Theme 1 Launch Webinar

The thematic launch webinar took place on Thursday 24 June at 13:00 GMT.

On this page you can find the webinar replay and the speeches of each subtitled intervention.

Join the discussions on these interventions and on the theme more widely:

The full webinar without subtitles



Panellists' interventions (subtitled)

Introduction by Mr. Miloon Kothari (Former UN Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing)

First intervention by Prof. Praveen Jha (JNU, New Delhi India)

First intervention by Mr Ardo Sow (Land rights activist, Senegal)

First intervention by Ms Ana Cha (MST Brazil)

First intervention by Ana Maria Suarez Franco (FIAN International)

Speech by Mr Ramesh Sharma (Ekta Parishad)

Second intervention by Prof. Praveen Jha (JNU, New Delhi India)

Second intervention by Mr Ardo Sow (Land rights activist, Senegal)

Second intervention by Ms Ana Cha (MST Brazil)

Second intervention by Ana Maria Suarez Franco (FIAN International)

Questions from the public and answers from the speakers


For all the webinars on this theme, Ekta Parishad wanted to ask the speakers to address the following points in general:

  • How do you think international frameworks such as the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants (UNDROP) emanating out of the UN and other multilateral organisations can lead to positive results with regard to access to land?
  • How are women differently affected by landlessness?
  • How should the commons be managed for the benefit of landless farmers and/or local communities?
  • What kind of reform is needed to combat landlessness?
  • What are the different types of landless farmers (including pastoralists, forest people, nomads)? Is access to property required to be considered “landed”?
  • Is it possible to fight land concentration and if so, how?

If you would like to register to participate in these future discussions and to be kept informed of future webinars, please follow the link below:

Join the online discussions on these exchanges by following the link on the right.

Ekta Parishad is a mass-based peoples' movement for land rights with an active membership of 250,000 landless people and is regarded as one of the biggest people’s movement in India with an iconic status globally. Ekta Parishad is known for several milestone successes including securing land rights to nearly 500,000 families, creating grassroots leadership of more than 10,000 people, protecting forest and water bodies, and framing several laws and policies related to the land reforms in India. Ekta Parishad is famous for the scale of its social mobilisations, with its latest mobilisation in 2018 drawing 25000 landless people from all over India.