This global speakout is organized by the Asian Peasant Coalition, People’s Coalition on Food Sovereignty, PAN Asia Pacific, International Indigenous Peoples Movement for Self Determination and Liberation, International League of Peoples’ Struggle, and ILPS Commission 6. It is also part of the Global People’s Caravan for Food, Land, and Climate Justice; Silenced Suffering: Stop Bombing Rural Communities; and Reclaim Our Future against the IMF-WB campaigns.

BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT

On May 13, the first day of the World Bank Land Conference, the world’s rural peoples shall stand against the IMF-WB policies that are enabling corporate landgrabs and resource plunder!

The World Bank Land Conference, happening on 13 to 17 May 2024, is making a return after five years – in time of the 80th year of the IMF-WB – with the theme “Securing Land Tenure and Access for Climate Action.” In this year’s edition, the Conference will be promoting climate change mitigation and adaptation in land use financing and governance. It is no surprise that the World Bank are joining the bandwagon of multilateral institutions making a shift toward climate action, premised on the “acceleration” of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development – the biggest scam of the decade. 

But rural peoples will not be fooled. No development is truly sustainable as long as corporate interests dominate and people from the grassroots are undermined. The WB and other international finance institutions are known to exploit current crises to secure corporate profit. They found opportunity in today’s climate emergency to facilitate more landgrab investments and false climate solutions peddled by corporations. And as long as land rights – including women’s right to land ownership, which is played up by WB’s Land 2030 Global Partnership – are bound by property rights and land titles, land is a marketable asset that can be easily leased or sold to the highest bidder. 

Thus, we are declaring May 13 as the Global Day of Action for Land and Climate Justice: Shut down IMF-WB! On this day, the landless people of the world will mobilize for genuine land reform and people-led climate action. We shall expose the IMF-WB as well as the WB Land Conference, rejecting their neoliberal reforms that are dispossessing rural peoples of their lands.

The Global Speakout of the Landless culminates the GDA and our efforts in this year’s Day of the Landless campaign with the theme is “Assert our right to land, exercise our right to resist.” The online protest will share the results of the Landless Voices consultation series that focused on different themes in relation to land struggle and land rights: international finance institutions; imperialist-backed wars, aggression, and occupation; resistance; agricultural workers; and Indigenous Peoples.

The Speakout will also feature the local mass actions done in different countries for the GDA and messages of solidarity from different organizations and movements who are also rejecting the WB Land Conference and supporting people’s resistance to assert their right to land.

CALL FOR VIDEO CONTRIBUTIONS

We are calling for video contributions to be featured in the May 13 Global Speakout of the Landless.

These can be:

• videos of local mass actions as participation to our GDA, and
• video messages of solidarity on why we reject the World Bank Land Conference and why people’s resistance to assert land rights is just and legitimate.

Video contributions are requested to be three minutes at maximum, shot in landscape/horizontal, and saved in mp4 format. They can be in the local/preferred language, but please provide English subtitles/translation. 

Kindly send on or before May 13, 12PM Manila time to secretariat@pcfs.global or upload the video here: bit.ly/3UUqDZR. ###