The preparatory Meeting is a discussion on how to build a partnership initiative between groups across the globe.
While Ekta Parishad is fighting against land grabbing in India, we are finding Indian companies going to Bolivia and Ethiopia and buying huge tracts of land that are displacing villagers and altering economic relationships. This means that national campaigning on land rights is no longer sufficient. It has to be an inter-regional and global campaign. This requires international solidarity and linkages to be built up to respond to the expansion of these national interests. How to build that level of solidarity especially among people and civil society organizations in the resource-rich developing countries? This is the reason why we are holding that conference. There needs to be a strong enough network that can monitor investment (viz the World Bank, IMF, ADB and others) and then pressure governments and international actors not to support these land-grabbing initiatives.
For Jan Satyagraha 2012 March to be carried out, it is proposed that there be a preliminary meeting of about 30 persons to plan out a joint program in early 2011. This international committee will oversee the global campaign Jan Satyagraha that culminates in the global march in October 2012.
The functions of an international committee will be to identify and oversee the formation of regional and national focal organizations in about 60 countries. Their responsibility will include developing greater understanding of the issues, and planning campaign strategies. People at the regional and national levels will be involved in campaign planning and advocacy. Inter-regional communication and exchange will be carried out to strengthen the linkages. International networking will also be an important task that will be overseen by the international committee. The international committee will have to be in contact throughout the 2 years of the campaign period (2011-2012).
Preparatory Meeting in India in March 2011
The objective of the Meeting is to create a good relationship among colleagues representing national, regional and international organizations related to land and livelihood issues, and to have them do the preliminary planning of the global march. The exposure is meant to give people an idea how Ekta Parishad has developed the organizing techniques for a march over a decade.
List of Participants
Resource Persons
Madido Niasse and Seema Gaikwad
International Land Coalition (ILC)
The International Land Coalition is a global alliance of civil society and intergovernmental organisations working together to promote secure and equitable access to and control over land for poor women and men through advocacy, dialogue, knowledge sharing and capacity building. Secure and equitable access to land, control over land reduces poverty and contributes to identity, dignity and inclusion.
Flavio Valente
International Human Rights Organisation for the Right to Feed Oneself (FIAN)
FIAN India is a network of various independent FIAN chapters in different federal states of the country. FIAN India is a non-profit organisation and affiliated to FIAN International, a Germany-based Human rights organisation that works for the implementation of economic, social and cultural human rights (ESC rights). The Main Vision Of FIAN India Is full, realization of the human right to adequate food so that the community can enjoy ecologically, socially, economically and culturally appropriate and safe food in dignity.
Devinder Sharma
Agricultural Analyst
Devinder Sharma is a distinguished food and trade policy analyst. Trained as an agricultural scientist Sharma is a noted Indian journalist and outspoken critic of industrial agriculture, genetic engineering, globalisation and free trade.
K.B. Saxena
Council for Social Development (CSD)
CSD is one of the leading institutions working in the area of development research in India. Apart from carrying out pioneering research on developmental issues and concerns, CSD has played an influential role in voicing social concerns among planners and policy-makers through-out the thirty five years of its existence.
Bina Agrawal
Bina Agarwal is Director and Professor of Economics at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi University. Educated at the Universities of Cambridge and Delhi she has held distinguished positions at many universities in the USA and UK and lectured world-wide. As an economist with a keen interest in interdisciplinary and intercountry explorations, Bina Agarwal`s publications include subjects like land, livelihoods and property rights; environment and development; the political economy of gender; poverty and inequality; law; and agriculture and technological change.
Sanjay Upadhyay
Enviro - Legal Defense firm
Enviro Legal Defence Firm, India’s first environmental law firm (ELDF) aims at mainstreaming natural resource law, resolving conflicts over resources and strengthening environmental jurisprudence. ELDF is an independent team of erudite legal professionals, which provides services to anyone who approaches us including Governments, Non-Government Organizations, Educational Institutions, Individuals, Private and External Agencies engaged in areas of natural resource law. It is our endeavor to ensure that the service provided by us is free from all biases and prejudices and speaks frankly about legal aspects- as we understand them.
Rajiv Vora
Swaraj Peeth
Swaraj Peeth Trust, a Gandhian center for nonviolence and peace, works for Mahatma Gandhi’s vision of Swaraj through building a community based nonviolent social force called Gandhi Shanti Sena; organizing public dialogues, training in nonviolence and education programmes for creating swaraj awareness in various areas of life.
Miloon Kothari,
Director, Housing and Land Rights Network and Former Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing, UN Human Rights Council
The Human Rights Council is an inter-governmental body within the UN system made up of 47 States responsible for strengthening the promotion and protection of human rights around the globe. The Council was created by the UN General Assembly with the main purpose of addressing situations of human rights violations and make recommendations on them.
Praveen Jha,
Chair, Prof. Economics, JNU
Praveen Jha is Associare Professor at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning at the
India Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.
Country Reports
From Latin America
Brazil
Cedenir de Oliveira
Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST)
The MST is a mass social movement, formed by rural workers and by all those who want to fight for land reform and against injustice and social inequality in rural areas in Brazil. The MST was born through a process of occupying latifundios (large landed estates) and become a national movement in 1984. Over more than two decades, the movement has led more than 2,500 land occupations, with about 370,000 families - families that today settled on 7.5 million hectares of land that they won as a result of the occupations.
Colombia
Eloy Garcia
Christian Peacemaker Teams Colombia (CPT)
Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) offers an organized, nonviolent alternative to war and other forms of lethal inter-group conflict. CPT provides organizational support to persons committed to faith-based nonviolent alternatives in situations where lethal conflict is an immediate reality or is supported by public policy. In Colombia, CPT works with CAHUCOPANA, the Community of Garzal and Nueva Esperanza, the Community of Las Pavas, FEDAGROMISBOL and Network of Iniciatives and Communities of Peace.
From Africa
Senegal
Amadou El Mazide Ndiaye
Societé International d`Ingénierie et d`Etudes de Développment en Afrique (SONED Afrique) and RADI Reseau Africain pour Developement Intègre(RADI)
The network was formed in 1985 to promote development in Africa. RADI's goal is to network with human rights and development NGO's to promote community outreach activities. It aims to help people know their rights and duties, and offer legal help to those who do not have access to a lawyer. RADI has a Legal Assistance and Information Centre that provides legal advice and services to organizations and individuals regarding workers' rights, family law, and the rights and duties of tenants and landowners. RADI has trained paralegals working in rural areas, and organized courses in Wolof and French on legal issues for school teachers, women's groups and other NGOs. The RADI centre is developing an adult education curriculum to reduce Senegal's 75 per cent illiteracy rate and encourage participation in the country's emerging democracy.
Kenya
Odenda Lumumba
Kenya Land Alliance (KLA)
Kenya Land Alliance is a non-profit-making and non-partisan umbrella network of civil society organizations and individuals advocating for formulation and implementation of land and natural resource policies and institutional reforms in Kenya. Their vision is a society in which all people are assured of sustainable livelihoods through secure and equitable access and utilisation of land and natural resources.
From Asia
Nepal
Roshan Chitrkar and Jagat Basnet
Community Self-Reliance Centre (CSRC)
CSRC is a NGO also affiliated with the Social Welfare Council. The idea of establishing CSRC was conceived in 1993 by a group of young and energetic schoolteachers from Sindhupalchok district in order to change the existing pattern of elite-dominated power relations by organizing and mobilising the marginalized groups of people, especially the tenants and farmers who have no, or nominal, land.
Indonesia
Muhammad Nur Uddin and Ika Nurillah Krishnayanti
Indonesian Peasant Alliance (API)
Indonesian Peasant Alliance (API) is an organization of peasants at national level. API was established based on the agreement among independent peasant organizations in Java and Sumatra. The urgency of this establishment was based on the necessity of the peasant movement to be a pressure power against unjust policies that have marginalized millions of Indonesian peasants’ lives.
Sri Lanka
Lalith Abeysinghe
Movement for National Land and Agricultural Reforms (MONLAR)
http://www.oocities.org/monlarslk/publications/publications.htm
Movement for National Land and Agricultural Reform (MONLAR) was formed as a network of farmer organizations, NGOs and people’s organizations in other sectors at the beginning of 1990, in response to the serious socio-political and economic crisis that emerged in Sri Lanka at the end of 1980s. Efforts made in integrating Sri Lanka’s economy into the globalization process resulted in an unprecedented increase in rural poverty, breakdown in rural small farmer agriculture, malnutrition among children, high rate of anemia, among mothers, low birth weight babies, large increase in income disparities, loss of livelihoods.
Thailand
Jeff Wong
Four Regions Slum Network (FRSN)
The Four Regions Slum Network was established with the goal of being an independent people`s movement that would push forward the issues of housing rights, developing the quality of life of slum dwellers, and seeking social justice together with the people’s movement and other civil society groups. At present, the Four Regions Slum Network has ten member networks, consisting of 110 communities with around 7,000 families.
Bangladesh
Muhamed Kamal Uddin
Association for Realisation of Basic Needs (ARBAN)
The Association for realization of Basic Needs, a Non Govt. Development Organization, concerned with fundamental rights and the basic needs of the people, was founded on 18th February 1984. ARBAN believes that all development projects and programmes designed and implemented by the Government, NGOs, International Organizations, UN bodies and others should be directed towards the fulfillment of the basic needs and fundamental rights of the people who live in perpetual poverty, famine, malnutrition, disease, deprivation, indebtedness, injustice and exploitations.
Philippines
Nathaniel Don E. Marquez
Asian NGO Coalition for Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ANGOC)
ANGOC is a regional association of 20 national and regional networks of non-government organizations (NGO) in Asia actively engaged in food security, agrarian reform, sustainable agriculture, participatory governance and rural development. ANGOC member networks and partners work in 14 Asian countries with an effective reach of some 3,000 NGOs and community-based organizations (CBOs).
India
Savio Carvalho,
Director, Demand Dignity Campaign
Amnesty International
International Secretariat
Amnesty International is a global movement of more than 3 million supporters, members and activists in more than 150 countries and territories who campaign to end grave abuses of human rights. Their vision is for every person to enjoy all the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights standards.
Annie Thomas
Action Aid International
Sandeep Chachra and Sarah Ramya
Action Aid India
ActionAid is an international anti-poverty agency whose aim is to fight poverty worldwide. They are helping over 13 million of the world`s poorest and most disadvantaged people in 42 countries worldwide. In all of our country programmes we work with local partners to make the most of their knowledge and experience.
From Europe
EU
Fintan Farrell
European Anti-Poverty Network
The European Anti Poverty Network (EAPN) is an independent network of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and groups involved in the fight against poverty and social exclusion in the Member States of the European Union, established in 1990.
Switzerland
Liliane de Toledo
Ekta Europe and Groupe de soutien de Genève
Ekta Europe and the Groupe de Soutien de Genève are standing in solidarity with the Indian people's movement, Ekta Parishad. Their primary goal is to acquaint people with the work of Ekta Parishad and promote international solidarity with its Jan Satyagraha 2012 campaign.
France
Odile Puget
Gandhi International and Groupe de Soutien de Genève
Gandhi International is a French N.G.O. which brings together motivated individuals and various non-violent organisations working for social change in the cause of justice and peace. Among its partners are: Lanza del Vasto’s Communities of the Ark, Université Terre du ciel, Pax Christi International, the association Shanti, Church and Peace, Femmes Internationales – Murs Brisés, Génération Non-violente, the Colibri network of Pierre Rabhi. It is also supported by the Catholic Committee against Hunger and for Development (C.C.F.D.) and Survival International.
Belgium
Jacques Vellut
Volens - Mercy Home
Le projet consiste à créer, dans le centre de Louvain-la-Neuve, un espace facile d’accès et bien visible dédié à la promotion de démarches citoyennes visant à assurer un avenir viable pour la planète. Ce projet est le fruit d’une collaboration entre l’Université catholique de Louvain et la Ville d`Ottignies-Louvain la Neuve.
United Kingdom
Ivan Nutbrown
Action Village India
Action Village India (AVI) is a UK-based charity working for non-violent change in rural India. AVI works with six partner organisations across India. All these projects are devised and managed by local people and work in the Gandhian tradition of non-violent change and self-organisation to right economic and social injustices.
Canada
Paul Schwartzentruber
Ektacanada
Ekta Canada is an organization standing in solidarity with the Indian people's movement, Ekta Parishad. Our primary goal is to acquaint people with the work of Ekta Parishad and promote international solidarity with its 2012 campaign.