 Thank you, Neil. Good morning, everyone. Thanks, all of you, for making time to be with us today and be part of this conversation on how the VGT's have been used, are being used, can be used to strengthen and secure tenant rights, particularly those of most vulnerable people whose rights have not been recognized. We have, as you know, this side event, which is organized on the sidelines of the CFS-48. The CFS is, as you know, the platform that endorsed the Voluntary Guidelines. And now we will look into how the VGT's are a tool to, again, secure tenant rights by the different people, including women, indigenous people, small farmers, whose rights have not been recognized. This event will look specifically into how those rights are being allocated, how they are transferred, and how transactions are undertaken. As you may recall, the Voluntary Guidelines are specifically Article 7 calls for governments to identify tenant rights who have not been secured, those who are the rightful holders, legitimate holders of those rights, and facilitate their recognition as we know having secure tenant rights is central for livelihoods, to secure livelihoods, to secure investments, and to promote sustainable food systems in the long run. So we are talking about a central issue which, again, has to do with secure and tenant rights, for which we need open and transparent systems. We'll have a good lineup today here. We'll have a good solid experts who will share with us their expertise, their views on how the VGT's can be used to improve, promote, have these open and transparent systems to secure tenant rights. We have Sam, our colleague, Sam Zocke Burkey, Senior Legal Researcher for the Columbia Center for Sustainable Investment. That's the Earth Institute, I believe, Columbia University in New York. He will not be with us today, but he has prepared a video that will show us the work they have been doing on land investments and how that involved local people recognizing legal rights and the participation of those involved in those investments. Then we have a team hamster, Leeds of the Chandler Foundation, she's first CEO based in Seattle, and he has worked with Landesa, and Landesa, as you know, is an institution with extensive expertise on tenant issues. We have now Natalie Carfi from Argentina. She's the Deputy Director of the Open Data Charter and she will share with us her views and expertise on this matter. Next, we'll have our colleague, Laura Mejolaro. She is the team leader of the Landportal Foundation who actually has facilitated the organization of this site event. Thank you, Laura. Thank you, Landportal. She will share with us her views, expertise on how data is being exchanged, how policy dialogues are being promoted to a further enhanced tenant rights. And we have, last but not least, Honorable Ellen Pratt, a Commissioner of Land Use and Management and Management with the Liberian Land Authority. That will be a great voice from the field to hear how Liberia is dealing with these issues and how the Liberia experience can shale light on the way forward to securing tenant rights. As I said before, unfortunately, Sam Zockeburke from Columbia University won't be able to join us, but we have a video that will show us some key messages that they would like to convey to us on this matter. And with this, I would invite the colleagues dealing with the logistics here to let us see the video. Hi, I'm Sam Zockeburke, Senior Legal Researcher at the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment. I'd like to thank the organizers and my colleagues on this panel for the opportunity to make this presentation by video ahead of time. Today's topic focuses on innovations in open and transparent land governance. And to borrow from a recent CCSI report on this topic, we must ask for whom. Transparency initiatives can have a range of beneficiaries, including regulators, community members, citizens, journalists, each of whom may have different needs. So designing systems that meet such needs will be crucial if we want to avoid less dominant actors, such as communities, indigenous peoples, and women being left behind. I'd like to focus on transparency in the context of land-based investments specifically, given the immense land pressures that agribusiness, forestry, and renewable energy projects are currently causing. As you can see, land investment transparency has four elements. The first is disclosure of all relevant and accurate information in a timely manner. This includes information about actual or proposed investments, including likely impacts and the actors involved. But it also includes information about relevant rights and laws, including the processes through which decisions will be made. CCSI's own effort in this regard is Open Land Contracts, which currently houses 1,500 land investment contracts and other documents from over 50 countries. The next element is access. Communities, citizens, and government actors have to be able to safely access the information. Third is comprehension. Information should be made in understandable formats, which includes translations into local languages and plain language summaries. In the case of Open Land Contracts, for instance, we summarize key contract clauses to aid comprehension for non-legal users. Communities often also need sufficient time to digest information and to access technical support if needed. The final element is information use in open systems. Communities and other actors must be able to access decision-making processes if they want to knowledgeably influence them. More generally, governance systems must be open and democratically responsive. So what are these open systems and decision-making processes that we need, and how can local actors influence them in practice? The systems and processes I have in mind are wide-ranging and often country-specific. They include processes enabling decisions on land use, planning, the design of legal and policy frameworks, through to consideration of proposed investments and the terms of those investments that are granted permits. So this also includes consultations, contract negotiations, impact assessments, as well as monitoring and enforcement, grievance mechanisms, and decisions concerning project closure and what happens to land afterwards. For communities to access these systems, disclosure is crucial, but it's also insufficient. To influence decisions, communities need information, yes, but also power is going to play a prominent role, meaning that communities will often struggle to have their voice heard. They may need skill-building and accompaniment from civil society and other support providers to really grasp what is at stake, prepare, and confidently decide on and implement a course of action before it's too late. Because communities, including women and indigenous peoples, are so often excluded from these processes, they increasingly are turning to processes to set the agenda themselves before it's too late. Community-led processes include autonomous protocols and bylaws, which explain how customary decisions are made within the community, as well as community-driven visions for how the community plans to pursue its own self-determined development. Community-led data collection is another important tool. This can democratize the information sources feeding into government decisions concerning land, which can otherwise often tilt heavily towards unaccountable company consultants or reporting that may not tell the full story. On the government side, we know that information sharing between agencies remain the challenge. This is not only a technical or a financial challenge, it's also a political one. Public actors might be hoarding information or demanding money for it, precisely because being a gatekeeper to such information brings with it power and influence. So while we can and should innovate on intra-governmental information sharing and coordination, we also have to empower those good faith actors within government, sometimes referred to as reformers, who earnestly seek to uphold their mandates, but are too often stymied by pressure from above to not make things difficult for certain investors. On this topic, CCSI is currently working to empower specific governmental actors and is preparing a brief on how such actors can build political support to translate good ideas into practice as part of our Align project with IIED and NAMATI. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you for that video. I hope that most of you were able to listen to and follow through the whole presentation, despite of some minor noises that we heard. However, and I think we were able to hear some key messages here and some key words that I heard, including for instant information, access to information and data, consultation process and decision making within the communities themselves. I think those are key words to an open and transparent systems in land governance. So I would like to hear from Tim, who comes from a very extensive background, particularly when I hear that you work with Landesa and this is a well recognized institution with extensive expertise on these issues. What are your views on this? What are your take on these issues? Over to you, Tim. Thank you, Javier and good morning to everyone. I wanna start by just giving a shout out, given this is a CFS side event to the CFS for their role in developing and endorsing and maintaining the voluntary guidelines on responsible governance of tenure. I think it's been about nine years since they were endorsed and they've served as I think great guidance for governments in making steps forward to improve governance of land tenure. But I want to provide just the kind of the big picture here. Today's session involves the intersection of two topics that I believe deserve to be much more elevated on the global development agenda. There's the first being secure land rights and the second being corruption. And it's worth I think taking a big picture view of these two topics and their intersection before delving into the specifics. So first on secure land rights, why are they important and deserving of more attention? Well, in some the wellbeing of every person on the planet and indeed the wellbeing of the planet itself depends on secure land rights. Secure land rights and capable land institutions are a cornerstone of any modern economy. They strong land rights upheld by land institutions provide housing security. They give confidence to individuals to invest in land and businesses. They help bolster food security. They allow companies and households to more easily access financing. They enable governments to collect property taxes. They're a foundation for environmental stewardship and we could go on and on about their importance. And they're particularly important for the poorest people on the planet, a large majority of whom rely on land-based livelihoods and yet their relationship to the land on which they depend, their land rights is often lacking, which constrains their ability to grow food, to have a voice, to build wealth and to resiliently manage the inevitable hardships that life brings. So without secure land rights, which are made possible in significant part by responsible land governance institutions that accurately maintain, that gather and maintain land data, society's risk missing the foundation for sustainable prosperity. That's a problem for all people, but it's particularly a problem for the lives and the livelihoods of those living at the margins. But open and transparent land governance is also necessary to fight the cancer of corruption. And corruption, like secure land rights is another topic deserving of much more attention on the global development agenda. Corruption erodes trust, it weakens democracy, it hampers economic development, further exacerbates inequality, poverty, social division. And broadly speaking, levels of corruption are highly correlated with the lack of prosperity. And high corruption is one of the best proxies for governance. Corruption is just a cancer. It's a cancer that substantially limits the ability of government institutions, including land institutions, to provide the good governance necessary to build an inclusive prosperity. And unfortunately, land agencies are often among the most corrupt of government agencies. That's what research from around the world tells us. It also tells us that one in five people worldwide have paid bribes to access land services in some countries that number rises to one in two. And such land corruption can flourish when of course the land governance institutions lack transparency. So to fight corruption, we have to embrace transparency. And transparency is all about knowing the who, the why, the what, how, the how much. It means shedding light on the formal and informal rules, processes, actions and data. And transparency is not only about making the information available, but ensuring it can be easily accessed, understood and used by citizens. So in some, and I know this is like very simplistic for some people, but I think this big picture is important. Weak land rights and corruption are major problems constraining inclusive development and food security. Now, there is reason for hope, I think much reason for hope, particularly the ongoing revolution in information and communications technology provides unprecedented opportunities to gather the needed land data, to document and protect land rights, to digitize land records and make them more open and transparent. And doing so has the potential to clarify the land rights of literally hundreds of millions of people globally and limit the scope for corrupt practices. So in closing, I would just highlight four recommendations for governments seeking to reduce corruption and make development more inclusive as they document, digitize and open up land records. So first, important to carefully verify and upgrade the existing land records through a robust community led process before digitizing records. And the reason is that digitizing inaccurate or incomplete paper records that exist in many settings has a potential of perpetuating problems by further validating existing inaccuracies that frequently benefit the powerful. Second, ensure the active participation of women and disadvantaged groups. Well, a land system that works for the vulnerable will also work for the well-connected, but the inverse is often untrue. So women disadvantaged groups must play an active role, not only in collecting the data, but also in the creation and evolution of the land record system itself. Third, to increase transparency and defy corruption, land data should be open by default. Now, there can be exceptions to this, but any exceptions should be clearly justified as being necessary to protect the disadvantage. And finally, and with this all closed, land governance systems need to be fit for purpose and context. It is current technological possibilities alone should not dictate the design of open land data systems. Instead, it's very important for governments to establish their own goals and their own priorities, create an open land data system to fulfill their needs and those needs consistent with the voluntary guidelines. And it's important that context really matters. What works in one setting may not work in another and I'm sure we'll hear more about that later. So Javier, sorry, I've gone on too long with that. I'll close and look forward to the questions and come up later in the discussion. Thank you. Thank you so much, Tim. I think you touched upon very key issues concerning land administration systems that have to do with data, access to data, data availability, then land institutions, the working of land institutions. And so these are key issues because data has to do with land records and land records lead to land rights, who owns what and where. So recognizing these, the relevance of data, accessibility, reliability of data, I would like to invite now our colleague, Natalie Karfi, who is the Deputy Director of the Open Data Charter. And she has experience working also with the Under Secretary of Public Innovation and Open Government in Argentina. What is your experience on dealing with data, open data, making data accessible to people and how you collect that data in a way that you are sure that is reliable? I would like to remind all colleagues or participants to pose any questions, to pose any comments, reactions through the questions and chat functions so that we can engage more actively in this conversation. Over to you, Natalie. Thank you very much, Javier. And thanks everybody for being here. Thanks to the Land Portal for organizing the event. I'm gonna use a short presentation just to introduce the work that we've done so far. Let me go through these seconds of trying to figure out the best way to showcase. I guess everybody should be watching now the presentation. So as Javier said, I'm Natalie Karfi. I'm the Interim Executive Director now of the Open Data Charter, have been working on open data and open government for over 10 years. I'm glad to be here. Let me tell you a little bit about us and about the work that we've done on open data. So the Open Data Charter is a collaboration between governments and experts working on open data. It was funded almost six years ago now because we turned six in September. And it was a collaborative work around six principles to open up data on any topic and for every level of governments. So now we have 82 governments that have endorsed and adopted the charter and 73 organizations worldwide that have already also endorsed and adopted the charter as their way of working with open data. These are the six principles. So we are an organization but also a text. And so these are the six principles that we work with alongside with our partners, our endorsers and our adopters. The first one being opened by default. So we believe that governmental data should be opened by default as a theme set. Of course, there's certain limitations to that like personal data or national security data but the default should be open. It should be open in a timely and comprehensive manner in order for it to be actually important to understand what's going on and what government is actually doing. It should be accessible and usable and that goes straight into the formats. Then of course, standards and interoperability, it's important. So the data should be comparable so that we can understand also what each level of government is actually doing and what governments are doing and trying to compare and understand what's going on in the overall picture. And then the last two principles go more into objectives like we wanna make sure that open data actually improves governance and citizen engagement because it promotes that a driven policy development and that's a driven engagement and promote participation. And then of course, understanding that the public value of that data can actually help inclusive development and innovation. So those are the six principles of the open data chart. And with that in mind, we started working on this data to impact framework. I'm just gonna go really quick around this but when open data as a movement, as a policy first started almost 12 years ago, every government was trying to kind of take the policy by creating an open data portal and just publishing any type of data that they could. Without thinking about the objective of opening up data, opening up data was the objective. After a couple of years of maturing, we understood and the open data chart are actually coined the phrase publishing with a purpose. So we need to understand the problem that we're trying to tackle while opening up data. First think about the problem in a collaborative way with citizens, with the people that will be impacted for the better or for the worst when you publish the data and then understand the process that that data's gonna go through in order to be published. We know that opening up data is not easy. It's not even for free. You need to have a team in order to be able to secure that you're publishing high quality data, that there's no personal data in those data sets that you're gonna open. So understanding the purpose and prioritizing data, it's an important step before opening up governmental data. So published with a purpose is even a seventh principle that anybody should understand when talking about open data and open data policies implementation. So the open data charter has always worked with a collaborative approach to things. So we know about open data, but we're not specialists, thematic specialists. So we've partnered with organizations from around the world in order to create these tools, these practical tools that we call the open up guides. So we've created for, and Laura is gonna talk a little bit more about the land governance one, but I wanna give the overall structure of the guide and why it's important that we keep working in this way. So the open up guides, the idea is to understand what are the key data sets that any government can open in order to tackle a specific problem, in this case, these four public issues in order to start an open data policy around each of these topics. So we've created an agriculture one, a climate action one where we work with the World Resources Institute, the anti-corruption one that actually we've created with transparency international chapter in Mexico and the land governance where we work with land portal. The idea is to understand how government collects, manages and releases sectorial data to improve their connection with data users, the availability and the decision making and innovation. So these open up guides are practical tools that are online and we'll go through a couple of examples to let you know how this looks like. So any open up guide actually has key data sets, as I said, like critical data sets, proposals on how they should be collected, stored, shared and published. We are not reinventing the wheel if there's already existing standards that are proposed in order to publish any type of data. They will be in the open up guide, for example. So any open contracting data, we promote the standard that open contracting partnership is actually using. Then of course, we wanna be able to leverage what's already been done and what's already been done for good. So we always try to figure out and do research and connect with good data policies and frameworks, understanding which is the metadata that needs to be out there. As I said, standards and the governance frameworks where they are because not every type of data has a governance framework that's been developed. Try to understand what are the gaps or the challenges of each of these thematic policies and some use cases because examples always, always are helpful to understand the problems, the challenges and the dos and the don'ts. And for example, just the anti-corruption open up guide, we implemented it in Mexico. You see there's 30 data sets that compose actually the anti-corruption open up guide, but in Mexico that translated when we did the mapping of the existing data that actually translated into 72 data sets because of the way the data was being collected and created within government. 16 institutions within the executive branch actually... Sorry, 60 data sets from within the executive branch actually were leveraged. Some new data sets were created in order to promote publication for anti-corruption. And we understood that there were 350 data points that were feeding into the open up, sorry, into the open data portal, working on open data for anti-corruption. So from theory to practice, there's always a translation and this was super important. Then we implemented the open up guide on climate action in Uruguay. So we did a mapping from the 72 data sets that are part of the climate action and climate action open up guide. Only 20 had some degree of openness, but we were working with the Ministry of Environment and Agisic, which is the digital agency there. And we worked with them and with data re-users and people from the climate action community to co-create a strategy for opening up data. And since then, 29 new data sets have been opened. We have worked within government to improve data skills and new visualizations from data re-users have been created, sorry, to showcase the greenhouse gas emissions. So people are already using the new data sets. What we've learned so far by implementing the open up guides that we've implemented so far, it's important to talk about data interoperability but also about people interoperability, participation and collaborative co-creation and prioritization of key data sets. It's important within government. Many times we see that there's no cooperation even within agencies. So we kind of started talking maybe as kind of a joke about people interoperability, but it's actually one of the key ideas and the key takeouts that we got from these implementations. We need to build those bridges. We help build those bridges even as a strategy because the open data chart is not gonna be there forever. So we leave those connections then. The guides are useful for this multi-stakeholder conversations when we talk with NGOs, with universities, with different communities, having a framework such as a guide with an already set proposal of key data sets actually helps out in conversations. And for example, the anti-corruption open up guide was taken as the umbrella for a hemispheric open data for anti-corruption program for the whole of the Americas. So this guide actually was the framework where government's discussions took place. So it helped out with a massive conversation. It's really important to engage with possible re-users and get feedback from the very, very beginning of any open data process data assessments to understand the situation on key data sets. Like if that data is even collected, it's really important and there's the need to be open about that in order to manage expectations in these participatory processes, understand the situation. It's very important to document the data production and the data quality in order to be able to move forward. And I'm gonna move really, really quickly. Just one of the key ideas is we need to understand that for data to be opened, we need to resource allocation and monitor progress so that we are opening in the prioritization process and how much can be done. And I think I'm done. Yeah, thank you very much for the time. And I'm gonna... Thank you so much, Natalie or Natalia. Thank you so much for your presentation, for these ideas. I think the role of open data cannot be overemphasized. And although there is a question here from participants concerning privacy issues when we have open data, but we can discuss that during the open dialogue. Period. Now I would like to invite our colleague, Laura Mejalaro from Dalan Portal. They have very solid, good knowledge on how to handle data, make data available to stakeholders and engage, facilitate discussion. So, Laura, what would be your views on this issue? Over to you. Thank you, thank you for having a good morning. Good afternoon, good evening, everyone depending on where you are in the world. And let me just continue the conversation that Natalia started on the open up guide at the Land Portal Foundation together with the Open Data Charter have created and launched two weeks ago and how they contribute, of course, to the voluntary guidelines, which is and force open data systems, which is the topic of today panel. So the Land Portal, as you know, is a promoter of data sharing and is a platform that promotes inclusive dialogue and debates on land data, which is an issue that has been raised already by my colleagues today. It is why I wanted to start my intervention by quoting, by sharing an insight that I read on a blog that was published on the Land Portal a few days ago by Luisa Jonson, our colleague from the FAO, a voluntary guidelines team. So Luisa writes in contracts to other global issues such as the climate crisis, now which no single state, no single actor can prevent or fight in isolation. So most land governance issues can be solved within a state. So what does it mean, what does it mean this sentence? It means that the individual governments are in the driver's seat when it comes to responsible land governance. They can generate favorable or less favorable conditions to secure land rights. So, and this is precisely why our open up guide on land governance is directed, not only but mainly to governments because they control most of land data in a country. So government are the main custodians of land data. So the open up guide is the first of his kind and is a tool, is a kind of a playbook for governments which who have the mandates or an interest in making their land governance data more open and available. So land governance data is collected by government agencies as they carry out the core land administration functions and includes tenure of land, the use of land, the development of land for construction so for agriculture, the value of land and so on. These are the main data types that the government that they open up government, the open up guide analyzes. So for monitoring the performance of any data or any indicators relating to these four categories of data you need data to be readily available. So someone already mentioned this, and Natalie already highlighted the importance of data that is timely up to date, that is standardized and widely distributed to create impact. So some countries are already doing a good job in managing and collecting and publishing open and reusable data. Other countries may seek advice on how to start or how to expand their activities or how to test their work against best practices, best international practices. So the land ownership data still is consistently ranked lowest on the global open data index and the open data barometer. So each and every year these data is highlighted as the least likely to be opened by government. So government usually do not publish in an open format primary data related to land governance. Why? We identify four main reasons for that. And some colleagues have already mentioned some of these reasons. Privacy concern. So land data contains personal data, data that should be restricted not be published. Because of mismanagement of this data already this has been mentioned already in many countries land, the data landscape is characterized by a patchy and overlapping record system. So data is scattered and fragmented across different jurisdictions and the land agencies. Some data is not good. There is a lot of gap and the quality of the data. Simply some data has never been historically collected. Think about the customer land rights data that the document customer land rights of data related to gender. So, and the corruption. Corruption is maybe another reason and my colleagues have already explained that corruption is widespread in the land sector. And finally the lack of know-how, lack of technical capacity. So the capacity gap at the government level has been identified on how government should collect, manage and publish and license land data. So there is also a technical gap there and also financial gap as well. Land data and land information yet is a public good. So, and public good has, and the public so that the citizens have a right to access it. So when my point is whenever we refer to good land governance, we should also pay attention and refer to good data governance. So data governance should become part of the land governance agenda. And although data cannot be a goal in itself, of course, is certainly an important means to good land governance. So why open data? So why an open up guide on land governance? So it is true that land governance is particularly vulnerable and prone to corruption. My colleagues have already elaborated on this, but at the same time, this is a practical guide to help the government to make land administration more efficient, deliver better services, more cost effective services, including collecting, sharing and more and better data. Data that civil society can use, our researchers can use, but also companies, private companies can use to generate any impact. So going back to Louisa blog, this open up guide is somehow similar to the voluntary guidance in the sense that is a voluntary instrument, but yet is an instrument that promotes reform through multi-stakeholder dialogue, political consensus and international good practices in this way is similar. So likewise, our open up guide gives the government, but also anyone else that is involved in land policy from the public sector, from the academia, from the private sector, some direction, some guidelines to overcome all the challenges and also the repercussions of the misgovernance of land. So we encourage governments, donors and key data players to join this conversation, because again, Landport is a place for dialogue, for conversation, for collaboration, and this is what we try to encourage within the sector. We want to pilot this guide in several countries, but also we want to improve the guide as a tool, as a model that can drive innovation and positive change in the land governance sector. So the open up guide is open for consultation until end of July. Please have your say, please share your feedback and be part of the conversation. Thank you so much, Javier. Back to you. Thank you, Laura. And now we have an invitation from her. So colleagues, take note. And so please, I hope you will be able to participate in this consultation. Now we have our last guest speaker. I see also our colleague, Chris Higadoran from CFS Secretariat also would like to join the conversation. I would like to invite first our guest speaker, Ellen Pratt, as I said before, Commissioner of the Land Use and Land Management with the Liberian Land Authority. I think that would be good to hear from her because Liberia is one of the countries at the frontline of improving governance of tenures based on the entire guidelines. Liberia has been one of the examples we have been looking at in Africa as how to use the VGT's to improve governance tenure to secure tenure rights, particularly under customary tenure. I think she will be very happy to share with us their experience. And I think her experience will also address one of the questions raised there in the question and answer function, which is how the VGT's being used to help secure tenure rights under customary tenure. So afterwards, I will let you invite Chris to take the floor. Over to you, Ellen. Thank you very much and good morning, good nights, good evening. Let me first say thank you to the CFS for this platform and also to the Land Portal for the invitation to participate. And as many of my colleagues have already stated, a lot of land governance and the initiative and drive for sustainable land governance comes from government. So as the Liberia Land Authority, we play a pivotal role and we will continue to play a pivotal role in land governance in Liberia. Just to give some background, the Land Authority is a new organization who were legislated in 2016 as a one-stop shop for land administration in Liberia simply because of all of the corruption, all of the inequalities and lack of transparency in land governance spread across a multiplicity of agencies. So this new agency was tasked with a broad mandate, but essentially effective land governance, equitable land governance. And fast forward to 2018, with the help of our multisacral platform of the VGT, Liberia passed a landmark legislation in support of land rights called the Land Rights Act or the Land Rights Law of 2018. We will argue that it is one of the most progressive laws in support of customary land tenure on the African continent. What this law has done is for the first time in our nation's history, we are recognizing the customary tenure rights of Liberians who have lived on their lands for generations. Prior to this law, all of that land was considered public land. And now as of the passage of this law, it is customary land. And there are guidelines that customary communities must follow in order to have their land regularized. However, as of the passage of the law, the land is in fact under the ownership or custodianship of the customary communities that have lived on that land. And the VGT came was implemented in Liberia in 2014. And since that time, the consortium made up of across stakeholders, Vermont's private sector donor partners, NGOs, CSOs, NGOs, have been instrumental in not only the passage of this law, but also in working with governments to spread the message, if you will. And that is very important because you have a law but this law does not answer the question of equality. It does not answer the question of promoting women's land rights in the absence of actions, in the absence of implementation guidelines, in the absence of the actual presence and information shared with the community. So even with the passage of this law, we find that there are several challenges. And one of them, most of our panelists have outlined here today and that is data. But I will also say that a key challenge for us is the lack of information. And what we've tried to do when we speak about intervention is we've taken what is a very complex law, we've broken it down into simple English, I will say that because 43% of our population is illiterate. So how do you explain how this law can change your life if you do not speak in the language of the people? So key provisions of the law, particularly the sections that speak to customer land tenure have been translated into local languages as well as broken down for lack of a better phrase into what we call Liberian English, which is a colloquial form of English that most Liberians speak. And now this message is starting to resonate with our communities. We still have a major challenge of our budgetary constraints as a government to reach the length and breadth and depth of the country to spread this message. But with our partners, particularly the multi-stakeholder platform, we are getting the message across. I think that also the VGGT platform has helped us to coordinate our partners a little bit better because one of the major issues that we've had as a country is not only is there a lack of data, there's a lack of coordinated data. So you find that many agencies are collecting information but the platform is not shared, is not interoperable and we're not speaking to each other. So the messages could get crossed and that we see happening in the landscape quite a lot. So the Liberia Land Authority is not only trying to, one, promote the messaging, work with communities to get the customary land deeds and then the supporting structures that follow. So you have a deed to your land. What does that mean for you as a community? We're working with communities to develop land use plans so that they understand or have a vision for how they would like to see their land and how this land could help to promote livelihood creation, poverty alleviation. 54% of Liberia's population lives below the poverty line. Most of that population is in rural Liberia. Most of that population are the people that are affected by this customary land tenure. So it is important and it's an intrinsic part of our Liberian fabric that we promote customary land rights, that we support women's land rights because again, our women are responsible for 70% of our agriculture in the rural communities. They too need land rights in order to continue to fund, continue to care for their families. I've noted what Laura said that it is governments that are in the driving seat and I think we take that responsibility very seriously. Not only is this law a catalytic change for Liberia and the Liberian economy, it is also a way to catapult our people out of poverty and how we do it will be the test of time. I will want to also extend a thank you to the open up guide. I will raise my hand and say that we are prepared to pilot this guide in Liberia. I think I noticed that you're working in our neighboring country, Sierra Leone. So we encourage you to please come across the river and join us because it is very important. I think one of our major weaknesses is still the data integration. I think Tim also spoke about the importance of not digitizing the wrong information and we have a plethora of illegal transactions in our land administration system, which is still a manual system. So as we develop our systems, it's important that digitize correct information and what does that mean? That means that we as the authority need to understand the data we have. We need to dig deeper into this data and we need to be able to throw out what is not correct, what is not validated, what has not been vetted as we migrate from a manual to an electronic and digital system. So I thank you all for the opportunity and I look forward to the dialogue. Thank you. Thank you very much, Helen. Yes, indeed, that's very inspiring. I mean, Liberia, as I said before, is one of the countries that have been very proactive in taking up the VETs to improve governance of tenure, but we are aware, very mindful that quite a few challenges are ahead, live on the road. In this regard, I would like to invite now our colleagues from the CFS secretariat, Chris Hegadorn, to share with us his views on this because after eight years, actually it's gonna be nine years of a, next year gonna be 10 of the endorsement of the VETs, how, from your perspective, how you see this process is moving forward, considering now that we have some lessons to learn and challenges ahead, how we can tackle those challenges so as we heard corruption. Well, from your perspective, what can be done? Thank you. Well, thanks, Javier, it's a pleasure. I don't know if my video can be turned on, but at least you have a picture of what I look like. I also can't tell exactly how many people are with us, but even if it's just five. Now you are muted, you are muted, Chris. Okay, so there we go. Okay, well, good morning. Thanks Javier, thanks Neil, Laura, Ellen, great speeches. Ellen, having your country perspective is so important and I think you raised some incredibly important points. Look, as part of the representing the CFS secretariat, you know, the CFS VGGT is certainly one of, or if not the product of which I certainly personally, and I think the team is most proud of because it really highlights exactly what the CFS was designed to do and reformed to do in 2009. And along with the RIPE principles, which often go very nicely hand in hand with the CFS VGGT, there's so much good news to share, not enough because we know that the issues of land tenure and land governance, there's just so much work to be done. But, you know, this is the ideal process. We had, if you recall, a special session in May, 2012, just like our special session tomorrow, where we adopted the VGGT and this stemmed from at least a decade of great work done at FAO and many other organizations, backed by a report with the CFS High-Level Panel of Experts and then taken forward over the past nine years as Xavier said, by FAO, by EFAD, World Bank, the ILC, Land Portal, many, many others, with help of donor states who funded major products, Germany, Switzerland, there's a number of ones who have put quite a bit of effort into this issue because they understand how central land is to reaching the VGGTs, to addressing poverty, to addressing women's empowerment, many of the issues Ellen spoke to. So another point, you know, the CFS VGGT has become a global reference document on land governance, on land management, on tenure issues. And of course, we're all very proud of that. And we're finally seeing some of the fruits of that work taking shape where, for example, in 2019, the UN conference on desertification used the reference, the CFS VGGT, as the global reference document around land degradation neutrality. So it's not only gone beyond CFS and beyond FAO and the other agencies mentioned, but into binding treaty territory. And I think that can't be underestimated. And I think we all need to keep pushing for that, including with the summit this year, the UN Food Systems Summit, highlighting, highlighting, highlighting, you know, every chance we get as advocates of land tenure, land governance, that this issue can't be underestimated. It is, you know, it ranks up at the top in terms of transformational issues that have to be addressed to reach the SDGs and the ambitions of the summit, and of course, the vision of the CFS, particularly for the most poor and vulnerable where these issues are so acute and so important. So I simply will highlight that, you know, the context is the important thing, Liberia's experience. Please, Ellen, join us anytime you want because your presentation was great, the experience is so relevant. And we'd like to see more of those shared experiences help inform other countries who are struggling with many of these same issues. Gender, empowering women as you rightly pointed out, the questions of governance and fighting corruption which undermines so much of the work, the good work that's being done, and data. And I want to encourage everyone, we are not only set to address and approve policy recommendations around innovative approaches to food security and nutrition such as agroecological and others tomorrow, but we are also starting and next year we will adopt voluntary guidelines on women's empowerment. And we hope that this really takes on these questions of land governance as well and is applied in that context. We are also set to produce policy recommendations around data, data collection and its implementation in policy. And that is also, we will start that work this year and we'll be continuing with the, until we produce and adopt policy recommendations. So thank you for letting me, I wasn't planning on speaking, but thanks for the chance Javier and others. And again, please look to us, join us tomorrow for the CFS 48 special session. Look at our website because we have links to not only our own videos, but also the documentation expert reports done by FAO and others, but let's work together and keep pushing forward on this incredibly important topic. Back to you Javier. Thank you, Chris. Thank you so much. One key issue I think is, I mean, and was somehow referred to by Ellen and also you touched upon is using the VITs to facilitate access to and regular rights, recognized rights, but most vulnerable, including women. And so I would like to invite now one colleague who has some experience to share on this very issue. And in fact, that would address one of the questions raised in the question and answer function here and examples of country level, concrete examples of how these voluntary guidelines have helped secure tenant rights in a way that is participatory, committed themselves, collecting data and verifying land rights. So I would like to invite our colleague from FAO, Maria Paula Rizzo, to share with us some experiences. For instance, I can think of Sierra Leone, for example, Guatemala, another one. So I don't want to talk so much. So I would like to invite Maria Paula. Good morning. Good morning and thank you. Thank you, Javier, for including me in this conversation. It was a really interesting set of intervention and all very relevant also to the work that we have been doing in the last 10 years. So I was, I mean, interested in some of the words that have been used during these interventions like Tim has mentioned, for instance, secure tenant rights corruption. Natalia mentioned interoperability of data and people. Sam mentioned assessment and consultation. Laura mentioned link between open data and the voluntary guidelines. The fact that the governments have the guidance of data and the importance of quality of data and the governance of data. And finally, Ellen mentioned the language, a multi-sector platform and coordination. And one of the question was related to the fact that if these activities, these initiatives with the, for instance, customer rights and indigenous people are legally recognized by governments. So to me, all of these words, which are not just words, but are much more than words, match very well with the work that we have been doing since 2010 when we started the implementation, actually of open source solutions in the area of land administration. So if I can just very quickly provide the background of our work, we started implementing these projects on open source systems, which is the solar open source software because we looked and based our work on three considerations. One is that the access to land and natural resources associated with tenure security. Second is that the effective and transparent land administration is fundamentally ensuring the security of tenure. And then the land administration can improve their services by using digitized systems, computerized systems for land registration. So the system that we have developed and that then we also extended for the implementation and the operationalization of the voluntary guidelines in the recognition of the legitimate tenure rights. So not just what was called formal land rights, but also extending to the recognition and protection of the legitimate tenure rights with a new man-based approach, meaning that we have been working a lot in the context of customary rights, community rights. And so you mentioned Javier the work that we have done in, for instance, in Sierra Leone, where we have used the system that we developed which is called open tenure for working with communities to protect communities tenure rights and to include the gender components. So the women, not just the women though, but also the youth of the communities. So I would like to highlight the importance of participation and inclusion in this process. So open data, having data which are accessible to the population and has as a basis, the fundamental basis is the process, the inclusion and the participation of communities. So in order to be able to secure tenure rights, to secure legitimate tenure rights, to combat corruption, we have to establish a sound process which is a participatory process. So tools like open tenure, there are many on the ground. What is fundamental is the process that accompany the use of these tools. And the tool itself has to be designed and used accordingly to the voluntary guidelines principles in terms of women inclusion and safeguards for vulnerable people. And also I would like also to mention the youth because this is an emerging issue, the inclusion of the youth in the process of securing tenure rights. So again, back to the experience in Sierra Leone, then we have implemented the use of the open tenure system involving the communities, but not just the communities, involving also the government because it's important, it's very, it's fundamental to have an understanding and a dialogue which includes all the stakeholders. So with the government as well, we have started together. Maria Paola, if I may, I'm sorry, I need to enforce time limitations here. Would you please? Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, sorry, yes, sure. So I just wanted to stress that the importance of the inclusion and the participation of all the stakeholders so that you can, even though there is not yet in place a law, but there is a provision for including and recognize the customary rights, have kickstart a process where this can be recognized. So this is what happened in Sierra Leone and also in Guatemala. I mean, that's all from my side and thank you for forgiving me this time Javier. Thank you. Thank you, Maria Paola. I think unfortunately we don't have much time, but I think that that information can be made available. We can upload in the chat function some links to the documents where you can find more information on those specific country experiences so that you can inform yourself as to how these concrete experiences show what can be done to secure tenure rights and to promote a more open and transparent tenure system. I saw a question and a number of points dealing with not only securing tenure rights, land rights, but also how those rights are used and land use, how land is used, how land is managed in a sustainable way. And in this sense, the entities have also led to another further step not only to secure the tenure rights, but also to promote sustainable land use. And this is being done in joint work with the UNCCD, the United Nations Convention to combat the certification. And now a technical guide on land use, land degradation notality is being prepared based on the voluntary guidelines, which is another step forward to sustainability of livelihoods and food systems. In this connection, I would like to see and check if our relief race from FAO is online to briefly share with us what is being done with the UNCCD Convention to combat the certification. Over, over to you Aurelie. Hi Javier, are you hearing me? Yes. Thank you for giving me the floor and thank you for all the presenter for their inspiring speeches and for all the participants. So as mentioned by Chris, indeed the VGTT as a CFS policy product got a key uptake by your real convention, the one to combat the certification during the 14th conference of parties, where for the first time, the parties wanted to encourage themselves to use the VGTT in the implementation of the convention, which opened the door to actually gain multiple benefit because also by targeting land degradation, the priority to achieve some elements to leverage some difficulties that exist and to increase governance of tenure. For instance, challenges that are met when addressing land degradation are insecure tenure rights, which prevent people from adopting sustainable practices whether on public land, whether on commons or silo policy on tenure and LDN, which prevent effectiveness and which sometimes have a detrimental effect one on the other. Also question of how to safeguard legitimate tenure rights when there are and they are mentioned to promote ecosystem restoration, for instance, or to promote access to grievance and redress mechanisms for the most vulnerable. Also how to promote gender equality so that everyone can actually engage into commenting the certification. All that are the type of advice and an element that we want to bring forward in the technical guide that we are currently preparing with jointly with UNCCD and that will be brought to the party during the next conference of parties of the convention on desertification. So in 2022, between May and September, dates are unknown. But it's true that and we can see also how the work that was mentioned by all the presenters on data transparent, some availability of data or the work that presented Maria Paola on how to promote easy system to map rights and to engage into process are the one that needs also to be taken into account when coming to fighting desertification. So thank you very much and we'll get back to the panelist. Thank you, Araleed. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that with us. Now we know that the GDs are being used not only to secure tenure rights to improve governance of tenure, but also not leading to tools, technical guides to improve management, land management and that's central if you want to secure that sustainability of systems in the long run. Now we have addressed some of the questions that have been posed through the questions and answer functions as well as the chat function. And now considering that we are running out of time we're getting to the end, I would like to invite each one of our guest speakers to let us hear from them the key message, some central ideas that they think we ought to take home to think that we take with us when we go back to our work, how we can leverage this information, this knowledge. What will be some key messages that you would like to share with us today? I would like to start now with our colleague back to Seattle, Tim, to hear what he would like to remind us. Thank you, Javier, and thank you to all the panelists. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to all the presentations. So much great information here. I would just underline what Ellen and others have said is that governments here are in the driver's seat and governments often need help and need to be supported, not just by international donors but also by nonprofit organizations to help them fulfill their goals and objectives around land data. And then second, underline the point that I think Laura emphasized in talking about the open up guide in the various, well, that land data is among the least open of government data. And Laura mentioned the several barriers to that. The one barrier I think that deserves underlining is that in many cases, the formal land tenure data doesn't exist at all. That is, it still needs to be gathered and the process by which it is gathered is so, so important. And the voluntary guidelines lay out the principles and more specifics about how that should be done. And the principles that I would just emphasize are the ones around gender equality, about participation of communities, about transparency because how that data gets collected and the involvement of communities and particularly vulnerable groups within that community is gonna be key to the quality of the data and whether it can be used to protect the most vulnerable. I'll stop there. Thanks Javier. Thank you, Trim. Now let's move on to, and let's go back to Buenos Aires and let's hear from Natalie. Hi everybody. So thanks for the amazing presentations. I just, I'm gonna go quickly to one point. Open data is seen as a super high technical type of policy and there should be a place where we create a strategy from a technical point of view about the creation, the recollection and the publication of data taking into account privacy concerns. But at the same time, and as I said from the very beginning, you need to also create a strategy to connect with communities, to connect through community leaders, a strategy that actually addresses the way that community can be engaged within their own times and manners. So participation in their own terms, not trying to bring them into your own platform, just go there and participation from the very beginning of any open data policy. All right, very good. Now talking about data, let's hear from our colleague, Laura Mejuloto from the Lamporto. Thank you. Thank you, Javier. One point. Well, just lend it as crucial. It's crucial for good land governance and can support decisions, policy, transparency, can be important drivers for innovation, economic and social development. But as my colleagues already stated, data governance is important. So the who and the how is very important. So the data governance should be put into the agenda of land governance and more in general to the sustainable development agenda. So how data is collected, how data is published, who is part of the process, who has a voice, what it represents, what do they document? So the Open Data Charter and Land Portal Open Up Guide is a step towards that direction. And I hope there will be support and collaboration. Thank you so much. Thank you, Laura. Well, clearly it seems that governments have a responsibility here. And so we have the possibility to hear from a government representative, Honorable Helen Pratt. So I would like to invite her to, you know, see what her message, the key message that she would like us to take away from this event will be. Thank you very much. So I think so much has been said today, but I want us to remember this idea of the continuum of land rights. And as we develop these systems, I want us to look at fit for purpose and fit for context solutions that address the issues and challenges through a bottom up approach, supporting inclusive processes that strengthen women's land rights, but also promote the rights of the most marginalized groups in our society. I ask that we continue to hold governments like myself accountable to ensure that these systems are not only developed, but they're implemented so that we continue to support equitable land rights and we continue to improve the lives of all of our citizens. Thank you very much. Thank you, Helen, for those words. And I think of this exchange of this dialogue, I would like to now remind everyone that all the information on site events are concerning the CFS in the website, the CFS website. And please remember that consultation. If you have the time, the lamp portal made a reference to. And so we hope that we will be in touch, continue in our work to secure tenure rights and to promote improved governance of tenure through open and transparent land administration systems. With this, I would like to close and I want to check with a lamp portal if they would like to have a closing remark.