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Fisher peoples denounce false climate solutions

Posted on by Tom

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

World Food Day: end corporate stranglehold over food systems

Posted on by Tom

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

Posted on by Tom

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,

Food industry must be held accountable for driving rising obesity and ill health

Posted on by Tom

The Fourth High Level Meeting of the General Assembly on the Prevention and Control of Noncommunicable Diseases (NCDs) and the Promotion of Mental Health and Well-Being presents a critical opportunity to draw attention to the harm caused by ultra-processed food corporations shaping our food system.

Aggressive marketing pushes out healthier food options

Around the world, poor quality, addictive ultra-processed products have been aggressively marketed – to the detriment of more bio-diverse traditional foods – resulting in growing obesity levels especially among children and young people. This year, for the first time, the global prevalence of obesity overtook that of underweight children.

Global production and trade of these products exacerbate the root causes of the climate crisis: transport, plastic packaging, intensive agriculture, mono-cropping, deforestation and land-and-sea-grabbing.


Unhealthy diets

From the heavy use of agrotoxics and other chemicals to the aggressive marketing of ultra-processed “food” products (UPFs) and drinks, the industrial food system plays a central role in driving NCDs, such as heart diseases and strokes, obesity, cancer, and diabetes. An estimated quarter of the 43 million deaths attributed to NCDs each year have been linked to unhealthy diets – or in other words, diets high in UPFs promoted by the food industry.

Despite the growing urgency of this public health crisis, a draft political declaration has been negotiated behind closed doors ahead of today’s meeting. This text entirely fails to include a food systems perspective or properly consider the causes of ill-health – including the role played by the food and beverage industry in pushing products that are proven to cause substantial health harm. Instead of introducing safeguards to shield health policies from corporate influence, the declaration encourages industry engagement and thereby may instead obstruct efforts to regulate these harmful products and prevent NCDs. 

Alongside the World Public Health Nutrition Association, IBFAN and other civil society networks and organisations, FIAN calls on governments to incorporate a food systems perspective with strong safeguards to protect human and planetary health.

We insist that the final political declaration agreed today should provide for robust follow-up and accountability procedures that allow for the meaningful participation of public-interest civil society and rights holders. Furthermore, there must be clear and enforceable measures to prevent conflicts of interest and protect against undue influence and interference by the food and beverage industry in NCD-related policymaking at national and UN levels.

For more information, please contact Laura Michéle: Michele@fian.org

The health and nutritional costs of supermarkets

Posted on by Tom

As supermarkets expand, traditional food systems shrink, endangering heritage diets and the benefits they offer to human health. This is the focus of our September bulletin.

Research carried out in Tanzania’s Kilimanjaro region found that the shift to a Western diet resulted in negative health outcomes like elevated inflammation, poorer immune function, and weight gain, while a return to traditional foods produced anti-inflammatory benefits and reduced markers of metabolic disease. The push for supermarkets across the world is causing an exponential rise in highly processed and refined foods that have a long shelf life and a rapid decline in the availability of nutritious, fresh and more perishable foods particularly fruits and vegetables.

These ultra-processed foods are associated with an increased risk of obesity and other chronic illnesses, such as heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, and even malnutrition among children. They are mostly composed of ingredients derived from industrial agriculture and global trade chains, leading to excessive chemical pollution of water, air and soil. On the other hand, local circuits of food distribution, with local markets and small-scale food vendors, provide more access to a diverse variety of fresh healthy foods that are affordable and easily accessible. Street food vendors play a critical role in many of these traditional food systems.

An estimated 2.5 billion people eat street food every day.  Most of these street food vendors do not have large storage capacities, so they often have to buy small quantities of fresh ingredients from traditional retail markets or directly from local farmers.  Food quality is assured by strong social ties and trust between producers, food vendors and consumers. The food is then prepared using simple processing facilities. In contrast, ultra-processed foods are commonly referred to as “junk food”, due to their high levels of free sugars, refined starches, sodium, saturated and trans-fats derived from substances or additives that make these products more appealing and enhance their shelf life.  In places where communities have a strong food culture, one of the marketing strategies of food corporations and retail chains is to mimic and recreate traditional foods using industrial food ingredients to expand their markets.    

This month, the third global Nyéléni Forum will be held in Sri Lanka.  The Nyéléni process emphasises the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods.  Food production, distribution and access form a cohesive socio-cultural fabric that supports people’s nutritional and mental wellbeing, and people’s food sovereignty. In this edition, we highlight how local food systems should be the entry point for addressing issues like nutrition, labour conditions, and community strengthening, and we look at examples from a healthy food procurement policy in Brazil’s school networks and the ways in which Africa is resisting supermarket expansion.

Read Supermarket Watch here

For more information contact Laura Michéle michele@fian.org

Progress on just fisheries regulation in Uganda

Posted on by Tom

One of the key achievements of the 2022 act is the replacement of the army with the Fisheries Monitoring Control and Surveillance Unit, composed of people appointed by the Public Service Commission. The new regulations will be crucial to further address concerns of affected fishing communities.

Since 2018, FIAN Uganda in collaboration with allies including FIAN International has stood alongside affected fishing communities to amplify their voices and build pressure for a better fishing regulation.

Today, FIAN Uganda’s mobilization of fishing communities – especially women and youth – focused on the new regulations to ensure a full demilitarization of fishing areas, equitable access to fishing grounds, gender-responsive enforcement, and co-management structures that recognize fisherfolks as stewards of their own future.

“We envision a people-centered fisheries governance framework where communities co-manage resources with authorities – where lived realities shape regulations and justice replaces impunity,” says Dr. Rehema Namaganda Bavuma, Coordinator of FIAN Uganda.

“A framework where women and youth are no longer sidelined, and where fisheries policy promotes food sovereignty and not exclusion.”

Read more about fisheries in Uganda here.  

For more information, please contact Valentin Hategekimana hategekimana@fian.org

SOFI 2025 neglects structural causes of hunger

Posted on by Tom

Heidelberg/Geneva. The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) 2025 report, launched at the UN Food Systems Summit +4 (UNFSS+4) this week, notes a slight decline in global hunger to 673 million people in 2024. The improvements take place mainly in Latin America and Asia, while Africa and mainly low-income countries remain the hungriest places in the world. For FIAN the significant advances made in Latin America are a good example of the results of public policies based on the right to food and nutrition that can make a real difference.  

Secretary General of FIAN International, Ana María Suárez Franco, emphasizes that hunger can be reduced quickly through decisive action.

“Brazil, for example, has reduced the number of people suffering from severe food poverty by more than 80 per cent in just one year. Hunger is not inevitable! Minimum wages, school meals, cash transfers to those most in need and public procurement programes prioritizing small-scale food producers can quickly and effectively reach those affected. However, this requires political will to redistribute wealth,” says Suárez Franco. 

Ignoring corporate power concentration 

The report fails to address the structural drivers of hunger: corporate concentration and power within food systems, financial speculation, and the weaponization of food and ignores how agribusiness profits from crises and how states enable corporate impunity. 

SOFI 2025 attributes rising food prices to “external factors” like COVID-19 and climate change while ignoring critical drivers within the food system. Notably absent is any mention of corporate price-gouging by agribusiness giants who reaped record profits during recent food crises, nor does it adequately address how financial speculation by hedge funds on grain futures artificially inflates prices – a phenomenon the report misleadingly labels as simple “market volatility.”  

The gender analysis similarly falls short, acknowledging disparities but failing to confront the systemic undervaluation of women’s unpaid care work that sustains food systems and demands recognition and redistribution.  

Most glaring is the report’s silence on the growing dominance of digital platforms in reshaping food systems, even as it praises improved data collection – a blind spot that ignores how tech monopolies are accelerating corporate consolidation while marginalizing small-scale producers. These omissions reveal a troubling pattern of avoiding scrutiny of powerful economic actors while attributing hunger to apolitical “shocks” rather than structural inequities. 

“The report’s silence on corporate abuse is deafening,” says Sabine Pabst, environmental officer at FIAN. “It blames climate change but not the agribusinesses driving deforestation, monocultures and overall environmental degradation.” Furthermore, it ignores the critical role played by territorial markets in connecting small-scale producers with consumers”. 

Gaza: Corporate Complicity in Weaponized Starvation  

The report highlights that 100 per cent of the population in Gaza is facing high levels of acute food insecurity, indicating a severe crisis. It also notes a significant increase in malnutrition among children in Gaza City, with nearly one in five children under five years old experiencing acute malnutrition. Nonetheless, it omits explicit reference to the use of food as a weapon in Gaza and the complicity of corporations in the genocide. 

In Gaza, over 95 per cent of farmland has been rendered unusable by Israeli military operations—including the deliberate destruction of 71 per cent of greenhouses and 83 per cent of agricultural wells—while fishers face lethal violence and near-total bans on accessing the sea, collapsing local food production and weaponizing starvation against civilians. 

UNFSS+4 continues distracting and draining UN energy from urgent action  

The UNFSS’ persistent failure to address structural power imbalances and roll back corporate power in food systems is evident in the protagonism of the World Economic Forum and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development in this year’s agenda. Moreover, the UNFSS+4 puts a blind eye on critical issues such as the use of food as a weapon of war, food apartheid, the drastic reduction in public development aid, rising authoritarianism, criminalization of human rights’ defenders, and repression of social movements and Indigenous Peoples. Instead, governments should step up efforts in the UN Committee on World Food Security to implement its Framework for Action in Protracted Crisis and a series of other policies which address the structural drivers of current food-related injustices. 

Civil society demands omitted by SOFI 2025  

Departing form states’ right to food obligations, we demand that they advance on the just taxation of Big Agribusiness, Big Food, Big Finance and Big Tech, through robust elements in the negotiation of the ongoing Tax Convention, at the UN General Assembly; active engagements and strong regulations in the context of the UN Treaty on Transnational Companies and other Business Enterprises with regards to Human Rights negotiated at the UN Human Rights Council; advance redistributive agrarian reforms, leveraging the opportunity of the International Conference of Agrarian Reform and Rural Development to take place in Colombia in February 2026 and the implementation of states` International environmental obligations.     

FIAN has consistently rejected SOFI’s techno-fix approach and the false corporate solutions promoted by the UNFSS. Joining social movements, we instead call on states to support people’s solutions, including strong support for the transition to agroecology, ending corporate capture of the UN, and ensuring the right to self-determination of Palestinian people and an end to the use of food as a weapon of war and genocide.

We will continue pushing for the transition to food systems that place people & planet above corporate profit! 

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

Global South countries take the lead on ending Israel’s genocide and illegal occupation of [alestine: securing the right to food must be prioritized 

Posted on by Tom

An emergency conference held in Bogotá, Colombia, on July 15 and 16, 2025, marks an important step in multilateral efforts to make Israel and its supporters comply with international law, including human rights law and humanitarian law. A total of 30 states participated in the conference convened by “The Hague Group,” an initiative launched by eight countries from the Global South in January 2025 and supported by Progressive International. The aim of the conference was to agree on concrete measures to end the ongoing genocide, impunity, and the illegal occupation of Palestine. 

State commitments 

The Conference resulted in a Joint Statement signed by twelve countries (Bolivia, Cuba, Colombia, Malaysia, Namibia, South Africa, Indonesia, Nicaragua, Iraq, Libya, Oman, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines), which committed to immediately adopt concrete measures to end impunity for Israel’s actions in Palestine and break any ties of complicity with the genocide and occupation. Crucially, these commitments are based on the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination. 

Specifically, these states have committed to preventing the transfer of arms to Israel; preventing the use of their ports and ships bearing their flags for such transfers; reviewing all public contracts to ensure that none of their public institutions support Israel’s occupation of Palestine; ensuring accountability for crimes under international law; and supporting universal jurisdiction mandates to ensure justice for victims. In addition, the declaration calls on the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to “commission an immediate investigation into the health and nutritional needs of the population of Gaza, and to devise a plan to meet those needs on a continuing and sustained basis.” Furthermore, it sets the date of September 20, 2025, coinciding with the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly, for ECOSOC to report on the investigation and for other states to join the commitments. 

Although not explicitly mentioned in the Joint Statement, the systematic violation of Palestinians’ human right to food and nutrition is a fundamental part of the Israeli genocide and occupation. According to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification IPC, 100% of the population of Gaza is highly food insecure and, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), one in ten children screened in its medical facilities is malnourished. These shocking figures are the result of Israel’s deliberate and systematic blockade of food and humanitarian aid, as well as the systematic destruction of agricultural land and the prohibition of access to the sea for fishers. In fact, as of April 2025, more than 80 per cent of Gaza’s agricultural land had been damaged and less than 5 per cent was available for cultivation. No cropland is accessible in Rafah and the northern governorates. Furthermore, Israel’s relentless campaign of bombing and destruction has devastated the entire territory and its ecosystems, wreaking havoc for present and future generations. 

Food sovereignty is key for self-determination 

“The famine in Gaza cannot be addressed as long as States continue to pretend that it is yet another humanitarian crisis,” said Ana María Suárez Franco, secretary general of FIAN International. “All states and international institutions must recognize that Israel is carrying out a deliberate campaign of starvation, used as a weapon of genocide.” International humanitarian law (IHL) prohibits the use of food and water as weapons of war, specifically in Article 14 of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, which protects goods essential to the survival of the civilian population. This has also been reaffirmed by the United Nations Committee on World Food Security (CFS). 

The militarization of food and humanitarian aid through the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHL), backed by Israel and the United States, which has led to the killings of nearly 900 Palestinians seeking aid to feed their families, is only the most blatant expression of the use of food as a weapon of genocide and occupation. Suárez Franco added: “Ensuring the immediate and unconditional provision of food and humanitarian aid in adequate quantity and quality to the population of Gaza, provided by multilateral aid agencies acting in accordance with the principles established by international humanitarian law (including UNRWA), is urgent but not sufficient to realize the right to food. As previously emphasized by FIAN and the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UWAC), the struggle for food sovereignty in Palestine cannot be separated from the broader struggle for Palestinian self-determination and sovereignty over land and natural resources.” 

Therefore, FIAN International calls on the signatories of the Joint Statement and all other states to give due consideration to the right to food when implementing their commitments and human rights obligations. Concretely, FIAN recommends the following: 

  • Include agribusiness and food corporations in the review of public contracts (commitment no. 4). 
  • Ensure accountability of all actors, including non-state actors, involved in violations of the human right to food of present and future generations, particularly through the use of food as a weapon of warfare and genocide, the blocking of food and humanitarian aid, the denial of access to fisheries, the destruction of agricultural lands, and the destruction of ecosystems through irreversible damage to the environment (commitment no. 5). 
  • Include breaches of states’ extraterritorial human rights obligations when supporting universal jurisdiction mandates to ensure access to justice by the Palestinian people (commitment no. 6). 

FIAN International also urges states and ECOSOC to take into account that nutrition is a constituent part of the human right to food and is intrinsically linked to people’s ability to feed themselves, in particular through access to and control over land, fisheries, forests, seeds, and other natural resources. These aspects must therefore be included in research on the health and nutritional needs of the population of Gaza, as well as in the development of a plan to meet those needs in a continuous and sustained manner. Involving the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) in the ECOSOC investigation would be a way to ensure that the right to food is duly considered. In particular, the rehabilitation of ecosystems, land, and other natural resources, as well as peasant seed systems, must be central to measures aimed at realizing food sovereignty and the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people. 

Finally, FIAN International calls on all states to join the Hague Group and fully comply with their obligations under international human rights law and international humanitarian law, with a view to urgently ending the genocide and illegal occupation of Palestine. 

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

FIAN Blog: Right to food rooted in territories but needs state support

Posted on by Tom

Germany has long played a prominent role in championing the right to food, both rhetorically and through concrete support for international mechanisms like the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS). The CFS is recognized as the most inclusive global forum on food policy, grounded in the right to food and notable for enabling direct and autonomous participation of rights holders – such as small-scale food producers, Indigenous Peoples, women, and youth – through its Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples Mechanism.

Central role of right to food

The German government regularly hosts the Policies against Hunger Conference, creating space for dialogue among governments, UN agencies, academia, and civil society. This year’s conference – held from June 23 to 25 in Berlin – was the first major event under the new German coalition government, formed amid increasing support for the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). The transfer of control over the Agriculture and Food Ministry, from the Green Party to the Conservative bloc, raised questions about Germany’s future direction: would it maintain its commitment to the right to food?

By the conference’s close, the answer appeared cautiously optimistic. Under the theme “From Rights to Action”, German officials and international participants reaffirmed the centrality of the right to food in shaping national and global policy. Discussions focused on five key themes: access to land, gender equality, the bioeconomy, agricultural value chains, and ensuring the right to food in the Global North.

Civil society organizations (CSOs) brought vital perspectives, with participants from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Europe. These groups – including peasants, Indigenous Peoples, women’s collectives, urban activists, and NGOs – played a key role in shaping debates and advocating for stronger human rights-based approaches from governments and multilateral institutions like the FAO.

Contradictions

Still, the conference revealed significant contradictions between state rhetoric and practice. Germany, despite its advocacy, falls short in several areas. For example, it has yet to recognize its extraterritorial obligations in the long-standing Kaweri case in Uganda, where over 4,000 people were evicted to make way for a coffee plantation linked to a German company. Germany-based investors have also financed agribusiness projects in Zambia, causing displacements and environmental destruction. In these and other cases, affected communities, with support from FIAN Germany, continue to seek justice.

Perhaps the starkest contradiction lies in Germany’s stance on Gaza. Invoking its historical responsibility to Israel, Germany has avoided addressing Israel’s systematic violations of Palestinians’ right to food – such as the destruction of over 80% of Gaza’s cropland and the blockade on fishing and food access.

At the conference’s opening, CSOs demanded a space to discuss the issue. The German Food and Agriculture Ministry agreed to a dedicated session, where participants urged Germany to act, including calling on the government to:

  • take all available means to end Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon of war and genocide
  • enforce international law, including the orders of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ)
  • ensure immediate, unimpeded humanitarian food aid delivery by multilateral aid agencies, which act according to the principles established by international humanitarian law
  • halt arms sales to Israel, impose sanctions, and suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement

While ministry officials offered no clear commitments, they promised to convey these demands to the ministerial level and other relevant ministries.

In conclusion, the Policies against Hunger Conference 2025 underscored the vital importance of grassroots pressure. While state-level and international commitments are crucial, the realization of the right to food and nutrition continues to depend on the relentless organizing of social movements, Indigenous Peoples, and civil society. Encouragingly, the conference made connections to upcoming global initiatives – including Brazil’s Global Alliance against Poverty and Hunger (GAPH) and the second International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD+20), organized by Colombia in 2026. But the daily struggle for food justice remains rooted in people’s territories, where the fight for human rights continues to be both urgent and essential.

Download: Civil society organizations’ statement

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

Agrarian reforms key to climate justice

Posted on by Tom

A new briefing paper, Land for Food and Climate Justice: The Case for Redistributive Agrarian Reforms released today underscores a powerful yet underutilized solution to the intersecting crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, food insecurity, and inequality: redistributive agrarian reform. Drawing on case studies from Argentina, Mali, and India, the publication presents evidence that placing land and ecosystems under the control of Indigenous Peoples, small-scale food providers, and rural communities is key to achieving climate justice and food systems transformation.

The paper, based on the landmark report Lords of the Land: Transnational Landowners, Inequality and the Case for Redistribution, highlights how global land inequality and resource grabbing—particularly so-called “green grabs” made in the name of environmental protection—are accelerating environmental destruction and undermining human rights.

“Corporate control over land is not only driving environmental collapse but also pushing millions into hunger and marginalization,” said Philip Seufert, policy officer of FIAN International.

“The solution lies in the hands of those who have always safeguarded ecosystems – small-scale food providers and Indigenous Peoples. It’s time to prioritize redistributive tenure policies as a climate strategy.”

Key messages from the briefing include:

  • Land inequality is a major driver of environmental degradation. One percent of farms now control over 70% of farmland globally. This concentration of land is deeply linked to increased carbon emissions, deforestation, and biodiversity loss.
  • “Green grabs” are displacing communities. The paper shows that over 20% of large-scale land deals today are made in the name of environmental objectives. These land grabs, including those earmarked for carbon markets and biodiversity schemes, often displace people who are the most effective stewards of land and ecosystems.
  • Small-scale food providers feed the world. Despite using just 35% of cropland, they produce over half of the world’s food, manage landscapes more sustainably, and support greater biodiversity. Their continued viability depends on control over land and natural resources.

The briefing paper includes three case studies that illustrate how rural communities in Argentina, Mali and India are setting the foundations for sustainable and just food systems, anchored in human rights and social and environmental justice.

The briefing paper calls for a bold rethinking of climate and food policy: agrarian reform and redistributive tenure policies must be recognized not only as social justice tools but as ecological imperatives.

“Small-scale food providers, Indigenous Peoples and rural communities are not just victims of climate change – they are frontline climate actors,” said Philip Seufert.

“If we are serious about just transitions and climate justice, land redistribution must be at the center of global policy efforts.”

Download the full briefing paper here.

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