Country: Germany

Transforming food systems from the bottom-up: local food policies and public participation in Europe

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The CRESS project is a collective effort by FIAN International, FIAN Austria, FIAN Belgium, FIAN Portugal, Observatori DESCA (Spain), and (the former) FIAN Sweden, funded by the EU. 

In recent years there has been an increase across Europe in local government policies and initiatives around food (systems) and nutrition. This has been accompanied and driven by the emergence of participatory spaces, including food policy councils, that engage communities in food policy making at the local level.

The project examines concrete policies and initiatives by local and regional governments and spaces of community participation in six European countries: Austria, Belgium, Germany, Portugal, Spain and Sweden. The project examined areas of engagement and constraints faced by local governments, as well as the transformative character (from a human rights perspective) of the policies and initiatives put forward.

Moreover, a central emphasis of the project was to understand how participation is organised across the different countries and localities: which structures are in place and what influence do they hold, who participates and who remains at the margins, how are power relations and conflicts of interest addressed?

Project outcomes are presented in three outcomes: (1) a mapping that summarizes the situation for each of the six countries and draws some general reflections, (2) an interactive map that provides more detail on the cases reviewed and (3) a toolkit that seeks to create greater understanding of how to operationalise human rights based local policy making, including impacts at the level of the EU.

Findings from the mapping point to important steps being taken at the local level to re-localize food systems and make them more healthy, sustainable, and just. There is an increased recognition by local governments of the role they can play and multiple strategies and initiatives covering critical areas of intervention from communal catering and public procurement, to support for ecological production and local markets, to changes in land use criteria. At the same time, local government is constrained by a number of internal and external factors including a lack of human and financial resources, and EU policies which hinder regionalisation.  

The project’s findings also reflect the immense diversity that exists across Europe – and within countries – with regard to structures of community participation. They highlight the critical relevance of such spaces, and community mobilization, for putting food on the agenda of local governments and pushing for transformative, bottom-up food systems changes. At the same time, and despite many efforts, important challenges and limitations remain, especially with regard to including marginalised groups within these spaces and enabling their voices to be heard. 

The toolkit aims to foster a more comprehensive human rights approach to addressing food system challenges from the bottom-up and promoting inclusive governance structures. It aims to contribute to our collective understanding of strategically engaging with food systems at the local level in Europe and fostering strategies to ensure stronger bottom-up governance at the European Union (EU) level. It explores the potential for multi-level architecture of food systems policies and governance structures and examines how regional policies impact local policymaking.

The mapping, interactive map and toolkit are also available in other languages:

Mapping: French, German, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish

Interactive map: French, German, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish

Toolkit: French, German, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish

For more information please contact Emily Mattheisen: mattheisen@fian.org or Laura Michéle: michele@fian.org

German Development Bank obliged to provide information on agricultural investment in Paraguay

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The Administrative Court of Frankfurt am Main, Germany, upheld an action for information brought by the human rights organisation FIAN Germany against German Development Bank KfW (Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau) . For years, KfW had refused to provide access to the environmental and social plans of PAYCO, an agricultural investor active in Paraguay.

The KfW subsidiary DEG (Deutsche Investitions- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft ) holds a 15.8 percent stake in PAYCO. The court ruled that KfW, as a public authority, is obliged to provide information under the Freedom of Information Act (IFG) and must obtain the information in the public interest from DEG.

FIAN Germany Executive Director Philipp Mimkes affirms: “The ruling is a great success. PAYCO is responsible for land conflicts with indigenous peoples, environmental damage and deforestation. Now the public and politicians can get a better picture of this investment in the near future. From our point of view, it is alarming that German development funds finance industrial agriculture and that information has to be fought for through costly legal proceedings.”

PAYCO Paraguay Agricultural Corporation is one of the largest landowners in Paraguay with 146,000 hectares. The company grows GM soy, owns tree plantations and raises livestock. PAYCO also sells genetically modified seeds to third parties.

The lawsuit was supported by the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR). Sönke Hilbrans, Senior Legal Advisor in the ECCHR's Business and Human Rights Programme Area, emphasises: “It is not only landmark that the Administrative Court obliges KfW to provide information on the activities of its subsidiary DEG under the Freedom of Information Act. According to the court, DEG fulfils public tasks. The state bank's strategy of pretending that its subsidiary had nothing to do with its development mandate did not work. This also means that DEG, like any other public body, has human rights and environmental responsibilities. This will have consequences beyond the right to access information.”

In January 2013, DEG had invested 25 million euros in the Paraguay Agricultural Corporation PAYCO based in Luxembourg. As a result, DEG received 15.8 % of the shares in PAYCO.

FIAN is aware of two land conflicts on the land areas acquired by PAYCO. Two indigenous communities of the Mbya Guarani people live within the Estancia Golondrina. They lay claim to 2,015 hectares of land on the estancia, which is the community's core land. In 2013, they initiated formal steps to have the land transferred – to date unsuccessfully.

“The enforcement of the indigenous communities' unequivocal human rights claim has thus not been resolved in almost ten years of DEG co-ownership. From our point of view, DEG puts private economic interests above human rights,” Philipp Mimkes criticises.

Even within the largest PAYCO farm, Lomas (36,408 hectares), communities claim land that was granted to them on the basis of the agrarian reform. As early as 2011, the municipality of Segunda Reconstrucción submitted a corresponding application to the competent authority. According to the municipality, about 1,000 hectares of land lie within the farm. Despite the pending proceedings, according to the municipality, it is precisely on this land that part of the eucalyptus plantations have been established since 2013 – since DEG became involved.

Background paper on PAYCO: www.fian.de/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/2021_06_FIAN_Hintergrund_PAYCO-DEG.pdf

Contact:
FIAN: Philipp Mimkes; P.Mimkes@Fian.de
ECCHR: presse@ecchr.eu

Zambian farmers’ livelihoods threatened by German agribusiness

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The company began farming operations in Zambia’s Mumbwa District in 2012 and grows soya and maize for export and domestic sale on around 40,000 hectares of land purchased from the local community. Some families say they have yet to be fully paid for their land. Amatheon also established an outgrower program for quinoa, chia seeds and chili and many local farmers who agreed to supply produce complain that the company failed to honor agreements when market prices fall.

Amatheon has built two dams in the area to irrigate the plantation, which has reportedly severely reduced water supplies to as many as 200 households downstream. This has forced farmers to reduce their livestock numbers and stop cultivating vegetables, which had provided a major source of income and nutritious meals.

One small hold farmer told FIAN Germany that the company had wrongly demarcated his land as being inside their property and had destroyed his well, forcing his family to get water two miles walking distance away. He also reported being threatened at gunpoint.

“A senior Amatheon employee came to my house and threatened me with a firearm, he later fired gunshots in the air, after that he told me to move out of (the) land,’’ he said.

Amatheon has confiscated community animals that stray onto its land and charges typically 500 Zambia Kwacha (USD 28) to return each animal, which is a large sum for the local farmers.

Local community members are demanding that the Zambian government properly regulates Amatheon’s activity in Mumbwa District and brings an end to the harassment and intimidation of local farmers. When confronted with farmers’ complaints Amatheon has denied most accusations.

In a recent meeting of community members and local officials, the District Administrator suggested that Germany had a role in regulating a German-based company in Zambia. He recommended calling on the German Embassy in Lusaka to intervene in the case. However there is no binding international legal framework governing situations like this which leaves the local people with recourse to justice.

This is yet another case which illustrates the need for a binding UN treaty with the teeth to hold transnational corporations to account in their home countries for their human rights impacts overseas.

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

Uganda must comply with the CEDAW recommendations in Kaweri Coffee Plantation case

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For more than two decades, evictees from Mubende District in Uganda have sought compensation for their brutal displacement from a vast tract of land that was converted into a plantation to supply coffee beans to the world’s top trader of the commodity. While some are shortly due to receive compensation, others are awaiting a June court hearing on their claims.

The CEDAW committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women raised concerns earlier this year over “the still outstanding settlement of the incident in court” and highlighted the “dispossessions of land owned by women and forced evictions of women, who constitute three quarters of the workforce in the agricultural sector.”

It called on Uganda to:

  1. Establish a legal framework to ensure that agro-industrial projects and the activities of extractive industries do not undermine rural women’s rights to land ownership and their livelihoods and ensure that such ventures are permitted only after gender-impact assessments involving rural women have been undertaken;
  2. Ensure that evictions are court-ordered and subject to strict procedural safeguards in line with international standards, and expedite court proceedings for prompt and adequate compensation and rehabilitation in the Mubende land evictions case, while observing the principle of separation of powers;
  3. Ensure that perpetrators of violent acts against women in fishing communities are prosecuted and adequately punished, including through a referral for criminal proceedings under the Leadership Code Act 2002, where appropriate, decriminalize fish smoking and support the development of alternative agro-processing economic activity for rural women;

On August 17, 2001, the Ugandan army began violently evicting over 4,000 villagers from 2,524 hectares of land in Kitemba, Luwunga, Kijunga and Kiryamakobe.

Authorities ordered the eviction to make way for a 99-year lease of the area to Kaweri Coffee Plantation Ltd., owned by the Germany-based Neumann Kaffee Gruppe.

FIAN will continue to monitor the implementation of the CEDAW recommendations to Uganda – including those related to alleged witchcraft and violence against fisherfolk – to ensure that the rights of women in Uganda are fully protected and respected.

For queries and additional information, contact Valentin Hategekimana, FIAN International Africa coordinator at hategekimana@fian.org.

 

Public development banks must stop funding corporate agribusiness

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There is little to suggest that the Finance in Common summit with over 450 PDBs will be any different, not least because of the failure of last year’s summit to embrace a human rights or community-led approach, but also because of longstanding human rights issues with these publically owned banks.

On the eve of the summit which will take place in Rome, FIAN International, alongside 280 other civil-society organizations and social movements, calls on governments to put an end to state-backed financial support to agribusiness companies and projects that take land, natural resources and livelihoods from local communities.

Poor track record

Public development banks are state-mandated, largely state-funded and state-controlled financial institutions that finance activities that should contribute to the improvement of people's lives, particularly in the Global South. They account for over US$2 trillion a year in financing to public and private companies for things like roads, power plants and agribusiness plantations. An estimated US$1.4 trillion goes to the agriculture and food sector.

Many PDBs have a poor track record when it comes to transparency and investments that benefit agribusiness corporations at the expense of farmers, herders, fishers, food workers and Indigenous Peoples, undermining their food sovereignty, ecosystems and human rights. They have a heavy legacy of investing in companies involved in land grabbing, corruption, violence, environmental destruction and other severe human rights violations.

Their increasing use of offshore private equity funds and complex investment webs –including financial intermediaries – to channel investments makes it very difficult to scrutinise them, as highlighted by recent revelations surrounding German development finance institution Deutsche Investitions– und Entwicklungsgesellschaft (DEG).

Linked to human rights violations

DEG, a subsidiary of Germany’s largest state-owned development bank Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW), provides billions of euros in development finance to Latin America, Asia and Africa.

FIAN Germany has monitored human violations related to investments of these banks for many years, despite major challenges with the banks’ lack of transparency. More than half of the DEG’s annual funding is channelled through financial intermediaries and other banks and funds.

Not even the German government has a clear picture of where this money hits the ground and its real impact. This makes it nearly impossible to force the banks to comply with Germany’s human rights obligations. In cases where FIAN could identify concrete investments in agribusinesses, there was also evidence of human rights violations.

In Zambia, for example, DEG continues to provide the country’s biggest agribusiness Zambeef with tens of millions of US Dollars although FIAN has documented cases of forced evictions involving Zambeef as far back as 2013. In Paraguay, DEG is co-owner of the country’s second largest landowner Paraguay Agricultural Corporation PAYCO, which buys up land on a large scale, including traditional indigenous settlements, for massive agro-industrial projects that make intensive use of pesticides.

“Those cases are emblematic of DEGs investment preferences for large-scale industrial agribusiness which foreclose instead of supporting or promoting equitable, people-centered and sustainable development rooted in the right to food,” said Roman Herre, FIAN Germany policy advisor for land and agriculture.

Unaccountable

A decision by the Belgium’s public development bank, Belgian Investment Company for Developing Countries (BIO), together with other European and North American PDBs to support palm oil production by Feronia PHC in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) – despite the violent repression of locally community activists – is a another example.

“Although the demands of the communities affected were relayed to the bank, there was no recourse to justice, no way to hold the bank accountable,” said Florence Kroff, coordinator of FIAN Belgium.

“Even before the decision to finance this project, we raised questions about the risks of human rights violations involved in supporting this agribusiness in the DRC, thanks to an ill-gotten concession on more than 100,000 ha of land, a legacy of the colonial era,” she added.

“In addition to environmental pollution and indecent working conditions on the plantations, Belgian – as well as German, French, Dutch and other – public money is contributing to a climate of violent criminalisation in the region, which has already led to dozens of arbitrary arrests and detentions and the deaths of several land activists.”

It is time to hold public development banks, and the governments controlling them, accountable for the human rights violations that they are fuelling and to stop all future investments that are not rooted in the right to food, a community-led approach and sustainable development.

FIAN International calls for:

  • An immediate end to the financing of corporate agribusiness operations and speculative investments by public development banks. 
  • The creation of fully public and accountable funding mechanisms that support peoples' efforts to build food sovereignty, realize the human right to food, protect and restore ecosystems, and address the climate emergency.
  • implementation of strong and effective mechanisms that provide communities with access to justice in case of adverse human rights impacts or social and environmental damages caused by PDB investments.

Food Banks in Germany: Right to Food Must Not be Privatized

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Food poverty must be recognized as a human rights issue and the German government must ensure the adequacy of income from employment and social protection schemes, so that no one need become dependent on food banks.

“We expect the German government to clarify before the UN Human Rights Council that food banks should not develop into a parallel system of social protection. Rather the government should announce that it will investigate the reasons behind the growing number of users of food banks and that it will take the necessary political action”, said Ute Hausmann, Executive Director of FIAN Germany.

According to information provided by the Bundesverband Tafel, approximately 1.5 million people use food banks in Germany. In the government’s reporting on poverty, however, the issue is not raised. FIAN International cautions against the outsourcing of state obligations to private food banks.

“Securing a dignified level of existence is a human right and constitutional obligation. Increased utilization of private food banks must be seen as a failure of the state to comply with these obligations”, said Flavio Valente, Secretary General of FIAN International.

Qualitative studies by the university project “Tafel-Monitor” demonstrate that users of food banks often experience stigmatization and intensified social exclusion.

FIAN Germany therefore calls upon the German government to adopt policies to increase individual income through employment and social protection benefits, in order to enable all people to feed themselves and live a life in dignity. 

*****
Contact:Ute Hausmann
FIAN Germany
T: +49-1736074973

Auf Deutsch lesen

Privatising the Right to Food: Food Banks in Germany

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On March 12, FIAN International will organize a side event at the UN Human Rights Council to discuss human rights problems associated with the boom in German food banks (“Tafeln”) which currently supply food to 1.5 million people in Germany.

An advocacy note, which complements the UPR submission by FIAN Germany, was submitted  to all the Permanent Missions before the United Nations in Geneva, addressing issues related to the right to food in Germany, as presented during the side event “Privatising the right to food: poverty, social exclusion and the boom in food banks in Germany.”

Read the advocacy note and view the invitation to the event below.

FIAN Germany’s Policy Brief on the Asylum Seeker’s Benefits Act

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In 2009, roughly 122,000 people received benefits under the Asylum Seekers Benefits Act, including asylum seekers, war refugees, victims of human trafficking, foreigners who have been granted a suspension of deportation (so-called tolerated foreigners) or those who are obliged to leave the country as well as spouses, partners and underage children. On 18 July 2012, the German Federal Constitutional Court declared the amount of cash payments specified under Article 3 of the Asylum Seekers Benefits Act as evidently insufficient and thus unconstitutional. The ruling specifies that the fundamental right to guarantee a dignified minimum existence applies equally to German and foreign nationals living in the Federal Republic of Germany. It obliges the legislator to immediately introduce a revision of the Act, ensuring a dignified minimum existence.