SECAM at ICARRD+20 in Cartagena, Colombia: Civil Society Calls for Land Justice and Pastoralist Futures

Bogotá, Colombia, 23 February 2026 – Civil society organisations, social movements, faith-based actors, Indigenous Peoples, pastoralist and peasant organisations from Africa and across the Global South have issued a powerful joint statement at ICARRD+20, calling for urgent action to protect collective land rights, restore degraded soils and secure pastoralist futures.

Meeting twenty years after the first International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development, participants warned that rural communities worldwide continue to face land dispossession, land concentration and ecological destruction. Despite repeated global commitments to end hunger and poverty, land and food systems are increasingly controlled by corporate and financial interests, while the communities that produce food remain marginalised and insecure.

The Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM) is a partner in the ICARRD+20 process. Representing SECAM at the conference in Colombia is Rev. Fr Uchechukwu Obodoechina, Deputy Secretary General of SECAM and Director of its Justice, Peace and Development Commission (JPDC), underscoring the Church’s commitment to land justice and the rights of vulnerable rural communities.

Attention to pastoralist communities

The statement highlights how customary and collective land systems across Africa and other regions are being undermined in the name of development, conservation and climate mitigation. Carbon offset projects, extractive industries and agribusiness expansion are accelerating soil degradation, social inequality and the exclusion of communities from territories they have governed for generations.

Special attention is given to pastoralist communities, particularly as 2026 marks the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists. The statement stresses that pastoralism remains one of the most climate-resilient land-use systems, sustaining livelihoods and ecological balance in drylands where crop farming is often unsustainable.

Concluding with a strong appeal, the joint statement insists that ICARRD+20 must be a turning point, not a commemoration. Governments and international institutions are urged to recognise collective land rights, protect pastoralist mobility, end land speculation, ensure community participation and safeguard land and environmental defenders. “Land justice is climate justice,” the statement affirms, “and pastoralist mobility is ecological resilience.”

SECAM Communications Office

Below the link to download the Statement: EN-Joint Civil Society Statement Ahead of ICARRD Final (1)