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We, the 45 representatives of organisations and communities from Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Gabon, Ghana, the Republic of Guinea, Mali, Niger, the Republic of Congo, Senegal, Tunisia, Togo, and Côte d’Ivoire, are deeply concerned about the land insecurity threatening ancestral peasant lands across Africa.

WE HEREBY ADOPT this Declaration, which affirms our commitment to responsible land governance and the restoration of ancestral, community, and peasant heritage.

WE RECOGNIZE THAT:

• The sovereignty of African peoples over their lands, natural wealth, and resources is inalienable;
• Ancestral lands constitute the economic, cultural, spiritual, and genetic heritage of peoples; they are inseparable from their traditions and essential to their development and future;
• The ancestral lands of communities have intrinsic value and deserve respect, regardless of their perceived utility;
• Women play a crucial role in safeguarding and sustainably managing ancestral lands;
• The involvement of youth in land governance and their access to land contribute to revitalizing local economies and preserving this heritage;
• Peasants’ access to land is indispensable for the food sovereignty of African peoples and essential for preserving ecosystems;
• Women are the guardians of food diversity in developing countries, despite having limited access to productive land and resources.

WE CONDEMN:

• Land grabbing, land hoarding, and inappropriate territorial policies that marginalize peasants and communities, selling off African lands to multinational corporations, foreign and domestic investors, and local elites;
• The obstruction by African governments of the exercise of customary land rights and the exclusion of existing customary rules in the development of land governance and spatial planning legislation;
• Land insecurity caused by post-colonial legal frameworks that are incompatible with community customs and practices;
• All acts that seize, dispossess, or marginalize communities, women, and youth from their land heritage;
• All acts that pollute, degrade, or overexploit ancestral lands, and their concession to corporations leading to violence, loss of human life, and biodiversity, particularly through extractivist activities;
• The failure to respect international commitments ratified by African States that are supposed to guarantee the human rights of African peoples;
• Development models based on compensation logic that unjustly “reward” impacted communities instead of restoring rights;
• The use of synthetic chemical inputs and the introduction of hybrid seeds, as well as the monopolization of global food systems by a handful of seed-producing corporations.

WE CALL UPON:

• African governments to guarantee the sovereignty of their peoples over natural resources and national wealth, as stipulated by constitutional rights and international conventions;
• African governments to return dispossessed lands to communities by adopting fair, inclusive, and equitable agrarian and land reforms;
• African governments to promote the participation of communities in the design and implementation of land governance and spatial planning policies and legislation;
• African peasants and communities to organize and unite their struggles for land access and food sovereignty;
• African civil society organizations to join the fight for just, inclusive, and equitable agrarian and land reforms.

WE COMMIT, ON THE BASIS OF PEASANT STRUGGLE, TO:

• Unite for the restoration of the sovereignty of African peoples over their lands, natural resources, and national wealth;
• Promote capacity-building processes for peasant movements through education, exchanges, and non-violent resistance actions aimed at combating land grabbing and reclaiming their land heritage;
• Facilitate the creation of a dynamic network of peasant organizations, communities, activists, and NGOs cooperating at local, national, and international levels to build strategies and tactics to combat land grabbing;
• Monitor and actively participate in legislative and policy processes relating to land governance and spatial planning, with the goal of advancing fair, inclusive, and equitable agrarian and land reforms;
• Advocate to national governments for the guarantee of African women’s right to land access;
• Promote and defend peasant agroecological practices and food sovereignty.

RECOGNIZING that the protection of the living wealth and beauty of ancestral lands depends on the full engagement of concerned communities and peasant organizations, WE COMMIT wholeheartedly to implementing the provisions of this Declaration.

EMPHASIZING that the security of community lands is essential to the survival of human society and the conservation of our planet, WE INVITE ALL PARTICIPANTS to widely disseminate this Declaration so that its outcomes are incorporated into daily actions.

Signed Countries:

Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Ghana, Republic of Guinea, Mali, Niger, Republic of the Congo, Senegal, Tunisia, Togo.

Find the original statement on: The Link