In this longread, Professor of Agrarian Studies Jun Borras discusses the recent ICARRD+20 international conference and the deepening land inequality and ecological crisis.
The inter-governmental International Conference for Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD+20) took place in Cartagena, Colombia in February 2026.
Brining together representatives from governments, social movements and NGOs, international development organizations and academia, the debates centered around the 4Rs - Recognition, Redistribution, Restitution and Regulation - as pillars for democratizing land and advancing systemic transformation.
Borras provides an in-depth analysis of the conference focusing on the land legacy of colonialism and imperialism and rejecting the two prominent approaches to land politics - land tenure security and reformism.
He argues that one of the most important accomplishments of ICARRD+20 was to inspire social movements of peasants, Indigenous Peoples, fishers, pastoralists, farmworkers – across genders, generation, race and ethnicity, caste and nationality – to forge a global united front, and decisively resolve not to be party to the reproduction of the reactionary divide and rule strategy of those opposed to deep social reforms.
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