“For organising rural women across Southern Africa into a united force defending land, seed and bodily autonomy against corporate and patriarchal dispossession.”

The Rural Women’s Assembly (RWA) is a self-organised, transnational movement of over 178,000 small-scale farmers across eleven Southern African nations, united to defend land, seed and bodily autonomy against corporate agribusiness and patriarchal dispossession. Rejecting the traditional NGO model in favour of a flat, volunteer-led structure, it has built one of the region’s largest autonomous platforms for rural women, recognised as “Guardians of Land, Life, Seed and Love.”

Through feminist agroecology and food and seed sovereignty, RWA challenges corporate control over the region’s food systems while strengthening communities’ resilience to climate shocks. It has established 24 seed multiplication sites and documented hundreds of Indigenous seed varieties, defending traditional seed systems from commercialisation.

Through healing circles and cross-border mutual aid, RWA has turned women long excluded from land ownership into a united, persistent political voice — one that, in the words of its Regional Coordinator, Mercia Andrews, is more “rowdy” than “radical”. That voice helped secure a 2016 Zambian law mandating equal land allocation to women and Eswatini’s landmark 2018 Sexual Offences and Domestic Violence Bill.

Biography

The Rural Women’s Assembly is a transnational movement of over 178,000 small-scale farmers across eleven Southern African nations, resisting corporate land grabs and patriarchy to achieve food security and defend bodily autonomy.

Through feminist agroecology, seed sovereignty and grassroots organising, it has turned rural women into an independent political force reshaping land rights and food systems across the region.

The legacy of settler-colonial rule

Southern Africa is a region shaped by a shared history of settler-colonial rule. What distinguishes it from the larger continent is the scale and permanence of European settlement, which led not only to political control but to the outright seizure of farmable land. Across the region, settlers took fertile land and redistributed it among themselves, while local populations were confined to smaller, poorer areas. Men were consequently forced to work in mines or on settlers’ land, leaving women to carry the bulk of subsistence farming. As a result, rural women rely heavily on natural resources and agriculture for their livelihoods, yet are often denied formal land ownership, as well as access to credit, technology and decision-making forums.

RWA’s Regional Coordinator Mercia Andrews explained that Southern African women’s situation is further complicated by the fact that their land sits “in the eye of the needle” of the climate crisis. In 2026 alone, Madagascar was struck by two major cyclones, with storms tracking onto Mauritius, Malawi, Mozambique and South Africa, as the region’s West Coast endures extreme drought. Southern Africa is also experiencing soil and water degradation and biodiversity loss, leading to mass displacement.

Extractive industries and corporate agribusiness in the region compound these environmental barriers. Through legal frameworks like the 1991 Act of the UPOV Convention, corporations claim intellectual property rights over seed varieties, threatening farmers’ ability to freely save, exchange and sell their own seeds. Large-scale land grabs for extractive materials are also linked to a rise in gender-based violence, creating a backdrop of structural violence.

Guardians of land, life, seed and love

The region’s painful colonial history and exploitative power structures have been visible in RWA’s story since the beginning. In 2009, the movement held its first meeting, with 250 rural women from across the region gathering in Limpopo Province, South Africa, to overcome lingering colonial and apartheid divisions between member countries.

Its founders set three goals: to build a new regionalism connecting women across borders, to create a shared platform against crises like food poverty and land dispossession, and to confront the HIV-AIDS pandemic. From this came the movement’s defining structure: a flat, volunteer-led model governed by a Reference Group of three leaders from each of its eleven country chapters. The movement currently operates in Eswatini, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Feminist agroecology and seed sovereignty

RWA practices feminist agroecology, a holistic approach linking the ecological transformation of food systems to the social relationships that sustain them. Beyond sustainable farming or increasing women’s role in value chains, its core goal is women’s autonomy: securing their access to and control over land, water, seeds and income, ensuring their voice in decision-making, and recognising their Indigenous knowledge and political agency.

It also confronts what sustains inequality in the first place — the gendered division of labour, the unpaid burden of domestic and care work, and the violence and domination that run through households, communities and institutions — toward a food system built on equity and justice at every level. It defends the agricultural commons against what it calls “neoliberal frameworks” and the “NGOisation” that depoliticises rural struggle.

The movement’s agroecology work grew out of a demand from its own members. After an initial focus on rights advocacy, members told RWA, “We’ve heard about our rights, but we do not eat our rights.” In response, RWA began organising an Agroecology School for its members to learn about these holistic strategies. As a result, members have lowered production costs by replacing synthetic fertilisers with natural resources, while building climate resilience through healthier, water-retaining soils and diverse crop systems that withstand extreme weather.

In 2025, the movement further fortified members’ knowledge of their seed and land rights by translating the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants (UNDROP) into local languages. Over 18,000 women participated.

As “seed guardians”, RWA has established seed banks and multiplication sites propagating traditional seed for exchange and sale to members. In 2025, it conducted research documenting 45 cereals, 31 fruits, 64 legumes and 20 tubers across seven countries, with 720 participating women. The findings of this research were shared internationally through a photo-documentary exhibition, “Guardians of Land, Seed and Life”, making rural women farmers visible in their roles as seed savers, guardians of local knowledge and the backbones of local food systems.

Building a movement of “rowdy” women

Each year, RWA convenes a Feminist School, a week-long gathering built to develop a feminist consciousness and shared identity across its eleven country chapters. “We are all African eco-feminists, we are pan-Africanists, we have a common philosophy of the RWA,” Andrews said, explaining the importance of having a common philosophy and understanding of the world they are setting out to change. “We are the guardians of land and life and seed. We fight patriarchy.”

The school is complemented by a fortnightly online course that can draw 300 to 400 women across the region at once. Andrews is among the educators, alongside external facilitators and a team built through what she calls a “training of trainers,” so that no school depends on one voice. These gatherings have opened conversations rarely held elsewhere, from sessions on reproductive health and bodily awareness to queerness and sexuality.

RWA’s feminist education is matched by persistent, sometimes “rowdy”, action at the village level. In the South African province Limpopo, when a traditional authority refused a widow land to bury her husband, thirty RWA members loaded his coffin into a hearse, carried it into the chief’s office, and told him: “Since you don’t want this man to rest, we will bring him here to you, so that you can be as restless as he is.” Within the hour, the land was granted.

In Namibia, after government fencing meant to keep elephants from destroying crops went unrepaired for years, members pushed a government vehicle into the elephants’ nightly path. “We want to live in harmony with wildlife,” Andrews recounted, “but if you are not going to help, … we are going to show you what we experience on a daily basis.” The tactic forced an agreement to erect proper fencing. Andrews calls actions like these “weapons of the weak”: small, cumulative victories that build women’s confidence that “they can, as a collective, make gains.”

Affecting policy across the region

In addition to local-level victories, RWA delivers concrete legal change. The movement lobbied to help pass Eswatini’s 2018 Sexual Offences and Domestic Violence Bill and a 2016 Zambian law mandating equal land allocation. 

The movement also secured a landmark ruling allowing women in Eswatini to register land in their own name — a right won through the case of one RWA member. When she lost her parents, an uncle seized the family’s land and tried to evict her and her sisters. They refused to leave, continued farming and chased him off whenever he returned, while pursuing a legal case to contest the customary law that barred widows and daughters from inheriting land. After years in court, and with RWA’s support, they won.

RWA has used the same pressure against extractive industries. The movement was part of a coalition that took Shell to court over ocean-floor mining off South Africa’s coast, leading the country’s Constitutional Court to rule for the first time that such mining could cause environmental destruction. 

“We often say to take the legal route is okay,” Andrews said. “But it has to be combined with activism, because if you don’t put pressure… it doesn’t hold too much water. And most importantly, our actions have to inspire and build hope.”

People-to-people solidarity

Healing Circles are one method RWA uses to create safe spaces for women to share experiences of trauma. They grew out of participatory research the movement conducted across eight countries to understand what support rural women could actually access when facing gender-based violence, domestic violence or serious sexual offences. Despite ambitious government promises, RWA found that services were extremely difficult for rural women to reach, so the movement built its own, training community counsellors, known as “GBV champions,” to work in schools and communities and run Healing Circles for women to share their experiences.

The same ethic of solidarity drives RWA’s cross-border mutual aid. Members from Zambia have travelled to Malawi to deliver seeds and provisions after climate shocks; in Mozambique, women from the north travelled south to help rebuild flooded fields. In South Africa, RWA members have repeatedly collected funds, food and other essentials to support women after climate disasters and fires have left people without homes. In Eswatini, members mobilised during the 2021 unrest to support women who had been shot. It is what RWA calls “people to people solidarity”: support built on presence and shared labour, not money alone. 

“We have our own answers,” Andrews said. “We save seeds. We’re the custodians of the food system… People must understand the difference between charity and solidarity.”

Watch Rural Women’s Assembly’s participation in the Defending Peasants’ Rights webinar on 10 December 2025: https://defendingpeasantsrights.org/en/video-of-our-webinar-nothing-about-us-without-us-realising-the-right-to-participation-of-rural-peoples-and-workers-through-undrop/

La entrada Rural Women’s Assembly Receives the 2026 Right Livelihood Award! se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

Nomadic and transhumant pastoralists face growing threats to their territories, water resources and traditional grazing routes. Land grabbing, privatisation of common lands, restrictive borders and policies that undermine pastoral mobility threaten their livelihoods, cultural practices and ways of life. These challenges also put at risk their vital contribution to biodiversity conservation, sustainable land management and resilient food systems.

UNDROP provides an essential framework to address these challenges. As the only international instrument explicitly recognising the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas, it affirms the rights of pastoralists to land and natural resources, food sovereignty, participation in decision-making and the preservation of their traditional knowledge and practices. The factsheet explores how UNDROP can be mobilised to strengthen their struggles and advance the recognition and protection of mobile Indigenous peoples’ rights.

La entrada New Factsheet on the Rights of Mobile Indigenous Peoples and Pastoralists: UNDROP as a legal and political leverage se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

The report points to extreme territorial inequality: 85 per cent of agricultural holdings are smaller than two hectares but control only 9 per cent of cultivable land, while the largest 0.1 per cent control more than half. Dispossession also affects fisheries, pastoral territories and areas targeted by climate, conservation and renewable-energy projects, as well as communities affected by conflict and displacement.

The report calls for stronger, binding measures to protect territorial rights, including legal recognition of collective and customary territories, restitution and compensation for dispossession, and stronger rights for rural women. It also recommends limits on land and water concentration, agrarian reform and redistribution, legally binding human-rights instruments to regulate business enterprises, and meaningful consultation and, free, prior and informed consent for development and climate-related projects.

Read the full report below:

La entrada New Report by the UN Working Group on UNDROP on territorialities of land and sea se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

The seed is the first link in every food chain. However, what for millennia was a common good safeguarded by farming communities is today at the centre of a global dispute between human rights, food sovereignty and intellectual property.

A new report presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council argues that the international governance of seeds is increasingly shifting towards commodification, corporate concentration and the criminalisation of ancestral practices such as saving, exchanging or selling farmers’ seeds.

The document, entitled The Right to Seeds: Custodianship, Enclosure and Resistance, was prepared by the Working Group on the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas. It was presented by Shamlali Guttal, Chair of the Working Group, who also presented the report on the official visit to Ghana carried out from 5 to 14 May 2026.

The diagnosis is unequivocal: seeds are progressively being transformed from biocultural heritage into commodities subject to intellectual property regimes, commercial certification and corporate control.

From common good to private property

The report identifies two opposing models. The first views seeds as common goods that underpin food sovereignty, biodiversity and the collective rights of rural peoples. The second regards them as economic assets subject to patents, plant breeders’ rights and global trade rules.

According to the Working Group, the balance between the two visions has clearly shifted in favour of the latter.

During the presentation of the report, Shamlali Guttal recalled that seeds are not simply commodities for peasants and Indigenous peoples.

“Seeds are the beginning of every meal, the memory of every harvest and the hope of future life. They are a living heritage, developed over generations through selection, exchange and adaptation to different soils, ecosystems and climates”.

Guttal also stressed that Article 19 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants recognises the right of peasants to save, use, control, protect and develop their own seeds. Consequently, States have an obligation to respect, protect and fulfil that right.

International rules on intellectual property, trade agreements and certification systems have imposed growing restrictions on those who save, exchange or sell seeds outside commercial circuits. What for centuries constituted an ordinary farming practice is beginning to be treated as a legal infringement in numerous countries.

The concentration of the global market

The privatisation of seeds is advancing alongside an unprecedented concentration of the industry. The report states that four companies — Bayer, Corteva, Syngenta and BASF — control more than half of the global commercial seed market.

This concentration does not only affect prices. It also directs genetic research, shapes agricultural policies and favours homogeneous varieties designed for intensive agricultural systems dependent on fertilisers and pesticides.

This erodes agricultural diversity and increases farmers’ dependence on large companies supplying seeds and inputs.

In response to this trend, the report highlights the importance of seed systems managed by farmers themselves. In some regions of Africa and Asia, these systems provide up to 90% of the seeds used for food crops.

During her intervention, Guttal explained that these traditional systems are the main reservoir of agricultural genetic diversity and constitute a fundamental basis for food sovereignty and resilience in the face of climate change.

The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture recognises farmers’ rights and establishes a multilateral system for access and benefit-sharing. However, the Working Group warned that these commitments are implemented unevenly and that resources allocated to the benefit-sharing fund remain insufficient.

When saving seeds becomes a crime

One of the most alarming aspects of the report is its description of a growing process of criminalisation of traditional seed-related practices.

In different countries, farmers have faced legal proceedings for exchanging, reusing or selling planting material saved on their farms. The report documents cases in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe, with sanctions including heavy fines and even prison sentences.

Plant variety protection regimes, particularly those inspired by the 1991 Act of the UPOV Convention, expand breeders’ exclusive rights over reproductive material. In some countries, restrictions may extend to practices as commonplace as saving seeds from one harvest for use in the next.

The document also warns of the growing use of surveillance technologies, genetic markers, drones and satellite imagery to detect alleged infringements involving protected seeds.

For the Working Group, there is an obvious paradox: while peasant systems continue to provide between 70% and 90% of the seeds used in numerous countries, it is precisely these systems that face the greatest legal restrictions.

Guttal also warned about the expansion of patents on genetic sequences and the use of information obtained from digital databases.

“Genetic sequences can be registered or patented without the physical seed having been used. This practice may allow genetic resources to be used without respecting benefit-sharing obligations”.

The invisible custodians

The report pays particular attention to the role of rural women. It identifies them as the main custodians of genetic diversity and as responsible for the selection, conservation and transmission of knowledge about seeds in much of the world.

However, agricultural policies and regulatory frameworks often render this contribution invisible. The privatisation of seeds and the imposition of certification systems disproportionately affect women, as they restrict practices that are fundamental to their economic and food autonomy.

The erosion of traditional systems does not only entail the loss of biodiversity. It also reduces the scope for action of those who have historically sustained food security at local level.

For this reason, the Working Group calls on States to guarantee equality for rural women in seed governance through secure land tenure, effective representation in decision-making bodies and recognition of their traditional knowledge and their role as the principal custodians of seeds.

Biodiversity under threat

For the UN, the dispute over seeds is inseparable from the global ecological crisis. The accelerating loss of plant genetic diversity is emerging as one of the most concerning signs of contemporary industrial agriculture.

The report states that approximately three quarters of crop genetic diversity was lost during the 20th century, as local varieties, adapted to their territories, were replaced by an increasingly limited number of commercial varieties.

The expansion of genetically modified organisms and new gene-editing technologies also increases the risks of genetic contamination and private appropriation of resources historically developed by farming and Indigenous communities.

The document records cases of contamination of native maize and cotton varieties with unauthorised genetically modified material in Latin America. It also reports lawsuits against farmers who had not knowingly planted patented seeds, but whose fields contained plants originating from such material.

The report also warns of new forms of biopiracy associated with the digitisation of genetic sequences. Thanks to these technologies, companies and institutions can register and patent biological characteristics derived from traditional varieties without physically accessing the original seeds.

This practice weakens benefit-sharing mechanisms and may facilitate the appropriation of knowledge developed by farming and Indigenous communities.

For this reason, Guttal called for new genomic techniques to be subjected to independent risk assessments and traceability and labelling requirements before any deregulation process.

Seeds, territory and conflicts

The defence of seeds cannot be separated from the defence of land. The report stresses that traditional systems depend on living territories where communities can cultivate, exchange and pass on knowledge between generations.

For this reason, forced displacement, land grabs, large-scale agribusiness projects, armed conflicts and environmental degradation constitute direct threats to the right to seeds.

The loss of territories also means the loss of knowledge, locally adapted varieties and community exchange networks that underpin the resilience of food systems.

In this regard, the Working Group recommended that, in situations of armed conflict, occupation or other crises, farmers’ seeds and related infrastructure be recognised as civilian assets essential to the survival of the population.

Peasant resistance and judicial victories

In response to these trends, the document records numerous experiences of resistance. Cooperatives, community seed banks, seed-exchange fairs and participatory plant-breeding programmes continue to sustain an essential part of global agricultural biodiversity.

Guttal stressed that these initiatives should not be treated as marginal activities, but as public goods deserving the same support as formal seed-breeding programmes.

The Working Group also highlights several legal and policy experiences. Among them is the African Model Legislation for the Protection of the Rights of Local Communities, Farmers and Breeders, developed through the ARIPO Arusha Protocol, which offers a human-rights-compatible alternative to the 1991 UPOV model.

Indian legislation expressly protects farmers’ right to save, use, exchange and sell seeds saved on their farms, alongside breeders’ rights.

In Brazil, the Food Acquisition Programme directs public procurement towards traditional and agroecological seeds.

The report also records several judicial victories. In 2021, the Supreme Court of Honduras declared the national plant variety protection law unconstitutional, invoking Article 19 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants.

In Kenya, both the Supreme Court and the High Court have recognised the constitutional protection of customary farming practices involving the exchange of seeds. In November 2025, the High Court held that “sharing seeds is not a crime”, a decision whose significance, according to the Working Group, extends beyond the country’s borders.

These experiences show that another form of seed governance is possible, based on human rights, food sovereignty and the conservation of biodiversity.

A dispute over the future of food

Beyond the agricultural question, the report raises a fundamental political question: who controls the resources that make food production possible?

The Working Group’s conclusion is unequivocal. Seeds cannot be reduced to simple commodities. They constitute the material basis of fundamental rights such as food, health, culture and a healthy environment.

Treating them exclusively as objects of private property not only threatens biodiversity and food sovereignty, but also deepens the economic dependence of millions of farmers around the world.

For this reason, the Working Group urges States to recognise and protect peasant seed systems, strengthen agroecology and guarantee the right of rural communities to save, exchange, develop and sell their own seeds.

In the words of Shamlali Guttal, protecting seeds also means protecting the communities that have cared for them for generations: their rights, their territories, their knowledge and their ability to cope with climate change and other crises.

In other words, returning seeds to their original status: the living heritage of peoples rather than a commodity of the markets.

La entrada Seeds Under Lock and Key: UN Experts Denounce the Privatisation of Peasant Life se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

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

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

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

Why is UNDROP important to us?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our mission in Geneva

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

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

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

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

Defending the Right to Seeds

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

The Right to Seed report can be accessed here

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

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

Globalise the Struggle! Globalise Hope!

La entrada LVC Calls on the UN Human Rights Council to Renew the Mandate of the Working Group of Experts on UNDROP se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

Purpose:To inform the Working Group on the rights of peasants for their visit to Paraguay

Deadline: 14 September 2026

Background

The Working Group on the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas, established pursuant to Human Rights Council resolution 54/9, will conduct a country visit to Paraguay from 16 to 27 November 2026, at the invitation of the Government of Paraguay.

The visit will make an independent, impartial and objective assessment of the progress made in the implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas (UNDROP) in Paraguay. The Working Group will issue a detailed end of mission statement on 27 November 2026 and present a final report the UN Human Rights Council in 2027.

The Working Group invites individuals and organizations, including peasants, small-scale fishers, rural workers, civil society organizations, activists, and academics, to share information on the issues below to help prepare for the visit.

Key questions and types of input/comments sought

All submissions are welcome. The questions below are a guide, not an exhaustive list. Please answer only those most relevant to your life, work or experience.

1. What progress has Paraguay made in protecting the rights of peasants, rural communities and rural workers? Please share good practices, laws, or policies.
2. What are the main challenges to implementing UNDROP and protecting the rights of peasants and rural workers in Paraguay? What lessons learned can you share?
3. What legislative, judicial, administrative, or policy measures has Paraguay adopted, or failed to adopt, to realize the rights of peasants and rural workers as laid out in UNDROP? Are there any measures you consider progressive or regressive?
4. What are social, economic, political and environmental challenges that affect peasant communities, Indigenous peoples, and rural workers?
5. What are the main trends and actors that have influence over the livelihoods of peasants and rural workers, as well as over their access to land, water, and natural and productive resources?
6. What issues specifically affect rural women and girls?
7. What challenges do workers engaged in agriculture, aquaculture, forestry and artisanal fishers face in Paraguay?
8. Which locations, organizations, or communities should the Working Group visit to see these issues first-hand?
9. Please share any relevant reports, research, or other documents.

How inputs will be used?

The Working Group greatly appreciates the effort that goes into making such contributions and looks forward to reviewing all submissions.

Please feel free to circulate this call for inputs widely in your networks.

Confidentiality of inputs

All submissions received will be published on our website unless requested otherwise, and will inform the preparation of the country visit and the consequent report.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Land and territory are fundamental rights of peoples. However, in Honduras, land concentration, territorial conflicts, dispossession, and criminalization continue to pose challenges for peasant, Indigenous, and Garifuna communities.

We invite you to take part in this space, where the document “Peasants, Indigenous Peoples, and Garifuna Communities Facing the Struggle for Land Justice” will be presented.

La entrada 📢 Webinar: Peasants, Indigenous Peoples, and Garifuna Communities Facing the Struggle for Land Justice se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

The Indonesian Peasants’ Union (SPI) invites you to join World Food Day and
International Food Sovereignty Day Webinar and Against Transnational Corporations, under the theme “Agrarian Reform for Food Sovereignty Towards a Just, Prosperous, and Peaceful Indonesia”.

Date: Thursday, 29 October 2026
Time: 6.45 PM Jakarta Time (UTC+7)
Zoom Meeting: [https://telkomsel.zoom.us/j/99180614700?pwd=aFRRMAaubF5EYE0UYsTakcFPW8Rb1Z.1]
Meeting ID: 991 8061 4700
Passcode: HPS2026

Live Streaming on YouTube Serikat Petani Indonesia

Opening Remarks:

• Henry Saragih – Chairman of the Indonesian Peasants’ Union (SPI)
• Shalmali Guttal – Chair-Rapporteur of the UN Working Group on UNDROP

Speakers:

• Jean Mathieu Thevenot – European Coordination Via Campesina (ECVC)
• Joao Pedro Stedile – MST, Brazil
• Wahyudi Rakib – Indonesian Peasants’ Union (SPI)
• Gladys Adusah – ECASARD, Ghana
• Chukki Nanjundaswamy (TBC) – KRRS, India

Moderator:
Zainal Arifin Fuat – Vice Chairman of the Indonesian Peasants’ Union (SPI) / ICC of La Via Campesina Southeast and East Asia

Join us in strengthening solidarity and advancing the struggle for genuine agrarian reform, food sovereignty, and a just and prosperous future for all people!

Notes: Interpretation will be available in English, Indonesian, Portuguese, and French.

La entrada Webinar: World Food Day and International Food Sovereignty Day – Against Transnational Corporations se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

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.