From the Council and the Council of Elders, ICCA Consortium
First published on 02/24/2026
Dear Members, Friends, and Allies of the ICCA Consortium,
As we continue our collective journey to support and promote territories of life, we are often reminded of all the feelings, understandings and concerns that we share and that bind us together. At the center of all these connections lies a living, fundamental document that defines who we are and why we exist as a movement: our Manifesto for territories of life.
The Manifesto is a political statement reflecting decades of experience and insights of the custodian Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities who sustain and defend their territories, often through generations. It distils the shared cultural and spiritual values of our movement and what we stand for: custodianship, community governance, caring for the commons. Crucially, it serves as a roadmap for the path we wish to take, connecting the strategic actions we take over time and across places towards self-determination.
Today, we write to you with a two-fold invitation to help our movement consolidate, resonate even more deeply in our communities, and grow.
Call for interest: translating the manifesto into all your languages
Our first invitation is about translations. Our manifesto must be fully accessible to the people who are the primary contributors and inspiration to its essence. For that, we need to embrace the diversity of languages that make the Manifesto’s content as alive as possible in all our communities, and beyond.
The ICCA Consortium is calling for expressions of interest and proposals from individuals and organizations to translate and enrich the Manifesto through various regional and Indigenous languages.
We wish to prioritize major regional languages and lingua francas such as Amazigh, Arabic, Bahasa Indonesia, Bahasa Malaysia, Guarani, Hausa, Hindi, Japanese, Khmer, Lingala, Malagasy, Mandarin Chinese, Mongolian, Nepalese, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Swahili, Tagalog, Turkish, Urdu, and Wolof. Indigenous and local languages spoken by communities that practice custodianship of their territories will also be appreciated. We’d like to see the Manifesto translated, understood, enriched and kept alive in as many languages as possible around the world.
Crucially, we’d love to hear your ideas about translation languages but also processes— ways by which one or more people will draft a translation and ask one or more communities to review it as an occasion to discuss the meaning of the components of the Manifesto, to identify elements of crucial value and to even propose new emphases and to enrich concepts and terms. If you or your organization has the expertise and passion to lead such a translation process, please let us hear from you.
Sharing our journey: how does the Manifesto live in our work?
We know our daily work is deeply grounded in our communities. Whether we are sustainably managing nature’s gifts, advocating for legal recognition of our land, documenting traditional knowledge, defending a water source from pollution or communicating with other custodians to ally against common threats, our efforts sustain and defend territories of life.
Learning how the Manifesto reflects, and is reflected in, our work will enrich mutual learning across our association. In what ways does the Manifesto enrich your work? Is there any element of it that you find particularly telling and inspiring?
We invite all to share stories, reflections, and challenges as you bring to life the values and assertions of our Manifesto. By sharing experiences, we can learn from one another, strengthen our collective voice, and remind ourselves that, while our contexts differ, our vision for a just world is fully shared. Together, we will co-create a series of articles, audio, and video publications based on the stories shared by us all. And our insights will help everyone in the Consortium to use the Manifesto to bridge local action and global change.
Getting involved
To express interest in developing a translation and/or sharing a story about using and reflecting the Manifesto in practice, please reach out directly to the Communications and Advocacy Coordinator of the Consortium, Mohammad Arju at arju.m@iccaconsortium.org .
After hearing from you, we will invite you to discuss arrangements, technical support, possible compensation, and how we can best collaborate on these translations and more.
The Manifesto for territories of life is a living document, and we are an evolving movement. Every time the Manifesto is read, shared, translated, recited, considered, loved, discussed, and put into practice, the Consortium is fully alive. As we live and evolve with our Manifesto, we gain strength together.
We look forward to seeing our vision translated into many beautiful languages and hearing many stories about it. Please respond to this call!
In solidarity,
The Executive Committee of Council and the Council of Elders of the ICCA Consortium
