Apr. 15, 2010

Coady Institute graduate wins award for work on land rights

Coady International Institute graduate Jagat Basnet and his organization, the Community Self-Reliance Centre (CSRC) of Nepal, have been honoured with a 2010 Farmer Voice Award. The award was presented by the Agricultural Learning and Impacts Network at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex in the UK.

CSRC is one of nine recipients of the annual award, which celebrates leading examples of development organizations that are successfully nurturing and responding to smallholder farmers' own efforts to improve their lives and livelihoods.

Basnet’s organization is leading a national land rights campaign with landless and tenant farmers in Nepal.

Olga Gladkikh, a senior program staff member at the Coady, has been working with Basnet’s group since he first came to the Coady in 2001 as a participant in the Diploma in Development Leadership program.

“CSRC organizes and educates farmers about their rights. It also helps them to exercise those rights by using various strategies to put their issues on the political agenda,” said Gladkikh. 

As a result of CSRC's local level activism, Nepal’s government now includes a representative from CSRC on its land commission and as of last year over 13,400 petitions have been settled in favor of the landless and land-poor. 

In addition, more than 200,000 families have been reached through the group’s educational activities. Gladkikh has connected CSRC with graduates working on land rights issues in other countries who together have formed an international Land First movement.  

“CSRC's award is well-deserved," added Gladkikh. "Its activism is breaking the cycle of poverty experienced by small landholders and landless farmers in Nepal."

More information on the CRSC is available online at www.crscnepal.org