(Geneva, 16 September 2026) — La Via Campesina, supported by CETIM and FIAN International, is in Geneva from 12 to 19 September to participate in the 63rd session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UN HRC), which is taking place from 7 September to 7 October 2026.

This 63rd session is particularly important for us, as peasants, because UN Member States will consider the renewal of the mandate of the Working Group of Experts on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas. The Working Group’s three-year mandate, established in 2023, is coming to an end in October.

It is therefore crucial that the Member States of the Human Rights Council support and vote in favour of renewing the mandate.

Why is UNDROP important to us?

UNDROP is very important to us because we fought for its adoption to protect the rights and role of peasants and other people working in rural areas. They are the people who feed populations, preserve biodiversity, protect ecosystems, and sustain local economies and cultures.

UNDROP provides an internationally recognised human rights framework that supports measures such as comprehensive agrarian reform, the protection and strengthening of traditional seed systems, and the promotion of local food production. It strengthens the legitimacy of States in adopting policies that protect peasants and support food sovereignty.

The Declaration is also an important voice for countries and communities whose economies remain largely rural.

As Elizabeth Mpofu, a peasant farmer from Zimbabwe, explains:

“Rural communities and peasants produce more than 80% of the food we consume. Not only that, we, particularly women, are the backbone of local food markets, supplying a diversity of foods that does not come from supermarkets or stores. This frees our governments to focus on other urgent social, physical and economic development needs. Through our peasant seed systems, we have created vibrant rural economies, generated employment for millions of people, and educated our children.

My story is the story of billions of rural women who play an important role in the social reproduction of labour and in fighting hunger, malnutrition, unemployment and poverty around the world.”

Our mission in Geneva

Our mission here is to keep up the advocacy work we began almost thirty years ago when we launched this process of recognizing the rights of peasants at the international level.

The LVC delegation will meet with and engage the missions of UN HRC Member States, advocating for the renewal of the mandate of the Working Group of Experts on UNDROP.

The Working Group is essential to ensuring continuity in international efforts to advance the implementation of UNDROP. It supports dialogue, cooperation and capacity-building among States, independent experts and UNDROP rights holders.

The Working Group also ensures that the realities and struggles of peasants and other people working in rural areas continue to be represented within the UN system. Its work strengthens the struggle for peoples’ food sovereignty.

Defending the Right to Seeds

While in Geneva, LVC delegates will participate in and contribute to a Side Event and a Public Conference on the Right to Seeds. These events will take place following the presentation of the UNDROP Working Group’s report on the Right to Seeds to the UN Human Rights Council today.

The Right to Seed report can be accessed here

The Right to Seeds is central to the struggle for peasant rights, food sovereignty and agroecology. Peasant seed systems, built through generations of knowledge, exchange and collective stewardship, are essential for protecting biodiversity, sustaining local food systems and strengthening the autonomy of rural communities.

For La Via Campesina, renewing the mandate of the Working Group is not simply about maintaining a UN mechanism. It is about ensuring that the voices, rights and struggles of peasants remain visible and recognised within the international human rights system.

Globalise the Struggle! Globalise Hope!

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Artificial intelligence, controlled by the large transnational technology corporations of the Global North, reinforces capitalist power structures and shapes global agriculture. The IARAA aims to reorient this technology to serve peoples and rural communities’ needs and thereby break the corporate technological monopoly. In this way, it helps to strengthen food sovereignty and build fairer, more democratic and sustainable agricultural systems, transforming technology into a genuine lever for emancipation and social justice for the peasantry.

To better understand this initiative and inspire rural movements in different parts of the world, the Defending Peasants’ Rights platform conducted the following interview with representatives of the movements that conceived and developed this project:

1. What is IARAA and how did the initiative come about within the World March of Women and the MST?

IARAA stands for Artificial Intelligence for Agrarian Reform and Agroecology, a tool created by grassroots movements with the aim of democratising agroecological knowledge and strengthening Popular Agrarian Reform. It emerged from the Course on Artificial Intelligence for Grassroots Movements in the Global South, which took place in Shanghai in July 2025. At that time, as well as critically and technically engaging with the technologies involved in AI, activists from movements in various countries were introduced to the Chinese model of technological development. This experience led us to reflect on building the struggle for technological sovereignty in our countries, and to create tools to wage this struggle.

The Landless Workers’ Movement of Brazil (MST) and the World March of Women (MMM) were involved in developing this course and, together with the International Association for Popular Cooperation (Baobab), decided to establish the IARAA so that it could serve as a tool for the widespread adoption of agroecology, popular feminism and our perspective on technological sovereignty in Brazil.

To build the knowledge base that underpins this tool, we brought together a team of agroecology experts from the MST and the World March of Women, representing all regions of Brazil. It was these comrades who defined the conceptual, political and technical foundations that guide the IARAA’s responses. At the same time, we trained activists from the movements themselves in the more technical aspects of AI development, particularly in the RAG architectures that underpin the tool. We did not want to rely on an external technical team that did not understand the political project, but rather to train activists who understood this political commitment in all its dimensions. We have had the support of internationalist allies with more experience in developing RAG tools, and this collaboration has been fundamental.

2. How do you define the role of IARAA within the broader strategy of the popular struggle for food sovereignty?

The IARAA is not an isolated tool. It is part of a larger strategic project. It complements the various forms of struggle that seek to overcome the agribusiness model. It is a tool that aims to strengthen agroecology in local communities, understood by the movements as a strategic perspective for political action and for tackling the environmental crisis imposed by agribusiness. Sharing the body of agroecological knowledge is one of the fundamental tasks in this battle.

The ‘Semeadura’ profile is aimed at those working in the field who need quick, practical guidance. The ‘Mutirão’ profile goes further: it was developed to support technicians, community leaders and grassroots educators in organising participatory processes and grassroots training, serving as a tool to support not only production but also grassroots organisation within local communities. The ‘Quintal Produtivo’ profile, meanwhile, offers a distinct capacity to deal in depth with the concepts, theoretical discussions and political foundations of agroecology, serving as a reference for study, theoretical development and the training of activists, students and movement leaders.

By providing a repository of agroecological knowledge curated by the movements, IARAA helps ensure that everyone who uses it is better prepared for technical visits, collective work initiatives, rural schools and assemblies. It builds on what already exists and strengthens the struggle for what still needs to be achieved. IARAA also demonstrates, in practice, that grassroots movements are capable of creating their own technological tools. This is no small feat in a world where the development of artificial intelligence is concentrated in the hands of a few transnational corporations. However, it remains a very limited endeavour, mainly due to a lack of infrastructure. Overcoming this technological dependence requires a strategy for popular digital sovereignty, which must go hand in hand with the struggle for food sovereignty and energy sovereignty.

3. How does the IARAA incorporate a feminist perspective and help to tackle gender inequalities in access to technology and in the production of knowledge in the field?

Our perspective is not merely to guarantee women’s access to technology, but rather to position women as the subjects of technology. When women do not participate in the design, development and control of digital tools, these tools are unlikely to meet the demands of women’s lives. This has concrete consequences: most commercial AI systems are deeply gender-biased, fail to recognise women’s unpaid labour in the reproduction of life when considering ‘the economy’, and treat agriculture as if it were a neutral activity, without taking into account that women’s ways of practising agriculture are specific, diverse and, to a large extent, sustain life.

At IARAA, we address this on several fronts. Firstly, in the knowledge base: we have included a wide range of materials on popular feminism and feminist agroecology, so that the tool draws on these frameworks when generating its responses, rather than on the androcentric frameworks that dominate hegemonic knowledge production. Secondly, in the design of the tool: principles of popular feminism are embedded in the guidelines that steer IARAA, ensuring that it always takes into account the gendered division of labour, the need to build popular feminism, and the overcoming of patriarchy when formulating a response. Thirdly, regarding the team: we have a technical and political coordination team comprising many women, which represents an alternative approach to developing technology, drawing on different forms of knowledge, different questions and different priorities.

IARAA is designed to strengthen and raise the profile of women’s experiences in rural areas, recognising the invisible work they carry out and providing concrete support for the organisation of their struggle, whilst acknowledging them as key actors in agroecology.

4. How can IARAA make a concrete contribution to the implementation of the rights set out in the UNDROP, particularly the right to information (Art. 11), to the means of production (Art. 16), to agrarian reform (Art. 17) and to food sovereignty (Art. 15)?

UNDROP is a fundamental milestone because it recognises that peasant women and men have specific rights that the capitalist system systematically denies. IARAA positions itself as a tool to support the struggle for the realisation of these rights.

With regard to the right to information, what we see is that, unlike commercial chatbots which simplify responses and standardise practices, the IARAA is being programmed to take into account the diversity of biomes, production systems, social organisation and the material conditions of territories in its responses. The right to high-quality, politically informed, contextualised information presented in accessible language is central to the IARAA.

As for the means of production and food sovereignty, transnational corporations such as John Deere, BASF and Microsoft have made significant strides in Agriculture 4.0, implementing technological systems that capture data from hundreds of thousands of hectares via big tech firms. As a result, they are concentrating more and more power and gaining greater leverage to push ahead with their destructive agenda. The IARAA takes the opposite approach, putting advanced technology at the service of peasant families, boosting their productive capacity without creating technological dependence, and providing recommendations aligned with agroecology, grassroots organisation and the diversity of production systems.

On the subject of agrarian reform, we believe that IARAA is a tool to support the struggle and to advance the organisation and widespread adoption of agroecology. Popular Agrarian Reform is underpinned by the ability of peasant families to produce, remain and organise themselves on the land they have secured. A community that has access to high-quality, politically oriented agroecological knowledge produces more effectively, diversifies its production, reduces its dependence on external inputs and strengthens its autonomy. At the same time, the IARAA supports leaders and technical staff working in the settlements by organising training programmes, facilitating collective production planning and systematising experiences that can be shared across different territories. It also contributes to the political education of activists and students who need to grasp the theoretical foundations of the agrarian issue and agroecology in order to play an active role in the struggle.

5. What role does international cooperation, through the partnership with China, play in the project? How has this partnership been developing?

The partnership with Baobab and comrades from China was central to making IARAA a reality. Seeing the Chinese model of technological development at close quarters has provided us with much inspiration: a model in which the state directs technology to serve the people, and in which data is treated as a factor of production at the service of a collective project. We have received concrete technical support from colleagues living in a society where this debate and this development are more advanced, and who have already gained experience in developing open-source RAG tools and language models. In this sense, this has been and continues to be a fundamental partnership.

At the same time, we know that, here in Brazil, we need to develop our own tools, based on the struggles of our movements and rooted in our reality. The reality of technological dependence, low levels of industrialisation and historically insufficient investment in science and technology that characterises Brazil and much of the Global South weighs heavily on the possibility of developing projects such as IARAA. In this sense, South-South cooperation is fundamental to enabling experiments, sharing technical knowledge and jointly building projects that reflect our identity and are suited to solving our own problems.

6. How can we ensure that peasant knowledge is not diluted within the hegemonic logic of AI? And how can we scale up the use of IARAA without losing sensitivity to local realities?

The logic of large language models tends towards homogenisation and the reproduction of biases that mirror the logic of commercial agriculture. To address this, we have made several adjustments to the architecture of the IARAA system. A central element of this is the knowledge base, which consists of documents produced by movements and research institutions committed to agroecology (booklets, technical manuals, summaries of local experiences, training materials, scientific publications on agroecology, and policy documents produced by the movements themselves). As it operates on a RAG architecture, IARAA will not seek its answers on the internet or in the generic repositories that feed commercial AIs, which are rife with agribusiness biases and hegemonic thinking about agriculture.

IARAA’s knowledge base has been built with a focus on the diversity of Brazilian territories: it includes materials on different biomes, summaries of agroecological experiences from various regions of the country, and analyses covering different production systems, crops and climatic conditions. This diversity is intentional and aims to ensure that the tool has a genuine capacity to deal with specific situations, rather than merely with generic, decontextualised agriculture. Even so, there are certainly questions for which IARAA does not yet have sufficient answers in its database, and in such cases it is advised not to make things up. In such situations, the IARAA encourages users to seek information from organisations and peers in their local area. It was designed not to be the end point of a conversation, but a starting point: it encourages dialogue within the community, the exchange of knowledge between neighbours, and consultation with local leaders. Interaction with the tool should open doors to collective organisation.

One of the greatest challenges in developing the IARAA lies precisely in bringing together this entire body of knowledge in written form so that it can serve as a knowledge base for the AI, given that it is scattered across multiple repositories and, at times, exists only in oral form. The IARAA does not replace the knowledge of the people. It can amplify this knowledge and facilitate its circulation across different territories and generations, and it must be subject to a constant process of refinement by the movements in order to continue fulfilling this role.

7. How can the IARAA be integrated with the public policy on Technical Assistance and Rural Extension (ATER) aimed at peasants and smallholder farmers in Brazil, ensuring that it acts as a tool to strengthen technical assistance, rather than as a mechanism to replace human technical work in the countryside?

One of the principles of IARAA is that it is a tool to support, not to replace, ATER. The absence or precarious state of public Technical Assistance and Rural Extension (ATER) in most parts of Brazil is a reality we cannot ignore. The expansion of agroecologically-based ATER as a right is a long-standing struggle of the movements, and we believe that no technological tool will replace this work. But IARRA can play a concrete and immediate role: to be a reliable support for agroecological production right now. There are, however, limits that the tool will never be able to cross: the systemic analysis of the agroecosystem; the bond of trust built up over time between the technical advisor and the farming family; and the understanding of the territory gained by those who know it intimately in all its dimensions. IARAA is even programmed to encourage people to seek out the ATER services in their own area and to demand this right.

8. What are the challenges of translating processes of political education and class consciousness into an artificial intelligence tool?

This remains a major challenge, because our collective intelligence as movements does not exist solely in the documents we write. It exists in our interactions and in the political experiences we have with our bodies, not just with our minds. However, the technical expertise we have built up, particularly with comrades who are skilled in developing RAG architectures, has enabled us to go beyond what we initially thought possible in this regard. We have managed to embody several of our political principles in the tool’s architecture, and these are indeed rigorously taken into account in most of the responses. This was only possible because the people who developed the tool had a deep understanding of both the technology and the political project.

La entrada IARAA: Artificial intelligence at the service of the peasantry and food sovereignty in Brazil se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

Cuba’s experience demonstrates that the principles and provisions enshrined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP) can be translated into concrete public policies, legal frameworks, and initiatives aimed at guaranteeing and promoting the rights of peasant communities. This report highlights the progress achieved and the main initiatives developed in this regard, underscoring the commitment of the State and of rights holders themselves to the promotion and protection of peasant rights.

This experience also constitutes a valuable reference for other countries and contexts. It demonstrates that, even under conditions of vulnerability resulting from an ongoing imperialist offensive, and in the face of enormous challenges caused by external economic warfare, it is possible to advance the implementation of the rights recognized in the UNDROP when there is political will, a supportive institutional framework, and the active participation and mobilization of grassroots organizations and communities.

Beyond its national particularities, the Cuban case offers lessons and inspiration for other countries seeking to strengthen their public policies and legal frameworks in support of the rights of people living and working in rural areas.

See the full report below:

La entrada Report on the Promotion and Implementation of the UNDROP in Cuba se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

In wake of the recently approved “Law For The Strengthening And Protection Of The Agro-Industrial Sector, Energy Projects, Tourism, Livestock, And Small Agricultural Producers Of Honduras” promoting and protecting agribusiness, 1000 eviction orders of peasant communities have been ordered. This law compounds on existing violence, criminalization and intimidation of many peasant groups who have been fighting for their historic right to land and food and food sovereignty including for example the massacre that occurred on 21 May, 2026 in the community of Rigores, Colon that resulted in the deaths of 20 peasants.

Defending Peasants Rights extends its solidarity with the peoples and communities of Honduras, especially the peasant, Indigenous and Afrodescendant organizations that are currently facing evictions and other attacks. We also uphold these organization’s demands for access to justice at the local, national and international levels, and we call for the rights enshrined in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas to be protected and respected.

We invite you to read the statements prepared by La Via Campesina Honduras about these recent events:

Honduras: Peasant Organizations Denounce 1,000 Eviction Orders: https://viacampesina.org/en/2026/07/honduras-peasant-organizations-denounce-1000-eviction-orders/

La Vía Campesina Honduras denounces the massacre of peasants in the community of Colón: https://viacampesina.org/en/2026/05/la-via-campesina-honduras-denounces-the-massacre-of-peasants-in-the-community-of-colon/

La entrada Peasant, Indigenous and Afrodescendant communities under attack in Honduras se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

The protests have unified an impressive coalition of peasant, rural and urban workers. At the heart of this mobilization are powerful peasant organizations, as the Tupac Katari Federation, the Bartolina Sisa Federation of Indigenous peasant women, and the Unified Syndical Confederation of Peasant Workers (CSUTCB), who have mobilized throughout the whole country to resist, counteract and claim the respect of their fundamental rights. 

This current struggle is testament to the formidable political force of peasant organizations in the country. The protests are not simply about land or fuel subsidies; they represent a profound rejection of a dominant political and economic model perceived as violating peasants’ rights, food sovereignty principles and marginalizing rural and Indigenous communities. 

We invite you to read the three following declarations of solidarity with the struggle of the Bolivian people:

CLOC-Via Campesina https://viacampesina.org/en/2026/06/bolivia-cloc-la-via-campesina-rejects-the-divisive-and-polarizing-actions-promoted-by-rodrigo-paz/

Bartolinas Sisas Federation (Bolivian member of LVC) https://viacampesina.org/en/2026/06/bolivia-the-bartolina-sisa-organization-reaffirms-unity-denounces-government-attempts-at-division-and-co-optation/

CETIM https://www.cetim.ch/bolivia-solidarity-with-popular-struggles-for-food-sovereignty-and-social-justice/

La entrada Solidarity with Bolivia’s peasant and Indigenous organizations se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

This article was originally published in the journal Lendemains Solidaires, available in French here.

Food Sovereignty is intended as the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food, produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and the right of peoples to define their own food and agriculture systems. La Via Campesina insists that diverse, peasant-driven agroecological modes of production, based on centuries of knowledge, experience and accumulated evidence, are central to guaranteeing healthy food to everyone, while ensuring harmony with nature. This paradigm puts the aspirations and needs of those who produce, distribute and consume food at the heart of food systems and policies rather than the demands of markets and transnational corporations. It defends the interests of next generations. It offers a strategy to resist and dismantle the current corporate trade and food regime, building food, farming, pastoral and fisheries systems determined by local producers and users.

Background

The history and background of the concept of Food Sovereignty declared by LVC in 1996 is linked to the failure of the implementation of the concept of food security initiated by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). It was conceived to overcome the challenge of hunger and malnutritinon that was and is particularly – and paradoxically – affecting the rural areas.

During the World Food Summit in 1996, La Via Campesina coined the term, insisting upon the centrality of small-scale food producers, the accumulated wisdom of generations, the autonomy and diversity of rural and urban communities and the solidarity between peoples, as essential components for crafting policies around food and agriculture.

We must remind ourselves that the only way to make our voice heard is by uniting and building new alliances within and across every border. Rural and Urban Social Movements, Trade Unions and civil society actors, progressive governments, academics, scientists and technology enthusiasts must come together to defend this shared vision for the future. Peasant women and other oppressed gender minorities must find equal space in the leadership of our movement at all levels. We must sow the seeds of solidarity in our communities and address all forms of discrimination that keep rural societies divided.

In the commomeration of the 25 years of La Via Campesina, it was declared that Food Sovereignty offers a manifesto for the future of our planet. It is an idea that unites humanity and puts us at the service of Mother Earth that feeds and nourishes us.

"Food Sovereignty offers a manifesto for the future of our planet."

Linking Food Sovereignty to Right to Development

Linking food sovereignty to the framework and concept of the Right to Development (RtD) is very relevant, as the latter must be intended as the right of peasant and rural populations to design and build their own rural development models, autonomously and independently, thus aligning with the perspective and principles of food sovereignty.

The Right to Development is conceived as a process of empowerment that necessarily implies social mobilization and struggle. It becomes a programmatic right that requires structural and specific measures from public authorities in favor of rural workers and communities. Hence the RtD is also a political instrument, a strategic counter-hegemonic legal framework aimed at resisting the dangerous policies imposed by the architecture of globalization, which primarily benefits transnational agribusiness corporations and financial capital, which have always contributed to marginalizing peasantry.

The interrelation between the RtD, food sovereignty and peasants’ rights is further confirmed in the ongoing negotiation of the Draft International Covenant on the Right to Development within the United Nations¹. This process aims at legally strenghtening and further consolidating the legal framework of RtD, initially codified through the UN Declaration on the Right to Development (1986).

The Draft Covenant text includes a specific provision recognizing the right of peasants “to determine and develop priorities and strategies to exercise their right to development.” This explicit reference represents both a legal and political advancement. It strengthens the interpretation of the RtD as a right belonging not only to States, but also to organized peoples and communities—particularly rural populations historically excluded from decision-making.

By inserting peasants and rural people as a constitutive element of development, this new legal instrument reinforces the centrality of self-determination in defining agricultural, economic, and territorial priorities. It also consolidates the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP) recognition that peasants must not merely be beneficiaries of policies, but rights-holders capable of designing, implementing, and monitoring their own development models (art. 3 and 10).

What Is Peasant-Led Rural Development?

Our vision of development is cantered on the development of peasant agriculture through agroecology, the only guarantee of dignified and just livelihoods and working conditions for people across the world, especially in rural areas as centre of food production. Therefore LVC proposed and finally success in getting the United Declaration on the rights of peasant and other people in rural areas ( UNDROP) as tool of struggle for Food Sovereignty.

To achieve this, we require public policies that regulate agricultural and food markets, as peasants always do not get the decent income from their food production’s activities for their livelihood and continuing food production ( article 16 of UNDROP). This is because of market mechanism-based food system with corporation control the market .

Among these regulatory mechanisms, we advocate for Minimum Support Prices (MSP), meaning that States must set support prices that cover peasants’ production costs and guarantee a fair income margin. This mechanism reverses the logic of dumping, which depresses prices, thereby protecting peasant dignity.

We also defend public procurement and public reserves. We demand the restoration of public food stock systems to regulate markets and stabilize prices. Public authorities should buy crops during harvest seasons to guarantee floor prices and release them during shortage periods to avoid speculation. Minimim Support Price, Public Procurement and public reserves are for instance implemented in Indonesia and India.

"Public authorities should buy crops during harvest seasons to guarantee floor prices and release them during shortage periods to avoid speculation."

These mechanisms are indispensable because the neoliberal model dismantled these regulatory tools, exposing small producers to competition with large subsidized agribusiness farms. LVC calls for strengthening local and regional supply chains, arguing that trade must prioritize short circuits over transcontinental flows.

Agrarian Reform, the right to land and the RtD

Agrarian reform is linked to access to and control of land and territory, which is now considered a fundamental right, enshrined in international human rights law, particularly through Article 17 of UNDROP. Many phenomenas and corporate initiatives violate and/or threaten the right to land: agrarian conflicts, criminalization, evictions, land grabbing, green grabbing and land concentration driven by agribusiness for large scale of agriculture (monocultures); carbon markets, biofuel and biodiversity offset; mining activities; and “development projects”, as the construction of highways, dams and others. These are the reasons why LVC fights at all levels for comprehensive and people-centered agrarian reform.

This approach goes beyond mere land titling, calling for effective and equitable redistribution of land. It includes setting to clearly limit property size, banning the sale of land to others and foreign entities, and expropriating holdings that rely on illegal or slave labour, especially in large scale agriculture and big plantations.

"This approach goes beyond mere land titling, calling for effective and equitable redistribution of land."

This vision directly opposes market-based “counter-reforms” promoted by the World Bank in the 1990s, which led to land privatization and a new wave of land concentration, imposing a single rural development model, rooted in neoliberalism and favourable to agribusiness interests.

The struggle for rights to land through implementing agrarian reform is therefore part of the RtD, it is a struggle for self-determination and for the right to define one’s own land systems. We advocate for a political understanding of land — as a social and productive ecosystem essential to life — and not as a mere financial asset.

Agroecology, the right to seeds and the RtD

In 2015, during the Second Nyeleni Forum², delegations representing diverse organizations and international movements of small-scale food producers and consumers gathered to get to a common understanding of agroecology, as a key component of Food Sovereignty.

Agroecology is intended to transform and repair our material reality in food systems, facing a rural world devastated by industrial food production and today by the so-called Green and Blue Revolutions. Agroecology is, thus, also political: it aims at challenging and transforming structures of power in society. It puts the control of seeds, biodiversity, land and territories, waters, knowledge, culture, and all the commons, in the hands of the peoples who feed the world.

The control of local/native seeds is a key mean of production amid the corporate offensive of seed industries to keep consolidating chemical agriculture. These industries develop genetically modified organismes (GMOs) seeds, while promoting patents (intellectual property rights) at the expenses of local/native seeds. Therefore, LVC strongly rejects the commodification of living organisms, notably through GMOs, patents, and the privatization and commercialization of biodiversity.

In this sense, the movement defends the collective and inalienable right of peasants to save, use, exchange, and sell their seeds, in accordance with Article 9.3 of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources and Article 19 of UNDROP.

Faced with industrial attempts to use synthetic biology and genomics, LVC organizes seed exchanges and campaigns to safeguard traditional community-based systems of biodiversity management. Here again, the struggle for seed rights is rooted in the RtD, in the right of peasants to design and implement their own seed development models based on their traditional and Indigenous practices.

The neoliberal globalization against the rights of peasants

International financial and trade institutions are the main forces behind violations against peasantry and the dismantling of peasant based food systems. The triptych composed of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) prevents governments—especially those of the Global South—from implementing essential public policies in favor of rural populations through coercive mechanisms and conditions. These neoliberal actors forced a reduction in the role of the state in the provision of public services, while increasing the role of the private sector (through privatization).

"These neoliberal actors forced a reduction in the role of the state in the provision of public services, while increasing the role of the private sector."

In this regard, it is important to recall that the integration of agriculture into the global free-trade regime through the WTO Agreement on Agriculture (1994) was a devastating turning point. This policy transformed food into a mere commodity and systematically deregulated the agricultural sector, dismantling market regulation tools such as minimum intervention prices and public reserves. The consequences have been systemic: falling agricultural prices, destruction of local peasant markets, loss of autonomy over seeds, and the expulsion of millions of peasants from their territories in favor of large landholders.

The tragic act of South Korean peasant Lee Kyung Hae, who took his life in Cancún in 2003 while wearing a banner that stated “WTO Kills Farmers,” remains emblematic of the violence of this neoliberal and neocolonial-imperialist system.

However, the neoliberal trade regime is not only the WTO, but it is also characterized by the spread of free trade and investment agreements at both regional, mulitilateral and bilateral level. In addition, today we are also facing Trump’s trade policies, which force countries to open market fully, but not vice-versa.

The Struggle for an Alternative Trade Framework

In response to the damage caused by the WTO Agreement on Agriculture, LVC launched a process to urgently claim for the creation of a new international trade framework grounded in food sovereignty. This new framework must be based on solidarity, international cooperation, and social justice. Its main purpose is to redefine the function of trade—from a tool that maximizes the profits of large transnational corporations to one that guarantees human rights and food sovereignty.

By asserting that agricultural and food trade must comply with human rights—and that the right to food is a fundamental human right, not a commodity—LVC advocates for a new trade framework that protects peasants’ rights and legitimizes States’ measures such as market protections against dumping and guaranteed support prices for producers.

"La Via Campesina advocates for a new trade framework that protects peasants’ rights and legitimizes States’ measures such as market protections against dumping and guaranteed support prices for producers."

To this end, LVC identifies the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) as the legitimate forum to build this renewed multilateral consensus, considering it a counterweight capable of realigning global trade norms with human rights.

Conclusion

Development, as conceptualized by La Vía Campesina, is an integrated and radical response to the systemic failures of the neoliberal model. It is defined by the achievement of dignity, social justice, and ecological sustainability for rural populations.

We will continue to fight for our rights by all means at our disposal, but above all through the popular mobilization of our masses. We will continue to consolidate advocacy through international legal instruments, such as UNDROP, to demand the implementation of redistributive and regulatory public policies that can realize our right to development, namely our right to define our own rural and agricultural development systems and models, in light of the food sovereignty paradigm.

By emphasizing autonomy and peasant knowledge, and by placing rural women and youth at the center of struggle, LVC proposes a pathway that prioritizes the protection of ecosystems and communities over capital accumulation, reaffirming its commitment to systemic transformation of the global economic, trade, financial, and social order.

1 https://docs.un.org/en/A/HRC/54/50

2. https://nyeleni.org/en/homepage/

La entrada The Right to Development: A Leverage for Food Sovereignty and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants (UNDROP) se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

More than a commemorative gathering, the webinar provided a space for exchange between peasant and rural organisations as well as social movements working in diverse contexts across Asia and Africa. It focused on sharing lived experiences of struggle and resistance, while also examining how ongoing geopolitical and geoeconomic shifts are affecting rural communities. Contributors included members of La Via Campesina and partner organisations such as SPI (Indonesia), CBOP (Burkina Faso), MONLAR (Sri Lanka), CAJF (Sudan), and PKRC (Pakistan). The event also featured the participation of Shalmali Guttal, expert member of the UN Working Group on UNDROP for the Asian region.

Watch the full webinar below (conducted in a multilingual format, with participants speaking in English, Bahasa Indonesia, or French) :

La entrada International webinar – Reinvigorating the Bandung Spirit to Strengthen Global South Solidarity se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

The adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP) in 2018 marked a historic milestone for rural justice. However, to date, its development and implementation have largely focused on the peasantry. It is essential to remember that the rights enshrined in UNDROP are fully applicable to other peoples who live and work in rural and aquatic territories, including fisher peoples. Article 1, paragraph 2 of UNDROP is very clear in this regard: “This Declaration applies to any person engaged in artisanal or small-scale agriculture, crop planting, livestock raising, pastoralism, fishing, forestry, hunting or gathering, as well as handicrafts related to agriculture or other related occupations in a rural area.”

In this sense, it is fundamental to continue advocating for the expansion of UNDROP’s reach to the various constituencies covered by its definition, including fisher peoples, by strengthening their appropriation of the Declaration and promoting their visibility as full rights-holders.

“And first was the water…
Still the earth did not peek through the waves,
still the earth was only a soft and trembling mud…
There were no flower moons nor clusters of islands…
In the womb of the young water, continents were being gestated…”

Dulce María Loynaz, fragment of Creation (Author ‘s translation).

Interpreting the UNDROP from the perspective of aquatic territories

For decades, the struggle for territorial rights has been imagined almost exclusively  in terms of land. Nevertheless, when discussing territories in the context of Small-Scale Fisheries (SSF), it is imperative to highlight the absolute interdependence between water and land for the livelihoods, food sovereignty, and cultural identity of these communities. The coast and inland water bodies represent a complete living environment where daily life, livelihoods, and culture intersect; where the land ends, the territory continues into the water.

In this spirit, a fundamental contribution that artisanal fisheries can provide to the interpretation of UNDROP is the use of paradigmatic concepts emerging from the social sciences and social movements in Latin America and the Caribbean, such as Maritorio (Maritory) or Territory of Life. This recognizes coastal and marine areas of collective use as spaces of food sovereignty shaped by the people who traditionally inhabit them; places understood as spiritual and intercultural spaces of “affection with nature and ancestry,” rather than merely extraction zones.

In turn, this vision expands toward the concept of Acuatorio (Aquatory), a term that allows for the understanding of the “amphibious territorialities” of the communities that inhabit these spaces. This perspective recognizes that the protection of artisanal fisheries requires an approach that treats all aquatic ecosystems—rivers, lagoons, wetlands—equally, as indivisible territories of land and water.

Consequently, the right to land and other natural resources enshrined in Article 17 of the UNDROP must be interpreted as a framework that encompasses the complex relationships that fishing communities maintain with their aquatic environments, reaffirming that water and land constitute inseparable dimensions of this right.

The Threats: “Ocean Grabbing” and the Blue Economy

Today, fisheries territories face an unprecedented onslaught of threats to their lives and livelihoods. Under the guise of development and sustainability, luxury tourism projects, offshore energy, industrial aquaculture and fisheries, and deep-sea mining exploration are destroying marine ecosystems and grabbing fishing grounds and landing sites. This is known as  Ocean Grabbing or Blue Grabbing.

Some approaches to  environmental conservation, when applied under the “Fortress” model – meaning protected areas that are closed off and exclude traditional inhabitants – have also become a threat. UNDROP, in dialogue with the Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries (SSF Guidelines), must be used to reclaim the important role of fisher peoples—who have inhabited these territories for centuries—as the true guardians of biodiversity and ecosystems. As established by these Guidelines, conservation must not be carried out at the expense of communities, but in collaboration with them. Therefore, the protection of their tenure rights and the recognition of their traditional practices and knowledge is—in itself—a conservation strategy.

The Defensive Triad: UNDROP, SSF Guidelines, and Tenure

The strength of UNDROP for fisher peoples lies in its capacity to dialogue with other international instruments. For protection to be effective, the Declaration must be read in light of the SSF Guidelines and the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure (VGGT).

While the SSF Guidelines and the VGGT provide the technical roadmap for responsible governance, UNDROP elevates these recommendations to the status of Human Rights. Together, they form a legal framework that enables fisher peoples to demand and struggle for the redistribution of land/water, preferential access to fishing zones and resources, and the collective management of their aquatic territories—both coastal and inland—as well as protection against all arbitrary and illegal displacement or eviction. Furthermore, this framework sustains the guarantee of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) and the implementation of territorial impact assessments regarding large-scale “Blue Economy” projects.

UNDROP also represents a pioneering instrument by recognizing the right to water as an essential pillar for a dignified life for small-scale fisher peoples, and as the foundation of their livelihoods. This right is understood not only for human consumption but also for food production and, by extension, for fishing. Likewise, by recognizing community management systems, this right reinforces the autonomy of fishing communities in the governance of their territories, where traditional knowledge plays a key role. Finally, the Declaration also establishes provisions for States to protect communities against third parties, which is crucial in the face of extractive or polluting activities that threaten both access to aquatic territories and the integrity of ecosystems.

Women at the Heart of Fisheries

If the UNDROP is to be used as a shield for the peoples of the sea, its protection must be particularly robust for women, who sustain the life and the economic fabric of their communities, yet face systemic and legal invisibility. In artisanal fisheries, as in other rural sectors, the relationship with territory is deeply marked by a gender dimension: while men are usually out on the water, women’s productive and vital space is the shoreline and the coastal strip. It is there that they process, dry, and market the fish; consequently, they are disproportionately affected by land and ocean grabbing and the advance of the “Blue Economy.”

This differentiated impact has been explicitly recognized by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) in its General Recommendation No. 34, noting that rural women—including fisherwomen—are not a homogeneous group and suffer from intersecting forms of discrimination. This intersectional perspective has been reinforced by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (OC-27/21), which establishes that women who depend on natural resources face “aggravated vulnerability” when their environment is destroyed, as it breaks not only their source of income but also their fabric of care and community life.

Therefore, under a logic of comprehensive protection, the UNDROP cannot be interpreted in isolation, but must be understood in permanent dialogue with CEDAW and  the SSF Guidelines – particularly Chapter 8. This normative articulation constitutes the basis for demanding that States fully recognize women’s work in fisheries, respect their knowledge regarding the sustainable use of resources, and guarantee tenure security for land adjacent to the water. This, in turn, is essential for fisherwomen to stop being invisible and to act as stakeholders, responsible decision-makers, and beneficiaries.

In this sense, Article 4 of UNDROP establishes provisions for States to adopt measures to eliminate discrimination against fisherwomen and guarantee their full and effective participation in all decision-making processes. It also recognizes their right to access productive resources, services, and social protection on an equal footing, addressing the structural inequalities they face. Thus, Article 4 not only complements CEDAW standards but also consolidates a transformative approach that demands public policies with a gender perspective in artisanal fisheries.

From Recognition to Realization: UNDROP as a Living Instrument for Small-Scale Fisheries

Although the term “peasant” shapes much of UNDROP’s language, its scope is unequivocal: small-scale fishers and fishworkers are full rights-holders under this instrument. As the International Collective in Support of Fishworkers (ICSF) recently argued before the UN Working Group on UNDROP, the challenge is no longer one of recognition, but of realization. It is time to definitively break down the “invisible frontier” that has historically excluded water territories from agrarian debates and ensure that fishing communities take ownership of the Declaration as their own shield.

From this perspective, making UNDROP meaningful in the lives of the fisher peoples requires moving beyond a purely declaratory reading of rights. The Declaration must be mobilized in tandem with the SSF Guidelines and the VGGT, not only as complementary instruments but as part of a coherent architecture for rights-based fisheries governance. In this framework, human rights cease to be abstract guarantees and become tools for action, rooted in the lived experiences, knowledge systems, and collective organization of the communities.

Ultimately, transforming UNDROP into an operational tool is both a political and a collective process. It depends on strengthening the capacities of small-scale fisheries organizations, their active participation in decision-making spaces, and the reinforcement of the strategic alliances that sustain their struggles. Historical experience demonstrates that durable change emerges from this interplay between community-based resistance and a sustained technical and political presence in global governance arenas.

UNDROP can serve as a vital compass, but only if it is actively steered by the very communities it seeks to protect. The task ahead is to ensure that the fisher peoples not only see themselves reflected in this Declaration, but use it as a tool to protect  the futures of their territories, their livelihoods, and their rights.

Candelaria Aráoz Falcón – International Collective in Support for Fishworkers (ICSF)

La entrada UNDROP as a Shield for Fisher Peoples se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

La Via Campesina releases its position document on wars around the world, in the framework of the 30th anniversary of the International Day of Peasant Struggles.

Bagnolet, April 17, 2026 | Today marks 30 years since the Eldorado dos Carajás massacre, a tragic event that became a milestone within La Vía Campesina, where landless peasants in Brazil were killed by federal police for defending their right to agrarian reform. Kilometers away and 30 years after what happened, the world continues to bleed innocent peoples and families in an increasingly critical scenario marked by the pressure of imperial power and geopolitical tensions.

Commemorating the International Day of Peasant Struggles, our movement presents the position document: Food Sovereignty in the Face of War, Imperialism, and the Hunger of Peoples Around the World, a document that addresses key elements to understand the impact of wars and imperial power on the food sovereignty of peoples. The document has considered important figures provided by reports from the FAO Committee on Fisheries through its report on The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI), the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), among others, regarding global conflicts and their impacts on food systems in affected countries.

“We are living in an era of unprecedented convergence of crises. Never in recent history have so many armed conflicts erupted simultaneously across so many continents. The wars in Gaza, Lebanon, Mali, Ukraine, Sudan, Yemen, Myanmar, the Sahel, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Syria are not isolated tragedies. They are symptomatic eruptions of a single structurally ill global system, built on the logic of endless capital accumulation, structural racism, escalating geopolitical power tensions, resource extraction, and imperial neo-colonialist domination.”

La Via Campesina, as a movement where peasant organizations converge at the global level, has reflected on this and has constantly denounced the use of hunger as a weapon of war and the business behind it. With destruction and military occupation, the economies of the United States, Israel, and many countries of the Global North benefit; promoting ongoing genocides and carrying out an incalculable number of human rights violations and crimes against humanity, at risk of going unpunished, where women and children are the most vulnerable.

We invite our member organizations and allied organizations to study and share the document as a popular educational tool and as a contribution from the global peasantry in its own voice.

United against imperialism, neocolonialism, the criminalization of our struggles, and the dispossession of our territories!

La entrada Food Sovereignty in the Face of War, Imperialism, and the Hunger of Peoples Around the World se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

CETIM and La Via Campesina were in Yaoundé, Cameroon, to closely monitor the proceedings of the 14th WTO Ministerial Conference (26–29 March 2026). CETIM and LVC advocate the dismantling of the WTO, as its paradigm is based on a deeply asymmetrical economic and trade architecture that serves the interests of transnational capital to the detriment of local peoples and economies, particularly in the Global South.

The Ministerial Conference concluded without a final declaration or the reform that had been announced. The majority of issues, including agriculture, e-commerce and investment facilitation, were referred back to Geneva due to a lack of consensus. Many participants attribute this failure largely to the strategy of the United States, which made any negotiations conditional on the adoption of a permanent moratorium on tariffs related to e-commerce, causing significant tensions, particularly among countries in the Global South. Disagreements on this issue, as well as on other priorities such as food security and intellectual property rules, stalled the negotiations. This failure thus confirms the analysis that the WTO is now largely paralysed, incapable of producing decisions conducive to fair and equitable trade development, and underscores the need for a fundamental rethinking of the international trading system towards a truly democratic framework that does not marginalise the voices of the peoples and countries of the Global South.

The Yaoundé Declaration, which we reproduce below and which was published by La Via Campesina, highlights the systemic effects of a trade model that subordinates food to the logic of profit, accelerates the marginalisation of small-scale food producers and undermines peoples’ sovereignty over their food systems. Against a backdrop of geopolitical, economic and environmental crises, increased dependence on global markets appears not only as a dead end, but as a factor exacerbating the structural vulnerabilities that oppress people.

In the face of this multidimensional crisis, LVC’s Yaoundé Declaration aims to offer hope by proposing a structured institutional policy alternative. By affirming food sovereignty as a fundamental principle, it calls for a rethinking of international trade based on the primacy of human rights, solidarity among peoples and respect for ecosystems. In line with the principles enshrined in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP), this new framework has to uphold and reinforce the recognition of peasants’ rights to land, seeds, biodiversity and food sovereignty, among others. It thus calls for agriculture to be removed from the WTO and for the current WTO framework to be transcended in order to build a new trading system that serves the self-determination of peoples.

Read the Yaoundé Declaration

Read CETIM’s communiqué prior to the Ministerial Conference: The WTO at a deadlock: Will the Ministerial Conference save it?

La entrada Yaoundé Declaration: The WTO And Free Trade Cause Hunger, Poverty And Inequality se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

The Sri Lankan government’s move to establish solar power plants in Hambantota has triggered a major backlash from peasant unions and environmental groups. More than 1,000 acres of forest ( a critical elephant habitat and biodiversity zone) have been cleared to make way for the so-called green energy initiative led by 17 solar companies. Over 5,000 farming families in areas such as Mayurapura and Gonnooruwa now face a surge in human–elephant conflict, threatening their safety, crops, and food security.

We are reproducing an appeal from MONLAR asking its allies in the international community to write to the President of Sri Lanka denouncing the move and calling for an immediate halt to the ongoing clearing operations.

To the members of the International Civil Society and Activists Community,

We are writing to you as the Movement for Land and Agriculture Reform to bring to your immediate attention a critical human rights and environmental crisis unfolding in the Hambantota district of Sri Lanka, one that is being deliberately disguised as a “green” energy initiative.

The farming communities of Hambantota are no strangers to struggle. They spent months protesting and advocating to secure the gazettement of the elephant corridor, a landmark legal protection for the ancient movement routes of endangered Asian elephants and the livelihoods of the communities who share that land. It is in the wake of that very victory that 17 solar companies have now moved in, clearing the land those communities fought to protect. Their struggle is being erased.

This is not the first time Hambantota’s people have faced dispossession.

The region has already borne the weight of the Belt and Road Initiative, including the controversial Hambantota Port lease and aggressive urbanisation that communities strongly opposed, bringing forced displacement and development imposed without transparency or consent. The current solar expansion follows the same pattern: irregular development proceeding in defiance of law and community rights, with both people and animals bearing the consequences.

While presented as renewable energy, a massive solar expansion is ravaging over 1,000 acres of forest within the Hambantota Managed Elephant Reserve (MER), using heavy machinery and deliberate fire to clear critical wildlife corridors, effectively “green-grabbing” land that sustains both endangered elephants and local farming communities.

The Impact

• Human Elephant conflict: By blocking ancient movement corridors (such as Sanakku Gala and Kapapu Wewa) with electric fences, the project is driving elephants into villages.
• Livelihood Crisis: More than 5,000 farming families in areas like Mayurapura and Gonnooruwa are now facing a surge in Human-Elephant Conflict, threatening their safety, crops, and food security.
• Governance Failures: Reports indicate these projects have bypassed mandatory Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) and ignored the protests of local communities and conservationists.
• Counter-Productive Climate Action: As noted by local experts, clearing and burning dry-zone forests releases stored carbon and disrupts local rainfall patterns, undermining the very emissions-reduction goals the solar project claims to serve.

A Just Transition must be inclusive, transparent, and ecologically sound. If renewable energy is built on the ruins of biodiversity and the displacement of the rural poor, it replicates the same extractive logic of the fossil fuel era that it hopes to eliminate.

APPEAL FOR INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY

We are asking your organization to show solidarity with the affected communities of Hambantota by sending a formal letter to the President of Sri Lanka. Your international standing can provide the necessary pressure to:

1. An immediate halt to all clearing within the Managed Elephant Reserve.
2. Strict adherence to the law, ensuring comprehensive EIAs and Archaeological Impact Assessments are conducted and made public.
3. Prioritizing Rooftop Solar and Degraded Lands (such as abandoned mines) rather than primary forests and productive agricultural land, as recommended by local environmental advocates.

We would be honoured to have your voice join ours in demanding a transition that is truly just for both people and the planet.

In solidarity, MONLAR TEAM.

The email template to be sent by movements and organisations to the President of Sri Lanka can be found below. Please read the instructions for completing the template on page 2 of the document:

La entrada Sri Lanka: MONLAR Urges International Support over Hambantota Green Energy Expansion Violating Peasants and Environmental Rights se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.