Engaging UNDROP’s rights holders in the next thematic report of the Working Group

Defending Peasants’ Rights continues to collaborate closely with the experts from the UN Working Group on UNDROP. In March 2026, we organised an online dialogue with the former chair of the Working Group, Carlos Duarte, gathering UNDROP’s rights holders from all over the world to provide direct input to the Working Group’s upcoming thematic report on Rural Territories on Land and Sea.

This report, due to be presented to the UN General Assembly in New York in the second term of 2026, will examine how violations related to land, water, and forests impact the dignity, stability, and livelihoods of peasants and rural workers worldwide. Inputs from rights holders and their representative movements and organisations were key to ground the report on the lived realities and struggles of peoples working in rural and water territories, who face multiple forms violations and threats as green- and blue-grabbing practices advance in a world increasingly controlled by private capital and transnational corporations.This discussion took place following the official Call for inputs released by the WG, which gathered many contributions. See them here.

The UN Working Group on UNDROP concludes its official visit to Ghana

The Working Group conducted its first official country visit since the start of its mandate, undertaking a ten-day mission to Ghana. During the visit, the experts met with a wide range of UNDROP’s rights holders, including smallholder farmers, artisanal fishers and pastoralists, as well as public authorities and varied civil society representatives. While noting important legislative and policy advances, they highlighted ongoing challenges related to land access, poverty, exclusion, environmental degradation and limited access to finance and markets.

The Working Group stressed the need for stronger implementation of existing laws and policies to ensure that Ghana’s agricultural transformation benefits rural communities and fully reflects the rights recognised in UNDROP.

Read the end of the mission statement with preliminary findings here.

Two new subcategories have been added to the website. Check them out!  

New category on UNDROP’s Rights Holders

UNDROP recognises a wide range of rural constituencies as its rights holders, which allows diverse rural groups that often face marginalisation and multiple human rights violations to use UNDROP as a legal and political tool to protect their fundamental rights at the national, regional, and international levels. This new subcategory aims not only to highlight the plurality of UNDROP’s rights holders, but also to provide guidance on the interpretation of the definition of “peasants and other people working in rural areas” contained in Article 1 of the Declaration. It includes insightful contributions from Shalmali Guttal, Chairperson of the UN Working Group on UNDROP, as well as from rights holders themselves, who participated in an online roundtable held during our 2025 public webinar.

Click here to access the new Rights Holders subcategory on Defending Peasants’ Rights

National Laws and Policies

The appropriation and mobilisation of UNDROP by rural movements and organisations have increasingly yielded important victories at the legislative and policy levels across different countries, especially in South America. This new subcategory serves to gather the main legislative and policy advancements obtained as a result of political advocacy led by rural constituencies and allies, aimed at creating or amending national legal frameworks that protect the rights of peasants, fisher peoples, nomads, and pastoralists, as well as other rights holders, in light of UNDROP’s provisions.

In recent years, we have witnessed a growing influence of UNDROP in shaping laws and policies at national level, thanks to the mobilisation of rural movements that give life to this legal instrument in their struggles. These victories not only help safeguard the rights of rural peoples, but also contribute to emerging practices that can guide future legislative and policy developments in favour of the rights of those who live and work in rural areas.

Click here to access the new National Laws and Policies subcategory on Defending Peasants’ Rights

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La entrada Defending Peasants’ Rights – Newsletter n°10 se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

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

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

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

See the full report below:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Issued by: Special Rapporteur on the human right to a healthy environment

Deadline: 21 August 2026

Purpose: Inform the preparation of my thematic report to the 64th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Background

Environmental human rights defenders (EHRDs) play a critical role in protecting the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment and all other human rights. Their work contributes directly to protecting ecosystems and biodiversity, advancing a safe climate, improving air quality, protecting water and watersheds, promoting healthy and sustainable produced food, and achieving non-toxic environments. Environmental human rights defenders’ work is fundamental for the advancement of the procedural elements of the right to a healthy environment; access to information, public participation, and access to justice. These are recognised human rights and fundamental pillars of the rule of law, democratic governance and peaceful societies.

The role of EHRDs is especially vital today, as humanity faces the triple planetary crises of climate change, biodiversity loss, and toxic pollution, aggravated by systemic inequalities and discrimination. Around the world, EHRDs are actively identifying and implementing alternative viable solutions to the triple planetary crises, with solutions that span from protecting fragile ecosystems on land and in the ocean- to advancing renewable and sustainable energy. This helps in achieving accountability while supporting States to fulfill their obligations. Whilst there has been an increased recognition of the crucial role of EHRDs by institutions, overall, the risks, violence and repression these defenders keep facing are increasing in all regions. These risks are reflected by the closing of civic spaces, stigmatization, harassment, surveillance, strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs), criminalization, threats, attacks, and even assassinations and forced disappearances.

People and groups in marginalized situations, including Indigenous Peoples, peasants, coastal and fisher peoples, people of African descent, women and girls, children and youth, older persons, LGTBQ+ and people living in highly polluted areas are especially in vulnerable situations. EHRDs on the ground face higher risks, aggravated by conflict, war, and illegal economies, while increased risks for journalists, lawyers, and even scientists working for a healthy environment, have also been documented .

To further understand the situation that EHRDs are facing around the world, and to find effective measures for their protection is urgent and important per se but also for solving the triple planetary crises. Understanding the situation requires considering differentiated impacts that EHRDs are facing by region, sector, gender, age, among others, towards the protection of their rights, and for effectively implementing the right to a healthy environment.

Objectives

In this report, the Special Rapporteur examines the situation of environmental human rights defenders, working in the context of the triple planetary crises, focusing on how violations against them also affect the realization of the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. The report will outline the obligations of States and non-State actors, under international law and human rights law, to protect EHRDs, as well as States’ duty to protect the environment and the climate system, preventing further harms. In doing so, the Special Rapporteur aims to contribute to the understanding of the situation of EHRDs from an individual and a collective perspective, acknowledging that while many of EHRDs are leading and implementing individual actions, these are commonly part of broader community or collective efforts.

The Special Rapporteur will provide concrete recommendations to States and other stakeholders to ensure the protection of environmental human rights defenders and the effective implementation of the right to a healthy environment, including in relation to collective measures from an intersectional approach.

Key questions and types of input/comments sought

Key Information and Contributions for the Report

The Special Rapporteur invites submissions from States, civil society, Indigenous Peoples, people of African descent, peasants, children and youth, small scale fisheries, academics, businesses and others on the following:

1. Regarding the situation of Environmental Human Rights Defenders

Please contribute with information describing:

• Specific risks faced by environmental human rights defenders, including Indigenous Peoples, women and girls, children and youth, peasants, coastal communities, rural communities, journalists, lawyers, scientists, LGTBQ+, and people living in highly polluted areas, among others. Please describe impacts of these risks and attacks on their communities, collectives, work, and environmental protection outcomes, as well as specific considerations applicable to regions or sectors that might be relevant.
• The use of legal measures to restrict, limit or obstacle the work of EHRDs, including impacting the civic space, use of SLAPPs, the use of criminal law, or other mechanisms to create a ‘chilling effect’.
• Kinds of impacts, including psychosocial impacts of threats, violence, and repression on environmental human rights defenders. Please detail the ways in which these attacks may generate or exacerbate internal conflicts within communities, organizations, and social movements.
• Factors that might be contributing to the worsening situation of environmental human rights defenders.

2. Policies, legislation and other existing measures of State and non-State actors for the protection of EHRDs

Please contribute with information related with :

• Policies, regulations and practices adopted by States, businesses and/or financial institutions to identify, mitigate, mitigate, prevent, prosecute and remedy for risks and impacts on EHRDs, including in the context of high-risk sectors such as extractive industries, agribusiness, energy, and infrastructure, as well as information on barriers to accountability and access to justice. Please mention whether mechanisms consider individual and collective protection and include examples of the implementation of these;
• Examples of actions taken by non-State actors to ensure meaningful engagement with affected or potentially affected EHRDs as individuals, collectives and communities, including Indigenous Peoples and other groups in vulnerable situations, and measures to avoid contributing to threats, reprisals, or conflicts. Include information of how these actions have succeeded or failed, and redress processes, established by non-State actors that are relevant to the protection of EHRDs, including their accessibility, effectiveness, implementation in practice.
• Grievance mechanisms, and redress processes, established by non-State actors that are relevant to the protection of EHRDs, including their accessibility, effectiveness and implementation in practice.

3. Other effective measures for protecting Environmental Human Rights Defenders

Please provide information regarding:

• Concrete examples of effective measures beyond legal frameworks or policies, to ensure a safe and enabling environment for environmental human rights defenders, including measures for individual, collective and/or communities’ protection.
• Explanation if these measures consider an intersectional approach and how it is implemented, as well as the process to conceive, plan and implement such measures.
• Examples of structural measures for the effective protection of EHRDs ensuring a safe and enabling environment for the implementation of their work.

How inputs will be used?

We appreciate your efforts to submit your valuable inputs for this report, and your collaboration and support for the implementation of this mandate. If there is information that you have previously sent to other special procedures or human rights mechanisms that may be relevant, we urge you to flag these to avoid duplication and more effectively coordinate. 

Please email your responses in Word format (subject: Planning and the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment to hrc-sr-environment@un.org. Unless specifically requested otherwise and provided they are in line with UN norms and standards, submissions may be posted on the Special Rapporteur’s homepage at the OHCHR website and may be referenced in the reports. In view of consent and privacy issues, contributions containing names of alleged victims will be considered but not published online.

For additional information on the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the human right to a healthy environment | OHCHR.

La entrada Call for Input: Environmental human rights defenders and the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

*Image: El mundo campesino. Elena Rusca

By Elena Rusca, June 25th, 2026

Interview with Geneviève Savigny, a member of the UN Working Group on the Rights of Peasants (UNDROP)

Geneva, June 25th, 2026 — Elena Rusca

As food, climate, and geopolitical crises intensify, small-scale farmers—who feed the majority of humanity—remain among those most vulnerable to poverty, dispossession, and violence. Since 2018, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants (UNDROP) has provided an unprecedented framework for protecting their collective rights, their seeds, their lands, and their knowledge. But its implementation remains fragile. Geneviève Savigny, a member of the Working Group on the UNDROP, analyzes the agricultural, seed-related, and political challenges facing the world’s rural areas today—from West Africa to Latin America.

UNDROP: A Historic Text Born of Peasants’ Struggles

Adopted in 2018 by the United Nations General Assembly, the Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas is one of the most ambitious instruments of the international system. The result of nearly twenty years of mobilization led by La Vía Campesina, it seeks to protect those who produce most of the world’s food but who remain the most vulnerable to poverty, expropriation, violence, and political marginalization.

UNDROP recognizes rights that are rarely explicitly stated in other international texts:

• the right to land,
• the right to seeds,
• the right to water,
• protection against evictions,
• participation in decision-making,
• collective and customary rights,
• and the recognition of peasant knowledge.

To ensure its implementation, the Human Rights Council established a Working Group in 2023 composed of five independent experts. Geneviève Savigny, a farmer and former member of the Peasants’ Confederation and La Vía Campesina, is a member of the group.

An international working group to defend the rights of peasants

— How was your working group formed?

G. Savigny: “The working group was formed by the Human Rights Council after a resolution was adopted in the fall of 2023. We were selected during the winter, and there are five of us. Personally, I am a farmer and a former member of the Peasants’ Confederation and La Vía Campesina. The others are Carlos, an anthropologist and professor in Colombia; David, a law professor in Armenia; Shalmalee, former director of the NGO Focus on Global South; and Uche, a Nigerian law professor working in the United States.”

— How do you work, specifically?

G. Savigny: “Our group holds two annual five-day in-person sessions, usually one in Geneva and another in New York. This year, we decided to replace the second session with country visits. We just completed a visit to Ghana, and another is scheduled for November in Paraguay. Each time, two members of the group go, along with our staff.”

— What do you do during these visits?

G. Savigny: “We meet with representatives from various ministries related to agriculture and food, and then with representatives of farmers, fishermen, herders, and rural women. In Ghana, the meetings had to be arranged through the government or local authorities so we could meet with village chiefs. The goal is to understand how farmers’ rights are being implemented, what the strengths are, and what can be improved. We then draft a report that will be presented in the fall.”

Participation: An Essential Right, Yet Difficult to Exercise

— You published a report on the right to participation. What were your conclusions?

G. Savigny: “Participation is truly indispensable for ensuring that the situation of rural men and women is taken into account and addressed appropriately. But there is still much to be done, including for practical reasons: translation, distance, and the difficulties of traveling to centers of power.

As for women, there is a particular challenge in freeing themselves from domestic chores and daily work in order to participate in decisions that affect them. This adds an extra layer of difficulty in a rural world where work is very demanding and often isolating.”

Seeds: A Crucial Challenge in the Face of Multinationals

— This year you are working on the right to seeds. Why is this so important?

G. Savigny: “Article 19 of the UNDROP specifies that farmers must have the right to maintain farmer-based seed systems: to save, reproduce, exchange, and sell seeds. The state must also support the existence of this system. This is not always the case, as there is a very dynamic, even aggressive commercial system in place, depending on how you look at it.”

— Do GMOs play a role in this issue?

G. Savigny: “Yes, of course. With technological advances, we now have much easier and faster ways to create GMOs. To facilitate their distribution and commercialization, seed companies no longer want them to be called GMOs, but rather NGT—New Genomic Techniques. They want it to be recognized that these traits could occur naturally, so there would be no need to label them.

But there are patents filed on them! And there is a fear that patented traits—which are not labeled—might appear naturally in farmers’ plants that they have been selecting for years.”

— What does this mean for farmers?

G. Savigny: “The patent on the CRISPR-Cas system, for example, belongs to a single company. There is an ever-increasing concentration of rights that determine whether or not seeds can be multiplied. In response to this, many seed laws impose strict rules for the certification and commercialization of seeds, which contradicts farmers’ right to seeds.

Farmers must assert this right, and governments must realize that—even for the sake of biodiversity and plant resilience—the small-scale breeding carried out by local farmers must not be halted. There is an entire system that must be preserved if we want to maintain significant biodiversity and crop diversity.”

Land and Territory: Collective Rights Yet to Be Recognized

— They are also working on the issue of land. What is the main challenge?

G. Savigny: “We’re working on Article 17 of the declaration, which addresses the rights to land and territory. Interestingly, UNDROP highlights the importance of collective and customary rights. This is important because that’s where the problem lies in many places: since there are no clear property titles, the situation becomes informal.”

— And in Switzerland, how do you view access to land?

G. Savigny: “I believe the right to land serves to illuminate new paths. Secure access to land is needed, not necessarily ownership. I hope that in Switzerland we can develop leasing arrangements or forms of collective ownership that provide security for those who cultivate the land.

There’s a major problem: an entire generation is reaching the end of their working lives with meager pensions and few resources. Sometimes they don’t want to pass the land on to younger people. It’s a widespread social problem. If we want high-quality food production, we must also solve the problem of access to land.

Buying land is prohibitively expensive. And we have to be careful because in some countries, even in Europe, it’s corporations that are buying up the land.”

Latin America: A “Peasantization” Under Attack but Essential

— For our Chilean readers, what is your perspective on “peasantization” in Latin America?

G. Savigny: “In Latin America, I believe ‘peasantization’ is essential. Together with indigenous peoples, they form the core of an agricultural sector that is, at the same time, under intense attack from the rise of highly intensive industrial agriculture.

This is reinforced by free trade agreements aimed at increasing exports of products and raw materials. What the farmers there say is that this does not serve to protect them.

It’s a region I don’t know perfectly well, but it seems so rich and diverse. From a cultural standpoint, it is rural and indigenous. In Latin America, artisanal production methods remain very important. Food quality also comes from being able to eat fresh vegetables everywhere.”

— Is it also a struggle against transnational corporations?

G. Savigny: “Of course. Small farmers must be supported; transnational corporations must be held in check, because they have a natural tendency—I think it’s even their business model—to expand, consolidate, and maximize profits. But there must be limits, because otherwise, it’s destructive both environmentally and socially.”

The UN’s “special procedures”: explaining the mandate

— Can you explain what the special procedures are?

G. Savigny: “Working groups are part of the special procedures, as are special rapporteurs. They focus on a particular aspect of human rights, such as the right to food or the right to water. We are a working group: instead of a single special rapporteur, there are five of us, which reflects the diversity and breadth of the issue.

Our role is to implement the Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas, the UNDROP. It is a text adopted in 2018 by the UN General Assembly that comprises twenty-eight articles summarizing the rights necessary for peasant activities.

It defines what constitutes a peasant, the obligations of States, non-discrimination, women’s rights, the right to resources, the right to participation, to information, to education, and so on—all detailed in a manner tailored to the rural context.”

The Working Group will present its reports on land and seeds this coming September in Geneva. These documents, which will be submitted to the UN General Assembly, should shed crucial light on the issue.

La entrada Without land, without seeds, there is no future for farmers se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The study examines the growing trend of agrarian counter-reforms in Latin America and the Caribbean and their impact on land rights secured through earlier agrarian reform processes. It shows how recent legal, institutional, and administrative changes are contributing to renewed land concentration and increasing pressure on peasants, Indigenous Peoples, Afro-descendant communities, and other rural populations. The report also maps the main forms these counter-reforms take (legal reforms, land financialisation, corporate-led green grabbing, and state-led dispossession) and explores their implications for territorial justice and rural development.

It analyses current patterns of land concentration across the region, highlighting how long-standing inequalities are being reinforced by financialisation and large-scale land acquisitions, with these structural conditions providing the backdrop for contemporary counter-reforms. Drawing on case studies from Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Ecuador, as well as Caribbean countries, it explores a range of legal and institutional measures that have weakened land protections, including administrative reclassification, deregulation, restrictive territorial policies, accelerated expropriation procedures, the criminalization of land-related conflicts, and the revocation of land titles.

It further identifies broader regional trends and assesses them in light of international human rights standards, arguing that these reforms reflect a wider shift in land governance that favours economic concentration while eroding protections recognised under international instruments, especially the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP).

The study concludes by highlighting a pressing contradiction of the current agrarian moment: while significant progress is being made in formally recognising the rights of rural peoples, the administrative, procedural, and economic mechanisms needed to make those rights effective are being steadily weakened through a global legal architecture that places land, territories and natural resources as mere financial assets.

Listen to the podcast on this study (Spanish only):

Read the full study here:

La entrada Agrarian Counter-Reforms: Anatomy of a Dispossession in Progress se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

This study provides the first regional mapping of laws recognising peasants and other rural populations across Latin America. It analyses 170 legal provisions in force in 23 countries between 1917 and 2025, offering a comparative overview of how peasant rights are recognized in national legal systems.

The findings show that legal recognition of peasants is now widespread across the region. Nearly half of the laws analysed explicitly recognise peasant rights, while 88% contain some form of recognition or protection for rural populations. Brazil has the largest number of relevant legal instruments, while Colombia and Panama stand out for the strength of their legal frameworks. More than half of all identified norms were adopted between 2010 and 2025, demonstrating growing political attention to peasant issues.

The most common themes are family farming, access to land, agrarian reform, and food sovereignty. However, important gaps remain in areas such as the rights of rural women, agroecology, the right to seeds, and political participation.

The study also examines the relationship between national laws and UNDROP. Although only four legal instruments explicitly refer to the Declaration, many laws incorporate its principles. Colombia, Ecuador, and Bolivia provide some of the strongest examples of alignment with UNDROP.

The report concludes that Latin America has become a global reference for the legal recognition of peasants, while highlighting the need for stronger implementation of UNDROP through constitutional recognition, greater protection of rural women, stronger support for agroecology and the right to seeds, and improved mechanisms for political participation.

See full study below:

La entrada Recognition of the Peasantry in Latin America Through the Lens of UNDROP: Key Findings se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

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

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

Background

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

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

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

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

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

Linking Food Sovereignty to Right to Development

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

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

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

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

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

What Is Peasant-Led Rural Development?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Agrarian Reform, the right to land and the RtD

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

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

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

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

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

Agroecology, the right to seeds and the RtD

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

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

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

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

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

The neoliberal globalization against the rights of peasants

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

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

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

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

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

The Struggle for an Alternative Trade Framework

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Ghana: Rural transformation risks leaving peasants behind, political will needed to move forward, say UN experts

ACCRA – Ghana stands on the cusp of an agricultural transformation, but there is an urgent need to ensure small-holder farmers, artisanal fishers, and pastoralists are not left behind through the country’s implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP), the Working Group on the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas said in a statement today.

“Ghana has a robust human rights framework and has demonstrated genuine willingness to engage with its commitments through the Fisheries and Aquaculture Act 2025, the Social Protection Act 2025, the Affirmative Action (Gender Equity) Act 2024, and the ratification of ILO Work in Fishing Convention (No. 188),” the Working Group said in a statement at the conclusion of their official visit to the country.

“However, there is a persistent gap between the law and policy and their meaningful implementation on the ground. Small-holder farmers, artisanal fishers and pastoralists, who constitute the actual backbone of food production, continue to suffer from poverty and exclusion,” they said.

The experts warned that the government’s drive toward mechanised, export-oriented agriculture risks entrenching a dual food system. This model heavily serves large-scale, input-intensive commercial agriculture, while the family-based agrarian sector is left increasingly marginalised.

Land tenure insecurity is an ongoing challenge, as the country’s dual tenure system exposes subsistence farmers to sudden dispossession with limited legal recourse.

“Women, youth and elderly farmers face compounded disadvantages within both statutory and customary systems. Despite their critical roles throughout farming and fishing, and despite strong legal protections, women remain excluded from land ownership and decision-making due to deeply entrenched social norms,” they added.

Ghana is simultaneously confronting a severe environmental emergency fuelled by illegal gold mining, or “galamsey”.

“Galamsey is the most acute, rapidly expanding and politically charged environmental emergency facing the country. The contamination of rivers, destruction of farmland and the spread of heavy-metal contamination reach far beyond mining sites,” the experts said. Sustained by powerful interests, it has become a national security, food and nutrition security, and public health emergency intertwined with elite capture.

The experts also highlighted the deep, multi-dimensional exclusion of pastoralists.

“Their nomadic way of life renders them structurally invisible to governance systems designed around settled tenure. Many in Fulbe communities face barriers to citizenship documentation, effectively placing them outside the reach of any legal protection framework.”

The erosion of grazing pastures, worsened by climate pressure and agricultural expansion, is generating an escalating cycle of conflict between pastoralists and settled farmers.

Economic barriers such as intermediary dominance, poor rural road infrastructure, and an absence of cold-chain facilities lead to catastrophic post-harvest losses, which are compounded by climate change shocks. Smallholder farmers and artisanal fishers are additionally excluded from finance by their inability to provide conventional collateral.

“The policy and legislative framework that Ghana has assembled constitutes a strong foundation that commands respect for human rights. Yet implementing laws to address all these issues demands genuine political courage that challenges entrenched interests, and a commitment to deeper social norm change without which legal frameworks remain aspirational,” the experts said. UNDROP calls for nothing less, on behalf of peasant farmers, fisherfolk, pastoralists and other rural workers.

The Working Group will present a report on the visit including findings and recommendations to the UN Human Rights Council in September 2026.

See the End of Mission Statement on the country visit to Ghana below:

The Working Group on Peasants and other people working in rural areas is comprised of five independent experts from all regions of the world. The Chair-Rapporteur is Carlos Duarte (Colombia), other members are Geneviève Savigny (France); Shalmali Guttal (India), Uche Ewelukwa Ofodile (Nigeria) and Davit Hakobyan (Armenia).

Special Rapporteurs/Independent Experts/Working Groups are independent human rights experts appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council. Together, these experts are referred to as the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. Special Procedures experts work on a voluntary basis; they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. While the UN Human Rights office acts as the secretariat for Special Procedures, the experts serve in their individual capacity and are independent from any government or organization, including OHCHR and the UN. Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the UN or OHCHR.

Country-specific observations and recommendations by the UN human rights mechanisms, including the special procedures, the treaty bodies and the Universal Periodic Review, can be found on the Universal Human Rights Index https://uhri.ohchr.org/en/

UN Human Rights, country page – Ghana

For inquiries and media requests, please contact: Cynthia Prah (prah@un.org) Public Information Officer in Accra, or Stee Asbjornsen (stee.asbjornsen@un.org) in Geneva.

For media inquiries related to other UN independent experts please contact Maya Derouaz (maya.derouaz@un.org) or Dharisha Indraguptha (dharisha.indraguptha@un.org)

Follow news related to the UN’s independent human rights experts on Twitter: @UN_SPExperts.

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Within this framework, the text identifies a series of concrete lines of action to advance in this direction. Among them, it highlights the need to promote sustained advocacy strategies—combining pressure, lobbying, and dialogue with States—as well as to strengthen alliances between peasant organisations, civil society, universities, and trade unions. It also underlines the importance of producing and disseminating data-based information, structuring a public communication strategy, and addressing in a well-founded manner the main criticisms raised by States that voted against or abstained during the declaration’s adoption process.

Finally, the article proposes measures at both international and national levels, understood as part of a broader process of legal and political development. These include the creation of specific mechanisms within the United Nations system, the integration of UNDROP as a reference framework in global policies, the adaptation of domestic legislation, and its use in judicial and administrative decisions. Likewise, it emphasises the importance of documenting violations of these rights and analysing their application to different groups, with the aim of translating these standards into tangible impacts on the lives of rural populations.

The full article is available below (Spanish only):

La entrada Prospects for the Consolidation of the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas in the International Order se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.