Roy Prosterman, Landesa’s founder and guiding light, passed away on Feb. 27, 2025 at 89 years of age. We remember Roy for his impact in making the world a much better place, particularly for hundreds of millions of people living on the margins.
Roy’s vision for combining research, legal expertise, and advocacy to provide land ownership and opportunity for millions would become a blueprint for inclusive social and economic development across the globe. That vision would also lead to the founding of Landesa, which continues to carry on his legacy of impact in land rights programs around the world.
A path to visionary impact through land ownership
After graduating from the University of Chicago and Harvard Law School, Roy’s career began as a corporate attorney at Sullivan & Cromwell in New York City. He practiced law for six years before accepting a teaching post at the University of Washington School of Law in 1965.
The following year, Roy authored a law review article, Land Reform in Latin America: How to Have a Revolution Without a Revolution, in which he urged a democratic approach to providing land ownership to millions of families who had no legal rights to the land on which they depended.
Soon after, Roy was invited to Vietnam to work with the government in the south on a program to provide land ownership to tenant farmers stuck in poverty. Roy worked with a variety of stakeholders to shape and eventually draft a law that gave rights to one million tenant farmers. Rice production increased by 30 percent while Viet Cong recruitment decreased by 80 percent. A New York Times article called the land reform law Roy had authored “probably the most ambitious and progressive non-Communist land reform of the 20th century.”
The world’s first land rights NGO
After this success in Vietnam, Roy found himself called into the fields of Latin America, the Philippines, Pakistan, and dozens of other countries to work with governments and civil society leaders on land laws and programs that provided land ownership opportunities for millions. In those early years, he was assisted by a small following of UW faculty colleagues and law students.
Over the next two decades, “the work”, as Roy called it, went beyond issues of land to include advances in US foreign aid reform, addressing world hunger, nuclear arms reduction, and numerous other topics aimed at making the world a better place for the world’s most economically challenged. During this time, he was instrumental in founding The Hunger Project (with John Denver and others), a global movement to end hunger, which continues today as one of the world’s leading organizations on this important issue. In 1992, Roy decided to focus “the work” back on issues of land. Moving outside of the University of Washington Law School, which had incubated the work, he co-founded Landesa (initially called Rural Development Institute), the world’s first global land rights organization. Landesa grew in size and, much more importantly to Roy, in impact, working with scores of governments on land rights reforms that provided legal land rights to hundreds of millions of women and men. Landesa’s work expanded to include offices and teams in numerous countries, as well as a Landesa Center on Women’s Land Rights.
Roy was solely focused on impact rather than bringing attention to Landesa itself. He recognized that impact could often best be achieved by staying in the background while supporting governments on reforms. Despite his humility and willingness to keep the organization out of the limelight, Landesa’s work and impact began attracting attention over the years, including some of the world’s most prestigious humanitarian awards. Landesa has been named as a Top 10 Global NGO for many years running, and is a recipient of the Hilton Humanitarian Prize, LUI Che Woo Prize, and Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship.
A legacy of impact
Roy worked steadfastly for over half a century to improve others’ lives through systemic changes, using the tools of law, policy, and institutional reform. He provided advice and conducted research in more than 40 countries, published six books, authored dozens of articles, and appeared as a frequent guest speaker and presenter at world forums on economic development. At the University of Washington School of Law, he founded and led for many years a graduate program in the Law of Sustainable International Development, the first of its kind in the world, which remains thriving today.
Over the course of his life of service, Roy received numerous awards and distinctions, including the Gleitsman Foundation International Activist Award, which honors achievement in alleviating world poverty, and the inaugural Henry R. Kravis Prize in Leadership. He was nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize. Most importantly to Roy: his work, and that of Landesa, resulted in countless legal and policy changes that improved lives and opportunities for hundreds of millions.
Read Roy’s full obituary here.
Roy is dearly missed by his colleagues and friends at Landesa. Together with our global community, we are committed to carrying on his legacy of strengthening land rights and improving lives around the world.
