Prior to ICARRD, a Call-for-Proposals was promoted by the ICARRD Secretariat as a depository mechanism to have ideas, research, intellectual understanding, debates and new findings that should feed into the preparations leading to and during ICARRD.

It was promoted as a means to engage participation, especially to those who could not attend ICARRD, through "paper" and "proposals" contribution for free and without financial obligation by ICARRD Secretariat Papers, documents and proposals received and generated from the Call-for-Proposals were reviewed and accepted for posting at the ICARRD website.

The conference was organised around a limited number of thematic axes which re-explore the classic issues in land tenure studies in the light of recent evolutions and increased knowledge. The following were some of the themes relevant to ICARRD and for which contributions were sought:

1. Gender dimension in access to natural resources

2. Access to land and territorial development: what role for local communities?

3. The condition of agricultural wage-workers: reflections around slave labour

4. De-capitalization of Family Farms (what future for youth farmers?)

5. Nomadic and sedentary groups – living together or conflict?

6. Public-private partnership for territorial development (enterprise development – small and medium-sized businesses)

7. Indigenous people and ethnic minorities: territorial rights

8. The use of ceiling legislation for land holdings

9. Access to water, land and genetic resources

10. Urban and peri-urban land

11. A simple system for basic information on land tenure in different countries

12. Environmental rights

13. Relationship between food security and tenure security

14. Negotiated territorial development

15. The cultural and bio-diversity dimensions of agrarian systems, and

16. The question of agrarian reform in its more classic sense and the visions of the international organizations (role of the State and of the Market).

Contributions received: