Please join us on 17 September at 1:00 pm in Room XI at Palais des Nations (Geneva) for a rich and engaging discussion bringing together perspectives from different regions on:

“Our seeds, our rights, our future : Resisting the criminalization of peasant seeds and putting peasant seed systems at the heart of food system transformation”

We warmly encourage you to share this invitation with your networks and contacts.

Looking forward to seeing you there and to a fruitful exchange!

La entrada Our seeds, our rights, our future: Resisting the Criminalization of Peasant Seeds se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

La entrada The Future of the Fisheries: a press forum for journalists and storytellers se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

–> Event Name and Theme

• Event Name: 71st Anniversary of the Asian-African Conference.

• Event Theme: Reinvigorating the Bandung Spirit to Strengthen Global South Solidarity Amid Contemporary Global Dynamics in term of Geopolitics and Geoeconomics

–> Objectives of the Event

1. To analyse the relevance of the Bandung Spirit in fostering a framework of solidarity among Global South nations amidst contemporary global dynamics
2. To exchange struggle experiences among peasant organizations from Asia and Africa
3. Developing relevant policy recommendations to promote the Bandung Spirit as a guiding principle for the nation in addressing contemporary global dynamics

–> Format and Venue

• Format: Hybrid (In-Person and Online)

• In-Person Location : National Secretariat of Indonesian Peasant Union

–> Rundown Program:

La entrada INTERNATIONAL WEBINAR: Reinvigorating the Bandung Spirit to Strengthen Global South Solidarity Amid Contemporary Global Dynamics in term of Geopolitics and Geoeconomics se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

Join us os Friday 10 April for WAMIP youth-led webinar on “Empowering Young Pastoralist Leaders”!

This session is designed to engage young pastoralists and global stakeholders in a meaningful dialogue about the challenges faced by the next generation of rangeland stewards and the tools available to them to drive more meaningful decision-making.

Why Attend?

• Direct Insights: Hear directly from global pastoralist youth regarding their experiences in governance and decision-making.

• Practical Tools: Learn about the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants (UNDROP) as a political tool for advocacy.

• Expert Advice: Receive recommendations on political engagement from the IPC Youth Working Group and CSIPM.

• Networking: Connect with young leaders from all over the world.

La entrada Empowering Young Pastoralist Leaders: a youth-led webinar se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

Background:

As corporate control and concentration over natural resources expand, many peasants, fisher peoples, Indigenous Peoples, pastoralists, migrant communities, and rural workers face increasing dispossession of their territories – land, water, forests, and seeds – threatening livelihoods, cultures, and the right to food and food sovereignty.

The UN Working Group on UNDROP is currently preparing its report on territories of land and sea, examining how violations related to land, water, and forests impact the dignity, stability, and livelihoods of peasants and rural workers.

The Global Network for the Right to Food and Nutrition and DefendingPeasantsRights.org invite you to this dialogue with Carlos Duarte to exchange perspectives with UNDROP rights holders and contribute insights to the upcoming thematic report.

La entrada Territories of Land and Sea: Online dialogue with Carlos Duarte, Chair of the UN Working Group on UNDROP se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

La entrada International Webinar: Time for a Transformation of the Global Trade System se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

We are pleased to invite you to the conference “Lands for the Taking: Neo-Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Unravelling of International Law”, which will be held at the Geneva Graduate Institute on 12–13 March 2026.

Organised in collaboration with the United Nations Human Rights Council Working Group on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas and with the generous support of the Heinrich-Böll Foundation, the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Geneva Graduate Institute, this conference will address the pressing and sensitive issue of contemporary land capture in the context of international law, focusing on both overt and invisibilised forms of territorial appropriation. Bringing together a diverse group of legal scholars, historians, anthropologists, policymakers and civil society actors, the conference will critically examine the erosion of core legal principles such as sovereignty, self-determination, and collective rights to natural resources.

Key questions to be explored include:

• How effective are international legal frameworks in preventing various forms of land capture?
• What is the role of cronyism and corporate capture of state authority in land appropriation?
• How do Indigenous and peasant communities experience and resist displacement, dispossession and erasure?
• How are legal configurations, in both substance and form, related to modes of land capture, and what possibilities for resistance do they provide?
• How might law need to be transformed or reimagined to resist neo-imperial and corporate forms of land capture?

Preliminary programme:

La entrada Lands for the Taking:  Neo-Imperialism, Sovereignty, and the Unravelling of International Law se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

SAVE THE DATE AND JOIN THE WEBINAR, Defending Farmers’ Rights to Seeds: The Role of Judicial Action in Africa — Insights from Kenya.

The session will highlight a landmark Kenyan High Court ruling, explore how seed laws can affect farmers’ rights, and discuss lessons for advancing seed sovereignty across Africa.

La entrada [WEBINAR] Defending Farmers’ Rights to Seeds: The Role of Judicial Action in Africa — Insights from Kenya. se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

In commemoration of the 7th anniversary of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP), the Indonesian Peasants’ Union (Serikat Petani Indonesia / SPI) will host an international webinar entitled “The 7th Commemoration of UNDROP: Sharing Struggles and the Implementation of UNDROP.”

This discussion will serve as a space for collective reflection and exchange of experiences among peasants’ organizations and rural movements across countries in advancing and implementing UNDROP as a key instrument for the protection of peasants’ and rural peoples’ rights at local, national, and international levels.

Date: Friday, 19 December 2025 Time: 2:00 PM WIB (GMT +7)

La entrada The 7th Commemoration of UNDROP: Sharing Struggles and the Implementation of UNDROP se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

Let’s commemorate the historical day of the adoption of UNDROP!

Speakers include Prof Uche Ofodile, the Africa Representative to the UN Working Group on the UNDROP.

Objectives of the Webinar

1. To highlight the importance of UNDROP in the attainment of the rights of Peasants
2. To highlight the purpose, mandate and role of the UN Working Group on the UNDROP in attainment of the Rights of Peasants
3. To highlight key recommendations of the UN Working Group Annual Report on Challenges Undermining Rights in UNDROP published on 25 August 2025

La entrada WEBINAR: Rights of Peasants Seven Years After Adoption of UNDROP se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

The right to participation affirmed in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP) is far more than a procedural formality, it constitutes a cornerstone of democratic governance and a central pillar of rural peoples’ civil and political rights.

The UN Working Group on UNDROP, created in 2023 to promote the effective implementation of the Declaration, wrote its latest report on rural peoples and workers’ right to participation. The report highlights the main obstacles for the realisation of this right worldwide, while identifying good practices and addressing concrete recommendations to States for its effective implementation.

Despite their central role in global food systems, UNDROP’s rights holders remain largely marginalised from decision-making processes directly affecting their lives, territories, and environment. Building on the Working Group’s report, this webinar offers a platform for an international public dialogue on the right to participation, bringing together diverse rural constituencies of UNDROP’s rights holders and the current Chair of the UN Working Group on UNDROP.

We very much look forward to having rural movements and civil society organisations joining forces to exchange experiences, share strategies, and strengthen collective advocacy for the realisation of rural peoples’ right to participation. Building on the report of the Working Group, this dialogue aims to create bridges between local and international struggles, ensuring that the voices of those who feed the world and protect the environment are meaningfully included in shaping the laws and policies that affect them. Through shared learning and strengthened solidarity, this webinar aims to support a wider movement for more inclusive governance, greater social justice, and the genuine implementation of the UNDROP.

Objectives:

• Highlight the importance of the right to participation enshrined in UNDROP as a foundation for democratic governance and the realisation of rural peoples’ rights.
• Discuss key findings and recommendations from the UN Working Group’s latest report on the right to participation.
• Create a space for dialogue between rural movements, civil society organisations, and the UN Working Group, discuss experiences and perspectives on advancing the right to participation.
• Share concrete strategies and good practices that enhance rural peoples’ participation in decision-making processes affecting their livelihoods, lands and environment.

Speakers:

• Carlos Duarte – Current Chair of the UN Working Group on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas
• Loupa Pius – World Alliance of Mobile Indigenous People (WAMIP)
• Modesta Arevalos Ortiz – International Federation of Rural Adult Catholic Movements (FIMARC)
• Jones Spartegus – World Forum of Fisher People (WFFP)
• Norah Mlondobozi – Rural Women Assembly (RWA)
• Saúl Vicente – Unidad de la Fuerza Indígena y Campesina (UFIC – Mexico)
• Paula Gioia – La Via Campesina (LVC)

La entrada WEBINAR: Nothing About Us Without Us – Realising the Right to Participation of Rural Peoples and Workers through UNDROP se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

We have witnessed powerful mobilisation across continents — from national meetings and continental fora in Africa and Asia Pacific, to relentless social media action, the global campaign on Panama, our report launch on rising seas, our all-out campaign around COP-30 at Belém, and so much more!

Now, as we move toward International Human Rights Day (10 December) — the closing moment of a campaign that began on 5 November (the first-ever International Fisherwomen’s Day) and travelled through World Fisher Peoples’ Day (21 November)

At this final stretch, we are coming together to celebrate, to affirm our rights, and to continue resisting

As the Five-Week Campaign draws to an end, we pause — not to conclude, but to refuse the growing political project that seeks to privatise oceans and erase customary rights. So we ask: do you know what’s unfolding in Panama, and in coastal communities worldwide resisting ocean privatisation and erasure of customary rights? Victories have emerged through struggle. This webinar is a celebration and a call to resist.

Join us- December 12th at 3:00 PM CET / 7:30 PM IST / 8:00 AM Belize for a timely conversation about fisher peoples’ sovereignty

We are at a pivot point with the effects of climate change, and fisher peoples are at the frontlines of enduring the consequences. Not only are they enduring rising tides and natural disasters but their human and customary rights are being eroded by governments that want to take their territories away.
We understand that governments want these territories because they have been well kept and preserved by the people that depend on those resources the most. We must protect those people and defy any notion that they are not the rightful caretakers of their ancestral territories.

We have seen this first-hand through our Indigenous comrades in Panama who are in a battle with their government for their right to govern their ancestral island of Escudo de Veraguas, also called Degö island. Every local, national, and international law supports the Ngäbe Buglé peoples rights to their ancestral fishing grounds, yet this year the Ministry of the Environment of Panama, headed by Juan Carlos Navarro has decided to attack those rights by prohibiting subsistence fishing, occupying the island with police, confiscating fishing equipment used for ancestral fishing, and tearing down houses of Indigenous residents unannounced.

This November, it all came to a head with two meetings back to back, where Ngäbe Buglé fishers confronted their government with the backing of international guests like Carlos Duarte, Chair of UNDROP. This webinar will address this and other cases of dispossession that go against international law and basic human rights.

Opening Remarks

• Shalmali Guttal, Senior Analyst, Focus on the Global South, and member of the Working Group on UNDROP

Moderator

• Christiana Saiti, Indigenous Fisherwoman with the Emolo Forum in Kenya

Speakers reflect fishers from various regions:

• Panama:
  Alfonso Simón Raylan, Ngäbe Buglé, President of SITRAMAR (Union of Sea Workers)
  and Astriyaneth Yasmin Santo Baker, Ngäbe Buglé, Community Seafood Processer

• North America/Alaska:
  Melanie Brown, Yup’ik and Inupiaq Fisherwoman, Board Member of the NAMA (North American Marine Alliance)

• Latin America & Caribbean (Ecuador):
  Lider Gongora, C-CONEDM (Coordinadora Nacional Para la Defensa del Manglar)

• Africa (Uganda):
  Seremos Kamuturaki – Uganda Fisheries and Fishing community organisation(UFFCA)

• Palestine:
  Sa’ad Ziada- Union of Agricultural Work Committees – UAWC

• Asia (Indonesia):
  Masnu’ah- heads the PPNI Indonesia and is CC Member of WFFP, representing Asia Pacific region

Key Respondents and International Spokespeople

• Mary Lawlor, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders

• Carlos Duarte, Chair-Rapporteur, Working Group on UNDROP

• Herman Kumara, General Secretary, WFFP (World Forum of Fisher Peoples)

Organised by WFFP and Focus, and Facilitated by PARC-I
5WC webinar series

La entrada Determining Fisher Peoples Sovereignty: Reclaiming Panama for Indigenous Fishers and Our Victories for Customary Governance se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.