Renewing Global Commitments to a Comprehensive Agrarian Reform and Social Justice
Nearly two decades after the first International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD) in 2006, preparations are underway for a second global gathering — ICARRD+20 — to be hosted by Colombia in February, 2026.
The initiative, endorsed by the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS) and the FAO Council, is seen as a major step toward reviving international attention to land rights, agrarian reform, and food sovereignty.
As elaborated by Nury Martínez, Saúl Vicente Vasquez, and Philip Seufert in their 2025 paper in The Journal of Peasant Studies, the first ICARRD, held from 7 to 10 March 2006 in Porto Alegre, Brazil, brought together governments from all continents alongside social movements, Indigenous Peoples, and rural communities.
Its central themes included:
- policies that favor poor populations’ access to resources
- improved planning and local management of natural resources
- the identification of new development opportunities for rural communities
- the need for agrarian reform grounded in social justice and sustainability
- the importance of food sovereignty for equitable access to land and resources
In 20026, while governments were meeting at the ICARRD, social movements and Indigenous Peoples’ organizations held a parallel forum, called ‘Land, Territory and Dignity’, to set out their vision, demands and proposals. (Read the Declaration from the Parallel Forum in 2006)
The 2006 ICARRD also marked a milestone for democratic participation in the UN system, enabling self-organized engagement by peasants, landless people, Indigenous Peoples, fishers, pastoralists, and rural workers. Its final declaration emphasized that fair access, use, and control of land and natural resources are inseparable from the eradication of hunger and the realization of sustainable development.
However – as the paper notes – nearly two decades later, global inequality and land concentration have only deepened. Land grabbing, environmental degradation, and rural poverty continue to threaten human rights and food systems worldwide.
In the years following ICARRD (2006), movements continued to advocate for rural communities’ rights. In 2022, on the tenth anniversary of the UN Tenure Guidelines, the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty, of which La Via Campesina is a part of, issued a statement. It highlighted ongoing failures in land governance, continuing land grabbing, and ecosystem destruction, and called for renewed international action to uphold rural people’s rights.
Social movements are insisting that the upcoming ICARRD+20, led by Colombia and supported by Brazil – must therefore respond to these ongoing challenges by assessing and promoting the implementation of the 2006 commitments and related frameworks such as the Tenure Guidelines, UNDRIP, UNDROP, and CEDAW General Recommendation No. 34.
“ The 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) states unequivocally that Indigenous Peoples have the right to the lands, territories and resources which they have traditionally owned, occupied or otherwise used or acquired. Complementing the UNDRIP, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas recognizes the right to land and other natural resources of rural people who are not indigenous but who have a special dependency on and relationship with the land and ecosystems. In addition, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) issued a General Recommendation (No. 34, 2016), which explicitly recognizes land as a human right of rural women.” the paper notes.
Social movements want that ICARRD+20 will serve as a genuine intergovernmental platform — one that strengthens land rights, advances a comprehensive agrarian reform, and builds pathways toward climate justice, food sovereignty, and peace for rural communities across the world – at a time when the world desperately needs it.
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This article draws its content from the paper – “Towards the Second International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD+20): An Opportunity to Advance the Realization of the Right to Land and Territories” by Nury Martínez, Saúl Vicente Vasquez, and Philip Seufert, The Journal of Peasant Studies (24 September 2025).
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