Issue: PEASANTS, INDIGENOUS PEOPLES & OTHER COMMUNITIES

In October 2023, during its 54^th session, the UN Human Rights Council adopted resolution 54/11, establishing a new Working Group on the Rights of Peasants and other People Working in Rural Areas, comprising five experts from the five UN regions. The selection process for these experts took place from mid-October to early December 2023.

The 5^th of April 2024, during its 55^th session, the UN Human Rights Council officially appointed the five experts (who were selected among 48 applicants):

1. Ms. Uche Ewelukwa OFODILE (Nigeria) for African States.
2. Ms. Shalmali GUTTAL (India) for Asia-Pacific States.
3. Mr. Davit HAKOBYAN (Armenia) for Eastern European States.
4. Mr. Carlos DUARTE (Colombia) for Latin American and Caribbean States.
5. Ms. Geneviève SAVIGNY (France) for Western European and other States.

The imminent initiation of the Working Group’s activities marks a significant milestone in advancing the implementation of the rights enshrined in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP). This achievement is of particular importance to rural organizations advocating for their rights, including small-scale farmers, rural women, herders, artisanal fishers, landless agricultural workers, pastoralists, rural workers, nomads and Indigenous Peoples.

Rural communities have endured prolonged injustices concerning rights protection and access to social security systems, exacerbated by the dominance of the agribusiness sector in industrial food systems. This domination not only exposes them to heightened vulnerability to exploitation and repression but also obstructs their fundamental rights – among others, their right to land, seeds, food sovereignty, biodiversity, means of production – necessary to advance towards autonomy in dignified work. Furthermore, the establishment of the Working Group underscores a commitment from States to safeguard the rights of rural individuals and communities.

The newly appointed Working Group holds great promise for the promotion and implementation of the rights of rural communities, providing crucial support for their initiatives aimed at realizing these rights. Additionally, it will play a pivotal role for States, offering them technical cooperation, sharing examples of good practices, and providing concrete recommendations on the best ways to make their actions and national legal frameworks comply with the principles and provisions of the UNDROP. Since the adoption of the Declaration by the UN General Assembly in 2018, some States have made progress in implementing UNDROP at the national level. However, there has been a lack of institutional monitoring of its implementation at the international level. Moreover, the structural causes that led to the adoption of UNDROP, including various forms of discrimination, systematic human rights violations, and historical disadvantages, have persisted without adequate attention. In light of these challenges, the Working Group will be instrumental in facilitating the implementation of UNDROP. It will identify and promote best practices and lessons learned, foster collaboration between States’ authorites, rights holders and UN experts, and provide technical capacity-building support. By doing so, the Working Group aims to elevate the global prominence of UNDROP and address the underlying issues hindering the realization of rural communities’ rights.

What are the challenges facing the Working Group?

The primary challenge confronting the Working Group revolves around financial constraints, with limited funding available to adequately support its operations.

In addition to financial challenges, there are also operational challenges related to the engagement and participation of peasant and rural organizations. These organizations, in collaboration with their allies, must take ownership of the new mechanism, recognize and acknowledge its utility; disseminate it in respective networks; be able to explain the procedure; and develop strategies to use and feed it. This requires resources, capacity building, and coordination efforts.

Moreover, there may be challenges related to visibility, as peasant and rural organizations need to be prepared to actively contribute to the Working Group’s efforts. This includes duties such as submitting reports and complaints about violations and engaging with respective State authorities in the spaces provided.

By doing so, this involvement can help to increase the visibility of peasants, who are frequently marginalized in society, strengthen their dignity, and further foster their participation in local, national, and global governance.

Download the Fact Sheet on UNDROP  Working Group to learn more about its mandate.

By La Via Campesina, Fian International, CETIM

This article was first published on La Via Campesina’s website on April 8th, 2024 here.

For many governments and policymakers, food has come to be viewed as a commodity rather than a right. Global food governance increasingly serves corporate interests through market- and business-friendly agreements which are normalised in a wide range of multilateral institutions. People’s livelihoods and nature are being traded away via economic and financial deals that benefit corporations and elites in different sectors and countries, but threaten the conditions necessary for peoples’ food sovereignty. This threat is now being compounded by corporate techno-fix approaches to climate change and biodiversity crises.

In this issue of the Nyéléni newsletter, we describe how trends in multilateral and other international platforms are impacting food sovereignty in ways that will be decisive for the future of food and peoples’ self-determination. We unpack the different processes in which unfair exchanges are being perpetuated and opaque concepts promoted.

As trade and investment fora continue to advance industrial food systems and global supply chains, the proliferation of so-called ‘Nature-based Solutions’ (NBS) is masking new ways of commodifying nature, territories and livelihoods.  By assigning land, soil, water, forests and biodiversity the impossible task of making up for the pollution caused by industries elsewhere in exchange for monetary remuneration, a new front of commons enclosure is opening up, which is being enabled, measured and monitored through new technologies. Corporate capture of political and economic agendas is a common factor in all these scenarios; spreading out and embedding in multilateral institutions through multistakeholderism. A glaring example of this is the 2021 Food Systems Summit and the subsequent establishment of a UN Food Systems Coordination Hub, which seeks to hijack the ongoing food governance conversation.  A further example is the discussion on Data for Food Security and Nutrition in the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), driven by none other than the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

It is clear that we need to collectively mobilise and resist on an even larger and more coordinated scale than ever before to challenge and reverse these trends across a range of multilateral and other ‘negotiating’ arenas.

ETC Group, FIAN International, Focus on the Global South

Read the newsletter or download it here. 

Illustration by Andrea Medina for the ETC Group.

It has been more than two years since the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP) was adopted by the UN General Assembly after a decade of mobilization. This Declaration is a blatant victory for the rural world, as it recognizes essential rights for peasants, indigenous peoples, migrant workers, women and other people in rural areas. Some of the rights recognized include the right to seeds, land, water, and food sovereignty. The Declaration is also a key milestone in the race for environmental justice, as rural people’s sustainable practices, like agroecology, help restore our decaying biodiversity.

But the work is not finished. Despite playing a crucial role in food systems, and in providing resilience to territories and communities, peasants continue to be among the most excluded and affected groups in today’s global society. The negative impacts of the COVID pandemic on small-scale producers can attest to that. Peasants and other people in rural areas are not yet protected, at least not until the Declaration is consistently reflected in the laws and policies of their countries. 

To this end, FIAN International is launching the ‘Peasants’ Right Week’, programmed to coincide with the International Day of Peasants’ Struggles, and releasing a series of briefings that look at key aspects of the Declaration: from how this protects the rights of rural peoples’ to land and other natural resources, to how the Declaration itself will help us achieve agroecology, as well as environmental and climate justice.

Access the briefings and feed into the discussions via #PeasantsRightsNow

Join us in the webinar ‘Filling the gaps in protecting human rights in a diverse rural world’ on Thursday 15th at 15 CET https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85125500729

Did you know that…?

Every year, during the week of 17th of April, the International Day of Peasant’s Struggle, initiated by La Via Campesina, aims to commemorate the massacre of the landless peasants movement in 1996 in Eldorado dos Carajás, Brazil while they were protesting for a comprehensive agrarian reform.

During the protest, the Brazilian military police in the Amazonian State of Pará attacked members of the Landless Workers Movement (MST) blockading a highway, killing 19 and injuring hundreds of peasants.

 

When the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on 30 January 2020, few imagined the scale of the devastation that the disease would wreak across the world, or for how long it would last. As COVID-19 swung from country to country on its deadly course, it became clear that governmental actions or inactions, and social-economic-political contexts were as responsible as the virus for triggering impacts.
 
The COVID-19 pandemic is far from abating: infections continue to spike in numerous countries with the emergence of new, more contagious strains of the SARS-COV-2 virus. The long awaited vaccines have started to be rolled out but may well be out of reach for majority of the world for several months or even years due to “vaccine apartheid.” Despite the limited availability of vaccines due to the time needed for production and testing, many wealthy nations have purchased sufficient vaccine supplies to immunize their own populations at least twice, and are backing monopolistic control over vaccines by pharmaceutical companies through legally enforceable intellectual property rights in the World Trade Organization.
 
This edition of the Nyéléni newsletter presents excerpts from some of the documentation and research conducted by practitioners and advocates of food sovereignty, particularly, Voices from the ground, From COVID-19 to radical transformation of our food systems, prepared by the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples Mechanism to Committee on World Food Security. Links to the full reports/papers are provided with each excerpt.

You can access the newsletter here.