Mission and Vision

Consult for Women and Land Rights-A Position Paper

Land has been and continues to be one of most important natural resource which has sustained life and mankind. Over decades women have played a key role in utilizing land for, agriculture and forest based activities to sustain themselves and their households. It is now a well documented fact that women constitute the majority of labour, without getting returns for their economic contribution. Women produce a large percent of the region's food as farmers, working on lands that they cannot own.[1] This is mainly because ownership of resources has remained in patriarchal hands across the world. Furthermore this patriarchal logic has defined work in economic terms where women’s contributions has been underestimated and ignored. Despite the high prevalence of women as workers in the unorganized sector this same logic has excluded women rights to property and other resources even when laws grant them. Social and customary constructs return self generated property back to male relatives. As a result women often do not even have access and right to adequate housing. The rapid changes ushered in by globalisation have ensured the continuation of these social constructs and policies which has rendered women powerless despite working twice as hard to ensure survival of their households. Privatization and open market policies are threatening livelihoods of the poor and most of all women.  Strong movements are mobilizing in the developing world demanding rights of people on land, natural resources and other means of livelihoods. Issues like displacement, farmers’ distress due to agrarian crisis, rights of Dalit and other marginalized groups and others are being addressed and defined very clearly at local, national and international levels. Women participate as a strong force within these movements but their voices and articulations of their rights to land and other resources remain in the background. There is an urgent need to inform these efforts with a gender perspective since women have nurtured and managed workers movements land, forests and traditional livelihoods since time immemorial. It is important to highlight and bring to the forefront the fact that the adverse impact of globalisation is being acutely felt more by women, increasing their burden of work both at home and outside. It was with this realization that several groups and organizations in India and elsewhere in Asia and Africa had begun mobilizing women to demand for their rights to land and other resources. These efforts were mainly located at local and national levels and it was being felt that it was imperative to ensure a linkage between these groups and build a common platform for sharing the work being done. The need was also felt to impact at the larger national and international forum for stronger advocacy for women’s rights to land and other resources. In the light of the upcoming United Nations Committee on Status of Women (UNCSW) meeting in March 2005 a regional meeting was organised by several of these groups at Delhi where  Consult for Women and Land Rights (CWLR) was initiated in 2004 as an informal forum of activists, movements and organizations working with women.

CWLR engages different stake holders to discuss and implement options to ensure women’s resource rights agenda through gender equal allocation of land and resources for livelihood and homestead. Women’s land and resource rights include ownership of land and other natural resources, housing and other economic assets. This needs to be accompanied by easy availability of credit and training as well as access to essential women friendly public services

To achieve this CWLR has lobbied for women’s rights to land and other resources at several local, national and international events like Non Aligned Movement summit, Millennium Development Goals summit (July 2005) International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (March 2006) World Urban Forum, Vancouver (June 2006), India Social Forum(November 2006) and World Social Forum. CWLR is a global forum of local, national and international NGO’s and networks from India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Uganda and Nigeria lobbying and advocating for policies, law reform, developing programs and administrative mechanisms to increase resource base, especially land rights for the poor and marginalised women.

Goal

The Consult for Women and Land Rights has an overall goal to ensure equal access to, control and ownership over land and resources for women worldwide. This includes specifically recognizing, upholding and protecting women’s housing, land and rights over other resources, food sovereignty and livelihood security.

Core Principles of CWLR

Þ    All members will work for the promotion of women’s rights on land, livelihood and other resources. To do so they will ensure the promotion of the agency, participation and visibility of women’s voices and their demands for claiming these rights.

Þ    Agree to utilize human rights principles as defined in CEDAW, IESCR, ICCPR and other international and national human rights instruments to inform their work.

Þ    Recognize and respect different ideologies and agree to work together on common issues of women’s rights to land, livelihood and other resources.

Þ     Respect diversity among women and allow space for all such voices which have their own unique understanding of rights to land and livelihood within the context of their socio-cultural framework. At the same time they will continue to question and examine patriarchal patterns and challenge them within these diversities.

Þ    Commit to marginalized women (Dalit, ethnic minorities, poor women and such others) in local, national and international levels and inclusion and involvement of all such women in training, advocacy and policy reform processes as a matter of principle.

Þ    Recognize that women’s rights to land, livelihood and other resources would first ensure their subsistence needs whether individual or collective and ensure a life of dignity for all.

Þ    Efforts will be directed towards sharing information and technical knowledge with women as partners at all levels.

Strategy

Consult for Women and Land Rights is an informal forum of diverse groups, organizations and human rights activists. Its members employ a variety of strategies through a multi-level and multi-prong approach at local, district, state and community-levels to ensure women’s rights to land and other resources. These include:

ü      Campaigns and direct intervention through programs on women’s housing, land and resource rights, food sovereignty and livelihood security.

ü      Lobbying and advocacy at local, national and international levels to promote policies and programmes for women and land rights.

ü      Developing linkages between local, national and international levels to strengthen advocacy efforts.

ü      Research and documentation of efforts of local groups to mobilize women to access these rights.

ü      Capacity building to increase economic, social and political participation of women at all levels, local, national and international.

ü      Solidarity with other movements and building networks at country and regional levels.

ü      Promoting Afro-Asian solidarity among groups and movements mobilizing around women’s land rights.