Final Report of the Sixth Session of the Land Forum in Middle East and North Africa

Final Report of the Sixth Session of the Land Forum in Middle East and North Africa

“Applying the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security”
Tunis, Tunisia, 25–27 October 2017

Introduction
In the framework of the Land Forum for the Middle East and North Africa as a regional platform for exchanging experiences and enhancing communication between civil society organizations concern with the land issues and its related common challenges, the Land Forum concluded its sixth session in Tunis on 24–27 October 2017. The land Forum took the reform of a workshop with the participation of 27 representatives of local and regional human rights organizations and social movements from 10 countries of the NE/NA region under the theme Applying the Voluntary Guidelines on Tenure in the Context of Human Rights Principles in MENA Territory.” This most recent session was an advanced step in the achievements of the Land Forum platform by enabling civil society across the region to be able to use international standards to address local problems related to land and natural resource administration.
The 6th round of the Land Forum sought to develop a regional program of specialized civil society partners to implement the Voluntary Guidelines on Tenure and to identify gaps and/or specific aspects to address the region’s priorities, policies and other specificity, while strengthening human rights approaches to chronic issues responsible governance of land and other natural resources in the region, including protracted crises that have resulted in mass displacement of thousands families in search of refuge either internally, or in other regions.

In this round, the Land Forum developed a set of important learning objectives for the applying the Voluntary Guidelines:

1. Understanding the background and processes of the VGGT
2. Explaining the main topics covered by the VGGT
3. Identifying main actors and processes and their respective roles
4. Understanding how to assess the local situation
5. Applying the VGGT to prepare an agenda for action for CSOs