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Civil society organisations (CSOs) have denounced failures and exclusions in the public consultation process for the revision of the National Land Policy. In a communique, CSOs call the Review Commission inflexible, and demand an extension of the deadline.
The Public Consultation Process for the Review of the National Land Policy started in 2020. Now nearing the end of the process, the Review Commission has already published some pilot documents.
In their assessment of the process, CSOs say that the work was not inclusive, and therefore is unrepresentative.
A communique signed by nine institutions reads as follows.
“Civil Society Organizations approached the Commission in different ways and channels, without, however, achieving an immediate acceptance of its claims, in a process filled with many silences and little public visibility (… ) This strategy achieved no fundamental change, amidst serious coordination and communication problems, which have characterised the process over these three years.”
“Outside the framework of formalised and structured collaboration with the CSOs,” they add, “information is scarce as to demonstrating that the commission has been carrying out extensive consultations with the most varied sectors of society, from main users of the land – the peasants – to the commercial private sector, without excluding women and youth”.
The Executive Director of Sekelekani, Tomás Vieira Mário, one of the stakeholders closely monitoring the process, says it makes no sense to disclose documents about this process at a time when “there is no completed diagnosis of what the important issues to be resolved are”.
“On what basis was the document that is now circulating on the internet put together?” he asks.
All this, according to the CSOs, was repeatedly raised in discussions with the Review Commission, but in vain.
Extending the deadline for consultations is, for now, the best way for the process to achieve transparency.
“More than the matter of deadlines, it is necessary, effectively, to have space for suggestions to be accepted and for there to be feedback. The constraints of the pandemic, and terrorism in Cabo Delgado, were obstacles, and should be considered [as reasons] to extend the deadline,” Tomas Vieira Mario insists.
Otherwise, rights will be called into question, hence Teresa Boa’s appeal, from the Rural Women’s Forum.
“Do not take away what we are entitled to. This is the cry of rural women from Rovuma to Maputo, because there are rural women who are suffering.”
In general, “Civil society’s interpretation of the entire National Land Policy review process is that is not very transparent, is deliberately obscured or complicated, which legitimises suspicions of a flawed process, laden with manipulation, whose results could be imposed on society in an undemocratic and, therefore, authoritarian way”, the CSO communique reads.
To that extent, civil society expresses its rejection of the way in which the process is being conducted and demands the protection of the rights acquired by local communities, the guarantee of access to land for all Mozambicans, and that the land remains the property of the state.
By Milcon Chichume
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