Ukrainian Rural Development Network, European Coordination La Via CAMPESINA, and Institute for Economics and Forecasting, NAS Ukraine, initiated the Public Forum “Towards Peasant’s Rights to Land in Ukraine”, which took place on 26 November 2019, Ukraine, Kyiv
The lifting of the moratorium on agricultural land sales is one of the top urgent priorities for Ukrainian government. The proposed models for land market and land sales are designed to provide an easy access to agricultural land for big investors and legal persons. At the same time, there are considerable risks that about 4 million of Ukrainian farming households, which are not legal persons, will not have priority and real possibilities to acquire land. Implementing the governmental approach to agricultural land market will lead to losing jobs, marginalization of rural population and exclusion of smallholders in agricultural sectors. It is a cause of concern that there are no real regulations to prevent land concentration. According to the draft of new land law, a single natural or legal person will be allowed to own 15 percent of all agricultural land in a region or 0.5 percent of all agricultural land in Ukraine (more than 200 thousand hectares). Another point is that peasants do not have priority to buy agricultural land. City residents and other physical persons without education or experience in agriculture have the same rights. The governmental approach to land market does not also resolve the issue of deeper involvement of local rural communities in land governance.
Participants of the Public Forum developed a resolution with regard to the agricultural land market in Ukraine, to be presented at the Parliamentary hearing on 4 December 2019.
Read more: http://urdn.org/activity/public-forum-towards-peasant-s-rights-to-land-in-ukraine/
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