For generations, the people of Desa Ria-Ria in North Sumatra have fought to protect the land they call home.

When Indonesia's flagship food-estate programme arrived, it promised agricultural progress, but instead reignited a decades-old struggle over land rights.

The story exposed how the government used binding conditions, overlapping claims, and administrative procedures to gradually weaken residents’ control over their land, allowing dispossession to unfold without an overt seizure.

As tensions escalated, the village’s women once again stood at the forefront of the struggle, carrying forward the legacy of an earlier generation of women who endured detention and violence to defend the same land in the 1970s.

Their struggle is about far more than ownership. It is about preserving livelihoods, identity, ancestral history, and the right to pass the land on to future generations.

Against the backdrop of an ambitious national development agenda, the story reveals how policies promoted in the name of food security can place the greatest burden on the communities expected to benefit from them.

At its core, it is a story of resilience, historical injustice, and the enduring question of who ultimately gains and who bears the cost when development arrives.