Latest News
Former FIAN Brazil Secretary General Leads President Lula’s Anti-Hunger Programs
Valéria Burity has been advocating for the right to food for almost eight years as FIAN Brazil’s Secretary General. Now, with a key position inside the new government of President Lula da Silva, she has the challenge of restoring the food security programs dismantled by former president Jair Bolsonaro and promoting food sovereignty in a country where 50% of the population faces some degree of food insecurity.
FIAN International Annual Report 2022
Exposing causes of food crisis, defending seed biodiversity, supporting grassroots struggles
FIAN welcomes UN recommendations on China’s human rights obligations
Last week, the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights released its Concluding Observations following its review of China. The committee raised clear concerns about China’s failure to uphold its human rights obligations regarding economic, social, and cultural rights (ESC rights), both at home and abroad.
Website Launch – Defending Peasants’ Rights: Platform of rural struggles in action
A new collaborative knowledge base for the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas
UN report on covid’s impact on food security and nutrition
Urgent global action is needed to tackle increasing threats to the right to food in the post pandemic food crisis. Communities have adapted in order to survive while governments around the world have yet to agree on a coherent international response. The UN special rapporteur on the right to food highlights the structural constraints to a effective response and how a just transition to agroecology is the right way forward.
EU and UN instruments regulating corporations must work in tandem to guarantee justice
The UN Treaty aimed at regulating the activities of transnational corporations and other businesses (also commonly referred to as the Legally Binding Instrument, or LBI), and the proposed EU Directive on corporate sustainability due diligence (CSDDD) are two legal instruments currently under negotiations.
Civil society and Indigenous Peoples’ organizations demand a globally- coordinated policy response to tackle food crisis
Only if the crises are understood in a comprehensive and systemic way, can they be overcome. A profound, human rights-based and human rights-compliant transformation of the global food system and economic model is urgently needed.
Ecuador civil society lead the way in protecting peasant seed systems
Ecuador’s new constitution in 2008 established ecosystem rights, including declaring the country free of genetically modified (GM) crops but a 2017 law undermined this, paving the way for research on transgenic seeds and restrictions on the free circulation of peasant seeds. In January 2022, after years of court battles, the Transgenic Free Ecuador Collective, which included FIAN Ecuador, defeated the law, strengthening constitutional protections against GM seeds and crops.
Food Sovereignty Ghana fights for right to seeds
Ghana adopted a patent protection law in 2020 which criminalizes farmers who save and sell patented seeds, threatening draconian jail sentences of up to ten years. The grassroots movement Food Sovereignty Ghana (FSG) has challenged the law in court and the undue protection it gives to genetically modified (GM) seeds, notably GM versions of the country’s staple cowpea crop.
Seeds treaty must help halt corporate takeover
At a meeting of the International Seeds Treaty in India next week, governments will discuss how small hold farmers, peasants’ and Indigenous Peoples’ can use and manage their own seeds. Peasant and Indigenous Peoples’ organizations are mobilizing to assert their rights and fight laws that threaten their livelihoods while boosting the profits of agribusiness corporations.