In a regional scenario marked by a multidimensional crisis—characterized by the advance of agribusiness, the criminalization of popular struggles, and the weakening of collective rights—peasants continue to be one of the most vulnerable groups and, at the same time, one of the most strategic for food sovereignty, the defense of territories, and social justice. In this context, the effective implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP) becomes an urgent and deeply political task.

With the aim of strengthening this process, CLOC–Via Campesina has promoted the creation of an Observatory for Peasants’ Rights, an initiative designed as a tool for coordination, monitoring, visibility, and support for rural struggles in Latin America and the Caribbean.

In this interview, Diego Monton, leader and representative of the National Indigenous Peasant Movement (MNCI)-Somos Tierra of Argentina and CLOC–Via Campesina, delves into the objectives, scope, and challenges of this new collective instrument, as well as its potential to support peasant struggles, influence public policy, and strengthen grassroots organization.

What are the main objectives of this new Observatory? How do you hope it will strengthen popular struggles in rural areas and influence public policy on peasant rights in Latin America and the Caribbean?

The Observatory is an initiative intended to serve primarily as a tool for CLOC and La Vía Campesina in Latin America, as well as for other allied organizations. In addition, we want it to be a resource for the UN Working Group of Experts on UNDROP itself, insofar as it makes available relevant information on developments taking place in each of the countries.

The central objective is therefore, on the one hand, to make visible situations in which the rights of peasants are being violated in the countries and in the region, while also emphasizing positive experiences at two levels. First, those related to legislation and public policies based on UNDROP that are progressively turning the rights set out in the Declaration into concrete state actions. Second, by highlighting initiatives led by rural organizations themselves—concrete actions that make it possible to guarantee the rights of peasants.

The Observatory also aims to offer a consultation tool for organizations: a space in which various studies and reports are made available from the perspective of the Declaration itself. We seek to produce information and provide analysis and knowledge that are quickly accessible and that can serve as a basis for the formulation of public policies and legislation. By building links among organizations, the CLOC collective on peasants’ rights, and the UN Group of Experts itself, the Observatory will help provide systematic follow-up on the process of promoting and implementing UNDROP.

In a context of systemic multidimensional crisis, marked by a frontal offensive by the dominant elites who are riding the wave of neo-fascism, the situation in rural areas is increasingly conflictive: how will the Observatory contribute to raising awareness and defending peasants’ rights in the face of predatory agribusiness practices (land grabbing, GMOs, or the criminalization of protests)?

The Observatory must be able to engage in dialogue with peasant struggles and help strengthen them. In fact, in these crisis contexts, the strategy of some states—or of agribusiness financial capital itself—is to stigmatize peasant life and work.

UNDROP makes it possible to legitimize the role of the peasantry, not only by enshrining their rights, but also by recognizing the role they play in promoting food sovereignty, combating climate change, and addressing the phenomenon of migration.

More rights of peasants also mean more rights for workers in all countries, and we aim to contribute—through communication and access to information—to strengthening organizations’ spaces for negotiation. We are convinced that the main tool available to the peasantry in Latin America is mobilization, struggle, and active organization. The Observatory seeks precisely to accompany these processes, while also supporting public institutions that have good intentions and that will be able to find, in addition to specific information, concrete experiences on which to create or develop new initiatives.

In addition, academic circles will be contributing to and drawing from the Observatory. And, as mentioned earlier, the UN Working Group of Experts on UNDROP itself has committed to contributing reports and articles to the Observatory, and to using its outputs to inform advocacy at the international level.

What structure, tools, and methodologies does the Observatory have for monitoring and documentation? And what types of data or indicators will be considered key for its evaluation?

Well, at this initial stage the structure is very simple, with a small staff in terms of the Observatory’s coordination and a few people dedicated to systematization. Work is being carried out in coordination with CLOC, drawing on different experiences of participatory research, and in collaboration with Alianza Biodiversidad, human rights organizations in the region, and other networks.

The aim is for this to be a cooperative, network-based effort that makes it possible to pool resources and to give visibility to many initiatives that are already being carried out and published in different spaces.

There are news agencies covering the situation in rural areas in different countries that are already doing this work, and our goal is to systematize and centralize— in a complementary way— all of this work that is being done in parallel.

We are also working to strengthen the Observatory’s financial capacity, in order to establish our own research group that will allow us to identify the main experiences on which we draw, deepen the level of research, and ultimately develop a solid manual of public policies associated with UNDROP. This should make it possible, whenever there are institutional advances, to quickly obtain ideas and action protocols to move forward with the institutional implementation of UNDROP, as well as to support parliamentary work in all those countries that still need to further develop and adapt their legislation accordingly.

How can rural organizations and their allies — such as the Defending Peasants’ Rights website — collaborate with this new observatory?

There is an email address, observatorioderechoscampesinos@gmail.com, through which it is possible to get in touch with the Observatory’s coordination team and submit reports, articles, and proposals.

In addition, in Latin America, within the peasants’ rights collective, a network has been gradually built so that country focal points are working to bring the Observatory online. In other words, CLOC’s own organizational structure also functions as a mechanism for this work.

We also hope to build a fruitful collaboration with the website Defending Peasant Rights, so that we can mutually reinforce one another and move forward toward the realization of the fundamental rights of rural peoples.

La entrada The Peasants’ Rights Observatory: a key tool for the implementation of UNDROP in Latin America se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

1: What is the Rural Women’s Assembly and what are your key areas of work?

The Rural Women Assembly is a network of movements of peasants, fisher folks, farm workers, migrant and landless women, all living and working in the rural areas in the Southern Africa region. We are in 11 countries, with a membership of close to 200,000 members. So it’s a very unique movement of rural women in the region.

Essentially, the Rural Women Assembly builds the voice of rural women and builds agency in relation to questions of access to land and water; the right to food; the right to seeds; and of course, we deal with patriarchal issues that affect women particularly in rural areas. Also central to our work is the issue of climate justice, which has a substantial impact on the region, largely due to the many cyclones that strike it repeatedly, as well as other climate-related crises.

Furthermore, we deal with cases of gender-based violence. In this regard, we develop study cycles in different countries, which are spaces that allow us to discuss on issues related to violence against women.

We are also the guardians of our seeds, because we believe that seeds are our lives, our heritage, our identity, which we don’t want to lose. We have a situation where the transnational corporations, the seed companies, want us to do away with our seeds, which we have inherited for generations and generations – and we’re resisting against that.

2: Why are you here in Geneva this week? What are your expectations?

We are here in Geneva for the 11th session of negotiation on a legally binding treaty to regulate transnational corporations (TNCs). We are here because our communities are experiencing violence from transnational corporations every day. The people in the communities are being grabbed off their land, where we do farming as women. We also have issues of climate crisis, as already said. These companies should pay for the pollution, the damages and the losses that we’re experiencing each and every year. It’s drought, it’s floods… So that is why we are here, so that we can contribute to the elaboration of a binding treaty to hold these companies accountable. Our goal is for the treaty to be out so that we are able to prevent these catastrophes.

We are here to have our voices heard, because when we’re in our countries we can issue statements, but they don’t reach the United Nations. So we are here in multiple movements and communities, and a collective voice from different countries can carry weight.

We are here as part of the Global Campaign to Reclaim Peoples’ Sovereignty, Dismantle Corporate Power and Stop Impunity – a powerful coalition of social movements, progressive organisations and communities affected by transnational corporations – to raise the issues of the rural women in the Global South. Being here is critical for us and it’s part of our advocacy strategy as Rural Women’s Assembly. We want to invest and participate in different platforms to advocate locally, nationally, and internationally, and use these global policy-making spaces or even UN instruments to really amplify our voice.

3: How does the struggle for a strong binding treaty to regulate transnational corporations relate to the protection and implementation of peasants’ rights as outlined in the UNDROP declaration?

There is a strong connection. I was very pleased to hear about the inclusion, in Article 15.7 of the draft text of the binding treaty, of a provision on the rights of peasants and rural peoples, which received strong support from almost all countries, particularly from Colombia and Palestine. It speaks to the UNDROP that the rights of the peasants are included in this treaty. This instrument will help us to push forward the agenda of ours, which is pushing for the implementation of UNDROP in our countries. Whilst our countries, for example, South Africa, signed the declaration in 2018, we still don’t have a policy that implements UNDROP. Having this binding treaty in place will strengthen our advocacy and work back home to ensure that we hold our governments to account to implement both instruments. So, these two legal frameworks are going to be key vehicles for us to utilize in our advocacy strategies.

It is necessary to note that the violations committed by transnational corporations directly affect the very rights granted to us by UNDROP. In particular, the right to seeds, the right to land, and the right to water. Once this treaty is adopted, we will have a binding instrument to which we can refer in order to defend ourselves.

4: How do TNCs activities impact your communities?

Firstly, TNCs want to take away our seeds and impose their own industrial seeds.. These enterprises pollute our water, causing a lot of diseases. The pollution affects not only people, but also animals and crops. As a result, we suffer from illnesses we don’t even recognise – sometimes even our own countries tell us they don’t know how to treat them. These are the impacts we are facing as a result of what TNCs are doing in our communities.

Seed sovereignty is no longer a right. Seeds have been commodified by transnational corporations. They have become a source of capital accumulation at the detriment of the rural poor. Our governments ignore that our seeds are resistant when it comes to the effects of climate change. Our seeds can be planted several times. When you buy hybrid seeds, they only last for a year. If you try to plant those seeds afterwards, they won’t germinate. Our seeds, on the other hand, are resistant – we can plant them for many years. Hence, we have food security at home and in the community. Our seeds are perfect. They are not harmful. They have healing properties and a lot of nutrients. You can cook the food coming from them in different ways. Sometimes they say there’s hunger in Zambia. It’s because they are following the corporate world’s thinking. If we could think like the rural women are thinking, there would be a lot of food in Zambia. There shouldn’t be even hunger in there. So, this treaty will also help us protect our seeds and our lives.

Hybrid seeds are expensive compared to our own kept seeds because they require fertilizers and chemicals. If you plant hybrids without any fertilizer, you get nothing. So, we are also trying to promote our own indigenous seeds, despite the threats we face from our governments. With the support of our governments, TNCs steal our seeds, make them hybrid, and make us pay the price for them. We have the right to say no to what they want to offer us.

Furthermore, they’re polluting the environment and they’re telling us we shouldn’t cut our trees so that the trees can clean up the carbon. They are interested in developing the carbon credit markets. They come into our areas, they grab big portions of land. They say, we shouldn’t even go and pick the mushrooms in there; we shouldn’t go pick the caterpillars in there. They put guards, so that we can’t go get the firewood. So, we have our own land, but we don’t have control of our own land. It’s very intimidating. They sell carbon with a lot of money, but we don’t get to get anything from there.

They grab land also because they want to do their mining, meanwhile we are displaced from a land where we’ve lived for so many years. They even damage the graves that are on the land. That is very de-humansing. There’s a lot of impunity in what they’re doing.

These TNCs have destroyed our land with pollution. You have a field that you cannot use for the next 10 years because it has been damaged with unknown toxic minerals that have passed through the area. In the Zambian Copperbelt province, which is near where we stay, TNCs polluted the Kafue River, which runs across the whole country. We can’t access the water in three quarters of the land through which the Kafue River passes. We can’t eat any fish from there.

In South Africa, fisher folks have taken up our government – particularly our Department of Mineral Resource and Energy – for blasting on the oceans, for working and collaborating with the Shell company, which was looking for oil in the ocean in the eastern part of South Africa. We have a similar case in terms of Titanium that has been going on for a long time also in the eastern part of South Africa, in Mbizana, where the communities are standing up and saying, ‘we have the right to say no’.The principle of free, prior and informed consent of the concerned communities should be respected. This has been a long process of litigation and these transnational corporations must be held accountable. They need to pay. We need reparations. Through the process of resisting, lives were lost, defenders have been killed and many are being threatened as we speak.

5: How have you been mobilising the UNDROP declaration in Southern Africa in favour of rural women’s rights?

Firstly, we made sure that our members understand what this declaration stands for and therefore what are the rights that are contained in it. We went through a strong move of capacitating, educating and building awareness amongst our members on their rights and how to engage to defend them. It is a declaration adopted by the United Nations that every country must implement, so it was critical for us to make sure our communities understood their rights. Each country has an advocacy strategy, they amplify the UNDROP in their communities. We have a booklet which is featured on our website, and we carry it everywhere. In every opportunity we have in engaging the duty bearers or government officials, we use this as a tool to engage and empower communities.

For example, in South Africa, we have been running a campaign called “One Woman, One Hectare of Land”, to provide more land for women. We combine that campaign with the UNDROP, especially the right to land, the right to food sovereignty, the right to use our seeds.

As rural women across different countries, we hold food and seed festivals every year. We do that to identify what seeds were lost, what we still have, how we can make better use of each seed. We now want to make seed banks and demo fields where we can be planting these seeds, so that we can multiply them. We also develop seed sharing initiatives. We work to increase our seed stocks so that, as we resist transnational corporations, we also show the strength of what we have.

In Swaziland, for instance, we are engaging government officials in the implementation of UNDROP. We have engaged with several ministries, including the Ministry of Agriculture, but concrete results are yet to come as they have not yet prioritised the issue. We also started with translating the UNDROP to the local languages so that it is accessible to our people, to the women.

6: What is your message for Southern African states regarding their engagement in the Binding Treaty process?

What is critical in this podium is to hear the voices of the Global South, especially our African governments. We want them to stop corporate impunity. The should take action for our people, for our communities, for the poor, for our nations. In South Africa, for example, we have a great human rights constitution. South Africa has signed declarations, and has been historically committed to the UNDROP. Therefore, we demand that our voices are heard and that these instruments are implemented.

We wish more African countries were actively engaging in this Binding Treaty negotiation process. The governments should step in, find markets for our indigenous foods and promote them, and help the peasants. If we don’t have maize, there’s sorghum, there’s different types of beans, there’s cassava. We can make a meal from that. So they should put the lives of their people first rather than protecting these so-called investors that are coming into our countries just to plunder. They extract the minerals, take them away, and when they return, we are forced to buy our own resources back at a very high price.

If corporations are coming as investors in our countries, let them build schools, roads, hospitals. The government should stand up and fight for us. Stop looking at the profits, and look at the lives of our people!

La entrada Corporate impunity and seed sovereignty: Interview with the Rural Womens’ Assembly (RWA) se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

Yesterday evening, representatives from the three European institutions came to an agreement on the trilogue on the proposal to deregulate plant GMOs obtained by new genomic techniques (GMOs-NGTs). The European Coordination Via Campesina (ECVC), representing the voice of small-scale farmers in Europe, denounces a deal which completely ignores the concerns of farmers, especially on patents. The European Parliament had initially recognized in its position of February 2024 that patents were problematic, even calling for a limitation of the scope of patents to prevent its extension to traditional and peasant seeds. Yet, the Parliament’s negotiator, Mrs Polfjärd, has not taken it into account.

These important demands were completely suppressed during the trilogue, leaving in the final deal only optional measures, such as a non-binding code of conduct for licensing and voluntary transparency, leaving farmers, small seed companies, manufacturers and retailers without any means of protection against accidental contaminations. The trilogue agreement claims that patentable plants obtained by NGTs are equivalent to plants produced by traditional, non-patentable breeding methods. Removing the current requirement to publish the detection and identification methods of GMOs traits will allow the extension of the scope of NGT patents to seeds and agricultural products that naturally contain these same traits. These measures are useless to protect farmers and other agri-food operators from the risks related to patents, notably abusive pursuits for patent infringement. Such pursuits will inevitably happen if all traceability requirements are removed, and will lead to the privatisation of all cultivated plants by the patent model, including traditional and peasant seeds.

The agreement foresees to deregulate patented GMOs-NGTs without traceability, including without the mandatory of detection and identification methods[1], without mandatory coexistence measures, without labelling for final products and without the possibility for Member States to opt-out. This proposal does nothing to prevent contamination for the organic sector, although it is strictly prohibited by the organic regulation and rejected by consumers. Some requirements of the current GMO legislation will continue to apply to GMOs-NGTs “category 2”, but we already know that the vast majority of NGTs will fall in “category 1”, which will be completely deregulated. In short, this deal would completely remove the right of farmers and consumers to continue to grow and eat GMO-free, and will endanger the economic survival of the well-established GMO-free and organic agri-food sectors in Europe.

“This deal will only benefit to large patent-holding multinationals, such as Corteva, BASF or Bayer, which will be able to control all seeds and the whole food chain with their patents. For all the others, farmers, small and medium breeders and consumers, it will be a loss. The main motivation behind this deregulation is to impose the patent model in Europe, and to impose GMOs to those who do not want them,” said Alessandra Turco from ECVC’s Coordinating Committee. “Patents are a tool to lock in access to genetic resources with the aim restructure the seed market at the advantage of large firms. If this deal comes through, it will lead to a monopolistic concentration of the market, the disappearance of smaller seed companies, a widespread privatisation of genetic resources and irreversible reduction in agrobiodiversity, as well as an increase in the price of seeds.”

Fortunately, this is not over yet: this harmful trilogue deal is only the result of the negotiations between the Presidency of the Council and the negotiators from the Parliament and Commission. Now, it still needs to be approved by all Members of European Parliament (MEPs) and all Member States. ECVC calls on all MEPs and Member States to hear farmers’, agri-food chain operators’ and consumers’ legitimate concerns and to not approve this dangerous text.

ECVC speaks on behalf of the many European farmers who do not want and do not need to use patented GMOs-NGTs, and which are already adapting their crops to climatic changes and reducing chemical input with peasant breeding and the use of locally-adapted crops, without depending on expensive patented GMOs. ECVC therefore demands to all MEPs to upheld its strong commitment against patents and to not endorse a proposal that will seriously undermine Europe’s food sovereignty and farmers’ rights.

[1] Which would be absolutely necessary for post-marketing monitoring, to allow the removal of a GMO-NGT from the market in case of damages to health and to the environment.

La entrada Trilogue agreement on GMOs-NGTs: A betrayal of farmers’ legitimate concerns on patents, health, the environment, and consumers’ rights to information se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

Among other things, the event aimed to highlight the multiple challenges currently facing rural communities around the world. It also sought to explore how the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP) could influence legal and policy frameworks to better protect these communities, strengthen their rights and promote social justice. Finally, the event highlighted the mobilisation of peasant movements and rural organisations across Latin America, which are working at all levels to promote and implement the UNDROP.

As moderator, Sibylle Dirren, FIAN International’s representative to the UN, emphasised the crucial role of UNDROP as a powerful tool for defending and promoting the rights of rural communities.

Carlos Duarte, Chair of the UN Working Group of Experts on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas, recalled the critical situation of rural communities, which face dispossession, lack of access to land and water, and the grabbing of natural resources. He lamented the difficulties faced by rural organisations in making their voices heard in international forums, such as the COP or the Global Biodiversity Convention, even though peasant and other rural communities are directly concerned by biodiversity protection and climate issues. Mr. Duarte also pointed to the persecution and repression suffered by peasant leaders in many parts of the world. Finally, he stressed the need to strengthen the participation of rural women, who are often invisible despite being “the backbone of the peasant-rural world”.

Alfonzo Simon Raylan, representative of the Sea Workers’ Union (SITRAMAR), a member organisation of the World Forum of Fisher Peoples, sounded the alarm on the situation of fishers in the indigenous region of Ngöbe-Buglé (Panama). Since 2010, under the pretext of environmental conservation, a fishing ban has deprived these communities of their main source of livelihood, exacerbating poverty and hunger. The populations live in difficult conditions, with limited access to education, healthcare and basic services. Mr. Raylan denounced the lack of state support and the violent repression suffered by indigenous peoples when they defend their rights.

Three representatives of La Via Campesina from Latin America shared their experiences via video message. Martha Huertas Moya, a member of FENACOA/La Via Campesina Colombia, gave an encouraging assessment of the situation of Colombia’s long-marginalised peasantry. The recognition of peasants’ rights in the country’s constitution and public policies has led to better land distribution and the guarantee of rights that were previously inaccessible. However, she stressed the need to create an agrarian and rural jurisdiction and to increase the budgets allocated to rural areas in order to consolidate these advances. Arturo Aliaga, member of ANAP/La Via Campesina Cuba, highlighted concrete advances in peasants’ rights, food sovereignty and agroecology in the country. The peasant representative stated that, thanks to the strong political will of the competent authorities and ANAP’s ability to participate directly in the development of public policies and the establishment of relevant legislative frameworks, the promotion and implementation of UNDROP is now a reality. Anderson Amaro, representative of MPA/La Via Campesina Brazil, presented how Brazilian rural social movements are mobilising the UNDROP in their struggle for decent living and working conditions. More specifically, the peasant leader discussed the ongoing advocacy strategy, which aims to integrate the Declaration into the work of actors in the national judicial system, relevant ministries, and the national and departmental parliamentary agenda.

Adriana Fillol Mazo, Professor at the University of Seville and the Geneva Academy, presented UNDROP as a concrete legal tool for protecting rural communities. However, she noted the existence of several threats, such as digitalisation and agricultural technologies that can increase dependence and exclusion. The lack of generational renewal also jeopardises the future of small-scale farming. Rural women also face significant obstacles in accessing land and a dignified life. Added to this are economic pressure, violence and climate uncertainty, which are causing a silent mental health crisis in rural areas. She concluded by calling for peasants, fishers and indigenous peoples to be seen not as problems to be managed, but as essential strategic partners in building fair, resilient and sustainable food systems.

Raffaele Morgantini, CETIM representative to the UN, closed the event on a hopeful note for rural communities, thanks to the emergence of progressive case law. Indeed, decisions favourable to rural peoples’ rights are appearing in several judicial systems. In Honduras, the Supreme Court invoked UNDROP to protect peasant seeds from the “Monsanto law”, a law passed by Parliament that favoured industrial seeds and was subsequently repealed. In Colombia, the Constitutional Court granted protection to a peasant couple forced to abandon their land after repeated flooding. In February 2020, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights issued a ruling ordering the reinstatement of an indigenous population on their ancestral land, using both UNDROP and UNDRIP (UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples). Other examples exist in Kenya and Canada, covering rights related to seeds and health. Mr. Morgantini stressed that these advances would not have been possible without strong alliances between peasant and rural movements, human rights defenders, lawyers, academics and the commitment of public authorities. These collaborations make it possible to transform principles into concrete actions in rural communities, courts and national policies.

Read our exclusive interview with Working Group Chair Carlos Duarte and our article on the Working Group’s report presented at the 60^th session of the Human Rights Council.

La entrada Side event at the UN: Challenges and best practices in promoting the rights of peasants and rural workers in Latin America se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

The Movement for Land and Agriculture Reform (MONLAR), representing over 5,000 peasant workers in Sri Lanka, recently made a submission to the government listing out several instances of the violation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas, to which Sri Lanka is a signatory. They also called upon the UN Working Group on the Declaration to initiate an assessment of how the conditions of the IMF, other IFIs, and global debt architecture violate the human rights of peasants and workers. The submission, an excerpt of which is reproduced below, also reveals how global financial institutions have enforced economic reforms that transferred the burden of economic stabilization to the poorer sections of society through austerity measures.

1.65 million peasants and small-scale food producers in Sri Lanka work on less than 2 hectares each, yet produce 80% of the country’s food. But debt-driven economic policies advocated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and Asian Development Bank (ADB) have wrecked peasants’ and fishers’ autonomy in food production and their ability to ensure food sovereignty.

Through various structural adjustment programs, the International Finance Institutions (IFIs) push Sri Lanka to prioritize cash crops for exports over food for domestic consumption. Export-oriented agricultural reforms that mainstreamed capital-intensive farming have favored agribusinesses and weakened peasants and small fishers by making them dependent on the market for inputs such as seeds, fertilizer, fishing nets, and boats. As a result of the increasing cost of food production, peasants and fishers are deeply in debt, dispossessed of their land, rendered agricultural laborers on their lands, and migrating to local industrial zones or abroad as indentured workers.

The current agriculture system’s failure to create dignified livelihoods for peasants and other workers in rural areas is evident in the extremely high levels of poverty concentration in rural and plantation areas, where more than 80% of Sri Lanka’s poor live.

Sri Lanka faced one of the worst economic crises in 2022 as it defaulted on its foreign debt payments in April 2022. The economic crisis had a devastating impact on rural communities, resulting in a doubling of poverty rates. The IMF, other IFIs, and private creditors have used the crisis and the debt default to push Sri Lanka into its 17th IMF program, a 48-month Extended Fund Facility worth around 3 billion dollars.

Violation of Article 2: State Responsibility
Two days before the September 2024 presidential election, Sri Lanka was forced to sign an agreement with international creditors to restructure its debt to private lenders. This agreement, which was neither disclosed nor discussed with the public or even in the Sri Lankan Parliament, forced the country to prioritize debt payment over the rights of people in Sri Lanka. It will severely impact the government’s ability to invest in food production, development of rural livelihoods, and social security of rural communities.

Violation of Article 4: No Discrimination Against Women
Despite their contribution being neither recognized nor reflected in national policy frameworks, the involvement of peasant women in Sri Lanka’s food production is critical. Peasant women face numerous barriers that inhibit them from reaching their full potential—the lack of access and control over natural resources, markets, financial services, technology, and care responsibilities. Yet, peasant women support food production as unpaid family members, agricultural workers, or through home gardens. However, they are neither acknowledged nor given any significance in government spending at the macro level. Hence, they are excluded at two levels—as women and as small-scale food producers.

Violation of Article 15: Right to Food and Food Sovereignty
Malnutrition and undernourishment have always been serious concerns in Sri Lanka, with 32.6% of women aged 15 to 49 years found to be anemic and 15.9% of infants handicapped by low weight at birth. The situation has been worse among agriculture worker families in the plantation sector. Despite being considered an ‘agricultural’ country, Sri Lanka depends heavily on food imports. Our food security’s vulnerability is evidenced during crises such as the pandemic, geopolitical conflicts like the Ukraine-Russia War, and scarce foreign exchange.

The economic crisis in 2022 has further worsened the situation. According to the World Food Program, by January 2023, 6.3 million people, or over 30 percent of Sri Lanka’s population, were “food insecure” and needed humanitarian assistance. Of these, around 5.3 million people were either reducing or skipping meals, and at least 65,600 people were severely food insecure. An increase in VAT also drove up food inflation.

Violation of Article 16: Right to Decent Income and Livelihoods and the Means of Production
The economic reforms enforced through the 17th IMF program have transferred the burden of economic stabilization to the poorer sections of society through austerity measures. Implementation of the IMF-recommended cost-recovery energy pricing has almost tripled fuel and electricity prices, having devastating effects on the livelihoods of peasant farmers and fisheries. Taxes on equipment, seeds, and chemical inputs have increased production costs, throwing peasant farmers into poverty and indebtedness.

Indebtedness among peasants and fishers is mainly linked to expansions in capital-intensive agriculture and the proliferation of pro-profit lending by banks and finance companies such as microfinance loans. With the withdrawal of the State from the provision of agrarian credit, indebtedness has become a permanent feature in the lives of peasants, peasant women, and fishers. Suicides among the peasant farmers in the 1990s and among the peasant women after 2015 illustrate the protracted nature of indebtedness in the agrarian sector. According to national statistics in 2019, indebtedness is more prevalent in the rural and estate sectors than in the urban sector. 60.9% and 64.4% of households in the rural and estate sectors, respectively, are in debt. Vavuniya and Polonnaruwa, predominantly agricultural areas, also located near the biggest rice mills owned by private individuals, recorded the highest incidences of indebtedness, with 76.1% and 70.3% of households in debt.

Violation of Article 17: Right to Land
IFIs like the IMF and World Bank have long advocated privatizing land markets in Sri Lanka. Freehold land titles are distributed to farmers by lifting restrictions for peasants to sell their land provided by the State to outsiders, which has been a long-standing demand from these IFIs. With the ongoing IMF program, this demand has returned to the fore, with the government introducing a new program to provide freehold land titles to peasants. With the ongoing economic crisis and indebtedness among peasants, MONLAR and many other organizations fear that this move will lead to large-scale dispossession of peasants’ land.

Currently, the State does not recognize the customary right to land; hence, many peasants have lost land they have been cultivating and living on for generations. Due to the absence of tenure recognition, many communities are displaced when large-scale projects and developments come to their villages.

Even though it has been 15 years since the end of the war, large portions of land in the North are still under the occupation of the military. Minoritized communities have used these lands for generations before and during the war and hold a key place in their livelihood and culture. Some of the residents of these lands are internally displaced, while some are still living in IDP camps.

Violation of Article 24: Right to Housing
Even after 200 years, the descendants of people brought to Sri Lanka from South India as indentured workers (Malaiyaga community) in tea and rubber plantations in Sri Lanka do not own their housing and land. They were forced to live on plantation land (owned by the State and privately owned companies) in extremely low-quality housing. They lack access to land for their food production and remain vulnerable to evictions by the landowners—the plantation companies.

Recommendations to the Government of Sri Lanka

1. Immediately exit the ongoing IMF and debt restructuring agreements, as they are unfavorable and harmful. The government should negotiate new agreements that ensure the country’s sustainable economic development and the socio-economic rights of peasants, workers, and other poor and vulnerable communities.
2. Introduce the necessary reforms to the local legal and policy framework to enforce the rights enshrined in the UNDROP. Some immediate actions can include:
   • Revise the current laws regarding land, seeds, water, biodiversity, and other natural resources to ensure the rights of peasants and other workers in rural areas.
   • Codification of a new Constitution that integrates the social, economic, and cultural rights of peasants, workers, and others as fundamental human rights.
3. Recognize food sovereignty and the rights of peasants and rural workers as key priorities in its agriculture, development, and economic policy formulation.
4. Conduct an agrarian debt audit and provide debt relief, including debt cancellation.
5. Recognize women as key actors in agriculture, food production, and the rural economy. Allocate resources through national and local budgets to ensure women have access to accessible and just financial resources. The government should support the collective actions of peasant women in food production, processing, marketing, and saving systems.
6. Release all the land occupied by the military in the North and East to their original owners, and support peasants and other food producers in restarting their livelihoods in those lands.
7. Recognize and fulfill the demand by the Malaiyaga community to allocate land for their housing and food production.

MONLAR also called upon the UN Working Group on the Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas to initiate an assessment of how the conditions of the IMF, other IFIs, and global debt architecture violate the human rights of peasants and workers, and also initiate a cross-country study to examine the impact of microfinance on women and rural development.

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On September 16, the European Coordination Via Campesina (ECVC) published a report on the implementation of UNDROP in Europe. You can find the launch press release here.

This new publication presents the Declaration: its origin, purpose, content and how it should be implemented. It lists policy recommendations for international and regional organizations, European decision-makers and national and local authorities.

The main requests are as follows:

• States and international and regional organizations must provide resources (including financial) to support the Working Group.
• The EU must ensure that all its legislation and policies on agriculture are in line with UNDROP. ECVC has already drawn up specific policy proposals on how to ensure this compliance concerning: seeds, a proposed directive on land, agricultural market policy and CAP social conditionality.
• When implementing international policies linked to food and agriculture, the EU must respect and ensure the coherence with UNDROP.
• In accordance with Article 10 of UNDROP, ECVC, as the only European peasant organization, must be systematically consulted by all EU institutions dealing with agriculture.
• The EC’s Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development (DG AGRI) should create a specific sub-unit responsible for peasants’ rights and human rights in agriculture.
• The EU should conduct an independent study to assess the level of coherence of EU legislation and policies with UNDROP.
• When implementing the EU directive on corporate due diligence, EU member states must include UNDROP.
• States must draw up national action plans and national committees for family farming, as called for under the UN Decade for Family Farming. These plans must put the implementation of UNDROP at the center, and promote a broader concept of family farming that goes beyond cis-heterocentric patriarchy, embracing chosen families, a diversity of people and ways of living and working, as well as all kinds of small-scale artisanal food producers.

La entrada How to implement the UNDROP at the European and national level to promote peasants’ rights – publication and video se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

These protests are the undeniable sign of a massive and widespread violation of peasants’ rights in Europe, caused by a liberal system that is out of breath and in perpetual crisis. Defending Peasants Rights joins peasants in calling for a profound change in the system, which is the only way to ensure fair prices and good working conditions. We also denounce any recuperation of these protests by the extreme right or by union leaders who no longer represent the interests of farmers, but only those of the agro-industry and large retailers.

Peasants’ Rights and Protests

Christophe Golay, Senior Research Fellow at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian and Human Rights and Visiting Professor at the Geneva Graduate Institute

Peasants and farmers protest in many parts of Europe*, claiming their right to live in dignity, with fair prices for their product and adequate remuneration for their work. They reject free trade agreements and call states and the European Union (UE) for more support.

In Europe, like in rest of the world, peasants are disproportionately affected by food insecurity and poverty. The rate of suicide in agriculture is much higher than in other professional activities. To support them, the main EU instrument is the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

CAP accounts for 31% of the EU budget, which means that 55 billion euros are spent every year to support agriculture. This is huge. However, the sum is unfairly distributed. Only 20% of food producers receive 80% of the CAP’s budget. The choice of calculating financial support based on the size of farms – instead of the number of people active in the farms – leads to increasing concentration of farm holding. Between 2005 et 2020, the number of farms in the EU declined by 37 %, with small farms experiencing the strongest decline. This also leads to less product diversity and greater biodiversity loss.

Affected by competition with product imported from other continents and sold in Europe at low prices, and pressured by various intermediaries, peasants often have to sell their products below the costs of production. They are also pushed to transition to organic farming – with the legitimate objective of 25% of agricultural land under organic farming in the EU by 2030 in the European Green Deal – without enough support to make that transition and benefit from it. This situation in part explains the current fight for peasants’ rights.

At the United Nations (UN), this fight for peasants’ rights started in 2008 in Geneva, when La Via Campesina proposed its Declaration on the Rights of Peasants – Women and Men to respond to the 2008 global food crisis. La Via Campesina is the largest transnational social movement, representing more than 250 million peasants in over 80 countries. Its call for a UN Declaration on peasants’ rights was supported by several states, human rights experts, NGOs, and Geneva Academy’s project on the rights of peasants. After six years of negotiation at the Human Rights Council, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP) has been adopted by the UN General Assembly on 17 December 2018. In October 2023, a UN Working Group of five independent experts has been created by the Human Rights Council to promote and monitor UNDROP’s implementation.

UNDROP enshrines many rights that are crucial to respond to the current crisis, including the rights to food, food sovereignty, fair prices, sufficient salaries, social security, seeds, land, and other productive resources. It also includes many provisions through which states committed to support peasants in their transition towards agroecology and organic farming. UNDROP and the right to food provide a strong legal basis for a just transition towards sustainable food systems in Europe.

Other resources

• ECVC: Rejection of free trade agreements and the demand for a decent income are at the heart of farmers’ mobilisations in Europe, 25/02/24
• ECVC: ECVC demands from Place du Luxembourg, Brussels: End free trade agreements and ensure fair prices for farmers, 01/02/24
• CETIM: Peasant mobilisations in Europe, 01/02/24
• IUF : Europe: Amidst farmers’ protests, agricultural workers’ working conditions in the future CAP are critical, 08/02/24

*Germany, Hungary, France, Greece, Poland, Switzerland, Spain, Belgium

La entrada Peasant Protests in Europe se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

On October 26, 2023, ECVC organized a round table to call on the European Union to put agricultural land on its agenda and take into account its proposal for a directive as well as UNDROP, find HERE the press release from the event.

Below is ECVC’s introduction to its proposal for a directive, and the full text of the proposal is available for download.

We present our proposal for a European directive on the governance of agricultural land. To stop land concentration: more farmers in Europe!

We have long demanded the realisation of the right to land as defined in Article 17 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other Rural Workers. Today, this right is threatened: concentration and land grabbing lead to the disappearance of farms, the increase of land prices, the devitalization of rural areas and the industrialization of practices. Land use is at the crossroads of economic, social, ecological and climatic issues in European agriculture.

There is no European framework for land governance, but many European policies have an impact on the price of land, its condition or its distribution, starting with the CAP and the allocation of subsidies according to the number of hectares. This observation is shared by the European institutions themselves: the jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice attests that land is not a commodity like any other, the Parliament recognises the threats it faces and calls for a land policy that is independent of market forces alone.

So, seized by urgency, we publish today a Proposal for a European Directive on Agricultural Land. We have analyzed the state of agricultural land and concrete measures to ensure the realisation of the right to land, and we put forward a comprehensive proposal for a directive.

It is imperative the agricultural population doubles by 2040, and this directive is essential to achieve this goal. It is also a tool to support land reforms at local and national level. It is necessary that the Commission takes up the issue and includes access to land in its work plan.

La entrada Proposal for an EU Directive on Agricultural Land se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

To see at what time it will be in your time zone go here.

CONNECTION LINK

Join us to discover how collectives and communities are using the UNDROP to further their struggles, to further promote and implement the rights enshrined in the UNDROP… lots of inspiration ahead!

In the webinar, peasant representatives from different regions will intervene to expose how they make us of the UNDROP in their struggles, as well as to present concrete examples of implementation and legal advancements :

Moderation : Coline Hubert, Facilitator of Defending Peasants Rights

Introduction : Morgan Ody, Secretary-General of La Via Campesina

ASIA
Pramesh Pokharel – General Secretary All Nepal Peasant’s Federation – Nepal
Zainal Arafin Fuad – SPI – Indonesia

AFRICA
Hortense Kinkodila – CNOP-Congo – Congo
David Otieno – Kenyan Peasants League – Kenya

AMERICAS
Nury Martinez – FENSUAGRO – Colombia
Jessie MacInnis – Youth President National Farmers Union of Canada – Canada

EUROPE
Ramona Dominiciou – Ecoruralis – Romania
Alberto Silva – Uniterre – Switzerland

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This report was first published on ECVC website January 31rst, 2023. You can find it here.

Peasant farmers and young agricultural workers represent two sides of the same coin: the failure to provide a decent income for farmers jeopardizes the training of future peasant farmers. Young people work in order to learn, and learn as they are working, even if no formal training is provided. However, the learning process of young agricultural workers takes place in very harsh conditions, including reduced or no payment, and inadequate housing, food and support. These are some of the important limitations that are preventing a socially and ecologically just transformation of the food system.

This report assesses the working and learning conditions of young agricultural workers, defined as people who labour in the fields, mountains and farms and also in the livestock or food processing units and who are younger than 40 years old. The report looks at a wide range of issues including working hours, fees, contracts, negotiation power, food and housing, and gender discrimination, including with regard to intersectionality. Issues such as finding a farm that is best suited for learning, difficulties and dreams for the future are also assessed.

With this report, the authors hope to contribute to the recognition of young agricultural workers’ conditions, and support the political work of ECVC Youth.

Youth in the Declaration of the Rights of Peasants

The UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants (UNDROP) makes two references to youth, in Articles 2 and 17. Article 2 is devoted to the general obligations of States, it is this article that sets out how States are to implement UNDROP. Paragraph 2 of this article asks States to pay particular attention to young people when implementing the rights contained in the UNDROP. This special attention is required in order to combat age-related discrimination against young people. All the rights in the UNDROP must therefore be read in the light of this fight against discrimination against young people.

Article 17 of UNDROP is dedicated to the right to land. This right is one of the greatest advances of the Declaration, and the mention of young people in its paragraph 6 on agricultural reform should be noted and especially used to advance the rights of young people. Paragraph 6 obliges States to carry out agrarian reforms in order to ensure an equitable distribution of land and natural resources. This paragraph specifies that in the redistribution of land, young people must be among the priority populations, along with landless peasants. This specific mention of young people is an illustration of the obligation of States to take into account the discrimination that young people suffer, in this case that of not having access to land because of their age. It is also the mark of a Declaration of the Rights of Peasants turned towards the future.

Download

La entrada Navigating Dreams & Precarity: Working and Learning Conditions of Young Agricultural Workers, Interns and Volunteers Across Europe se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

Joint statement by the European Coordination Via Campesina (ECVC) and the Coordinadora Latinoamericana de Organizaciones del Campo CLOC – Via Campesina condemning the EU-MERCOSUR free trade agreement as undemocratic and in violation of peasants’ rights and climate commitments. This statement comes at a time when the European Commission and some EU Member States are trying to find a way to approve such an agreement, without taking into account the democratic control of national parliaments, the real impact or the implementation of “environmental” measures.

January 30, 2023

In a statement signed by numerous organisations, small- and medium-scale farmers from Europe and South America have condemned the EU-MERCOSUR Free Trade Agreement as undemocratic and a violation of peasants’ rights and climate commitments.

The statement comes as the European Commission and some EU Member States are pushing to find ways to adopt the FTA, with little regard for the democratic control of national parliaments or real impact or implementation of so-called environmental measures.

In their statement, the European and South American regions of LVC are just two of the many CSO voices to reject this agreement and all the proposals designed to fast-track ratification without due democratic scrutiny. These proposals include splitting the agreement into a section covering purely trade, to bypass the much of the sign-off process from dozens of national parliaments, or putting together a non-binding additional document to simply appear to be considering environmental concerns, with little commitment to implementation after. Small- and medium scale farmers from both sides of the Atlantic condemn these attempts to greenwash an unstainable FTA and overlook the strong democratic opposition that the new FTA generates.

In addition to the statement, European peasants will also protest with allied organisations in front of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Madrid to underline the obsolete nature of the FTA, particularly in the context of the promise made in the European Green Deal, Paris Agreement and Sustainable Development Goals. Given that in the EU, the farming population accounts for less than 5% of total employment, the EU must do more to ensure their trade policies are coherent with their vision to support rural development and ensure rural areas properly integrated into any green transition.

Andoni Garcia Arriola, member of ECVC and the Spanish peasants’ organisation COAG explained. “The EU-MERCOSUR deal promotes industrial models of agriculture aimed at export agribusiness and destroys the more social and sustainable agriculture in the hands of small and medium-sized farmers on both sides of the Atlantic. This agreement increases the number of agricultural products that are unnecessarily imported and exported across and within continents, when otherwise those products could be produced sustainably and agroecologically by local peasants. For all these reasons, together with other Mercosur peasants’ organisations, we demand the EU and Mercosur governments to stop this agreement entirely.”

It is time to shift away from the free-trade paradigm towards a new framework for international trade based on food sovereignty. Any agreements negotiated by the EU must have at their core human rights, and in particular food producers’ rights as recognised in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP).

This would allow for genuine agricultural development which gives the priority to local food production and agroecology, instead of prioritising the profit and expansion of corporate power on food and agriculture.

DOWNLOAD the full statement

To go further:

• La Via Campesina’s webpage dedicated to free trade agreements
• Nyéléni Newsletter n°29 on Free Trade Agreements and Agriculture

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Nyeleni Newsletter is the voice of the international movement committed to the defence of peoples’ rights to food sovereignty around the political platform constituted by the Nyeleni Declaration 2007. The website dedicated to its publication brings together fifteen organisations: Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA), FIAN International, Focus on the Global South, Friends of the Earth Interational, GRAIN, Grassroots International, International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC), La Via Campesina, Marcha Mundial de las Mujeres, Real Word Radio, The World Forum Of Fish Harvesters & Fish Workers, Transnational Institute, VSF Justicia Alimentaria Global, WhyHunger, and World Forum for Fisher People.

Editorial

The United Nations has declared 2022 as the International Year of Artisanal Fisheries and Aquaculture (IYAFA 2022) to highlight the importance of artisanal fishing and aquaculture.

Over the past ten years, and even more so since the pandemic, blue economy initiatives have been blooming. The 2021 UN Food Systems Summit advanced the notion of “Blue Foods”, which first and foremost means aquaculture. In 2021, the FAO Committee on Fisheries took unprecedented steps to advance aquaculture, giving birth to the “Shanghai Declaration” drafted by WorldFish, industry players, and other stakeholders.

IYAFA is now also showcasing artisanal fishing. Some prefer the term small-scale fishing, but regardless of the term used, it is always about the way of life that provides food and income for over a hundred million people globally. However, fisher people’s territories and resources are increasingly being grabbed: the entire blue economy agenda spanning from displacing people in the name of conservation (Marine Protected Areas -MPAs), to massive-scale investments for fish farming, to expanding ports to facilitate more global trade, and to unprecedented sound blasting and drilling for oil and gas, are examples of contemporary development that have and continue to dispossess fishing communities. We hope IYAFA will become the year for fisher people all over the world to scale up resistance and mobilise masses in demands for restitution and regeneration of nature.

Transnational Institute and FIAN International

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