DEMETER (Droits et Egalité pour une Meilleure Economie de la Terre)

DEMETER (Droits et Egalité pour une Meilleure Economie de la Terre, or Land Commercialisation, Gendered Agrarian Transformation and the Right to Food)

​A team of researchers, led by Professor Elisabeth Prügl, Director of the Graduate Institute’s Programme on Gender and Global Change, recently visited Cambodia, where they joined local and international partners to implement the first phase of a major research project entitled Gender, Land and the Right to Food.

The DEMETER project team of Elisabeth Prügl, Christophe Gironde,Fenneke Reysoo, Christophe Golay, Seng Suon and Dzodzi Tsikata engaged in an iterative process to develop data collection tools, whilst Graduate Institute faculty delivered practical qualitative methodology training. In addition to visiting a field site in Kampong Thom, the team organised a workshop with non-governmental organisations and civil society stakeholders in Phnom Penh, and co-organised a large rally in Kandal province for World Food Day.

Elisabeth Prügl said “women have been at the forefront of protesting rights violations associated with large-scale land acquisitions in Cambodia. The DEMETER project is unique in that it draws attention to the gendered effects of accelerated land commercialisation.”

Launched in March 2015, DEMETER (Droits et Egalité pour une Meilleure Economie de la Terre, or Land Commercialisation, Gendered Agrarian Transformation and the Right to Food) is asix-year research project aiming to increase knowledge about ways to empower people to exercise their right to gender equality and food. It is funded by Research for Development, a Swiss initiative to support innovation and knowledge for sustainable global development.