World Food Day + #LandRightsNow!
Food is culture. Food is connection. Food is land rights. This World Food Day, from 15-26 October, we are dining together, marching together, taking action together to demand land rights now for Indigenous Peoples and communities.
Oxfam Sri Lanka is featuring a unique dish known as Pothu Pittu, made only in Paanama, Sri Lanka. Paanama is a coastal area in the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka, home to communities which engage in agriculture and fishing as their main sources of livelihood.Nearly 350 families of the Paanama community living in the five smaller villages have been forcefully evicted from their lands by the state. With their homes torched, and crops destroyed, these families have been living with relatives or in makeshift temporary shelters, anxiously awaiting the moment when they will be allowed to return to their lands.On 11 February, through a cabinet decision the President of Sri Lanka decided to release 340 acres of land currently occupied by the air force back to the Paanama community.
However this decision is still remains unimplemented in the ground level. We call for immeadiate action to be taken to enact the desicions made on releasing these lands back to the community.