What’s the Point of an International Conference on Agrarian Reform?

The International Conferences on Agrarian Reform—the 2006 conference in Porto Alegre and the one recently held in Cartagena in 2026—may seem like largely ineffective events. Through these conferences, several governments from the Global South and their allies have sought to put agrarian reform back at the center of the international agenda, but they were not designed to adopt a new international treaty, follow up on an existing one, or create a new institution dedicated to the issue, as is the case with most global summits. That being the case, what then is the purpose of these agrarian conferences? 

Many of us who participated in the 2026 Conference are content with an overly optimistic notion that, whatever we do, everything will build momentum toward tangible successes in the future. But exactly where do we want to go? And what must we do to get there? For my part, I believe it’s important to give a precise name to what we’re seeking. Below, I propose two possibilities for your consideration. 

The Lost Global Consensus on Agrarian Reform

Let me first clarify something: it’s no surprise that these events have such a limited scope, by the standards of other international summits, because the world is against them.

It’s not that agrarian reforms are a bad idea. Quite the contrary. They seek to distribute rural land equitably and shift societal support toward those who work the land directly—which, as comparative evidence has shown, has deepened democracy and economic development in modern nations. But this means taking power away from those who have amassed wealth and influence by seizing large tracts of land: capitalists, landowners, and large food corporations that are unwilling to relinquish their privileges. 

This did not prevent agrarian reform from becoming a global consensus in the mid-20th century. Communists and capitalists (led by the USSR and the United States, respectively) vied for influence, among other things, by demonstrating who could most easily break the resistance of rural elites through large-scale land redistribution and aid for rural peasant development around the world between the 1950s and 1970s. However, that Cold War-era reformism came to an end with the turn of the century. The Iron Curtain fell, and with it the geopolitical pressure to isolate rural elites out of fear of communism. At the same time, neoliberal doctrines and the boom in extractive industries—including agribusiness—have tipped the balance in favor of landowners and agrarian capitalists. 

In other words, even though agrarian reform is a very good idea, even for economic development, it is difficult to rally the entire world to revive it, as occurred half a century ago, because there are not enough global political incentives to challenge the rural elites and their allies. And that’s without even considering that the world’s attention is focused elsewhere: the wars in Iran, Ukraine, and Palestine, and Trump’s authoritarian outbursts. 

Creating “Soft Law”

Despite this adverse situation, however, I believe that the Agrarian Reform Conferences are worthwhile. My first argument is that we’re able to produce “soft law” at these types of events. 

“Soft law” is how lawyers refer to normative documents that are not yet legally binding, because they have not been adopted through the procedures required by international law for the adoption of treaties. Although they do not bind states, historically they have served as the foundation for building future consensus around norms of international law, or for inspiring new norms at the national level. That is why I like to call them “seeds.” A clear and directly related example is the International Declaration on the Rights of Peasants (UNDROP), adopted by the United Nations. It is not an international treaty, but it proposes a range of rights for peasants that has already been used as a basis to inspire national laws. This was the case in Colombia, where the Congress used it as inspiration to amend a constitutional article that strengthens peasants’ rights. It has also inspired cases of judicial activism: in Honduras, where the Supreme Court used Article 19 to support some of its arguments and declare unconstitutional a law that prohibited the informal exchange of seeds; and in Kenya, the Court of Appeals is yet to decide whether to lift the ban on introducing genetically modified plants into the country, following a lawsuit filed by peasant organizations that used the Declaration to interpret domestic constitutional obligations. 

My point is that we can follow the same path by using the official pronouncements of the Agrarian Reform Conferences. Let’s look at just one example to illustrate my point: Recommendation No. 21 of the Cartagena Declaration on Agrarian Reform:

strengthen the capacities of rural youth to develop their life projects in rural areas by facilitating access to land and other productive assets through inclusive mechanisms that are not limited to inheritance, promoting the right to education, and creating conditions for both agricultural and non-agricultural rural employment. 

Today, there is no international treaty that specifies what specific rights young peasants have. Not even the UNDROP. And, at least in the case of my country, Colombia, we do not have constitutional provisions that go in that direction either. But in that declaration that came out of Cartagena, we already have a paragraph with very promising elements. Don’t you think it opens a window to the future?

Our Political Density

When I’ve had this conversation about the value of the recent Cartagena Conference, many of my friends who attended have told me that what mattered most—beyond the outcome—was what happened “in the hallways,” or they even mention the “mystique” of the gathering. It’s an unplanned, virtuous effect of this type of event—one that’s hard to put into words—but one that makes many of us feel it’s all worth it. 

Sandra Botero gave it a name in her studies on activism before the High Courts: “political density.” Her idea is this: it’s not enough for a new law or a new ruling to be issued in our favor, because laws don’t enforce themselves; a movement is needed behind them to follow up and pressure institutions to comply with them. And social groups that manage to maintain larger membership, closer ties, higher morale, and a mechanism for renewal to sustain themselves over time are better equipped to do so. In other words, the greater the density, the greater the capacity to exert pressure. 

This concept perfectly captures what my friends took away from their participation in Cartagena. They told me they learned new ways to talk about agrarian reform, that they were happy to reconnect with friends and networks they thought were lost, that they were amazed to see young students from Cartagena browsing the conference events, or that they were simply excited to know that their struggles were still relevant. That said, it’s difficult to measure exactly how much we managed to increase the density of our networks, but you can find some signs of it in the “ICARD+20 Gossip,” published by the Center for Alternatives to Development. 

Many did complain, however, that the chaos of the event and its focus on political statements somewhat undermined that “behind-the-scenes” interaction where political density is forged. There is also the question of whether it’s actually worth investing so many resources in events of this type, given that we could increase that density in other ways. Perhaps we should keep this in mind for future conferences.