ICARRD+20 – Social Movements Final Political Declaration
At the Second International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD+20), held in Cartagena, Colombia from 24 to 28 February 2026, social movements – including AFSA – represented by the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC) have called for a transformative agrarian reform grounded in food sovereignty.
AFSA’s Focal Point for farmers Tammi Jonas, spoke about the declaration drafting methodology with Morgan Ody (La Via Campesina International Coordinator) and Sylvia Kay (Transnational Institute) at the ICARRD+20 Social Movements Forum.
Twenty years after the first ICARRD, we are confronted by several challenges, as globally vast areas of land, water, and forests have been transferred from rural populations and Indigenous Peoples to corporations and elites, masking plunder as ‘investment.’
ICARRD+20 offered a historic opportunity to talk real actions. A chance to reaffirm that land is not a commodity, it is life. And to assert the importance of agrarian reform and rural development, to take stock of transformative examples of agrarian reform, to update the meaning of agrarian reform, and to forge a shared vision for popular, feminist, decolonial, and eco-social transformation.
AFSA’s delegation has come back from Colombia very much inspired by comrades from a variety of civil society organisations, farmers, indigenous peoples, fisherfolks, pastoralists and scholar activists.
AFSA’s General Coordinator, Antoine Lenique, spoke about men’s responsibilities in the fight against patriarchy.
Nonetheless, at the closing ceremony, Indigenous Peoples and social movements have reaffirmed unity and support to ICARRD+20 organisers, but have rejected the conference declaration, found weak with regard to terminology and actions. Particular concern was raised on the address of Indigenous Peoples with the vague concept of ‘local communities’. The three UN mechanisms on the rights of Indigenous Peoples have clearly distinguished the unique characteristics, origins, and legal status of Indigenous Peoples’ rights, and warned that grouping them with undefined communities undermines those protections. Similar concerns were expressed for fisher peoples, nomadic pastoralists, peasants, rural workers, and mobile and artisanal communities whose territorial and mobility rights must be explicitly recognised.
Social movements have called once again for a 21st-century agrarian reform that is inclusive of Indigenous Peoples, peasants, fisher peoples, pastoralists, women, youth, gender-diverse people, Afro-descendant communities, family farmers, and rural workers.
Agrarian reform must go beyond land redistribution, and food sovereignty and agroecology must be the central pillars of the transformation.
Social movements advocate for an agrarian reform and rural development policies centred around the inseparable and mutually reinforcing principles of the 4Rs: Recognition, Redistribution, Restitution and Regulation:
Recognition: respect Indigenous Peoples’, small-scale food producers’ and rural communities’ tenure rights and management systems, especially recognising and protecting collective and customary rights and tenure systems.
Redistribution: ensure broad, equitable and sustainable distribution of land, fisheries, forests, and water, countering trends toward increasing concentration and inequality in land, fisheries and water. Power, wealth, and decision-making must also be redistributed. Structural patterns of discrimination and inequalities – class, gender, ethnic, race, cast and generation – must be dismantled and guarantee the collective rights of peoples and communities.
Tammi reading the Social Movements Declaration in the Plenary Session.
Restitution and reparation: restoring access, control, and use of land, fisheries, forests, and water where populations and communities have been deprived of them against their will, especially due to dispossession and displacement related to colonisation and forced evictions.
Regulation: States must deploy a range of measures to limit the influence of market forces on land, fisheries, forests, and water, including through public interest regulation of land markets and prices, restricting corporate land ownership, adequate taxation, simplified procedures for accessing tenure rights for small-scale food producers and Indigenous Peoples, protection and facilitation of rights to use public lands, fisheries, and forests, participatory and inclusive land-use planning, among others.
Read the full IPC Position Paper here.
Read the full Political Declaration by Social Movements here.
Read the full Official Delegation Declaration here.
As we continue to fight for just agrarian reform around the world, in so-called Australia the AFSA is working to establish a Land Trust aimed at decommodifying land. The trust seeks to acquire and steward agricultural land to provide secure farming tenure for small-scale, agroecology-oriented farmers, with a priority on First Peoples and underserved communities. Finally, AFSA’s strong policy advocacy has achieved a major success, with the Victorian Government passing reforms that make it easier to build micro-abattoirs on farms without a planning permit, representing a significant form of agrarian reform focused on transforming land and food system regulation.
