
Zarina Geloo, ipsnews.net
October 16, 2003 - The governement in Zambia has directed local authorities to allocate land to more women in an effort to empower them through land ownership. Critics and some local women have raised concerns as to how this political commitment to women will actually be realized.

TAKE ACTION-Armed landlords prevent agrarian reform in Brazil
La Vía Campesina & FIAN
October 09, 2003 - Since the end of 2002, 180 landless families are camping on the border of municipal land in Foy do Jordão,Paraná. Local landlords created armed military groups to protect their properties, harrass landless families and hinder the expropriation of land for the agrarian reform.

The Crime of the Latifundio
Alai-Amlatina
October 02, 2003 - Historically the violence in the Brazilian countryside has been caused by the enormous concentration of land by the few. As a result, hundreds of rural workers have been murdered; the land monopoly generates poverty, unemployment, and the exclusion from political life while preserving the power of rural oligarchs.

TAKE ACTION-Guatemalan Land Reform
Campaign for Agrarian Reform, La Via Campesina & FIAN
September 25, 2003 - Indigenous land has been taken by force from families in the northern regions of Guatemala. Land must be redisributed to nearly 830 landless indigenous families in Guatemala if justice is to be restored in the countryside.

Stop Forced Removals & Evictions! Stop Privatisation!
People's Rights Campaign
March 26, 2003 - More than seven million poor and landless urban people living on the edges South African cities in informal settlements are threatened by apartheid-style forced removals carried out at gunpoint by private security companies on instructions from the elected government.

Backgrounder Part I: Land Reform in Brazil
Manuel Domingos, Federal University of Ceara
February 03, 2003 - In January of 2001, President Fernando Henrique Cardoso announced that land concentration in Brazil had diminished and that a truly democratic, peaceful, and productive revolution had begun in the countryside. Even if the President’s statistics were correct, the number of settlers is less than the number of workers that abandoned their plots in search of better living conditions.

Backgrounder Part I: Land Reform in India
Issues and Challenges
Land Research Action Network
January 21, 2003 - India inherited a semi-feudal agrarian system. The ownership and control of land was highly concentrated in a few landlords and intermediaries whose main intention was to extract maximum rent, either in cash or kind, from tenants. As a result, agricultural productivity suffered and oppression of tenants resulted in a progressive deterioration of their plight.

Backgrounder Part II-Land Reform in India
Issues and Challenges
Land Research Action Network
January 21, 2003 - Part 2 of this report includes information on tribal displacement and deprivation, women and land, as well as report methodology and bibliographic references.

Backgrounder-Land and Agrarian Reform in South Africa
Wellington D. Thwala, National Land Committee
January 21, 2003 - In South Africa, land is presently not only one of the most defining political and development issues, but also perhaps the most intractable. The continuing racial maldistribution of land will either be resolved through a fundamental restructuring of the government's land reform programme, or it will be resolved by a fundamental restructuring of property relations by the people themselves. Which direction the country follows depends to a large degree on the urgent and immediate responsiveness of the government to the needs and demands of the country's 19-million mostly poor, black and landless rural people.

Backgrounder-Land and Agrarian Reform in Zimbabwe
Tom Lebert, National Land Committee
January 21, 2003 - Over the past two years or so, land has stormed onto the Southern African regional agenda, thanks largely to developments in Zimbabwean land reform. The media in particular has latched onto these developments, overwhelmingly with a negative sentiment. This negativity has largely clouded the real situation, and obscured important and valid grievances - namely the unresolved land issue which underpins much of the structural inequality characteristic of the country.

Backgrounder Part I :The Agrarian Question in Guatemala
Laura Saldivar Tanaka and Hannah Wittman, Land Research Action Network
January 13, 2003 - Part 1 of this paper discusses the history of land reform efforts in Guatemala and gives an overview of the political struggles for land.

Backgrounder Part II: The Agrarian Question in Guatemala
Laura Saldivar Tanaka and Hannah Wittman, Land Research Action Network
January 13, 2003 - Part 2 of this paper discusses land markets and the establishment of FONTIERRAS, and explores the role of Civil Society in shaping the debate over agrarian reform Guatemala.

Two Models of Land Reform and Development
Jeffrey Frank, Z Magazine
November 27, 2002 - Guided by the slogan "Occupy, Resist and Produce," the MST initiated a direct action model of land reform
wherein landless peasants occupy an unproductive parcel
of land, petition the Brazilian government for land
rights, and operate the settlement as a collective
enterprise.

Land Research Action Network: Sponsoring Organizations
November 07, 2002 - Land Research Action Network's sponsoring organizations.