LAND RIGHTS
The last twenty years have seen the rapid acquisition of large plots of land in the global south by national and international elites, often referred to as land grabbing. Land grabbing can be defined as the control of land – whether through ownership, lease, concession, contracts, quotas, or general power – for purposes of speculation, extraction, resource control or commodification. (Ecoruralis 2016)
Land grabbing is a violation of human rights by threatening access to food and livelihoods. The new land proprietors often favor profitable export of their crops or minerals over feeding the hungry. Peasant farmers lose access to their land and thus their income and nutrition. The environmental health of the land is compromised as industrial forms of agriculture are implemented.
CIDSE is supporting the resistance of land grabbing in Africa, by connecting church actors with social movements and organising spaces for exchange. In 2015, CIDSE contributed to the organisation of a Pan-African Conference on Land Grabbing and Just Governance in Kenya, which brought together church and non-church actors to exchange knowledge and strategies on land grabbing, resulting in the establishment of a permanent platform called “Our land is our life” for these purposes. A similar conference was organised again in 2017 in Abidjan. The reflection and discussion on land grabbing from the perspective of Laudato Si’ and Catholic Church social teachings that began at the conference in Abidjan was then concretized in a paper on the theology of land grabbing to facilitate the opening of a concrete dialogue on land issues with church actors.
Stories
Publications
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We are the strength and we are the hope!
February 27, 2017A blog by Dr. Vaishali Patil, anti-nuclear activist (Jaitapur, India) and member of the National Alliance of Anti-Nuclear Movements, on […]
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Laying the foundations for gender equality work
December 20, 2016The CIDSE network embarked on a gender equality review in 2016- find out where this led us to and what […]
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In solidarity with those opposing pipelines on their ancestral lands
December 2, 2016The government of Canada recently announced that it rejected the construction of the Northern Gateway pipeline, which would have cut […]
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Indigenous peoples say “Water is life”
December 2, 2016Maryknoll Sister Patricia Ryan and members of the indigenous community where she works in Peru came to Washington, D.C. in […]
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Land conflicts and shady finances plague DR Congo palm oil
December 1, 2016European and US development funds are bankrolling palm oil company Feronia Inc despite land and labour conflicts at its plantations in the […]