2 October, 2019
Amnesty International Nepal (AI Nepal), Community Self Reliance Centre (CSRC) and Justice and Rights Institute Nepal (JuRI-Nepal) made public their joint briefing entitled Land for Landless Peasants: Comments and Recommendations on the Amendment to the Lands Act 1964 at a press gathering in Kathmandu on 2 October, 2019.
The programme started with a presentation on the Briefing by Raju Prasad Chapagain, researcher of Amnesty International, who pointed out that the piecemeal approach of the State in dealing with the critical issue of land reforms and providing access to land-dependent people including the landless peasants, marginalised and discriminated community in Nepal has continued to remain as a promise broken by political leadership and the government.
The flaws in the Lands Act, as reported in the Briefing, basically relate to the definition of landlessness, determining the nature and type of entitlements, setting the criteria for providing land to the landless peasants, Dalits and other indigenous communities including Tharus and creating an independent mechanism to assess the overall situation of landlessness in Nepal. The Briefing highlights 17 crucial recommendations in relation to land reforms in Nepal.
Following the presentation, a panel consisting of Jagat Basnet, executive director of CSRC, Pankaj Kumar Karna, Chairperson of JuRI Nepal, Shachita Kuikel, board member of AI Nepal, and Raju Prasad Chapagain addressed queries raised by journalists on various land law related issues leading to an enriching discussion on various topics including the landless farmers, politicisation of the land issue, impact of lack of digitalization of the land ownership details.
The programme concluded with the panelists reiterating the three organisations’ call to the government for the formulation and enactment of a comprehensive legal framework on land in consultation with broad-based stakeholders to address the long-standing agenda of land reform including for enhancing access to land by those households and communities dependent on land.