Protest New World Bank land reform plan : IMC-SA

The following is an initiative of various African land NGOs concerned with the plans of the World Bank to introduce a new land policy during the World Summit on Sustainable Development. The international peasant movement, La Via Campesina, has already rejected this World Bank process. All land NGOs and activists are urged to support the Open Letter below. If you wish to sign, please send messages of support to: andile@nlc.co.za

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE WORLD BANK ON THE LAND POLICY “CONSULTATION”
TO BE HELD IN KAMAPLA, UGANDA

AN AFRICAN APPEAL!

We, the undersigned individuals, organisations and networks based on the African continent and working and struggling for genuine land reform and agrarian transformation that is lead and controlled by the landless and poor peasants, hereby state the following regarding the World Bank consultative process on land policy:

We recognise land reform as a basic condition for the full development of the African person, and consequently regard access to land as basic human right. Related to this is the democratic ethos which must inform any process that seeks to define or refine questions of land access, control, usage and redistribution. Since land is central to the lives of millions who live in the African continent, it is our general belief that the African landless and poor peasants should be the drivers of any process that seeks to address the land question. This belief is further strengthened by the failures of many “top-down” and “market-driven” land reform experiments on the African continent, some of which have been influenced and others directly driven by the World Bank.

We hereby express our profound concern about the land policies of the World Bank generally, and in particular, about the current process through which future World Bank land policies are being defined. This process of redefinition will not only be decisive for the future land programmes of the World Bank, but will also have a strong impact on co-operation policies at bilateral and multilateral level and on national agrarian reform policies.

According to the information we have received, the World Bank will be organising regional seminars on different continents over the coming months to undertake the formulation and drafting of a "Land Policy Research Report ", which will be launched in August 2002 during the World Summit on Sustainable Development to be held in Johannesburg, South Africa. This document - which is expected to have a wide international impact - will later be redrafted by a small group of experts. The Bank has announced that the process of redefinition will be transparent and will include the participation and consultation of civil society, and the new policies which emerge from this process are supposed to be "defined with the participation of civil society".

If the above is true, it begs a number of questions, beginning with the question of “who defines ‘civil society’?”. We further would like to know what mandate such “civil society” would have to help define a policy that is expected to be carried out by governments?

We further note the absence of landless and peasant organisations on the list of invited participants. We believe it is impossible to embark on a “participatory” process to define land policies without including the peasants’ perspective.

The presence and role of the few civil society organisations appears to be very limited by the current process. The organisations involved run the risk of being used to legitimate the claim of a “consultative” process to justify the World Bank policies.

We are also concerned about the lack of clarity regarding the manner and extent to which the seminars will influence the "final product (the Land Policy Research Report)", to be drafted by a few experts - in fundamental contradiction to the supposed participatory approach. Finally, even less clarity exists regarding this document’s influence on the actual policies of the World Bank.

Having noted the above we demand the following:

1. That the current process of defining new land policies must be stopped or reviewed;

2. If the “consultations” are to continue at all, these should not be regarded as consultative, but rather as World Bank meetings, and as such, as meetings that should not define policy for Africa;

3. That before planning new land policies, the impact of existing programmes, such as "market-assisted land reforms", must be evaluated by democratic processes;

4. That peasants and organisations of the landless must play a central role in the evaluation of existing programmes and in the definition and implementation of new land policies.

Sincerely,

1. Land Rights Network For Southern Africa
2.