Paraguay - Context and Land Governance

Paraguay is part of the United Nations Committee on World Food Security (CFS) and as such has endorsed the VGGT on 11 May 2012. The CFS at its 38th (Special Session) on 11 May 2012, among other points: i) endorsed the VGGT; ii) noted that, according to their title  the VGGT are voluntary and not legally binding; iii) and encouraged all stakeholders to promote, make use of and support the implementation of the VGGT when formulating relevant strategies, policies and programmes. (See FAO Council Report of the 38th (Special) Session of the Committee on World Food Security (11 May 2012), Rome, 11-15 June 2012).

Paraguay engaged in regional dialogue on using the VGGT to improve governance of tenure in the country. Read more.

In spite of the lack of precise data, it is estimated that in Paraguay there are between 200,000 and 300,000 peasant families that do not have land, or that do not have enough land. Likewise, of the existing 480 indigenous communities in the country—which already have great difficulty in defending their land demands—a little less than half (44%) do not have their own land, and instead live and depend on lands owned by the state, businesses, farms, or churches and missions.

Agrarian reform is a pending issue in Paraguay, and this is stated explicitly in the definitions of the Political Constitution of the State, which establishes the progressive elimination of very large estates (latifundios) through a specific tax system, expropriation of private property, and other measures. Likewise, there is the Agrarian Statute, a law that conceptually defines the economic and social function of land and considers it the central aspect of national agrarian reform policy, stating that, in case of non-compliance, the state must expropriate those lands and redistribute them. The National Institute of Rural and Land Development (INDERT, by its Spanish initials) is responsible for these tasks.

However, in spite of enacting the necessary laws and operational tools over the past twenty years, it is evident that redistributive policies in Paraguay have not had much of an impact on land tenure. The distribution of land is still highly concentrated. According to the National Census of 2008, the number of properties greater than 500 hectares is only 2.6% of the country’s total, but they hold 85% of surveyed lands. On the other hand, farms smaller than 20 hectares represent 83.5% of the total but only occupy 4.1% of the land. Land inequality in Paraguay is the highest in the world, with a Gini index for the distribution of land of 0.93, with a tendency toward the increase of property concentration in the future.