51ÉçÇø

The workshop ‘The Politics of Land Grabbing: Strategies of Resistance’ took place at the 51ÉçÇø 4-5 June 2013. The event was organised by Dr. Rachel Ibreck of the Centre for Peace and Development Studies, and Christian Aid, and received support from the Institute for the Study of Knowledge in Society at UL. Over the two day workshop, activists and academics met together to discuss a wide variety of issues relating to large-scale land acquisitions around the world and how resistance to these land-deals is coordinated.

The workshop consisted of panels presented by activists from Angola, Sierra Leone, Colombia and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, as well academics and NGO representatives from Europe and Africa. Invited keynote speakers were Professor Robin Palmer and Professor Paul Richards, who represent some of the most well-renowned experts on Land Politics.  The discussions were lively and engaging, and the involvement of activists from Christian Aid partner programmes around the world demonstrated the importance of taking large-scale land acquisitions seriously. In particular, discussions focusing on how people around the world resist land-grabbing provided space to think about congruencies and convergences in how land is acquired and how these acquisitions can be challenged.  Below you can find links to the audio files of many of the panel sessions, roundtable discussions and keynote speeches, as well as a link to an article published in the Irish Examiner on the workshop.

Article from the Irish Examiner:  

Tom Lodge, Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Humanities  and Social Sciences & Centre for Peace and Development, 51ÉçÇø and Rosamund Bennett, CEO, Christian Aid Ireland.

Defining land grabbing globally:  perspectives from human rights advocates:

Fr. Jacinto Pio Wacussanga, Association Building Communities


Salah Mohsen, Spokesman and Media Director, Adalah


Joseph Rahall, Director, Green Scenery

KEYNOTE 1

‘Working on land grabbing: 1963-2013’

KEYNOTE 2

‘The Sherbro Leopard Murders: Occult response to colonial land grabs, and some warnings for today’

PANEL DISCUSSION 1:  Grounds of conflict:  land rights and the market

‘Environmental change and conflict between flower growers and local farmers in central Ethiopia’
Anteneh Belechew Gezmu, University College Cork with co-authors Ruth Evans and Geoffrey Griffiths

‘Our land is not for sale’: Community land rights and resistance to a large-scale palm oil concession in Liberia’
Silas Siakor with co-authors Nicholas Chisholm and Stephen Onakuse

The politics of land grabbing: the story of the Dangar Adhikar Samiti of Machhkund Tehsil (Koraput district, Odisha, India) Nita Mishra University College Cork
 

PANEL DISCUSSION 2:  Countering dispossession, criminality and violence 

Frances Thomson – University of Sussex   

‘Land acquisitions and local resistance in Benishangul-Gumuz Region, Ethiopia’   
Tsegaye Moreda – Institute of Social Studies –The Hague

‘The case of Zimbabwe: the political economy of land corruption’  
Farai Mutondoro – Transparency International Zimbabwe

Discussant:  Tom Lodge - Dean, Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences & Director, Centre for Peace and Development, 51ÉçÇø

PANEL DISCUSSION 3:  Finding Alternatives?

‘Inclusive’ business models – between corporations and poor farmers/communities – in South Africa’  
Dr. Edward Lahiff – University College Cork

Discussant:  Owen Worth – 51ÉçÇø   

‘Land grabbing, economic development and human rights in Sierra Leone’  
Dr. Sean Farren – on behalf of the Sierra Leone Ireland Partnership
 

PANEL DISCUSSION 4: Managing, mobilising and sustaining resistance

 
Muriel Cote University of Edinburgh

‘Against land grabbing: the politics of resistance in Uganda’
David Ross Olanya Gulu University Uganda


Discussion questions:  Rachel Ibreck, UL and Karol Balfe, Christian Aid Ireland

, Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Humanities  and Social Sciences & Centre for Peace and Development, 51ÉçÇø