Statement of the ILPS on the Occassion of the Day of the Landless 2026
The International League of Peoples’ Struggle marks the Day of the Landless 2026 with renewed vigor to link with the struggles of all those fighting for the rightful control of their lands and productive livelihoods under the call to Defend Our Land & Territories, Defend Peasants’’ Rights and Resources, and Onward with People-Led Genuine Agrarian Reform! The League reaffirms on this Day of the Landless that the only way to truly wrest land back to the tillers is through the militant struggle to overthrow US imperialism and its fascist and landlord-ruled puppet states.
The peasants, the indigenous people, the fisherfolk, all those who produce food for society are today by and large landless, mainly due to imperialism especially US imperialism, as it plunders the lands and resources of the Global South. The US hegemony has aggressively maintained landlessness in our countries, many of which live under semi-feudal, semi-colonial rule. The parasitic relationship of semi-colonial states with imperialist states such as the US, has allowed it access and control over land and natural resource, while deepening the exploitation of the working class and the peasantry. In recent years, China and Russia have also started using different imperialist policies for building their control on our land and resources.
Under the yoke of policies enforced through the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization to name the most notorious of imperialist institutions, peasants’ right to land and resources is non-existent. Our states basically function as police states, ensuring that any peasant movements demanding genuine land distribution are harshly crushed. At the same time, exploitative agro-chemical methods of production are maintained that benefit the local feudal elites and imperialist countries. Small farmers, sharecroppers, contract farmers, and agricultural labor are kept bonded in a vicious cycle of debt through using external agro-chemical inputs which are immensely costly, but are critical to agro-chemical industrial farming. A particular tool of US imperialism, green revolution technologies have resulted in lands being intoxicated to chemical fertilizers; without their use land productivity falls to almost zero. Hence, farmers are bounded to a system of agro-chemical production that leaves them in a vicious cycle of debt, year after year.
Another tool to subjugate an indebted peasantry is forceful implementation of neoliberal policies that include deregulation, privatization and trade liberalization. Deregulation means that government economic support for peasantry is taken away. Privatization allows mega-corporations to have control over the entire supply chain of agricultural inputs as well as a strangle hold over markets. Trade liberalization means opening up national industries to foreign capital investment, and brings in a realm of WTO agreements from AoA to TRIPs and a host of other imperialist mechanisms. Governments provide special incentives on particular cash crops, that takes away land from traditional nutritious crops – such as pushing hybrid maize instead of millet, or enforcing draconian seed laws for use of genetically modified seeds are policies seen across Asia and the Pacific, Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean. These measures have over the decades forced farmers to sell the small pieces of land that they had, intensifying landlessness.
Trade liberalization has resulted in many countries investing in land ventures across the Global South. For instance, the UAE has heavily invested across East Africa to the worth of $47 billion. It is estimated that almost 250,000 hectares of land has been provided to UAE – that includes a port development project namely the Abu Amama Port Project; it alone encompasses approx. 161,874 hectares to which agricultural area is associated. In Sudan, the war, aided by UAE, has resulted in more than 12.4 million forcibly displaced inside and outside the country. This displacement is not accidental – it is being carried out to clear the land to be sold for agricultural production – UAE has been investing heavily for fodder as well as for its own food security. In East Africa, 9 out of 12 countries are involved in armed conflict, which show the deep fissures in their societies as a result of neo-colonial ambitions of controlling other nations’ land and natural resources. Land is also being sought for not only food security but for renewable energy. So from increased production for sugarcane, for maize, and other agro-fuels, land is also needed for solar panels, windmills, and hydro-projects.
As investors rush in to take over agricultural land, peasants are bereft of their land, especially as in many of our countries in the South, they generally do not have land title documents to prove ownership over their land.
A critical aspect of landlessness is climate crisis, and is also closely associated with debt. As semi-colonies face high levels of debt, imperialist organizations such as the IMF and World Bank craft different ways to control their land and other resources. This is especially so for countries facing one climate disaster after another.A strategy that is being used is Debt-for-Climate and Nature Swaps, being researched in nearly 50 countries. In a debt-for-nature swap, a country’s government bonds or loans are bought up and replaced with new ones paying a lower rate of interest provided the government commits to spend some of the money saved on conservation. In exchange for debt payment concessions, large pieces of land are given for so called environmental safety and land conservation. Such projects have in many instances have forced indigenous people off their land, or have limited their access rights to local resources, forests and fishing areas. While a nexus of corporations, NGOs and state agencies are able to gain profits, it has left rural and indigenous communities poorer with their social networks torn apart. Biodiversity gains, ecotourism are mechanisms that are being used to draw in super profits for corporations and financial investors.
Landlessness is also exacerbated in the rush for critical minerals that are being extracted from land and the sea. Pushing out Adivasis (indigenous people of India) in East and Central India is a well-known case. Their land is rich in Bauxite and a critical basic mineral for aluminum, highly sought by the weapon’s industry. The Adivasis have been terror-tagged as Naxalites and thousands have been killed in Odisha and Chattisgarh. Similarly in the Democratic Republic of Congo, peasants have been forcibly displaced for mining minerals such as cobalt, copper, gold and a host of other minerals.
Though no concrete statistics are there for the number of landless in the global south, more than a billion people are in the agriculture sector, and a vast majority are landless. In Asia, it can be safely said that more than a 100 million peasants are landless. In Bangladesh and Indonesia, nearly 78% and 71% of rural households are landless. Similarly, in the Philippines, of nearly 20 million rural households, only 4 million or so have secure land titles. In Latin America and the Caribbean nearly 75 million people are landless or have insecure land holdings.
The impacts of landlessness are immense encompassing social, economic and political realms. First is of course, widespread hunger and malnutrition. Currently, nearly 750 million people suffer from hunger, while 2.3–2.4 billion people experience moderate or severe food insecurity meaning they do not have access to regular meals. The most marginalized in rural communities, such as from a minority religion, or based on caste and race, and especially women and children, suffer extreme forms of exploitation and oppression.
The landless are constantly in a state of flux moving from one type of livelihood to another; migrating from one rural area to another, or from rural to urban areas seeking whatever employment comes to hand. Or finally even abroad to face lives of indignity and humiliation, facing exploitation and abuse. Indebted share-cropper agricultural workers are under control of rich or feudal landlords. Their wages are not assured, nor is their families’ safety a given. While cost of living climbs steadily, their wages are static and they suffer more and more from inflation, climate crisis, and wars.
This is why for peasants in the global south, land is life, And to find dignity, decent livelihoods, safe and nutritious food, the only way forward is widespread organizing, forming unity across sectors, from peasants to indigenous people and to fight for our land.
The genocidal war in Occupied Palestine, in Iran and the atrocities that are taking place in Venezuela and Cuba has shown the world quite clearly, that imperialist forces, especially the United States, is on a forward attack on recolonizing the world. The pressure on farmers across the world will only increase as there is more and more demand for land for renewable energy, for critical minerals and of course for food security of the imperialist countries and their satellites. Only a united front among peasants, the indigenous people, locally to across regions and globally is critical for being able to defeat US imperialism. Our work is to build that unity based on not only fighting for right to land, but for national liberation, liberation from imperialist control and policies. The fight is no more in the future. It is here now inside our homes – let us rise and fight.
Signed,
International League of Peoples’ Struggle
