In a joint statement released on 24 February 2026, civil society organisations, social movements, faith based actors, Indigenous Peoples, pastoralist and peasant groups from Africa and the Global South call on ICARRD+20 to become a turning point for land justice and food sovereignty. The statement warns that twenty years after the first International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development, rural communities continue to face dispossession, land concentration and ecological destruction driven by agribusiness expansion, extractive industries, carbon offset schemes and financial speculation. It highlights the erosion of customary and collective land systems and the rapid spread of industrial livestock production, which undermines pastoralist and small scale systems. With 2026 declared the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists, the signatories urge recognition of pastoralism as climate resilient and central to sustainable food systems, while rejecting policies that privatise rangelands or restrict livestock mobility. The statement calls for protection of collective tenure rights under international frameworks such as UNDRIP and UNDROP, genuine agrarian reform, an end to land financialisation, redirection of climate and agricultural finance toward agroecology and rangeland restoration, binding corporate accountability, and protection of land and environmental defenders.