We publish here below the statement issued by the UN Working Group of Experts on UNDROP on this occasion, which reflects on the ongoing relevance and urgency of the UNDROP. On this anniversary, the indispensable contributions of peasants, small-scale fishers, pastoralists, herders, Indigenous Peoples, and other rural workers to global food security and sovereignty, resilient ecosystems and biodiversity, must be reaffirmed. Emphasizing that these communities produce a significant share of the world’s food and maintain traditional knowledge systems critical to climate adaptation, the statement highlights how UNDROP recognizes the rural rights-holders as central agents in sustainable development. 

In this anniversary, we call on States, international organizations, social movements, civil society organizations, committed scholars and other relevant actors to accelerate the implementation of UNDROP’s rights-based framework as a foundation for dignity, equality and justice for rural populations worldwide.

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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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UNDROP’s rights holders fight for sustainable and just food systems!

Practical information

• The webinar will take place on Wednesday, June 25th, 2:30-4:30 pm CEST, to see at what time the webinar will be on your time zone click here .
• REGISTRATION LINK: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/AhWPbaA4Tk-mHWzD8pYaJQ
• Please register in advance! Registration is mandatory for all participants.
• Interpretation in English, Spanish and French will be provided.

Following the hacker attack during our webinar on May 5th, we have set a new date for our annual public online event. As part of the digital security measures implemented to reduce virtual threats, we kindly request all participants to register in advance using the link provided above. We are not giving up to those who have attacked us, our webinar will happen and rural struggles will continue ever more united and strong!

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On June 25, “Defending Peasants’ Rights” is organizing a webinar dedicated to UNDROP rights holders and their struggles for sustainable and just food systems!

Because the very existence of the Declaration is based on the need to recognize and include rural groups in all their diversity, we want to use this webinar to publicize and honor all those who work to feed people while preserving the land, the ocean and natural resources, and especially those who continue to do so in the face of a predatory agro-industrial system.

To understand UNDROP, take hold of it, use it and defend it, we need to know who it protects, both for the people concerned, who may not always recognize themselves in it, but also for the general public and professionals who sometimes fail to grasp the full scope of the Declaration.

Join us in getting to know the rural struggles in action!

IMPORTANT: Please ensure that you join the Zoom meeting with your name and organization clearly indicated. For security reasons, participants whose identity cannot be verified may not be admitted to the meeting.

The webinar is made possible by the financial support of: Action de Carême and HEKS/EPER

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From the 21^st to the 25^th of October 2024, the United Nations Working Group on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (the Working Group) held its second session in Geneva. The Working Group on peasants was established in October last year when the member states of the UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution tabled by Bolivia and a core group of states agreeing to further implement the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP).

La Via Campesina (LVC) delegates from Asia, Europe and Latin America together with their allies, CETIM and FIAN International, attended and participated in this first in-person historic meeting of the UNDROP Working Group in Geneva. LVC was represented by Zainal Fuat from the Indonesian Peasant Union (SPI) in Indonesia, Paola Goes from the Movement of People Affected by Dams (MAB) in Brazil, and Pierre Maison from the Confédération Paysanne in France.

During the session, the Working Group organized a meeting on the 23^rd of October with civil society organizations to consult and receive information on progress made and the main obstacles encountered in the promotion and implementation process, thus initiating a discussion on the priorities of the Working Group. On the 24^th of October, the Working Group also met and engaged with State representatives.

The Working Group started the consultation process through the call for inputs issued this year. So far, over 60 inputs were submitted – 14 from States, 41 from Civil Society and 14 from different human rights and academic institutions.

Read here the inputs submitted by LVC, CETIM and FIAN International.

Zainal Fuat presented the efforts of LVC to disseminate UNDROP and highlighted some important achievements and challenges faced so far by the member organisations to disseminate and create wider awareness among the right-holders in their respective countries. After the adoption of UNDROP in 2018, LVC and its member organisations, working together with their allies, CETIM and FIAN International, developed popular materials, organised numerous training sessions at national, regional and international levels and translated the declaration into over 18 languages in addition to the six official UN languages. A website was created to provide a common platform to facilitate knowledge-sharing and connect different organizations and movements, and to link the UNDROP to other international instruments and standards.

La Via Campesina shared also on the legislatives, administratives, policies and other related measures which the peasant movement regarded as good practices and lessons learned on the implementation of the UNDROP before the creation of the Working Group.

Paula Goes from MAB Brazil and the Latin American Coordination of Rural Organizations (CLOC) in South America highlighted how the pandemic and the far-right governments have generated a delicate political situation in Latin America, which has had impact on the implementation of UNDROP. Despite these challenges, the CLOC has never stopped pressuring the States to implement this important tool. For example, the new Cuban constitutional approval in 2019 to incorporate important elements of the UNDROP, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights is producing a relevant jurisprudence about peasants’ rights, while in Ecuador in 2023 the declaration was ratified – an important step to defend those who feed the country and to focus the State’s debate on the elaboration of agrarian policy, – and Honduras declared the Monsanto Law (Decreto Nº 21-2012) unconstitutional.

Sibylle Dirren and Ana Maria Suarez-Franco from FIAN International stressed the urgent need for systemic reforms to uphold human rights, ensure food sovereignty, and promote social justice. They outlined the concerning trend of the commodification of natural resources, which disproportionately impact peasants by consolidating resources under corporate and elite control and emphasized the importance of agroecology – rooted in the knowledge and practices of peasants and rural communities – as a foundation for sustainable food systems, with rural women championing transformative models that align with social, economic, environmental and gender justice.

In Europe, Pierre Maison from Confédération Paysanne highlighted how LVC members have been lobbying their governments, especially in the process of the adoption of UNDROP and the resolution to establish the UN Working Group. He pointed out that the relationship that member organisations have with their governments varies from country to country. Some members are very close to their governments, some not. At the European level, the European Coordination Via Campesina (ECVC) region keeps pushing for public policies that are aligned to the declaration.

Raffaele Morgantini from CETIM intervened to talk briefly about the case of Switzerland and its challenges in terms of promotion and implementation of the UNDROP. Indeed, the Swiss case is complex, and has unfortunately had little or no progress to date, despite the advocacy work carried out by the coalition of “Friends of the Declaration – Switzerland”, of which CETIM, Uniterre (LVC member in Switzerland) and FIAN Switzerland are members. Among the main obstacles in Switzerland, but mirrored in many other countries where the agribusiness sector exerts almost total control over food and agricultural systems, the delegates identified the centrality of the dominant commercial and financial architecture. In fact, the international free-trade and investment regime involves a fundamental contradiction with the commitments made at UNDROP level. CETIM stated that the Swiss coalition wishes to participate constructively and actively in the activities of the new Working Group, so that it can play a major role in helping to promote and implement the peasant rights declaration in Switzerland.

LVC is convinced that UNDROP is a very relevant tool to foster agroecology and truly sustainable farming practices, climate and environmental justice, ensure the right to food for everyone, enhance the right to health, and generally protect human rights. In this regard, the peasant movement suggested that the Working Group should (1) examine how peasants, rural communities, and indigenous peoples’ initiatives could contribute to safeguarding biodiversity; address and reverse the structural dispossession of peasants and rural communities from means of production (such as seeds, land, water, etc.); (2) address the issue of dismantling the transnational architecture of the dominant trade and investment regimes that promote monopolistic and predatory agribusiness and other harmful corporate practices at the expense of peasants’ rights; and (3) explore how food sovereignty and social justice serve as alternative principles for better access to markets.

FIAN also highlighted the potential of UNDROP as an instrument of collaboration among the different groups that constitute a diverse rural world, such as Indigenous Peoples, rural women, peasants, pastoralists, artisanal fishers and fish workers, forest dwellers, and agricultural and food workers. They urged the adoption of an intersectional approach in addressing systemic discrimination, recognizing the barriers posed by gender, race, class, and other social factors, particularly for women and LGBTIQA+ individuals in rural areas. This comprehensive approach, they argued, is essential for building inclusive, resilient communities and ensuring the full realization of human rights for all rural people.

Zainal Fuat gave additional inputs on the priorities of La Via Campesina that need to be addressed in the implementation of the declaration. These include (1) promotion of best practices and lessons learned, fostering collaboration between States, rights holders, and civil society groups and organizations, (2) technical capacity-building support to States, rights holders, civil societies, and relevant UN mechanisms and bodies, (3) how agroecology and truly sustainable farming practices can foster climate and environmental justice, ensure the right to food for everyone, enhance the right to health, and generally protect human rights and (4) trade issues on the urgent initiative to build a new global trade order based on food sovereignty to address the failures of the current trade system and to promote collective action towards a new trade framework emphasizing solidarity, internationalism, human rights, and food sovereignty. Hence, it is also important for the Working Group on peasants to conduct a dialogue with UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and Food and Agriculture Organisation to realize this framework.

In closing, Zainal said that La Via Campesina welcomes the good news that Committee on World Food Security (CFS) approved the proposal of the Colombian government to hold International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD +20) in 2026. He called for implementation of Agrarian Reform (article 17 of UNDROP) with land distribution and that the ICARRD +20 will go a long way in addressing many agrarian conflicts, criminalization, repression, eviction and land grabbing for export production of food, feed and for climate change-carbon markets, bio fuel etc.

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Episode 2 focuses on the Declaration of the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas. It consists of two parts, the first focusing on the history and key rights of the Declaration, the second on the recent creation by the United Nations Human Rights Council of a Working Group of experts on the follow-up to the implementation of UNDROP. In 10 minutes, this episode covers all the basics for understanding UNDROP.

At its 8th International Conference, La Via Campesina made UNDROP a central element of its political future: “We are convinced that the more we disseminate information about UNDROP within our communities, our movements and among political decision-makers, the more it will be able to protect us at a legal and political level“.

La entrada Podcast Peasant Voices | Episode 2 – The UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants (UNDROP) se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

Originally written in 2021.

Introduction

The UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP) was adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in December 2018, after a nearly 20-year elaboration and negotiation period that involved UN member states – led by Bolivia – and the transnational peasant movement La Via Campesina, which was since the outset the main idealizer and promoter of what has now become the UNDROP. Switzerland played an important role in such process (Dommen and Golay, 2020), being responsible to organise some important international events to promote the declaration both before and after its adoption.

The sociopolitical coalition Friends of the Declaration, created after the adoption of the UNDROP, is the group now pushing for the implementation of the peasant declaration in Switzerland. In this sense, this paper focuses on the current efforts and challenges faced by this coalition around the promotion and implementation of the UNDROP in the country. It provides an analytical overview of the actions conducted and views shared by the coalition’s members, which is formed by a Swiss peasant union, NGOs, and an academic institution. Together they join forces towards “bringing the declaration to life” in Switzerland.

The paper is divided into three sections. The first introduces the Friends of the Declaration coalition, while the second elaborates on their fronts of action and the third on their views and challenges towards implementing the UNDROP in the country.

The Friends of the Declaration – A Swiss coalition for pushing the UNDROP agenda

When it comes to the Declaration on the rights of peasants in Switzerland, the group – strategically named – the Friends of the Declaration¹ (henceforth FoD) takes up a central place on the political stage. They are a sociopolitical coalition composed of different organisations that act for the promotion and implementation of the UNDROP within the country.

Officially created under this name in early 2019, the coalition gathers a group of Swiss-based organisations that had previously worked together during the declaration’s negotiation process to push for its adoption within the UN system and to assure Switzerland’s positive stance towards it (efforts which did result in a double success). The nine organisations currently forming the coalition are diverse in scope and areas of action: CETIM and FIAN Switzerland (human rights NGOs); HEKS/EPER, Pain pour le prochain² and Action de Carême (Christian development NGOs); Swiss Aid (development NGO), Alliance Sud (alliance of Swiss development NGOs), the Geneva Academy (academic/research institution) and Uniterre (peasant association/union).

The UNDROP’s adoption was a fundamental step for the consolidation of this political coalition, whose idea to create it first came about at the HEKS LandForum annual meeting held in December 2018 – which included the above-mentioned organisations³. Its very creation under such name acts as an important showcase for the declaration – both at the national and international levels – and expresses the central goal of the group: “to bring the declaration to life”.

In the context of an increasing neoliberalisation and transnationalisation of agriculture in the past decades, agrarian issues of access to land and food production became increasingly shaped by a politics of human rights and environmentalism of global amplitude (Kearney, 1998). In this sense, agrarian movements have joined forces with human rights NGOs and academic experts to push their political struggles at an international human rights level. This alliance that congregates local and transnational grassroots knowledge (through peasant movements) with the legal knowledge necessary to access international human rights frameworks (NGOs and academic experts) forms what Keck and Sikkink (1998) called “transnational advocacy networks”. It is precisely within this new configuration of agrarian struggles that the FoD coalition comes into existence.

Setting the scene: an overview of the actors and their fronts of action

The plurality of actors composing the FoD results in a range of actions taken by the coalition for promoting the UNDROP in Switzerland. In general, these actions can be divided into two fronts that focus on international and national affairs.

These fronts take shape in accordance with the specialisation area of each member of the coalition. For instance, although both fronts push for the promotion and implementation of the UNDROP in Switzerland, the first concentrates its efforts on the different impacts the country’s foreign policies have on peasants’ rights worldwide, as well as in pushing for Switzerland’s engagement in promoting the UNDROP within the UN System and through Swiss-funded development projects carried out abroad. The second front, on the other hand, focuses instead on issues concerning the national agricultural system and political struggles of the Swiss peasantry. Although overlapping in some areas⁴, these fronts of action distinctively mark a division within the Friends of the Declaration.

The international front

The actions undertaken with an international orientation are shared, to greater or lesser extent, among all members. Their foci, however, differ depending on the type of work developed by each organisation.

CETIM, for instance, as a Human Rights NGO with consultative status at the UN (ECOSOC NGO Committee), worked closely with LVC during the long years of the UNDROP negotiation process and served as an entry point for LVC members to participate in the human rights debates held at the UN in Geneva (see Hubert, 2021). Today, CETIM’s main activities remain centred at following and promoting peasants’ rights discussions in the UN, while its team also elaborates and publishes research papers and informative documents on the declaration – such as the multiple “training sheets on peasants’ rights”.

The four Swiss development agencies (HEKS/EPER, Action de Carême, Swiss Aid and Alliance Sud) push forward the UNDROP agenda in their diverse rural development projects implemented in economically less privileged countries. For instance, these organisations carry out diverse projects on agroecology, food security, food justice, seeds, and rural development across Latin America, Africa, and Asia – the main target regions of the development narrative.

Moreover, the Geneva Academy publishes a series of studies conducted on the declaration and on specific themes concerning peasants’ rights worldwide. A particular emphasis should be given to their latest published study on Swiss Foreign Policies and the UNDROP, which was funded by the aforementioned development organisations and delineated a series of recommendations for the Swiss Federal Government to put into practice in order to better comply with the peasants’ rights enshrined in the declaration.

FIAN International also played an active role in the negotiation process of the declaration – alongside CETIM and LVC – and today promotes the UNDROP through the publication of papers on an array of topics related to the right to food, rights of peasants, etc⁵. Its Swiss branch, FIAN Switzerland, is currently working on different Human Rights affairs within the UN while also being involved in a project for promoting the UNDROP in Burkina Faso.

Finally, the peasant union Uniterre has also been active in this international front as the representative of LVC in Switzerland; they worked closely with CETIM and FIAN to push for the UNDROP’s adoption in the UN. Its current secretariat members have a history of engagement in different committees of the European Coordination of LVC, which renders Uniterre an active player in the international struggles for food sovereignty and peasants’ rights.

The national front

Whereas all members of the coalition, each in their own manner, are engaged in promoting the UNDROP with an international orientation, the national focus remains mostly centred around a sole member, the peasant union Uniterre. Human rights and development NGOs, as well as research institutions seem to be, in this particular case, rather distant from the country’s rural reality.

Uniterre has a 70-year-old history of engagement with the political struggles of the Swiss peasantry. Actively involved in the UNDROP negotiation as LVC representative in Switzerland, the union now seeks to promote and implement the declaration on national grounds. In 2023, Uniterre is due to launch a national campaign on Fair Prices and Transparent Value Chains to push for fairer prices for Swiss producers. According to some board members, this is a great opportunity to bring the UNDROP into their political agenda as a mechanism to further endorse the union’s national campaign.

Although the implementation of the UNDROP in relation to the Swiss agriculture itself remains mainly an issue for Uniterre, other members of the FoD provide support in promoting the declaration locally through events, trainings and workshops about the declaration to peasant organisations, government representatives and development agencies. This is considered a crucial step in the promotion of the UNDROP, as an unknown declaration may never be implemented.

The imbalance between international and national fronts

To attentive eyes, an initial peek at the FoD coalition in terms of the type of organisations it is composed of is enough to perceive an apparent imbalance in their practical scope. As explained, among the member organisations only one represents peasants in Switzerland, while all others have different statuses and functions that orient them towards an international arena.

This asymmetry is the result of a coalition that was initially formed on the international level – during the negotiation process of the UNDROP in the UN – and now directs its focus to the national level of Switzerland. Whereas in the first scenario NGOs and experts engaged with La Via Campesina and its varied members on a global scale, in the second scenario the only peasant representative nationally involved with the declaration is Uniterre, which despite its formal connections to LVC still struggles to find its space in the national political arena.

The focus of NGOs and academic experts did not change considerably from one case to the other, as it naturally remained in the international sphere (through Swiss foreign policies and the promotion of the declaration in the UN system). In the meantime, the debate around the UNDROP among the Swiss peasantry – to whom the declaration is for – seems to remain a challenge to Uniterre members due to its limited representativity among the sector in the country.

Promoting and Implementing the UNDROP from the perspective of the FoD: Visions and challenges

The fact that the UNDROP is a declaration – and not an international treaty or convention – implies that states cannot initially be held legally accountable under it. However, while remembering the relevance of the internationally renowned Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Hubert (2021, p. 78) states that “the value of declarations in comparison with treaties and conventions should not be underestimated”. The years-long struggle for UNDROP’s adoption at the UN, involving multiple sectors of society, culminated in what is seen as a milestone in the international human rights law (Lozada, 2021; Hubert 2021). Nonetheless, the fact that despite international efforts peasants’ rights continue to be mostly neglected worldwide has prompted different social actors to actively advocate for the implementation of the UNDROP in different instances (Lozada, 2021), which is precisely the case of the Friends of the Declaration in Switzerland. In this sense, bringing this normative document into a palpable reality is concomitantly the main goal and biggest challenge of the coalition.

A recurrent point mentioned by interlocutors of the FoD is that the implementation of the UNDROP consists of translating a theoretical legal instrument into a practical reality that positively impacts peasants’ lives. It is in the gap between these two spheres that resides the political struggle carried out by the Swiss coalition. The Geneva Academy professor and main representative of the academia in the FoD, Christophe Golay, defined the implementation of the UNDROP as follows: “to implement the UNDROP in Switzerland means that steps have been taken (decisions, projects, etc.) on the basis of the declaration […] There are two ways of implementing the declaration, first by promoting the whole declaration (for example through trainings, awareness raising about the declaration in the Federal administration, etc), and second, by implementing one specific right or one article of the
declaration (for example on the right to seeds, right to land, etc)”. In addition, CETIM’s representative at the UN, Raffaele Morgantini, states that “there are different levels of implementation of the declaration. It can be done at a local, national, regional or international level. At the national level, for instance, for the declaration to be implemented in any country there must be a political will from the authorities […] In my view, the implementation of the UNDROP in Switzerland is intrinsically linked to the elaboration of a rural/agrarian legislation that has to be approved by the parliament and carried out by the executive government.”

In this respect, “bringing the declaration to life” takes up two main spectrums within the coalition: for the NGOs and the Geneva Academy, UNDROP’s implementation is linked to a greater extent to the adaptation or creation of laws and policies in line with the declaration’s content, whereas for Uniterre a comprehensive social mobilisation that promotes the appropriation of the declaration by Swiss peasants is the primary way through which the UNDROP can take shape in the material world.

The efforts in bringing the peasant rights agenda into Swiss foreign policies has been one of FoD’s main areas of action considering its international front. The most recent study carried out by Dommen and Golay (2020)⁶ focuses on four main areas that concentrate the core concerns of the coalition in respect to Swiss foreign affairs and their relation to peasants’ rights: i. the tensions between international trade agreements and the rights of peasants, specially concerning issues of Intellectual Property Rights and the right to seeds; ii. the need for the country to include the contents of the declaration into its development cooperation projects and raise awareness about the UNDROP in this sector; iii. the importance of the UNDROP being a guiding instrument for Switzerland in its international commerce activities as well as in its public-private partnerships; iv. the importance of Switzerland to continue to promote the declaration at the UN system.

In addition to highlighting the pressing issues concerning each topic, the study also provides a series of recommendations for the Swiss state to put into practice so to better comply with peasants’ rights in its foreign policies. Moreover, the full study was presented and discussed in an online meeting organised by the FoD that had the participation of members of the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (represented by its Agency for Development and Cooperation – SDC), the Federal Department of Economic Affairs (represented by the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs – SECO), and the Federal Office for Agriculture. In addition, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Michael Fakhri, the General Coordinator of La Via Campenisa, Morgan Ody, the Deputy Head of the Office for Human Rights Policy, Benjamin Müller, and the Swiss parliamentarian Carlo Sommaruga also participated in the event. This precisely synthetises an important role of FoD actors on the international front: elaborating academic studies on the UNDROP, promoting the declaration – based on them – in events with public authorities and other sectors of civil society, and lobbying for the implementation of the declaration nationally and internationally at the UN level⁷.

Nonetheless, the articulated efforts of the FoD face challenges that reveal political misalignments between the State’s and the UNDROP’s political agendas. Evidently, such challenges significantly hamper the implementation of the declaration in the ambit of the Swiss laws and policies. In this respect, Raffaele Morgantini ponders: “as of today, in Switzerland, the declaration is not being implemented because the authorities have not yet entered the ‘UNDROP implementation mode’, because they would have to completely change their agriculture policies and laws [both national and foreign]”. This “implementation mode” that authorities are not “on” exposes an ideological-political clash that was also acknowledged by Christophe Golay: “the declaration is quite radical in many ways; it goes against free trade agreements and intellectual property rights in some cases; so it is, let’s say, a bit at the margin as it is a different way of thinking development and human rights than most of the policies that Switzerland implements – in relation to its foreign policies”.

One of the greatest opportunities to bring up structural changes to the national agricultural policy in light of the UNDROP agenda was found in 2020 in the revision of the federal “Politique Agricole” PA22+. However, regardless of the Swiss active engagement and support towards the peasant declaration it the UN during the negotiation period, when it came to restructuring its own agricultural policy no moves were made to include elements from the UNDROP into the national agrarian framework. This is somewhat considered a defeat by the FoD and exposes some challenges faced by the coalition at the national front, for instance, building a nationally oriented socio-political mobilisation around the cause.

In the perspective of Michelle Zufferey and Rudi Berli, interlocutors who are part of Uniterre’s Secretariat, creating a social mobilisation around the UNDROP is a fundamental element for the implementation of the declaration in Switzerland. According to Michelle Zufferey, the implementation of the UNDROP in the country means “a radical change of paradigm, a totally new system based more on solidarity and agroecology; because the system, as it is now, it’s running against the wall.” This transformation can and will only come into place, she says, “if the society, the people, and the consumers change their way to act.” As great as the need for a comprehensive social mobilisation is the difficulty to achieve it. In regard to the mobilisation of the declaration by the Swiss peasantry, the difficulties lie in at least three aspects that shall be further analysed: i. the fact that the UNDROP carries an ambiguous character in respect to the reality of Swiss peasants; ii. Uniterre’s internal political disconnections; iii. and the union’s current distance from local peasantry engagements.

In relation to the first point, Rudi Berli argued that the UNDROP is simultaneously close and far from the reality of Swiss peasants. While the closeness is linked to its theoretical contents that directly crosses multiple realms of the peasant life, on a practical level this normative instrument, coming from the UN, is far away from the concrete reality of the category. As he puts it: “the UNDROP is not really something which is part of the comprehension of our members. There is quite a big gap between their reality and this struggle (the declaration) which was mainly supported by Uniterre’s board alongside LVC and NGOs […] I think it is because they have their daily sorrows, their daily work which is quite demanding and there is not much space for farmers to engage in this kind of agenda. So it’s too far away for most farmers, they cannot really link it to their lives even if we are convinced that it is clearly linked because these farmers’ rights as international standards set important benchmarks in international law”. This distance makes it harder for the UNDROP to be known as well as believed as a useful instrument for Swiss peasants.

Furthermore – and touching on the second aspect –, Michelle Zufferey highlights that Uniterre members also diverge in political ideologies, which would further widen the gap between them and the declaration: “In Uniterre we have about 800 members, but they do not all relate to agroecology and food sovereignty, only about half of them do”. These assertions point to internal issues within Uniterre that also reverberate in a wider spectrum of the Swiss peasantry, which is mostly politically conservative due to its historical ties with the urban bourgeoisie (see Forney, 2011). In this sense, a considerable part of Uniterre’s peasant members do not necessarily align themselves with the political goals of LVC, which may hinder the adherence of the UNDROP within the members themselves.

In addition to the distance of Swiss peasants to the UNDROP agenda for practical and ideological reasons, challenges for social mobilisation are further enhanced also by Uniterre’s distance to its own national agricultural scene in the past year when they acted more intensely on an international level to push for the declaration’s adoption at the UN. Michelle Zufferey expresses this concern through a kind of self-critique: “we [Uniterre] have been very involved internationally and we lost the contact with our basis. We now have to reestablish the contact to rebuild the link. This will be also our priority, we have to go back to our farmers. We are like a train which has lost its wagons.”

As a result of these multiple and complex challenges, it is consensus among the interlocutors that the implementation of the UNDROP in Switzerland will be a rather slow process, be it for changing national laws (especially those related to the national agriculture) or for mobilising the local peasantry and civil society around the declaration’s political goals. In spite of the significant challenges ahead, Uniterre intends to start its mobilisation as well as its process of “connecting back to the basis” by launching a Value Chain Campaign for fairer prices to producers in 2023. Through this campaign, the union intends to mobilise different sectors of the Swiss peasantry around a common cause – fairer prices – that would benefit the entire category, taking the opportunity to both divulge the UNDROP to this group and use it as a way of endorsing its struggle. It is a chance of linking the declaration to a concrete political cause of the local peasantry, as Michelle reasons: “we think that peasants are under pressure, they put a lot of money for infrastructure, and we internally discussed that if we work on fair prices it’s perhaps the best way to show a concrete link between their realities and the UNDROP. That’s the reason why we decided to begin on prices, and also if farmers are getting better prices then perhaps they can better imagine themselves to change their agricultural practices. That’s the basic idea: give them prices, make them proud of their work and then perhaps they agree to change. Because we must make the UNDROP concrete. Farmers have a lot of work and if it is too conceptual, they say goodbye.”

As scholars have pointed, issues of severe indebtedness by peasants leading to a recurring bankruptcy of rural properties are causing a gradual disappearance of the local peasantry (Droz and Forney, 2007). The (neo)liberalisation of the federal agricultural policy in the 1990s led to an increasing instability of prices that Uniterre’s upcoming campaign will attempt to tackle with the UNDROP as an ally – especially its Article 16 on the right to adequate income and standard of living. Moreover, severe issues of gender inequalities and access to social security permeate the Swiss agrarian setting (see Contzen and Forney, 2017 and Droz et al, 2014), which the UNDROP’s Articles 4 and 22 directly address. As of now, the potential the declaration will have to bring about changes in the national agricultural structure is directly linked to the political mobilisation constructed around it by Uniterre, which remains the sole Swiss peasant union to support the cause. As a matter of fact, the biggest and most influential peasant union in Switzerland, the Union Suisse des Paysans, is not politically aligned to Uniterre and does not include the UNDROP in its political struggles.

This section brought into perspective some of the actions and challenges that were most salient to me during interviews with FoD interlocutors. The Swiss case is an example of how implementing a declaration of international scope into a national context involves a complex political and social mobilisation that takes specific shapes according to the country’s political scene and the position of the social actors involved in it. The main challenge of the FoD coalition remains to bring the UNDROP into the local peasantry’s political agenda, as the efforts in respect to foreign policies seem to be more solidified with more concrete actions being taken at the practical level.

Conclusions

This paper provided an overview of the political actors pushing for the promotion and implementation of the UNDROP in Switzerland, as well as their areas of action and challenges. It has been identified that the “Friends of the Declaration” coalition presents a unique heterogenous group – formed in a transnational context of peasants’ human rights struggles – which steer actions towards two distinct fronts: one related to international affairs (through Swiss foreign policies and the UN system) and the other to national affairs (concerning the national peasantry and the local agriculture).

The imbalance observed between these two fronts can be explained by analysing the origins of the coalition and the areas of expertise of the organisations engaged in it. The promotion and implementation of the UNDROP in Switzerland face challenges in both fronts identified. These difficulties are not only related to changing laws, but are even more pressing when it comes to mobilising the local peasantry around the declaration’s political agenda. Aware that the implementation of the UNDROP in Switzerland will be a rather slow process which demands constant political action, the coalition has nevertheless been concentrating valuable efforts towards it within its own possibilities. The challenges and setbacks faced by no means obscure the political relevance of this group, which could serve as inspiration for other countries or regions to form similar political networks to push for peasants’ rights at local, national and international levels.

References

Contzen, S. e Forney, J. 2017. Family farming and gendered division of labour on the move: a typology of farming-family configurations. Agriculture and Human Values 34: 27–40.

Dommen, Caroline; Golay, Christophe. 2020. La politique extérieure de la suisse et la déclaration de l’onu sur les droits des paysan·ne·s et des autres personnes travaillant dans les zones rurales Geneva Academy et al.

Droz, Yvan; Forney, Jérémie. 2007. Un métier sans avenir? La Grande Transformation de l’agriculture Suisse Romande. Paris/Genève: Karthala/IUED.

Droz et al. 2014. L’agriculteur et la paysanne suisses : un couple inégal ? Swiss Journal of Sociology, 40 (2), 2014, 237-257.

Forney, Jérémie. 2011. Idéologie agrarienne et identité professionnelle des agriculteurs: la complexité des images du «paysan suisse ». Yearbook of Socioeconomics in Agriculture.

Hubert, Coline. 2019. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants – A Tool in the Struggle for Our Common Future, CETIM.

Kearney, Michael. 1996. Reconceptualizing the peasantry: anthropology in global perspective. Colorado: Westview Press.

Keck, Margaret E., Sikkink, Kathryn. 1998. Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Rosales Lozada, Luis F. 2021. The Implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas: What Is Next? South Centre, Policy Brief No. 98, 2021.

1 This name was inspired by other coalitions of similar kind that exist, most of all, within the UN system (e.g. the Friends of the Right to Food – FAO). Regarding the UNDROP, a coalition of this kind – even sharing the same name – exists only in Luxembourg.

2 Pain pour le Prochain merged with HEKS/EPER in November 2021.

3 Even though the UNDROP had not yet been officially adopted by the UN General Assembly, its adoption was taken as certain since the declaration had already been approved by the Human Rights Council by then. In this sense, the LandForum meeting also served the purpose of discussing the next steps of action around the UNDROP’s political agenda in the post-adoption scenario. The idea of creating a “Friends of the Declaration” coalition was then born there.

4 For example, Intellectual Property Rights and international trade agreements have great impact on both Swiss and foreign peasants.

5 For additional publications see https://www.fian.org/en/our-work/ and https://www.fian.be/- Etudes-rapports-?lang=fr.

6 This study was a collaboration between an independent researcher (Caroline Dommen) and the Geneva Academy (Christophe Golay). The coalition members provided economic as well as intellectual support for its elaboration.

7 See, for example: Golay, Christophe. 2020. The Role of Human Rights Mechanisms in Monitoring the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants, Research Brief, Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, 8p.; Golay, Christophe. 2019. The Implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas, Research Brief, Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, 11p.; Golay, Christophe. 2018. No One Will Be Left Behind. The Role of United Nations Human Rights Mechanisms in Monitoring the Sustainable Development Goals that Seek to Realize Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Academy Briefing No. 11, Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, 106p.; Golay, Christophe; Bessa, Adriana. 2019. The Right to Seeds in Europe. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas and the Protection of the Right to Seeds in Europe, Academy Briefing No. 15, Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, 73p.

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Around the world, people and communities are active in defence of the commons, territories, and peoples’ rights. From peasants protecting their seeds and traditional practices from transnational agribusiness to forest communities resisting destructive logging, many of these collective struggles take place in rural areas. The UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas represents an important step forward in strengthening legal frameworks that recognise collective rights, particularly in relation to environmental rights and control over the territory.

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The UN Declaration on the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas (UNDROP) has been adopted to protect the rights of some of the most marginalised people in the world, who together represent around two billion people: peasants, landless people, people living from traditional fishing, herding, and hunting activities, and rural workers. The UNDROP is based on a number of international instruments, including (1) international human rights instruments, (2) the Convention on Biological Diversity and its Protocols, and (3) the Plant Treaty.

INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS INSTRUMENTS

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) has been adopted in 1948. In the UDHR, UN Member States proclaimed civil and political rights (CPR) as well as economic, social and cultural rights (ESCR). Among the rights that are particularly important for peasants, one can mention the rights to food, health and social security enshrined in UDHR’s articles 21 and 25.

International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR)

The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) has been adopted in 1966, and it has more than 170 States Parties. The ICESCR protects the rights to social security (article 9), food (article 11) and health (article 12), among other ESCR. The right to food in ICESCR is composed of the right to adequate food (article 11.1) and of the fundamental right to be free from hunger (article 11.2). It has been interpreted by the UN Committee on ESCR, in charge of supervising the ICESCR, as the right to food that is available, adequate and accessible to all. Correlative obligations include the need for States take steps to protect the most vulnerable people, including peasants, and to provide them with access to the natural resources that they need to feed themselves and their family in dignity.

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) has been adopted in 1966, and it has more than 170 States Parties. The ICCPR protects important rights for peasants, such as the right to life and physical security (articles 6, 7), freedom of movement (article 12), access to justice (article 14), the right to privacy, family and home (article 17), freedoms of expression, assembly and association (articles 19, 21, 22), the rights of minorities to their own culture (article 27) and the right to non-discrimination (article 26). The UN Human Rights Committee, in charge of monitoring the ICCPR, has recently interpreted some of these rights to protect the rights to food and to land of peasants.

International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD)

The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD) has been adopted in 1965. It has more than 180 States Parties, which have committed to prohibiting and eliminating racial discrimination in all its forms and guaranteeing every person’s right to equality before the law, without distinction of race, colour or ethnic or national origin, in particular in the enjoyment of ESCR (article 5). Important rights for peasants that are mentioned explicitly in CERD’s article 5 include the rights to a just and favourable remuneration, to social security and social services, and to own property alone or in association with others.

The Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, in charge of monitoring CERD, noted that on the basis of CERD’s article 5, States Parties shall fight discrimination in access to food and land by vulnerable persons and groups, which include peasants.

Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW)

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) has been adopted in 1979, and it has 189 States Parties. Its article 14 is particularly important for peasant women.

CEDAW’s article 14 provides that States Parties to CEDAW shall take into account the particular problems faced by rural women and the significant roles that rural women play in the economic survival of their families, including their work in the non-monetized sectors of the economy, and that they shall eliminate all forms of discrimination against women in rural areas. It provides that States Parties shall ensure the equal rights of rural women to participate in development planning; to adequate health services; to social security; to training and education; to organize self-help groups and co-operatives; to agricultural credit and loans, marketing facilities and appropriate technology; to equal treatment in land and agrarian reform as well as in land resettlement schemes; and to adequate living conditions, particularly in relation to housing, sanitation, electricity and water supply, transport and communications.

The UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW Committee), in charge of monitoring CEDAW, underlined that ‘rural women are critical to achieving food security, reducing poverty, malnutrition and hunger, and in promoting rural development’. It provided that States Parties to CEDAW should ensure rural women’s rights to food, nutrition and seeds, as well as their rights to manage and control natural resources, within the framework of food sovereignty, and in accordance with their right to equality in marriage and family relations.

Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC)

The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) has been adopted in 1989, and it has 196 States Parties. The CRC accords a central place to the protection of the right to food of children, justified by the prevalence of malnutrition as the primary cause of infant mortality throughout the world.

The CRC is based on the principle that States are not the sole guarantors of the fulfilment of the protected rights. The parent(s) or others responsible for the child have the primary responsibility to secure, within their abilities and financial capacities, the conditions of living necessary for the child’s development. To facilitate their task, CRC’s article 27 provides that States Parties must adopt appropriate measures and must offer, if need be, material assistance and support programmes, especially regarding food.

The CRC also aims at fighting child labour, which for 71% – 108 million children – takes place in agriculture. CRC’s article 32 recognizes the right of the child to be protected from economic exploitation and from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with child’s education, or to be harmful to child’s health or development. 

UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP)

The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) was adopted in 2007, after 25 years of mobilisation by indigenous peoples’ organizations and their supporters, and 11 years of negotiations at the UN Human Rights Council and General Assembly.

UNDRIP enshrines several rights that are important for indigenous peasants, such as the rights of indigenous peoples to their lands, territories and resources (articles 10, 25 to 32), their right to development (article 23), their right to the conservation and protection of the environment (article 29), their right to maintain, control, protect and develop their cultural heritage, traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions, as well as the manifestations of their sciences, technologies and cultures, including human and genetic resources, seeds, medicines, and knowledge of the properties of fauna and flora (article 31), and their right to have access to justice (article 40). UNDRIP’s article 17.2 also protects indigenous children against child labour, and its article 39 provides that indigenous peoples have the right to have access to financial and technical assistance from states and through international cooperation, for the enjoyment of their rights.

UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP)

UNDROP has been adopted in 2018, after almost 20 years of mobilization by La Via Campesina and its allies, and 6 years of negotiation at the UN Human Rights Council and General Assembly.

The UNDROP expresses deep concern at the structural discrimination faced by peasants and other people working in rural areas, who disproportionally suffer from, inter alia, poverty, hunger, and malnutrition, forced evictions and displacements, and criminalisation (Preamble and art. 3.3), and it recognises an important number of rights to overcome that situation.

UNDROP’ article 1 defines peasant as any person who engages or who seeks to engage, alone, or in association with others or as a community, in small-scale agricultural production for subsistence and/or for the market, and who relies significantly, though not necessarily exclusively, on family or household labour and other non-monetized ways of organizing labour, and who has a special dependency on and attachment to the land. It also provides that UNDROP applies to any person engaged in artisanal or small-scale agriculture, crop planting, livestock raising, pastoralism, fishing, forestry, hunting or gathering, and handicrafts related to agriculture or a related occupation in a rural area, as well as to dependent family members of peasants, indigenous peoples and local communities working on the land, transhumant, nomadic and semi-nomadic communities, and the landless engaged in the above-mentioned activities. Moreover, it adds that it also applies to hired workers, including all migrant workers regardless of their migration status, and seasonal workers, on plantations, agricultural farms, forests and farms in aquaculture and in agro-industrial enterprises.

Some of the most important rights enshrined in UNDROP include the rights to land and other natural resources (articles 5 and 17), to freedom of thought, conscience, religion, opinion, expression, and peaceful assembly (art. 8), to create and join organizations to defend their rights (art. 9), to participation and information (arts. 10 and 11), to access to justice (art. 12), to food and food sovereignty (article 15), to an adequate standard of living, including the right to sell products at prices that guarantee a decent income and livelihood (art. 16), to seeds and biological diversity (articles 19, 20), to water, including for irrigation, and to sanitation (art. 21), to social security (art. 22), to health (art. 23), to a safe, clean and healthy environment (art. 18), to housing (art. 24), to education and training (art. 25), as well as cultural rights (art. 26).

UNDROP’s article 4 provides that states shall take all appropriate measures to eliminate all forms of discrimination against peasant women and other women working in rural areas, including women family farmers, to promote their empowerment, and to ensure that they enjoy without discrimination all the human rights and fundamental freedoms set out in the UNDROP. It is also important to mention that UNDROP’s articles 13.2 and 13.6 aim at protecting children in agriculture from child labour.

THE CONVENTION ON BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY AND ITS PROTOCOLS

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was adopted in 1992. Today, it has acquired almost universal acceptance, with 196 States Parties. The CBD protects important elements of the right to seeds of indigenous and local communities, including peasants, through provisions aimed at ensuring the protection of indigenous and local communities’ traditional knowledge and practices, and the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising out of the utilization of genetic resources, including by appropriate access to these resources.

The two Protocols to the CBD are also important for peasants. In the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, adopted in 2000 and to which more than 170 States are parties, States have agreed to take measures to protect biological diversity and indigenous and local communities from the potential risks posed by genetically modified organisms (GMOs). In the Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and Benefit-Sharing (Nagoya Protocol), adopted in 2010 and ratified by more than 110 States, States have further defined benefit-sharing obligations arising from the use of traditional knowledge associated with genetic resources, and from research and development on genetic resources held by indigenous and local communities (article 5). They have also committed, ‘as far as possible, not to restrict the customary use and exchange of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge within and amongst indigenous and local communities’ (article 12.4).

THE PLANT TREATY

The most important international treaty for the protection of the right of peasants to seeds is the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (Plant Treaty), adopted by consensus at FAO in 2001. It has more than 140 States Parties today. The Plant Treaty establishes a multilateral system to facilitate access to seeds and planting material and to share their benefits in a fair and equitable way. It complements the CBD and its provisions protecting farmers’ rights, which aim at drawing attention to the unremunerated innovations of farmers which are as the foundation of all modern plant breeding, have been described as vital to the preservation of agro-biodiversity.

In the Plant Treaty’s Preamble, States affirmed that ‘the rights recognized in this Treaty to save, use, exchange and sell farm-saved seed and other propagating material, and to participate in decision-making regarding, and in fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising from, the use of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture, are fundamental to the realization of Farmers’ Rights, as well as to the promotion of Farmers’ Rights at national and international levels’.

In Plant Treaty’s article 9, States recognized ‘the enormous contribution that the local and indigenous communities and farmers of all regions of the world, particularly those in the centres of origin and crop diversity, have made and will continue to make for the conservation and development of plant genetic resources which constitute the basis for food and agriculture production throughout the world’. The same article requires States Parties to take measures to protect and promote farmers’ rights, by: ‘(a) protecting traditional knowledge relevant to plant genetic resources for food and agriculture, and affirming (b) the right to equitably participate in sharing benefits arising from the utilization of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture, and (c) the right to participate in making decisions, at national level, on matters related to the conservation and sustainable use of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture’.

INTERNATIONAL INSTRUMENTS TO PROTECT PEASANTS’ RIGHTS

1. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948
2. International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, 1965
3. International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 1966
4. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 1966
5. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, 1979
6. Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989
7. Convention on Biological Diversity, 1992
8. International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, 2001
9. UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 2007
10. Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization to the Convention on Biological Diversity, 2010
11. UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas, 2018

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