Author: Tom

3rd Nyéléni forum: Building global solidarity for systemic transformation

Posted on by Tom

From 6 to 13 September 2025, the city of Kandy in Sri Lanka hosted the 3rd Nyéléni Global Forum. Small-scale food producers, consumers, Indigenous Peoples, trade unions, human rights defenders, climate and health justice advocates, urban poor communities, women and gender-diverse groups, practitioners of the social and solidarity economy, scholars, artists and other representatives from grassroots movements and civil society organizations gathered at the National Institute of Co-operative Development. Together, they built a Common Political Action Agenda (CPAA) for systemic transformation towards economic, social, gender, racial and environmental justice.

Over the years, the Nyéléni process has enabled collective movement building, offering a space where grassroots movements share struggles, analyse trends, and work together toward common solutions. Building on the legacies of the first and second Nyéléni fora, both held in Mali, this third forum expanded its reach by joining forces with the climate justice, people’s health, and social solidarity economy movements.

Reflecting its diversity, the forum brought together participants from all regions of the world, with a team of 72 volunteer interpreters organised by the collective COATI, working tirelessly to ensure language justice and interpretation into 18 official languages.

At its core, the forum reaffirmed that food sovereignty is inseparable from global solidarity. From Palestine to Congo, from Haiti to Sudan and beyond, participants voiced their commitment to resist oppression in all its forms and to build a world rooted in dignity, justice, and care. Standing with Palestine — and with all peoples facing occupation, war, and dispossession— was recognized as a shared responsibility and a reflection of the movement’s collective vision of justice.

The forum culminated in the acclamation of the Kandy declaration and the anticipation of an enriched CPAA, both intended to serve as a political compass guiding the actions and vision of movements worldwide striving for food sovereignty and justice.

This edition of the Nyéléni newsletter shares a selection of the forum’s highlights, capturing several of the participants’ perspectives. As the Kandy declaration states: “Across all the diversities we represent—to strengthen our struggles – we are raising our voices together, declaring: Systemic Transformation—Now and Forever!”

IPC for Food Sovereignty, Transnational Institute (TNI)    

Illustration: Mural created by the Fearless Collective during the 3rd Nyéléni Forum in Kandy, Sri Lanka.

Click here to download the English editionNyeleni_Newsletter_Num_62_EN (pdf) or read it directly on the website!          

For any further information, contact info@nyeleni.org – www.nyeleni.org

On the International Human Rights Day, we demand a transformation of the UN that strengthens accountability and serves peoples not budgets

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In our work with communities affected by human rights violations, people often tell us that visits and recommendations by the Human Rights Council’s Special Procedures – such as the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food – and recommendations by Treaty Bodies bring visibility to the risks and harms they face, guide states in preventing or redressing those harms, and ensure accountability for obligations under the UN Human Rights treaties.

While the Human Rights System has failed to stop genocides and other grave atrocities, the work of Special Procedures and Treaty Bodies- carried out by independent experts serving without pay – has played out a decisive role in correcting injustices, and stands out as one of the most important parts of the system for human rights holders.

Despite this reality, the UN80 reform (UN80 Initiative) threatens to reduce budgets essential to ensure the work of the human rights mandates, including by cutting the technical support provided by the OHCHR that is necessary to respond to letters of allegations from rights holders, prepare affidavits, and conduct other critical monitoring work. The UN human rights pillar is already severely underfunded, receiving only about 1% of the total UN budget, and the proposed cuts would once again disproportionately impact human rights work – further weakening protection for those most at risk. We are concerned because mergers of mandates that are essential have already begun and the reduced number of country visits introduced in 2025 has been announced to continue unchanged in 2026, with only one visit planned. Furthermore, while the work of these mandates is mainly based in Geneva, the decisions are taken by the UN General Assembly in New York, through a very opaque process, without due consultation with a diverse group of civil society and affected communities or even the concerned human rights mandate holders.

“The UN’s credibility and legitimacy have already been seriously questioned due to its failure to stop the genocide in Gaza, the many abuses by transnational corporations and the destruction of our nature. Further weakening the human rights mandates would deepen the crisis of legitimacy. We need a transformation of the UN that puts people and planet at the center and strengthens those mechanisms that serve the people, not a rushed, cost-cutting reform that superficially treats the symptoms while leaving the structural causes untouched” says Sibyle Dirren, permanent representative of FIAN in Geneva.

We call on all UN member states to pay their contributions to the UN and to actively defend the full and uninterrupted functioning of Special Procedures and Treaty Bodies. Members who have committed to respect, protect and fulfill human rights, shall ensure that any reform guarantees accountability, access to justice, and effective remedy. A reform that is done with the people serving the system without pay, the Special Rapporteurs and the members of treaty bodies, and those they are mandated to defend, the human rights holders. We call on civil society to unite and raise their voices for a real transformation of the UN.

Contact person: Sibylle Dirren, dirren@fian.org

Rural women, care and agrochemicals: A Call for Action 

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In rural communities worldwide, women are the backbone of food production and care. However, they are also on the frontlines of a growing health and environmental crisis caused by the widespread use of agrochemicals. Pesticides and synthetic fertilizers, central to the industrial corporate food system and production model, play a central role in the triple planetary crises: the intensification of climate change, the degradation of ecosystems and loss of biodiversity, and environmental pollution.  

Our new briefing paper “Rural women, care and agrochemicals” shows that women face exposure in every dimension of life. In Ecuador’s banana and floriculture industries, women work amid fumigation and chemical residues, often without protection. Many bring pesticide-use practices into family greenhouses near their homes, extending contamination into the domestic sphere. Women are exposed to toxics during care work, when they are washing contaminated clothes, preparing food, and fetching water. Toxics also increase their already heavy care work when they nurse sick family members. 

“We are in a constant struggle. We seek to produce food that is healthy and agrodiverse […] bananas, cocoa, cassava, coffee, citrus fruits, avocados […]. However, in our surroundings […] we find large areas of banana monocultures. Through fumigation, using light aircraft or drones, extensive production contaminates nature, our production and ourselves.” Evelyn Yánez and Daisy Chávez, rural woman from Ecuador. 

Care as resistance and transformation 

Despite these injustices, rural women are building transformative alternatives rooted in care. They are leading the resistance against a food system centred on extraction and pollution that accumulates wealth in the hands of a few while externalising harms to communities and the environment. In Ecuador, the Rural Women’s Network has embarked on an agroecological transition that includes diversified production, seed protection, women-led agroecology schools, territorial food reserves free of agrochemicals, and community markets. 

Similarly, in Honduras, women fishers are defending their coastal territories, which are being polluted and privatized by industrial shrimp farming. The destruction of mangroves and marine biodiversity has made it increasingly difficult for these women to feed their families or make a living while compounding the impacts of climate change on coastal communities. Yet, they continue to take care of the marine ecosystems and their communities, demanding co-governance of marine resources, restoring mangroves and advocating for sustainable fishing practices.  

“We are full of shrimp laboratories; they took our beaches and left us only rubble and pollution. They did not fulfil their promises to provide employment for the community.” Leader of the Cedeño community. 

These efforts are not only about ensuring food security; they are about reclaiming control over the natural resources that sustain life and over the way food is produced and families are fed. By embracing agroecology, women are showing that care within food systems, care for the land, water, and forests, and communities, is a key force for social and environmental justice. They are advocating for ways of producing, collecting and exchanging food that are based on care and solidarity, not on toxic inputs and corporate greed. 

The challenges rural women face are compounded by gender inequalities. While they provide most of the unpaid care work, they receive little to no support from the state, and their work is often undervalued and invisibilized. As noted by Marcos Orellana, UN Special Rapporteur on Toxic Substances and Human Rights, women face a “double injustice”—they are responsible for shielding their families from invisible toxics but are often denied the resources and information necessary to protect themselves and their communities. 

Rural women’s leadership and transformative practices offer a roadmap for a just and toxic-free world. To support and amplify their efforts it is essential that states: 

  • Recognize food care as essential: Acknowledge the critical role of women’s care work in sustaining life and food systems. 
  • Redistribute care responsibilities: Implement policies that share care work equitably across families, communities, and the state.. 
  • Support agroecology: Invest in sustainable, women-led agroecological practices, providing training, resources, and market access. 
  • Enforce protective measures: Enact strong, gender-responsive regulations to protect rural women from agrochemicals and other toxic substances. 

If we are serious about just, healthy, and sustainable food systems, we must place care—and the women who provide it—at the center of policy and action. Protecting their rights is not only a matter of justice; it is essential for the future of food and the health of our planet. 

Data is power: understanding the complexities of violence against women street vendors

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Women constitute a majority of market and street vendors worldwide. Every day, we can see them at the marketplace and on the streets, making a living to support their families, and making a significant contribution to the local economy – who we focus on in this edition of Supermarket Watch.

According to data from the Street Vendors Barometer, a participatory research led by StreetNet International with the Global Labour Institute (GLI), 64.2% of women vendors in Zimbabwe experience physical abuse from customers, with many reporting harassment and intimidation that jeopardise their safety and dignity. Some of the women are survivors of domestic abuse who turned to vending as a means of survival rather than choice. Gender specific economic precarity exacerbates their vulnerability, as only 7.8% of the women have maternity coverage, and most of them work long hours under insecure and exploitative conditions. Overall, vendors in Zimbabwe lack access to basic infrastructure. For one in five of them, the ground is their workplace with no shelter. Extreme weather has been disastrous for the incomes of these vendors, especially for those selling perishable goods like fresh food, fruits, vegetables or fish.

Meanwhile the survey found that 56.9% of women vendors in Argentina do not have access to toilets at their workplace, a problem that disproportionately affects women. Of those who have access to sanitation facilities, only 32.9% have access to gender-separated toilets, an invaluable source of safety and comfort for women vendors, posing concerns for their health and problems with menstruation. The survey also found that 40.9% women vendors face violence and harassment, frequently from police authorities and fellow vendors. From the findings, the lack of sanitary facilities, insecurity and extreme weather intensifies both economic and psychological stress, reinforcing women’s exposure to physical and emotional harm.

The data detailed above paints a grim reality, yet it might also help change it. The participatory research carried out by the Street Vendors Barometer is meant to visibilise and empower women vendors and market traders facing gender-based violence. Participatory research transforms women vendors from subjects of the research into equal partners of the process, which generates lived-based data to expose the gendered aspects of economic exclusion. It provides a practical organising tool, strengthening solidarity and uncovering shared experiences across countries.

The Street Vendor Barometer has confirmed two important issues faced by market and street vendors, particularly by women vendors: one is the fight against harassment and evictions of small traders; the other is the fight for social protections, such as access to health services and income security. And it has amplified the demands of women vendors for the right to formalise their work and to live free from violence. In this edition, we also share a case of how women from Uganda’s lakeshore communities showcased the influence of transforming data into compelling evidence to support women’s engagement in policy debate and building solidarity to fight for just food systems.

Read the latest issue here.

For more information contact Laura Michéle michele@fian.org

FIAN Blog: Multilateralism from Below – Building People Power

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Two powerful examples of international spaces where social movements, Indigenous Peoples and civil society organizations are working to challenge structural power imbalances from the local to the international level are the UN Negotiations on a Legally Binding Instrument on Transnational Corporations, Other Businesses and Human Rights (TNC Treaty), and the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS). Movements and organizations engaged in these spaces have fought for long to protect people and nature from corporate abuse and impunity, and to make the right to food a lived reality – especially for underrepresented and historically disadvantaged communities.

Last month, FIAN International participated in both processes. In Geneva, we joined the 11th session of negotiations for the TNC Treaty, while in Rome we engaged in the 53rd plenary session of the CFS. In both arenas civil society showed its strength: organized from the grassroots to the global level, equipped with expertise and deep knowledge, and united in clear demands that put pressure on governments to adopt policies grounded in human rights and the protection of the planet.

Tireless mobilization and advocacy

In Geneva, the advocacy of the Treaty Alliance, the Global Campaign, Feminists for a Binding Treaty, ESCR-Net, and others has bolstered strong engagement from Global South states such as Colombia, Palestine, Uruguay, Mexico and Brazil. Together they are countering the push from Global North governments that, for over a decade, have sought to block progress toward ending corporate impunity, ensuring accountability along global value chains, and securing access to remedy for affected communities across borders.

Thanks to years of civil society and social movement advocacy, mobilization and perseverance, the current draft treaty reflects some key provisions demanded by civil society. The process remains essential—not only for advancing a TNC Treaty, but also to expose the gravity and extent of corporate capture, evident in the strong participation of corporate lobbies in the process, to connect affected communities worldwide, and to shape the future of international human rights law.  However, the EU’s recent approval of the Omnibus I package – erasing the timid advances achieved by the bloc on businesses and human rights, through a far-right alliance in the European Parliament – is a painful reminder of how corporations and their allies often put profit before people and the planet.

Food systems transformation

In Rome, the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples Mechanism (CSIPM) continued to play a crucial role in ensuring that discussions on food systems transformation reflect the realities and demands of small-scale food producers, Indigenous Peoples, workers, consumers, women, LGBTQIA+ people, and other constituencies. At the 53rd plenary session of the CFS last month, states underscored the importance of the second International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD+20), a global forum on land tenure reform to be held in Colombia in February, and reaffirmed the relevance of human rights-based natural resource governance, as set out in the UN land tenure guidelines.

They also stressed the urgent need to implement the Framework for Action for Food Security and Nutrition in Protracted Crises, emphasizing the right to adequate food in conflict settings. Civil society side events showcased how CFS policy guidelines are already driving real change in countries like Brazil, Colombia, and Nepal, which happens also due to the intensive engagement of civil society.

The CFS remains a unique UN platform where governments, UN agencies, civil society, Indigenous Peoples, and other actors participate on an institutionalized way, while states preserve the decision power, producing negotiated, rights-based policy outcomes grounded in independent science and real-world demands.

Advance people’s struggles and human rights in multilateral spaces

These UN spaces and negotiations are imperfect and often reflect the same global power imbalances that civil society seeks to challenge. The failures of the international system to prevent or respond to atrocities — from Gaza to countless other crises — have exposed deep structural flaws, selective accountability, and the limits of multilateralism shaped by geopolitical interests. Yet, they also continue to be important sites of struggle. Engaging critically with these institutions, while never losing sight of their complicity in global inequality, remains vital to the struggle to confront corporate power and defend international law grounded in human rights and solidarity.

While these are two crucial global processes, we also recognize the significance of the Peoples’ Summit to COP 30. It is another reminder of people’s movements reclaiming multilateralism from below — building alliances that care for Mother Earth, and for one another.

In the context of increasing authoritarianism and unchecked corporate power, ensuring the meaningful participation of rights holders and their organizations in multilateral processes, is key to transforming these spaces into arenas that truly serve people, not power.

For more information, please contact Ana María Suárez Franco: Suarez-Franco@fian.org

Fisher peoples denounce false climate solutions

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Despite binding obligations under international human rights and environmental law, states consistently fail to protect the rights of fisher peoples. Instead of addressing the root causes of the climate crisis, governments continue to promote so-called climate change solutions that entrench inequality and dispossession.

Ahead of the summit – held in parallel to the official UN Climate Change Conference – a new report by FIAN International and the World Forum of Fisher Peoples (WFFP), Rising Tides, Shrinking Coasts, and Sinking Rights: Climate Crisis and the Struggles of Fisher Peoples, reveals how the climate crisis is undermining the livelihoods, food systems, and cultures of millions of fisher peoples and coastal communities.

Based on ten case studies from Bangladesh, Belize, Brazil, Ecuador, Indonesia, Kenya, Senegal, South Africa, Sri Lanka, and Thailand, the report demonstrates that the climate crisis is already a human rights emergency. Across all regions, fisher peoples, collectors, and coastal communities report systematic violations of their rights to food and nutrition, territories, housing, health, and culture.

Fishing and coastal communities have already made many concessions to their governments on access to fisheries. Now they are on the frontlines of the climate catastrophe and they demand real solutions. This is a defining moment for how this global resource – the ocean, lakes and rivers – are managed for future generations.

Right to food and nutrition under threat

Millions of livelihoods are threatened by a range of false climate change solutions, ranging from Marine Protected Areas that exclude traditional fishers and carbon credit schemes that enable resource grabbing, to industrial aquaculture promoted under the guise of food security or climate resilience and large-scale infrastructure projects that serve corporate interests.

“Carbon credit projects are being sold as climate solutions but in reality they displace fishing communities and privatize the mangroves that sustain life. In Thailand, corporations now plant monoculture mangroves for carbon profit while erasing the diverse ecosystems and community rights that have protected these coasts for generations,” said Ravadee Prasertcharoensuk from Sustainable Development Foundation, Thailand, a national member of WFFP.

“Under the banner of ‘blue carbon,’ the state hands over public lands to private investors, leaving only 20 percent of the benefits to the people who have lived and cared for these forests. Climate justice cannot be built on exclusion and greenwashing—it begins with restoring community control and recognizing that the real climate custodians are the people of the mangroves.

The report reveals how core elements of the right to food and nutrition – availability, accessibility, adequacy, and sustainability – are increasingly under threat. As ecosystems collapse under climate change and fish stocks decline, fisher peoples who have long acted as guardians of biodiversity and coastal ecosystem, and as providers of nutritious food, are being displaced from their territories and deprived of their livelihoods.

Many are now forced into precarious forms of labor or are made dependent on inadequate and inconsistent external aid. This further undermines both their right to food and nutrition and their food sovereignty.

Despite the worsening crisis, states – often in close partnership with private corporations – continue to exclude fisher peoples from climate policy and decision-making. Instead of supporting community-led adaptation strategies grounded in human rights and local knowledge, they continue to promote top-down interventions that exacerbate inequality and marginalization.

A call for rights-based climate action

For decades, the peoples of the sea and the mangroves have resisted the theft of our lands and the destruction of our ecosystems. In Ecuador, we have replanted mangroves, defended our coasts, and demanded justice for the social and ecological debt owed to our communities.

“From the womb of the mangrove and the sea,” said Líder Góngora, director of Coordinadora Nacional para la Defensa del Ecosistema Manglar in Ecuador, “we, the gatherers and fisher peoples, have been restoring the mangrove ecosystem – a national public treasure and the heart of our life and culture – through our own socio-ecological efforts since the late 1980s.”

“Our struggle is collective. It rises in defiance of the criminal shrimp industry in Ecuador and across the world. We defend our living spaces, our legends, and our ancestral stories rooted in the marine territories that sustain us.”

True restoration means restitution: returning stolen territories and protecting the peoples who have cared for them with love and resilience for generations.

FIAN International and WFFP urge all states and intergovernmental organizations to fulfil their human rights obligations, including under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas.

Genuine solutions must recognize fisher peoples as rights-holders, knowledge-holders, and key actors in the struggle for climate justice, food sovereignty, and the protection of aquatic ecosystems.

Download report here.

For more information please contact Yifang Slot-Tang slot-tang@fian.org

Newsletter process: Rooted in resistance, territories for climate justice

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For Indigenous Peoples, peasants, artisanal fishers, pastoralists, forest dwellers, workers and other rural communities, land, waters, forests, and ecosystems are the foundation of life. Indigenous Peoples understand their territories as the total habitat they occupy or use, where culture, identity, and livelihoods are rooted. Beyond food production, these territories sustain essential social, cultural, spiritual, and ecological roles. Yet, land and natural goods are deeply contested, with their unequal distribution reflecting structural discrimination and historical injustices. Across centuries, processes of enclosure, colonialism, and dispossession have concentrated control in the hands of powerful actors, reinforcing oppression and exclusion.

Today, climate breakdown, biodiversity loss, and environmental injustice – driven by neoliberal economies rooted in financialization, patriarchy and colonialism – intensify these struggles. Communities’ access to, use of, and control over land and territories remain essential for advancing systemic transformations envisioned by the food sovereignty movement. Territories are sites of resistance against extractive projects that endanger health, livelihoods, and ecosystems, but also spaces where communities build alternatives based on agroecology. These models promote food sovereignty, dignity, and justice – social, climate, environmental, gender, and intergenerational.

As social movements mobilize toward Climate COP 30 and the Second International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development, this edition of the Nyéléni Newsletter highlights the centrality of land and territories in shaping just and sustainable futures.

FIAN International, Friends of the Earth International, ETC Group, La Via Campesina

Illustration created for the 3rd Nyéléni Global Forum: Cultivate or Die, Chardonnoir
Nyéléni Virtual Gallery – Axes – Nyéléni Global Forum

Read it directly on the website!          

For any further information, contact info@nyeleni.org – www.nyeleni.org
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UN negotiations: time for real protection against corporate human rights violations and abuse

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FIAN International will advocate for an ambitious legally binding instrument (LBI) at the negotiations.  If states fail to support this, corporate impunity will continue to undermine human rights, justice, and dignity for people on the frontlines of extractivism, land grabbing, climate harm, labor abuses, and environmental destruction.

In their reports to the UN General Assembly, the Working Group on peasants and rural workers and the Special Rapporteur on the right to food have also warned that the growing dominance of transnational corporations and industrial agribusiness in global food systems poses an escalating threat to food security, rural livelihoods, and human rights. They stress that voluntary commitments are not enough. The rights enshrined in the UN declaration on rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas – including rights to land, seeds, biodiversity, and participation – must be implemented through binding laws and robust accountability mechanisms.   

Environmental rights have been particularly weakened in the latest updated draft of the LBI. FIAN and partner organizations call upon states to re-integrate in the instrument’s robust language enshrining the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, as indicated in a recently published study.

“We stand ready – alongside movements of peasants, Indigenous Peoples, workers, environmental defenders, and affected communities – to push for a treaty with teeth,” says Ayushi Kalyan, corporate accountability coordinator at FIAN International.

“In Geneva we will push strongly with our partners for textual provisions that ensure justice, accountability, and respect for human rights above corporate profit.”

Robust rights-based treaty

This week will see the continuation of state-led negotiations on Articles 12-24 and an interactive discussion based on the Chair’s summary of the three intersessional consultations, that took place earlier this year, as well as his own proposals on redrafting Articles 4-11. These were only published five days before the start of the negotiations, giving civil society and states little time to properly analyse them. Corporate lobbies and business representatives actively participated in the intersessional consultations this year, further diluting the draft and pushing for voluntary standards, rather than legal binding provisions.

Moreover, the Chair-Rapporteur’s proposed redrafting of Articles 4–11 presents a streamlined and procedural version of the LBI that prioritizes textual convergence among states over substantive ambition. While the Chair’s sugestions includes some positive advancements, it narrows state obligations by conditioning them on domestic legal frameworks, not sufficiently integrating environmental and gender dimensions, and softening accountability provisions related to corporate liability and access to justice.

This approach diverges from FIAN’s positioning, which called for a robust, rights-based treaty grounded in binding state obligations, precautionary measures, strong environmental protection, compulsory joint and several liability and communities’ right to say “no!”. The timing and content of the Chair’s proposals risk sidelining these substantive civil society and Global South proposals, shifting the process toward procedural consensus rather than transformative justice.

Time for action

The choices made now will determine whether the final instrument is robust – or watered down to the point of ineffectiveness.

“Failure to adopt strong, binding norms will continue the impunity of transnational corporations,” says Stephan Backes, coordinator for extraterritorial obligations of states at FIAN International.

We call on all states to engage in this negotiating session with ambition and courage. We need a treaty that establishes binding obligations for transnational corporations, robust enforcement mechanisms, and effective remedies for affected peoples. It must address the interlinkages between corporate power, environmental destruction, climate injustice, military-industrial complex and gender inequality, including through reparations, sanctions, and divestment from abusive industries.

These dimensions must be integrated across the treaty, not treated as peripheral issues. It is also essential to prevent undue interference of business interests seeking to dilute human rights protections. The process should be driven by human rights principles not corporate interests.

These negotiations should not be rushed, nor watered down to accommodate corporate or geopolitical pressure. A weak or symbolic agreement would only legitimize the status quo of impunity.

For further information, please contact Ayushi Kalyan kalyan@fian.org or Stephan Backes backes@fian.org

World Food Day: end corporate stranglehold over food systems

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The latest report by UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Michael Fakhri reveals that corporate power in food systems has become so concentrated that a small group of companies now shape what is grown, how it is grown, working conditions in food production and what consumers pay – prioritizing profit maximization over the public good.

The report – which cites submissions from FIAN International – calls for urgent action to curtail corporate power over food systems, ensure fair and stable food markets, and hold corporations accountable for human rights violations.

Land concentration

It shows how corporate dominance of food systems is driving hunger, inequality, and environmental destruction – with land grabbing by transnational corporations at the heart of the crisis.

This was highlighted in FIAN’s report with Focus on the Global South “Lords of the Land: Transnational Landowners, Inequality and the Case for Redistribution”, which exposed the growing power of the world’s ten largest transnational landowners who control a staggering 40.4 million hectares – an area roughly the size of Japan.

“The concentration of land in corporate hands is both a driver and symptom of a broken food system,” said Philip Seufert, co-author of the report.

“Our research shows virtually all of the world’s largest landowners have been linked to land grabbing, human rights abuses and violations, and environmental destruction. Redistributive land and fiscal policies are essential for realizing the right to food and achieving climate justice.”

Unprecedented concentration of power

The Special Rapporteur’s report details how just four firms control more than half of the global commercial seed market and more than 60 percent of the pesticide market, while corporate concentration extends across the entire food system.

It also highlights how global price hikes reflect high concentration of suppliers’ market power, with transnational corporations raising prices beyond increased costs to hide profiteering. Meanwhile, corporations create demand for ultra-processed products through marketing strategies disproportionately targeting minorities, disadvantaged groups, and children.

“Corporate power over food systems has reached unprecedented levels. Our food systems have become dangerously dependent on corporations, granting them a dominant power that undermines food sovereignty and captures decision-making spaces that should belong to the people.

“This corporate concentration of power makes our food systems extremely fragile and bound to the interests of the agrifood industry. This is having devastating consequences for people and the planet,” says Ana Maria Suarez Franco, Secretary General of FIAN International.

While corporations accumulate vast territories and extract enormous wealth, more than 700 million people go hungry and over 2 billion face food insecurity. This is not a failure of the food system. It is the predictable outcome of an economic system that rewards the rich and privileged while penalizing the poor and marginalized people.

Legal tools

The Special Rapporteur recommends that states use corporate law to regulate corporations, employ all legal tools to curtail corporate power, and commit to finalizing negotiations on a legally binding instrument to regulate transnational corporations. The report also calls for redistributive agrarian reforms, progressive taxation, and greater support for peasants, Indigenous Peoples, fisherfolk and rural communities.

FIAN fully endorses the Special Rapporteur’s recommendations. It is time for governments to commit to dismantling corporate control over food systems and prioritize human rights, food sovereignty, and agroecology.

For more information please contact Philip Seufert seufert@fian.org

No profit without accountability: recognising the right to a healthy environment

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Communities around the world are affected by unchecked and unregulated transnational corporate power, leading to poisoned water supplies, lost farmland, destroyed food systems and lost livelihoods. Yet, too often, corporations escape accountability while communities are left without remedy or justice, as outlined in a new study focusing on environmental issues, No Profit Without Accountability – For People and the Planet, aimed at shaping UN discussions.

The upcoming session of the Human Rights Council’s open-ended intergovernmental working group in October 2025 – the eleventh annual round of discussions – has enormous potential for curbing excessive corporate power and protecting communities and the environment. States will be negotiating the final articles of the updated draft of the legally binding instrument(LBI) to regulate transnational corporations in international human rights law. FIAN and other international civil society groups insist that the LBI must include an explicit recognition of the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment and integrate this right – along with broader environmental and climate change considerations – throughout its substantive provisions.

“It’s very simple. If the LBI does not include strong environmental protections, it will fail the very communities it is meant to protect,” says Ayushi Kalyan, corporate accountability coordinator at FIAN International.

Enforceable international standards

Communities and human rights and environmental defenders have long campaigned for this addition to international human rights law.

In Latin America, families are still fighting for justice decades after Sweden’s Boliden Mineral dumped toxic waste in Arica, Chile, causing widespread health problems for people living near the dump site. In Palestine, corporations like Heidelberg Materials are alleged to have contributed to the pillaging of natural resources from occupied land. Across Africa and Asia, extractive projects are dispossessing Indigenous Peoples and rural communities of their territories and food systems. Each case highlights the urgent need for clear, enforceable international standards that prioritize human rights and environmental protection over corporate profit.

The International Court of Justice and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights have both affirmed states’ obligations to regulate private actors and prevent transboundary environmental harm. More than 80 percent of UN member states already legally recognize the right to a healthy environment.

“The LBI must explicitly recognize the right to a healthy environment, protect defenders from reprisals, and ensure that victims have real access to justice,” says Stephan Backes, extraterritorial obligations coordinator at FIAN International. 

Close the gap

Negotiators now have the responsibility to close the gap at the global level by embedding this right in the heart of the LBI.

The study released today proposes concrete legal texts to states to strengthen the provisions in the LBI, ensuring, among other things, that it includes environmental due diligence, precautionary measures, and the primacy of human rights and environmental obligations over trade and investment agreements. States should carefully consider and integrate these recommendations in their submissions during the next round of negotiations in October and continue leveraging these proposals in their ongoing advocacy in relevant national, regional and international spaces and processes.

As the world edges closer to climate collapse, this LBI process is a critical opportunity to hold corporations accountable. States must not squander it.

For more information, please contact Ayushi Kalyan Kalyan@fian.org or Stephan Backes Backes@fian.org,