Red Tierras (Land Rights Network)
- Indigenous cultures
- Land rights
- Information & communication technology
- Poverty alleviation
- Vulnerable populations
- Public policy
- Networking
Example: Walk us through a specific example(s) of how this solution makes a difference; include its primary activities.
Mercy Corps
+1 503 896 5834
PO Box 2669, Dept W Portland OR 97208
, OR, Multnomah County
More than 5 years
The success of Red Tierras could be limited by barriers to participation including language, technology skills, limited connectivity, and/or lack of cohesion among network members. The following actions will mitigate these limitations: The virtual network (www.redtierras.org) will use a Ning platform for customized networking technology, such as working groups, photo/video uploading, blogging, and advanced communications tools. Mercy Corps will translate the website into local indigenous languages, train communities on computer/internet use, and explore the possibility of using text messaging and/or netbooks with USB modems for communities with limited connectivity. Workshops on land rights issues will be converted into a virtual format, with different presentations according to education, cultural background and technical expertise. Red Tierras will host nine cross-visits from 2010-2012 for local communities, NGOs and government to build cohesiveness and community among members. The cross-visits and the website are mutually reinforcing, giving participants a combination of onsite and virtual contact.
2011:
Cross-visits: 5 cross-visits in Guatemala and Colombia, including the participation of Nicaragua and Honduras. 50 land conflicts resolved in Colombia and 50 land conflicts resolved in Guatemala, benefiting 8,000 people with secure land tenure.
Website: Translations in Embera, Tule, Q’eqchi’, Spanish and English, 1,000 users, virtual workshops on land conflict resolution, cadastral modernization, and ethnic land rights.
2012 and 2013:
Cross-visits: 4 cross-visits in Guatemala and Colombia, 1 cross-visit in other Latin America country. 100 land conflicts resolved in Colombia and 100 land conflicts resolved in Guatemala, benefiting 16,000 people with secure land tenure.
Website: Expansion in Latin America and the Caribbean (such as Haiti, Bolivia, Perú, Ecuador, Brazil), translated in 15 languages, 10,000 users, virtual workshops on GIS, land-use planning, sustainable resource management, gender and land rights, and natural resource conflict resolution.
1001‐10,000
$50 - 100
Yes
Since the Peace Accords were signed in Guatemala in 1996, the government has faced myriad challenges in implementing reforms enshrined in the Agreement on Socioeconomic Aspects and the Agrarian Situation. In 2003, Mercy Corps joined with local partner, JADE, and launched the Tierras program. The Tierras staff knew that land conflict resolution would be superficial without structural agrarian reform, so they included local and national political advocacy as a primary program objective. The Tierras program’s municipal and provincial networks have been critical instruments in the design and/or passage of numerous pieces of legislation, including the Law on the Registry of Cadastral Information and the Comprehensive Rural Development Law. For Colombia, the lessons learned in Guatemala could be a vital input to the resolution of the country’s armed conflict. 2010 has presented Red Tierras with an auspicious opportunity for advocacy; the newly inaugurated Colombian President, Juan Manual Santos, proposed a comprehensive agrarian reform bill in September. In response, cabinet members, congressmen, NGOs, universities and the media have been anxiously seeking new opportunities to learn about agrarian reform and analyze President Santos’ bill. Mercy Corps’ discussions with ministries and other key government agencies have demonstrated an unprecedented interest from public officials to learn from the Guatemalan experience in agrarian reform. In 2011, Red Tierras will host a bilateral cross-visit in Guatemala focused on applicable lessons in agrarian reform for Colombia. Red Tierras aims to be a key source of dialogue on agrarian reform in Colombia, based on the lessons learned from Guatemala.
Operating for 1‐5 years
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Red Tierras is a vehicle for developing partnerships across borders to secure land rights for marginalized populations. Mercy Corps’ relationships with communities are critical to Red Tierras’ success. Mercy Corps has key partnerships with Tule, Embera and Q’eqchi’ indigenous communities and multiple Afro-Colombian communities. Local NGOs are also important partners, given their contextual and technical knowledge. Mercy Corps’ NGO partners, Fundación Darién in Colombia, and JADE and ADIM in Guatemala, have over 10 years of collective experience in land conflict resolution. At the local and national levels, Mercy Corps has partnerships with governmental entities responsible for agrarian policy, titling, mapping, and land-use. These entities update titles after conflicts are resolved, and they will learn how to improve their methods via exchanges with Red Tierras. Mercy Corps also has close relationships with the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and the South-South Task Team to integrate Red Tierras into existing South-South cooperation channels.
The first two years of Red Tierras cross-visits are funded by the European Commission via a €1.3 million grant to replicate the Tierras experience in Colombia and expand activities in Guatemala. USAID has donated an additional US$1.2 million for the continuation of cross-visits in 2012 and two additional Land Conflict Mediation Centers in Colombia. IrishAid is contributing €750,000 to expand the sustainable resource management component of Red Tierras. The funds from the European Union and USAID will finance the basic Red Tierras website and nine cross-visits through January of 2013. Red Tierras will also seek national government funding from Colombia and Guatemala to expand the exchange and virtual activities. The Colombian Ministry of Foreign Affairs recently invited Mercy Corps to present a Red Tierras proposal to the Bilateral Commission that funds South-South cooperation projects between Colombia and Guatemala. Mercy Corps is a member of the international South-South Task Team, a working group that evaluates the impact of South-South activities in the context of the global Aid Effectiveness agenda. The Task Team will develop a case story on Red Tierras, which will be featured at the High Level Event for Aid Effectiveness in Korea in 2011. Mercy Corps also secures co-financing for exchange trips from government officials and others who are able to pay part of their travel costs, such as when local and/or national governmental officials are invited to Red Tierras exchange events, they are asked to cover part or all of their travel costs to attend events. In 2011, Red Tierras will assess market mechanisms, such as charging for membership fees, the use of virtual learning materials and/or participation in cross-visits.
In February 2010, Mercy Corps organized its first cross-visit on land rights in Cobán, Guatemala, the birthplace of the Tierras land conflict resolution program seven years earlier. Participants included local NGO partners Fundación Darién from Colombia, JADE and ADIM from Guatemala, and staff from Mercy Corps Guatemala and Colombia. It was the first time the Colombian participants had traveled outside of their country to learn from others in land conflict resolution, and the exchange exposed both nationalities to new ideas, enduring friendships and fresh perspectives. Participants engaged in an invigorating dialogue and analysis of their innumerable similarities in land rights issues, including shared histories of land conflict, technical and political challenges of securing land rights for marginalized communities, internal forced displacement, environmental degradation, gender and ethnic discrimination in land rights, and problems caused by infrastructure megaprojects and monocropping. The Colombian participants received in-depth technical training from their Guatemalan counterparts in alternative dispute resolution, land conflict mapping and analysis, land rights frameworks, and administrative and human resource strategies for land conflict mediation centers. They also visited communities and local authorities who had peacefully resolved land disputes through the Tierras program. The Colombian participants took the lessons they learned home and launched the first two land conflict mediation centers in Colombia only a month and a half later. Soon after the cross-visit, however, the Colombians and Guatemalans both recognized that they needed to bridge the distance between the two countries and continue to support each other in their efforts to resolve land conflict and secure land rights for marginalized communities. It was also clear that the newly formed group would need a broader network to perpetuate lessons learned and include other land rights specialists and stakeholders. Modern information and communications technology proved to be the most viable tool for achieving these two objectives. Accordingly, the group decided to build an interactive virtual platform to complement the cross-visits as a network-building activity. After investigating available networking technologies, the Ning platform (www.ning.com) was chosen as the most versatile, user-friendly website option for the land rights network. The groups shared their idea for a land rights network with colleagues, community leaders, government officials and other NGOs, all of whom became excited over the potential of the network. Additional cross-visits in Guatemala and Colombia have also been scheduled to further strengthen the relationships that underpin this exciting new network.
A diverse range of social innovators are behind the creation of Red Tierras. The original Mercy Corps Tierras program in Guatemala was developed by Romeo Euler and Borys Chinchilla, two Guatemalan rural development specialists who dedicated their lives to help impoverished communities amidst rural violence after witnessing the pain and anguish caused by land conflicts. They envisioned the need for viable alternatives to land disputes in northern Guatemala and used their ideas to initiate Tierras. By 2008, Tierras was an overwhelming success in Guatemala. Mercy Corps’ Colombia Country Director, Gary Burniske, met with Borys Chinchilla to discuss the possibility of replicating Tierras in Colombia, which was also facing violence caused by land disputes. Gary was convinced that the Tierras methodology could have a profound impact in resolving land disputes in Colombia. Gary and Borys shared the idea with two headquarters decision-makers, Kathy Fry from the Portland, Oregon office and Carrie Beaumont from the Edinburgh office, and both offered their full support for the initiative. Within six months, they secured funds from the European Union and Irish Aid to launch the program. A team of development professionals with local experience was formed to build the program. Matthew Alexander, with ten years of extensive grassroots human rights experience in Central and South America, was appointed as the Regional Coordinator to facilitate the South-South knowledge exchange between Guatemala and Colombia. He has led the formation of Red Tierras along with three colleagues in Guatemala and Colombia: Carlos Aquino, Miguel Balán and Hugo Gómez. Carlos Aquino is Mercy Corps’ Rural Development Manager and has decades of experience in land rights projects. Miguel Balán was one of the original Tierras land conflict mediators in 2004 and now serves as the National Tierras Project Manager in Guatemala. Hugo Gómez, the National Tierras Project Manager in Colombia, is a land rights professional with experience in areas of intense armed conflict in Colombia. Miguel, Hugo, Carlos and Matthew have built a solid team and a lasting friendship that forms the base of Red Tierras. Mercy Corps plans to eventually transition the leadership of Red Tierras to a Technical Secretariat, which will be comprised of local land rights practitioners from NGOs and communities across Latin America.
Through another organization or company
fundsforngos.org
Policy advocacy to strengthen property rights or increase security of tenure, Formalizing and documenting property rights (i.e. titling, leasing or certification), Legal education and awareness, Developing/applying technology for surveying, mapping and documenting property rights.
Red Tierras advocates for improved agrarian policy via cross-visits and a web forum. Land conflict methodologies include formalization of property rights and technologies for surveying, mapping and documenting property rights. Methods will be replicated via virtual training. Legal education/awareness on ethnic land rights are facilitated via onsite and virtual workshops.