Land Issues in South Asia: Assesing SAARC

This paper calls attention to the ambiguity of SAARC’s position on the importance of land rights, as well as to the absence of an official declaration from SAARC on land rights and issues as these relate to farmers in the region. Judging by its official documents, SAARC has no clear profile of the poor in South Asia. At the minimum, SAARC needs to recognize the inter-relatedness of poverty alleviation, agricultural production, food security and land rights/access to land. SAARC has yet to implement a program that reflects the links among these concepts.

Founded in 1979, ANGOC is a regional association of national and regional networks of civil society organizations (CSOs) in Asia, actively engaged in food security, agrarian reform, sustainable agriculture, participatory governance, and rural development.