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.

The Sri Lankan government’s move to establish solar power plants in Hambantota has triggered a major backlash from peasant unions and environmental groups. More than 1,000 acres of forest ( a critical elephant habitat and biodiversity zone) have been cleared to make way for the so-called green energy initiative led by 17 solar companies. Over 5,000 farming families in areas such as Mayurapura and Gonnooruwa now face a surge in human–elephant conflict, threatening their safety, crops, and food security.

We are reproducing an appeal from MONLAR asking its allies in the international community to write to the President of Sri Lanka denouncing the move and calling for an immediate halt to the ongoing clearing operations.

To the members of the International Civil Society and Activists Community,

We are writing to you as the Movement for Land and Agriculture Reform to bring to your immediate attention a critical human rights and environmental crisis unfolding in the Hambantota district of Sri Lanka, one that is being deliberately disguised as a “green” energy initiative.

The farming communities of Hambantota are no strangers to struggle. They spent months protesting and advocating to secure the gazettement of the elephant corridor, a landmark legal protection for the ancient movement routes of endangered Asian elephants and the livelihoods of the communities who share that land. It is in the wake of that very victory that 17 solar companies have now moved in, clearing the land those communities fought to protect. Their struggle is being erased.

This is not the first time Hambantota’s people have faced dispossession.

The region has already borne the weight of the Belt and Road Initiative, including the controversial Hambantota Port lease and aggressive urbanisation that communities strongly opposed, bringing forced displacement and development imposed without transparency or consent. The current solar expansion follows the same pattern: irregular development proceeding in defiance of law and community rights, with both people and animals bearing the consequences.

While presented as renewable energy, a massive solar expansion is ravaging over 1,000 acres of forest within the Hambantota Managed Elephant Reserve (MER), using heavy machinery and deliberate fire to clear critical wildlife corridors, effectively “green-grabbing” land that sustains both endangered elephants and local farming communities.

The Impact

• Human Elephant conflict: By blocking ancient movement corridors (such as Sanakku Gala and Kapapu Wewa) with electric fences, the project is driving elephants into villages.
• Livelihood Crisis: More than 5,000 farming families in areas like Mayurapura and Gonnooruwa are now facing a surge in Human-Elephant Conflict, threatening their safety, crops, and food security.
• Governance Failures: Reports indicate these projects have bypassed mandatory Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) and ignored the protests of local communities and conservationists.
• Counter-Productive Climate Action: As noted by local experts, clearing and burning dry-zone forests releases stored carbon and disrupts local rainfall patterns, undermining the very emissions-reduction goals the solar project claims to serve.

A Just Transition must be inclusive, transparent, and ecologically sound. If renewable energy is built on the ruins of biodiversity and the displacement of the rural poor, it replicates the same extractive logic of the fossil fuel era that it hopes to eliminate.

APPEAL FOR INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY

We are asking your organization to show solidarity with the affected communities of Hambantota by sending a formal letter to the President of Sri Lanka. Your international standing can provide the necessary pressure to:

1. An immediate halt to all clearing within the Managed Elephant Reserve.
2. Strict adherence to the law, ensuring comprehensive EIAs and Archaeological Impact Assessments are conducted and made public.
3. Prioritizing Rooftop Solar and Degraded Lands (such as abandoned mines) rather than primary forests and productive agricultural land, as recommended by local environmental advocates.

We would be honoured to have your voice join ours in demanding a transition that is truly just for both people and the planet.

In solidarity, MONLAR TEAM.

The email template to be sent by movements and organisations to the President of Sri Lanka can be found below. Please read the instructions for completing the template on page 2 of the document:

La entrada Sri Lanka: MONLAR Urges International Support over Hambantota Green Energy Expansion Violating Peasants and Environmental Rights se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Recommendations to the Government of Sri Lanka

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

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

La entrada Sri Lanka: MONLAR asks the governement to reform the Law to Align with UNDROP se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

It is part of a series marking the 70th anniversary of the 1955 Bandung Conference. A turning point in anti-colonial and South-South solidarity, Bandung’s legacy endures in today’s global struggles for justice and self-determination. Read the rest of the series here.

Good afternoon everyone. I am Shalmali Guttal. I am a member of the Working Group (WG) on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP). I am joining you from India.

UNDROP was adopted by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in 2018. The WG for its implementation was established in April 2024.

For me, it is a double honour to be invited to speak at this commemoration event in Indonesia, whose leaders birthed and enabled the Asia-Africa Conference in Bandung in 1955, and UNDROP several decades later. There are some important parallels between the two that I would like to highlight.

It was an Indonesian leader, Ali Sastroamidjojo, who proposed a conference of leaders from newly decolonized countries in Asia and Africa, which, after a planning meeting in Bogor in December 1954, resulted in the Asia-Africa Conference in Bandung from 18-24 April 1955. The Bandung conference led to the Non-Aligned Movement, the creation of the G77, and new sensibilities of South-South solidarity and cooperation across all the regions of the Global South.

And it was an Indonesian leader, Henry Saragih, from the Federation of Indonesian Peasants, who launched discussions in the early 1990-s with social movements and civil society organisations on the importance of articulating, realizing and defending the rights of peasants. These discussions intensified in La Via Campesina (LVC) in the following years and resulted in a charter on peasant rights drafted by SPI in 2002, and then a broader declaration on peasant rights collectively drafted by other LVC member organisations, which was presented by LVC in the UN Human Rights Council in August 2008.

From 2008 onwards, SPI and LVC built alliances with and won the support of numerous other social movements, CSOs, human rights experts and UN member states from the South. After a period of intense negotiations in the UN Human Rights Council from 2013-2018, UNDROP was adopted by the HRC and UNGA in 2018.

UNDROP is regarded as a “United Nations Declaration” after having been endorsed by the United Nations, but it remains first and foremost a “peasants’ bill of rights.” It was not States who launched the process, but peasants themselves, with the support of their representative organisations. And it was not States who shaped its content, but peasants, based on their knowledge and first-hand experience of the discrimination, oppression and social exclusion they have been subject to. This is evident in the inclusion in UNDROP of food sovereignty; agroecology; regulation of markets; rights of rural women; rights to seeds and biodiversity; rights to land, water and natural resources; protection of rural and migrant workers regardless of their status; right to participation; rights to justice; and numerous other civil, political, social, economic and cultural rights.

The UNDROP WG pays tribute to all social movements who have been involved in the negotiating process of the Declaration for their resolve and clear-sightedness. The Declaration would not have seen the light of day without their unwavering commitment to the equal and effective realisation of the human rights and fundamental freedoms of all individuals and groups who live and work in rural areas. In keeping with this spirit, the WG elected as our first Chair-Rapporteur, Ms. Genevieve Savigny, who is a peasant herself, and was closely involved in the negotiations that resulted in the adoption of UNDROP.

Just as the 29 independent nations represented at the Bandung Conference in 1955 constituted more than half the world’s population. UNDROP’s rights holders also constitute more than half the world’s population: they include peasants, fisherfolk, Indigenous Peoples, forest peoples, herders, nomadic rural peoples, rural and migrant workers in agricultural and food systems, rural women, and their families. Article 1 of UNDROP lays out the breadth and diversity of UNDROP’s rights holders. Rural women are highlighted as those facing persistent, intersectional discrimination and rights violations.

The ”Bandung Spirit” became—and remains to this day—a banner for the ideals of anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism, peace, sovereignty, self-determination, solidarity, and South -South cooperation to build robust domestic economies based on equality, justice and dignity of all peoples.

These ideals were not dreamed up by the state leaders who participated in the Bandung conference; they emerged from and were shaped by the struggles of the peoples in Asia and Africa, who were at the forefront of struggles for liberation from colonialism and resistance to imperialism, who gave their lives for liberty. These included peasants, Indigenous Peoples, fishers, workers and working classes, intelligentsia, women from numerous classes and backgrounds, local merchants, lawyers and many more.

The heroes of the Bandung Spirit were, very regrettably, not at the Bandung conference in 1955. Women were noticeably absent even among the leaders, although so many were at the forefront of freedom struggles back home. Even more regrettably, the decades after Bandung did not bring peace, liberation from settler colonialism and self determination to everyone. In many countries, the benefits of liberation and independence were enjoyed by particular classes, castes, races, ethnicities and religions, with women usually at the end of the line.

As former colonizing powers regrouped in the subsequent decades, the Bandung spirit was undermined by political demonization and persecution, criminalization of liberation ideologies, and the weaponization of debt, trade, and other economic and financial policies that recreated global structures of colonialism, imperialism and slavery.

The Bandung ideals of Asia -African cooperation on agriculture, rural development, technology sharing, and industrialization fell off the table. National development models were subverted by neoliberalism, and the expansion of corporate power in the economy, finance and governance. Countries of the South have grouped again through BRICS and regional formations, but competition has replaced cooperation and solidarity. The ten Bandung principles have been captured and reinterpreted on the basis of geopolitical and geoeconomic interests.

Reviving the spirit of Bandung in the present context demands urgent attention to long standing priorities: agrarian reform and rights of rural working classes to land, water and territories; food sovereignty and the right to food and nutrition; stable, secure employment and workers’ rights; social protection, and secure access to essential goods and services; economic and political systems that serve and respond to the needs of vulnerable peoples, and address the structural conditions of vulnerability to prevent vicious cycles of poverty and deprivation from recurring; protecting environments, eco systems and biodiversity; tackling debt and climate change through the principles of justice and historical responsibility; dismantling structures of historical discrimination among races, genders, ethnicities; and ending settler colonialism and extractivism that continue to dispossess people.

UNDROP and other international human rights instruments are important tools in rebuilding the spirit of Bandung in the present political, economic and environmental context. As multilateralism itself is faltering under the pressures of multistakeholderism, unilateral actions by a powerful few and cynical alliances among some countries, the international human rights architecture offers people all over the world a strategic tool to rebuild peoples’ multilateralism based on justice, equality, non-discrimination, peace, dignity and self-determination. UNDROP and other human rights instruments can serve as ethical benchmarks and criteria for assessing national, regional and international laws, policies, agreements, institutions and actions

In the present context, those at the forefront of struggles for liberation from the multiple, cascading and inter-meshed crises of our times–hunger, poverty, inequality, climate change, biodiversity loss, authoritarianism, military occupation and conflicts, gender based and other social-cultural violence and injustice, and extractivism–have been working classes, peasants and small-scale food providers, workers, Indigenous Peoples, women, students, journalists, lawyers, academics, parliamentarians and civil society organisations.

Despite facing persecution from authoritarian, fascist, patriarchal and oligarchic regimes, today’s heroes–like the heroes who fought for our liberation from colonial subjugation and rule–are not abandoning the terrains of struggle. UNDROP and other human rights instruments make these heroes visible, offer ways to protect their lives and efforts, and provide a basis for reviving the spirit of Bandung.

For us in the WG, UNDROP constitutes a new starting point, a paradigm shift towards a more inclusive society that recognises and values the essential contribution of peasants and people working in rural areas in the fight against poverty, hunger, exploitation and persecution in all their forms and dimensions; to the protection of the natural environment from pollution and degradation; to the nurturing and regeneration of biodiversity crucial for sustaining life; to the economic and social progress of our societies; and to the realisation of peaceful, just and inclusive societies where everyone’s rights are equally protected.

On behalf of the UNDROP WG, I urge governments, social movements, civil society, academics, parliamentarians and all those committed to equality, justice, peace, dignity, human rights and self-determination, to join us in implementing UNDROP.

Thank you.

La entrada The Bandung Spirit and UNDROP se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

“The present Declaration also applies to indigenous peoples and local communities working on the land, transhumant, nomadic and semi-nomadic communities, and the landless engaged in the above-mentioned activities.” Article 1 §3 UNDROP

On March 13th, 2025, WAMIP held a webinar on the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists (IYRP) 2026. The webinar was a complete presentation of WAMIP and of the lives of pastoralists around the globe, with presentation from representatives from : Jordan, India, Europe, Mongolia, Kenya, Uganda, Argentina, Morroco and Iran. They gave thorough analysis of the current context and crisis facing them, but also good exemples of advocacy and concrete programs on the field. You will find below all the recording of the webinar and all the materials shared by WAMIP after the webinar.

WAMIP IYRP 2026 Webinar: Recording, Insights & Additional Resources

We are pleased to share the webinar recording and presentation slides with you:
WAMIP IYRP 2026 Webinar – Watch here

Webinar Slides – Access here

Additionally, we would like to share two videos contributed by WAMIP members, highlighting the realities and experiences of pastoralist communities in different regions:
Latin America (Peru) – Watch here
South Asia (India) – Watch here

We are also grateful to Nyéléni Food Sovereignty Movement for publishing reflections from the webinar, with a special focus on pastoralist women’s leadership and resilience in honour of March as the month of Working Women’s Struggle. You can read their article here:
Voices of Pastoralist Women: Leadership and Resilience – Read here

As we move forward, we must continue to amplify Indigenous pastoralist voices in the governance of IYRP 2026. Let’s remember and renew our promise to leave no one behind through strengthening, recognising, and involving the pastoralist governance institutions to enable their participation in decision-making and policy-making processes linked to their destiny at all levels.

Here are the key calls to action raised during the webinar:

• Pastoralists as Right-holders, Not Just Stakeholders – Pastoralists must have a direct role in co-managing IYRP 2026, with pastoralist civil society organisations actively involved in its governance at all levels. We urge nation-states, with the support of FAO, to form smaller steering committees with key pastoralist right-holders and relevant stakeholders and launch a dedicated trust fund to implement actions. The governance of IYRP must acknowledge and integrate established pastoralist organisations, ensuring fair representation in decision-making, including the management of trust funds.
• Securing Land & Resource Rights – Immediate action is needed to halt land grabs, mining, and large-scale infrastructure projects that displace pastoralists. Governments must respect Indigenous land tenure, mobility rights, and access to water.
• Ensuring Connectivity & Mobility Rights – Animal trails, migration routes, seasonal pasture access, and customary governance systems (such as ICCAs) are crucial for sustainable rangeland management.
• Upholding Food Sovereignty & Trade Justice – The current global trade system prioritises profit over people. Alternative trade frameworks must safeguard small-scale food producers, ensuring fair markets and protection against agribusiness expansion.
• Empowering Women in Governance – Women pastoralists face exclusion from decision-making. Addressing structural barriers, securing land rights, and supporting their leadership in rangeland management are critical.
• Youth Engagement & Education – Young pastoralists need policies that protect their livelihoods, provide access to education, and integrate modern technology to sustain pastoralism as a viable way of life.
• A Broad Definition of Rangelands – Policies must recognise that rangelands include not just grasslands, but also forests, tundra, mountains, and post-harvest croplands.
• Global Solidarity & Coordinated Action – Pastoralists must unite with small-scale farmers and fisher movements to push for systemic change in governance, climate adaptation policies, and social protections.

We are committed to actively promoting IYRP through our networks and communications, ensuring Indigenous pastoralist communities remain at the center of global discussions on rangelands. We look forward to further collaboration with FAO, governments, and allied movements to advance these goals.

La entrada Webinar : Voices of Indigenous Pastoralists on 2026 – Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

This video was included in an article of Capire about Defending Peasants’ Rights, you can find it here. Capire is an international feminist online media that emphasize and carry the voices of feminist struggles around the world.

La entrada In defense of peasants’ rights and popular peasant feminism – Voices of Peasant Women of La Via Campesina se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

The indigenous nomadic peoples’ organization Wamip, which you will find throughout this newsletter, took an active part in the UNDROP negotiation process at the Human Rights Council alongside La Via Campesina. Wamip is calling for 2026 to be declared the International Year of Rangelands and Shepherds, and we relay its appeal here.

“Our way of life has existed since time immemorial, evolving together with the landscape. But today pastoralism is threatened as never before by the forced industrialization of livestock farming. We have to stop the loss of grazing land, “land grabbing” and the restrictions on mobility that make it impossible to maintain a viable pastoralist system. Currently we are defining a possible campaign on Pastoralists Rights.“

La entrada Nyeleni: Introducing the message of pastoralist communities – a voice from the land se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

For the International day of Peasants’ Struggles, La Via Campesina and Defending Peasants’ Rights organized a webinar on the uses of UNDROP in peasant’s struggles since its adoption. La Via Campesina members around the world are using UNDROP in their struggles, the aim of the webinar was to present these examples to inspire others. To this end, eight peasants presented how their movements incorporate UNDROP in their struggles. You will find videos of each of these presentations below.

Zainal Arafin Fuad – SPI – Indonesia

Zainal Arafin Fuad is a member of the Indonesian peasant union Serikat Petani Indonesia. He is also a member of La Via Campesina’s International Coordinating Committee. Zainal took part in a large part of the negotiations for the Declaration. In this video, he presents the progress made in Indonesia since the adoption of UNDROP, in particular the launch of food sovereignty zones by his union.

Nury Martinez – FENSUAGRO – Colombia

Nury Martinez is a member of the Federación Nacional Sindical Unitaria Agropecuaria. In her presentation, she looks back at the process of integrating peasants as subjects of rights in the Colombian Constitution.

Jessie MacInnis – National Farmers Union of Canada – Canada

Jessie MacInnis is Youth President of the National Farmers Union of Canada. She is also a member of La Via Campesina’s youth group. In her talk, she explains a Canadian court ruling based, among other things, on UNDROP.

David Cidi Otieno – Kenyan Peasants League – Kenya

David Cidi Otieno is national convenor of the Kenyan Peasants League. In his talk, he describes, among other things, his organization’s fight to maintain Kenya’s ban on GMOs, and how UNDROP is used in this context.

Hortense Kinkodila – CNOP-Congo – Congo

Hortense Kinkodilla is a member of Coordination Nationale des Organisations Paysannes et des Producteurs Agricoles. She tells us about the initiatives taken by her organization to transmit the Declaration to the peasants of the Congo and their participation in the negotiations on the next Agricultural Orientation Law.

Ramona Dominiciou – Ecoruralis – Roumania

Ramona Dominiciou is a member of the Ecoruralis organization. She took part in the negotiations for UNDROP at the UN Human Rights Council and at European level. In her speech, she recalls the peasants struggles in several Eastern European countries: Romania, Moldavia and Ukraine. She also reviews the concerted efforts of peasants in this region at the FAO.

Pramesh Pokharel – All Nepal Peasant’s Federation – Nepal

Pramesh Pokharel is President of the All Nepal Peasant’s Federation of Nepal. He is also a member of La Via Campesina’s Youth International Coordination Committee. He tells us about the progress made for peasants’ rights in Nepal and the ongoing struggle for the approval of a law protecting peasants’ rights, obtained after three years of negotiations in committee.

Alberto Silva – Uniterre – Switzerland

Alberto Silva is a member of the farmers’ union Uniterre. He tells us about the creation of the coalition Friends of the Declaration in Switzerland and the work this coalition of organizations is doing to implement the Declaration.

La entrada Videos of our webinar : The UNDROP Alive and Kicking, Peasants’ Rights in practice – A regional perspective se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

Background

We know about various United Nations instruments to protect the right of people and communities such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR, 1948), Covenant on Economic and Socio-Cultural Rights (CESCR, 1966), Rights of Disabled Persons (1975), Indigenous People Rights (2007), Viena Declaration (1993), ILO 169, Refugee Rights (1951), Convention on the elimimation of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW, 1979), Convention on the Rights of Children (1989), etc. These all international instrument has played an important role to protect the rights of respective groups and in many cases with clear legal provisions at the national level. However, in the case of small food producers, who are mainly the victim of systemic and structural crises, these UN Standards were insufficient and did not address the issue specifically. That is why and how peasants of the world were demanding for the peasants’ right declaration for at least 30 years. They dreamed it 30 years ago, started the process 20 years ago and after the long and tedious struggle at different levels, the UN Declaration on the rights of peasants
and other people working in rural areas (UNDROP) has been a reality today.

History of UNDROP: The journey from a small village in Indonesia to the United Nations

Yes, History has been created. After really a tough fight against the corporations, corporate-led government, and reactionary forces, the struggle of peasants all over the world led by the global peasant movement, La Via Campesina for the last 17 years has been successful. Those people who feed the world and harmonize nature have a moment of joy. On December 17, 2018; United Nations General Assembly approved the UNDROP. The movement led bottom-up journey which started from the Villages in Indonesia in 2001 AD, ended with a historical achievement. The resolution was approved by 119 votes in favor, 7 votes against, and 49 abstentions.

The issue of “rights of peasants” started with the LVC’s struggle against neo-liberalism and the birth of the concept of food sovereignty. With the initiative of SPI (Serikat Petani Indonesia), the process from 2001 to 2008 was internal, to the Indonesian government. La Via Campesina adopted the draft Declaration in 2008. Two years later, the UN Human Rights Council instructed the 18 independent expert members of its Advisory Committee to propose ways and means to protect the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas. The Advisory Committee strongly proposed the need of protecting peasants’ rights and presented its final study. The draft declaration was adopted by Human Rights Council in September in 2012. Then UNHCR created an open-ended intergovernmental working group to negotiate the draft Declaration. There were many changes in the draft during its fifth round of the open-ended intergovernmental working group (OEIWG) in the Human Rights Council in Geneva for five years. ANPFa was activly participated in all OEIWG.

Success: Glorious Victory

This Declaration is now a historical document. The rights enshrined under the Declaration are not just of farmers but alsofor the fisherfolks, pastoral communities, indigenous people, migrant and seasonal workers, dairy workers, rural women, youth, etc. It recognizes all of them as rights holders (individual & collective) and provides for various protections from the State. Through this Declaration, millions of peasants around the world would be able to reclaim their rights to feed their families and communities, as it recognizes the fundamental role of small-scale food producers while also offering them tangible prospects for decent working and living conditions, consequently making this world a safer place for peasants.

The document bridges the legal gaps in regard to the protection of peasants’ rights and of other people working in rural areas at the international human rights level. Though it is not binding, it is sufficient to argue in legal instances at all levels. For peasant movements, this new instrument can be an important point of reference in their local struggles for seeds, land, and better working conditions as was as move towards peasants right act in their respective countries.

La Via Campesina along with some other organizations The International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Association (IUF), World Forum of Fisher Peoples (WFFP), Federation of Rural Adult Catholic Movement (FIMARC), International Indian Treaty Council (IITC), Association Centre Europe-Tiers Monde (CETIM), FIAN International, International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL), Bread for All, South Asian Feminist Alliance for Economic and Socio-cultural Rights, etc played a significant role in this process. Human Rights council Chair Ambassador of Bolivia Angélica Navarro and progressive states of Bolivia, Cuba, Venezuela, Nepal, etc strongly favored the declaration from the beginning whereas few neo-liberal states including the UK, US, and some members of the EU were against it.

Contents of Declaration

The final declaration has 28 articles and a two-page long preamble. The preamble has recognized and addressed the challenges faced by small food producers around the world and highlighted the need of ensuring food sovereignty to solve many problems of peasantry and agriculture. With the clear definition of peasants (Article One), it has highlighted the duties and obligations of the state to ensure the rights enshrined in the declaration. Similarly, the declaration demands that the rights to food, right to peasantry and agriculture. With the clear definition of peasants (Article One), it has highlighted the duties and obligations of the state to ensure the rights enshrined in the declaration. Similarly, the declaration demands that the rights to food, right to land, rights to seeds, and biodiversity, and traditional knowledge and practices of peasants be protected. The declaration also protects, recognizes, and values the work of small food producers, mainly peasant women.

The peasant’s rights declaration has also addressed that neoliberal policies and corporate agriculture are the major threat to small food producers. Being a compromised document, the document may not be as progressive as we expect or want, but having a document from the UNO is really a success. Though, it could not ask the state to ensure the right to food sovereignty and move towards sustainable local agroecological practices banning harmful transgenic seeds, poisonous pesticides, and chemicals; there are provisions that have clearly mentioned that agroecological practices and food sovereignty are the right way to safe guard the rights of peasants transform agriculture Therefore, it is really a progressive document to ensure the rights of small food producers and ensure them a dignified life.

Time to celebrate, time to Act

If we don’t use the documents in our struggle, if we don’t ask our states to ratify and implement this declaration, it will not have an impact on the lives of peasants around the world. Therefore, we have a huge responsibility ahead. We must counter existing anti-peasants provisions in the legislation that is not in accordance with the declaration. We need to pressurize the governments of all levels, (local, provincial, and federal) to implement the provisions of the Declaration.

There are more tasks ahead. Immediately, translation of declaration in local language and Training of Trainers for massive awareness is important. Formation of pro-peasants Public policies and Peasants Right Law are equally important. At the same time, at the global level, lobbying in United Nations, especially in International Fund for Agricultural Development, Food and Agriculture Organizations and United Nations human rights commissions are equally important to form the mechanism of implementation and integrate it under other global agendas such as decade of family farming, sustainable development goals is also urgent. Peasants’ Activists need to use these tools at all levels advocacy, campaign, and organizational work.

A Tool to Face the Dilemmas of Humanity

At Present, not only the peasant communities but the humanity at all is being challenged by the neoliberal crisis and pandemic of COVID 19. For the present generation of the world, it was evident again that Capitalism is the major cause of all the challenges we are facing today. Increasing inequality, injustices, and hunger in the world, the devastation of the natural environment resulting climate crisis, degradation of the agricultural environment, and marginalization of peasants are the direct impacts of the neoliberal corporate Capitalist system. There was a clear difference in Socialist and Capitalist responses during the Pandemic. While Countries with public health care systems, pro-people governments, and Socialist economies such as Cuba, China, Kerala State of India, etc were successful in containing the Pandemic, people in capitalist states suffered most. Therefore, the demands put forward by la via Campesina with the banner of Food Sovereignty have been proven the right way to address the challenges faced by humanity today.

When the borders were sealed, industries and transport were closed and most people in the world were under lockdown, the peasants of the world were producing the food and feeding the world. They were the ones who were following the health protocol staying at home as well as doing their farm work. The same small-scale food producers of the world who rarely rely on external inputs, markets, labor, and transport, whom the Capitalist world undermines as traditional, rural, unprofessional farmers; actually they were feeding the world when the world trade regime collapsed and industrial farming shutdown. That is why we say, small producers are the steward of nature, they feed the world. The message given by small producers, the peasants’ agriculture is not only eco-friendly, healthy, and humanitarian but also can feed the world; has been validated. They are saying, it’s the right time to change the system and move to a localized food system self reliant economy and food sovereignty.

Why Peasants Rights Now?

The capitalist world is full of contradictions and paradoxes. Along with historically widest inequality, this system lives with the paradox that those small food producers; peasants, landless, rural workers, herders, forest dwellers, pastoralists, fisherfolks, and people living in rural areas who produce more than 70% of the world’s food in harmony with nature are not having a dignified life like other human beings. And in their profit monger, they claim commercialization, industrialization, and company farming are of greater significance. Peasants are sidelined by mainstream policies of neoliberal capitalism, highly neglected, and excluded from the thought called politico-economic development. Unfortunately, the same population constitutes the majority of people living with poverty and hunger, suffering from violence, displacement, and marginalization lacking access to and control over resources. If we see the reported formal statistics too, they are not only the primary victims of civil and political rights violations but even victims of inhuman seed laws, profit monger agri-policies, dislocation of multinational corporations, and chemical farming practices. Surprisingly, there was not any specific provision under Human rights and international law to safeguard their rights. Its time to implement UNDROP. Therefore Peasants of the world are demanding “Peasants Rights Now”. It is only the right way of addressing poverty, hunger, inequality etc but aslo an important step towards transforming agriculture and rural lives and sustainable development.

La entrada Peasants Rights Now! se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

It is coordinated by Action de Carême, with the Geneva Academy as strategic partner and financed by the Swiss Development and Cooperation Agency.

Several actions are planned within the framework of this project: trainings for peasants, youth and even children on their rights enshrined in the UNDROP, the joint elaboration of proposals for laws and programs on agriculture and food based on the UNDROP. The project also aims to sensitize the governments of the countries concerned on the dire situation of peasants and their rights, as well as on alternative systems to industrial agriculture, such as agroecology. Finally, advocacy work at the international level will also be carried out, in particular to obtain a monitoring mechanism for the implementation of UNDROP within the UN Human Rights Council.

As a strategic partner, the Geneva Academy will train the project’s partners and local peasants’ organizations of these countries on the rights of peasants and the use of national, regional and international mechanisms to protect them. The Geneva Academy team will also provide strategic guidance to national actors on the use of United Nations human rights mechanisms to ensure respect for the rights of peasants.

Defending Peasants Rights will follow the RAISE project as it works to empower peasants and implement the UNDROP.

La entrada Project RAISE – Rights-Based and Agroecological Initiatives for Sustainability and Equity in Peasant Communities se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

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

Editorial

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

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

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

Transnational Institute and FIAN International

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La entrada Small-scale fishers: Struggles and Mobilisations se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

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La entrada Transitioning towards pesticide-free food systems: People’s struggles and imagination se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.