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/

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

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

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

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

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.

La entrada Official visit of the UNDROP Working Group to Ghana: Challenges and Opportunities se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

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.

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

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

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

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

Interpreting the UNDROP from the perspective of aquatic territories

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

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

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

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

The Threats: “Ocean Grabbing” and the Blue Economy

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

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

The Defensive Triad: UNDROP, SSF Guidelines, and Tenure

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

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

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

Women at the Heart of Fisheries

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Peasants, fisherpeople, pastoralists, herders, Indigenous peoples, rural workers and rural peoples are central actors in transforming food systems and building pathways toward global food sovereignty. Safeguarding their rights is therefore key for the future of humanity and a sustainable planet.

A fundamental tool to protect their rights is the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas – UNDROP. It provides a robust framework to guide public policies, laws, and programmes that uphold rural peoples’ dignity, livelihoods, and futures.

The Defending Peasants’ Rights is a global platform for rural organisations and constituencies to share knowledge, amplify struggles, and build collective power for the implementation of their rights worldwide.

La entrada International Day of Peasant Struggles! – 17 April se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

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

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

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

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

Read the Yaoundé Declaration

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

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

–> Event Name and Theme

• Event Name: 71st Anniversary of the Asian-African Conference.

• Event Theme: Reinvigorating the Bandung Spirit to Strengthen Global South Solidarity Amid Contemporary Global Dynamics in term of Geopolitics and Geoeconomics

–> Objectives of the Event

1. To analyse the relevance of the Bandung Spirit in fostering a framework of solidarity among Global South nations amidst contemporary global dynamics
2. To exchange struggle experiences among peasant organizations from Asia and Africa
3. Developing relevant policy recommendations to promote the Bandung Spirit as a guiding principle for the nation in addressing contemporary global dynamics

–> Format and Venue

• Format: Hybrid (In-Person and Online)

• In-Person Location : National Secretariat of Indonesian Peasant Union

–> Rundown Program:

La entrada INTERNATIONAL WEBINAR: Reinvigorating the Bandung Spirit to Strengthen Global South Solidarity Amid Contemporary Global Dynamics in term of Geopolitics and Geoeconomics se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

Join us os Friday 10 April for WAMIP youth-led webinar on “Empowering Young Pastoralist Leaders”!

This session is designed to engage young pastoralists and global stakeholders in a meaningful dialogue about the challenges faced by the next generation of rangeland stewards and the tools available to them to drive more meaningful decision-making.

Why Attend?

• Direct Insights: Hear directly from global pastoralist youth regarding their experiences in governance and decision-making.

• Practical Tools: Learn about the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants (UNDROP) as a political tool for advocacy.

• Expert Advice: Receive recommendations on political engagement from the IPC Youth Working Group and CSIPM.

• Networking: Connect with young leaders from all over the world.

La entrada Empowering Young Pastoralist Leaders: a youth-led webinar se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.