BAN LAND GRABBING!

The new land grabbing is the latest element in a transnational business strategy of  trying to get the hands on people’s lands and water resources. Land grabbing violates international human rights law – not so much because in the course of people’s displacement numerous human rights standards are most likely violated, but because peasant farmers’ possibilities to feed themselves now and in the future are foreclosed.

The agenda of the upcoming session of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) on 11-14 October, 2010, includes a policy roundtable on land tenure and international investment in agriculture. This will be one of the most relevant sessions in the sense that it will show if the reformed CFS can effectively deliver international policy responses to one of the most pressing issues of our times: how to protect the lands of rural communities from encroachment. Please send a letter to the ministry in your country representing your government in FAO (usually the ministry of agriculture) with copy to the ambassador of your country in FAO requesting them to ban land grabbing.