300 participants successfully debate land governance at the first Mekong Regional Land Forum

From 21-23 June 2016, Hanoi, Viet Nam hosted the first international land governance event in the Mekong Region: the Regional Land Forum. This highly participatory and regionally representative forum enabled debates and discussions to occur about customary land rights and large scale land concessions in the context of ASEAN Economic Integration. This unique opportunity allowed a real sense of engagement to develop and grow during the event between multi-stakeholder groups of participants. This was largely a result of quality presentations being held and the audience being receptive and responsive throughout the forum.

The Regional Land Forum provided an opportunity to share ideas and concerns. Participants from neighbouring countries and various sectors were able to come together and discuss their experiences. Sector involvement included: government (15%), academia (28%), private sector (7%), civil society (domestic and international) (28%), land experts and development partners from the region (19%), and farming representatives (3%).

Over 300 participants participated in the event. Registered participants were from Cambodia (55), Laos (58), Myanmar (42), Viet Nam (111), other ASEAN countries (18) (including China and Thailand), and from outside the region (10) (including Australia, Italy, England, America, France and the Netherlands).

The following three keynote speakers opened the proceedings: Professor Philip Hirsch (University of Sydney), Louisa Jansen (Land Tenure Unit, UNFAO) and Duncan Pruett of Oxfam. They were followed over the course of the three days by parallel discussant presentations (a total of 39 presentations), five opportunities for training or discussion workshops, including a student learning exchange, one plenary panel session with six guest speakers from different organisations in Laos, Cambodia, Viet Nam, Thailand and Indonesia, a closed government exchange session and an open network event with an additional nine presentations by participants.

A full technical schedule coupled with plenty of networking space made for a recipe of forum success and happy participants – far exceeding MRLG program expectations. Participants are demanding that we hold the workshop again next year!

Acknowledgements
As a jointly supported project by the Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation (SDC), the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), together with the support of Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), the MRLG project was pleased to receive cooperation from the Economic Committee of the Communist Party and the Institute for Policy and Strategy of Agriculture and Rural Development (IPSARD), and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD).

For more information, please see http://mrlg.org/resources/active-debates-transpire-from-first-regional-land-forum-2/