MENA Land Forum V Outcomes

In December 2014, HIC-HLRN concluded its fifth Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Land Forum in Tuniswith the participation of22researcherand activist representatives of organizationsand local and regionalsocial movementsin the MENA region.

With the background of its previous four sessions, the MENA Land Forum and its participants continued diagnosing the land and natural resource-management issues across the region. This regional diagnosis is compiled in the 2015publication The Land and Its People (Arabic[2014] and English).

The Land Forum process progressively has enabled HIC-HLRN and participants to determine the priorities and refine the methodology for country assessments within the framework of human rights, other applicable international law norms and global commitments. This has enabled participants and HIC-HLRN to address, define and articulate several terms and concepts that previously were not part of the region’s CSO vernacular on the subjects of human rights or development.

This fifth session sought to go beyond diagnosing the regional problems and move toward sharing strategies and experiences in struggling for land rights in international processes, with a particular focus on the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Bank.

In pursuit of these objectives, HLRN organized this session as the first of a series of activities planned for the biennium 2015–16, which coincides with several global processes that promise to set global norms and policies for land and natural resource development. The Land Forum’s theme—“Taking It to the Next Level: Relating Local Issues to Global Processes”—framed the present phase in a cumulative effort begun in 2009 to build capacity of MENA civil society to contribute effectively to those processes and developments, as well as at country level. With this HLRN central program goal, the fifth session featured several added values, advancing previous Land Forum outcomes.

The participants affirmed proposals of most important activities to attain the HLRN central program goal and Land Forum objectives, including to:

• Develop the MENA Land Forum process as a mechanism to channel human rights-based research, assessments and problem-solving advocacy;

• Empower civil society to articulate the economic, social and cultural human rights dimensions of land and natural resource management, particularly for the impoverished and rural subjects of those rights;

• Create synergies among CSOs specialized in particular human rights to housing, water and adequate food and nutrition;

• To coordinate efforts at promoting the emerging human rights of land and energy;

• Exchange experiences of land and natural resource struggles across MENA;

• Further develop a regional diagnosis of land and natural resource issues as the basis for a regional research and advocacy agenda;

• Map the most important role players on the international level who affect decision making in the region, specifically influencing land laws and the political economy dimensions that affect the human rights dimensions, the present and future;

• Link participants to the global policy and norm-setting processes ongoing through 2016.

The Land Forum V outcomes are playing a central role in the work of HIC-HLRN in 2015–2016, including toward the planning and national reporting for the Third United National Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III). HIC-HLRN will continue to work with Land Forum participants to meet the outcomes of the Forum and to work toward full and meaningful participation of MENA civil society at both local and international levels.

The full report for the Land Forum V can be found is available in English.