Neil Sorensen joined the Land Portal as its Communications Specialist in October 2015. He has extensive experience leading communications for international organizations and developing relationships with civil society, donors, intergovernmental agencies, the media and the private sector. Previously, Neil worked for the International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD) as a Governing Bodies Officer and Strategic Adviser to the Secretary of IFAD. He has also led communications for three international organizations, including the International Land Coalition, the International Federation of Agricultural Producers (IFAP) and the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM). He holds a Master’s degree in Global Diplomacy from the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) as well as a Bachelor’s degree with a double major in German and Sociology from St. Cloud State University.
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Useful Covid-19 Resources for Legal Empowerment Groups
Namati has created a list of COVID-19 resources that address topics relevant to grassroots justice groups (available as a Google Doc 52 or PDF 74). Inside, you’ll find reflections and advice on:
Grassroots Justice in a Pandemic: Ensuring a Just Response and Recovery
Communities around the world are reeling from the repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic and measures taken to contain it. Now more than ever, the ability to know, use, and shape the law is critical. Access to health care and various forms of relief hinge on the ability to know one’s rights and navigate complex systems. As emergency actions escalate, citizens must ensure that governments do not use the pandemic as an excuse to entrench unjust or discriminatory policies.
Highways of Peru Swell With Families Fleeing Virus
Fear of the virus and job loss in cities are pushing many back to the countryside, reversing a decades-long trend of urban migration and raising alarm about a public health crisis in rural areas.
LIMA, Peru — The bus terminals in Lima are so crowded with people waiting to escape to the countryside that families are sleeping outside, side by side.
The highways of the city, Peru’s capital, are lined with walkers, laden with suitcases and children.
City demolitions expose Ethiopian families to coronavirus
Human rights groups want a moratorium on demolitions and forced evictions of informal settlements under COVID-19
NAIROBI/ADDIS ABABA, April 29 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Scores of Ethiopian families are at risk of contracting the new coronavirus after authorities demolished their makeshift houses and left them homeless, human rights groups said on Wednesday.
Authorities in the capital began destroying the informal settlements near Bole International Airport in February.
Towards an open up guide on land governance
This report provides a summary of an online workshop on March 16th 2020, organised in place of a planned fringe meeting of the World Bank Land and Poverty Conference which was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The 2-hour digital workshop brought together over 40 participants from across the world to discuss key data and key open data use-cases for land governance. This report is written based on workshop recordings and shared notes.
Hygienisation, Gentrification, and Urban Displacement in Brazil
This article engages recent debates over gentrification and urban displacement in the global South. While researchers increasingly suggest that gentrification is becoming widespread in “Southern” cities, others argue that such analyses overlook important differences in empirical context and privilege EuroAmerican theoretical frameworks.
Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography
Antipode publishes innovative papers that push at the boundaries of radical geographical thinking. Papers will be rigorous and substantive in theoretical and empirical terms. Authors are encouraged to critique and challenge settled orthodoxies, while engaging the context of intellectual traditions and their particular trajectories. Papers should put new research or critical analyses to work to contribute to strengthening a Left politics broadly defined.
Land and environmental defenders are sitting ducks, while world goes into lockdown
This is a special Earth Day Op-Ed by Michel Forst, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders and Michael Taylor, the Director of the International Land Coalition Secretariat.
Food Security Today Is Not Just For Local Population, But For the Globe: Minister Rania Al Mashat
Egypt’s Minister of International Cooperation Dr. Rania Al Mashat joined a high level virtual panel on the significance of international developmental cooperation to face the implications of the coronavirus pandemic on the agricultural sector and food security.
COVID-19 and the SDGs: moving forward after the crisis
Many governments, businesses and local communities have made commitments towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) but COVID-19 may set some of these commitments back.
COVID-19 is raging everywhere, resulting in much of the world in self-isolation and the closing of borders worldwide. With comparisons to the 1918 H1N1 influenza pandemic, we are experiencing a literal one-in-100-year event.