No More Neutral Ground: Land, Justice, and the Call to Take a Stand

In a world increasingly fractured by inequality, conflict, and climate catastrophe, the question of land remains central and unresolved. Who owns it? Who controls it? Who is excluded from it? And most critically, who decides how it is used?

These are not abstract questions. They are deeply political, moral, and urgent. And these questions were forcefully confronted at the Global Land Forum (GLF) 2025, held in Colombia, where more than 900 participants from over 97 countries gathered to confront the stark reality that without land justice, peace is impossible.

The Forum brought the land agenda back to the heart of the matter: those who live on and from the land – Indigenous Peoples, peasants, pastoralists, women, and youth – must be at the center of global decision-making.

This is not charity. This is justice.

A Forgotten Pillar of Peace: Agrarian Reform

Colombia, as host, offered a powerful backdrop. Scarred by armed conflict and displacement, its national peace agreements and agrarian reforms have become testaments to both progress and unfinished promises. Land lies at the core of this struggle not only in Colombia, but across the world. From Latin America to Africa and Asia, agrarian reform was once a cornerstone of social justice. But since the 1990s, the global discourse has shifted, prioritizing markets and individual land titling over collective rights and redistribution.

And yet, the conditions that gave rise to these reforms have not disappeared. If anything, they have intensified. Today, 78% of farms globally are under two hectares, and yet their cultivators are some of the most impoverished and food-insecure. Women make up nearly half of the agricultural labor force but own less than 15% of the land. The landless, the displaced, and the dispossessed are growing in number.

This is not accidental. This is systemic.

Centering Voices From the Ground

At GLF 2025, a different kind of leadership emerged. Not from think tanks or government desks, but from the grassroots. The Campesinos of Inzá in Cauca, Colombia, shared a philosophy rooted in collective belonging. Land, to them, is not a commodity—it is a covenant. Their community defends native biodiversity, runs a community radio station, educates in Campesino epistemologies, and exports ethically grown coffee. Their strength lies not just in production, but in preservation—of culture, ecology, and dignity.

Across Asia, similar struggles and solutions surfaced. In Indonesia, the agrarian reform agenda is back and the customary land systems are being reclaimed. In India and Nepal, women are asserting their land rights against all odds. In Mongolia, pastoralist communities are highlighting the role of rangelands in carbon sequestration and climate resilience. In the Philippines, the IPs have framed their own biodiversity strategic action plan (IPBSAP) to be inserted in the national biodiversity strategic action plan (NBSAP), and so on and so forth. Everywhere, the people who know the land best are those who have kept it alive.

And yet, they remain excluded from negotiations that define their futures. From COP climate summits to land administration policies, these communities are too often consulted last, or not at all. This is no longer acceptable.

Land, Conflict, and the Global Reckoning

From Palestine to Myanmar, Congo to Amazonia, the global crisis of land is fueling war, displacement, and dispossession. Colonial legacies persist in legal systems. Corporate land grabs continue under the guise of green investments. Conservation models displace the natives – the IPs, the pastoralists. The land is being stripped of its people.

At GLF, participants reminded the world: there is no neutrality in land governance. One must choose. Either you are for justice, or you are complicit in its denial. We can no longer remain neutral. We must take a position either for peace, or against it.

This is particularly critical as the world prepares for COP30 and the 2nd International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD+20) Conference in 2026. These global moments must not replicate old mistakes. They must place land redistribution, community stewardship, and tenure security at the heart of climate solutions and rural development. And they must be people-centered, not market-centered.

The GLF Declaration: Key Demands

There is growing momentum. Columbia, host of ICARRD+20, has expressed its commitment. Ministries of agriculture across Latin America have pledged renewed focus on food sovereignty and land redistribution.

In Asia, platforms are mobilizing to engage governments and intergovernmental institutions.

The time is now to unite land struggles. Not as isolated cases, but as a global movement of care, resistance, and transformation. From Dalit land rights activists in India to Indigenous defenders in Colombia, from pastoralist women in Kyrgyzstan to farmers in Haiti—land is not just territory. It is a memory. It is resistance. It is the future.

From Forum to Action

• Mobilize new alliances between movements, policymakers, scientists, and donors who are ready to prioritize justice over profit.
• Shift narratives in media, education, and international forums to reclaim land as a public good, not private capital.
• Demand accountability from governments and corporations to stop dispossession in the name of development or conservation.
• Invest in young people, women, and Indigenous knowledge systems that offer real solutions.