On November 27, 2025, the High Court of Kenya in Machakos delivered a much-awaited decision in a constitutional challenge to the Seeds and Plant Varieties Act mounted by smallholder farmers. The Court decided in favour of the petitioners on all counts, striking down various sections of the Act and Regulations.

As reported earlier on Defending Peasants’ Rights, the constitutional challenge to the Seeds and Plant VarietiesAct was filed in 2022 by a group of peasants of Seeds Savers Network against the government agency responsible for implementing the Act.

Revised in 2012, Kenya’s Seeds and Plant Varieties Act is a draconian law that prohibits peasants from saving, sharing, exchanging and selling seeds under penalty of criminal sanctions. In her decision, the judge declared that various provisions of the Act were contrary to the Constitution of Kenya, the FAO Plant Treaty and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP). The judge ruled that the Constitution had to be read along with Article 9 of the Plant Treaty and article 19 of UNDROP, and that Kenya was bound by its obligations under international law in general and international human rights in particular.

More specifically, the judge struck down the section of the Act that gives inspectors who reasonably believe that a breach has been committed the power to seize and dispose of seeds. The judge ruled that this violates a peasant’s right to the privacy of their person, home and property, as enshrined in the Constitution. The Judge also noted that failure to define “reasonable belief” and to provide for an independent oversight mechanism could lead to arbitrariness and abuse.

Importantly, the judge declared that several provisions of the Act are unconstitutional because they infringe on peasants’ right to save, use, share, exchange and sell farm-saved seeds. These provisions criminalize the sale of seeds unless they are certified seeds sold by registered merchants, and limit peasants’ rights over their harvest grown from protected varieties.

The judge ruled that by restricting the right to save, share and exchange seeds, these provisions are contrary to the Constitution, which affirms that the State must recognize the role of science and Indigenous technologies, and recognize and protect the ownership of indigenous seeds and plant varieties, their diverse characteristics and their use by the communities of Kenya. Given the important contribution of smallholder farmers to food production, the Judge determined that these provisions also violate the right to food guaranteed by the Constitution, and Kenya’s obligation to take legislative, policy and other measures to achieve its progressive realization. Finally, the Judge also ruled that exorbitant registration fees, coupled with strict registration requirements, amount to indirect discrimination against smallholder farmers and peasants.

Regarding the right to participation, the Judge observed that many of the issues raised in the petition could have been avoided had the government ensured the right to adequate and meaningful participation by peasants, interested parties and the public in the process of developing the legislation. The Judge directed the government to ensure the right to participation in the process of amending the law to comply with the judgment.

It is not yet known if the Kenyan government will appeal the decision. In any case, this judgment is a game changer for millions of Kenyan peasants and sets a powerful precedent for peasants’ rights and the right to seeds globally.

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Judgment of the High Court of Kenya, available here:
https://new.kenyalaw.org/akn/ke/judgment/kehc/2025/18166/eng@2025-11-27

Constitution of Kenya (in particular, arts. 11, 21(2) and 43(1):
https://kenyalaw.org/kl/fileadmin/pdfdownloads/TheConstitutionOfKenya.pdf

Kenya’s Seeds and Plant Varieties Act:
https://upovlex.upov.int/en/legislation/text/506145

La entrada Landmark victory for Kenyan peasants and seed sovereignty 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.

Article 2.1 takes up the typology of State obligations recognized in international law, the obligations to respect, protect and fulfill all human rights.

The obligation to respect the rights of peasants and others working in rural areas requires States to refrain from interfering with these rights in an unjustified or arbitrary manner. The State includes all its components at national and local level, and all public, executive, legislative and judicial powers. The State must respect the rights of all individuals on its territory (including foreigners present on its territory) and under its jurisdiction (state nationals present abroad).

The obligation to protect these rights means that the State must prevent violations by third parties (third-party States, individuals, companies, multinationals, etc.). Specifically, it must :

1. take precautions against the risk of violations.
2. guarantee compensation if these rights are violated.

The obligation to realize these rights implies that the State must facilitate and guarantee their realization, notably through the adoption of laws, policies and programs, and the allocation of resources, financial aid and so on.

Article 2.1 provides that States must make a special effort to implement those rights in the Declaration that cannot be guaranteed immediately.

They shall promptly take legislative, administrative and other appropriate steps to achieve progressively the full realization of the rights of the present Declaration that cannot be immediately guaranteed.

Article 2.2 specifies that the application of the Declaration must take into account the needs of the most vulnerable people (the elderly, the disabled, women, young people, children), because they are subject to multiple forms of discrimination that must be addressed.

Article 2.3 requires States to consult and cooperate in good faith with peasants and other rural communities before adopting any measure (national, international, legislative, political, commercial, etc.) that could have an impact on their rights. It is the counterpart of the individual and collective right to participation enshrined in article 10. This obligation specifies that participation must be “active, free, effective, meaningful and informed”, recalling the notion of free and informed consent guaranteed to indigenous peoples in article 19 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. These rights are so similar that it is made clear at the beginning of this paragraph that this obligation of States does not preclude their obligations towards indigenous peoples, and vice versa.

Dans ces consultations, les États doivent aussi tenir compte des « déséquilibres de pouvoir existant entre les différentes parties ». Cette précision est nécessaire au vu des répartitions syndicales paysannes souvent disproportionnées. Par exemple, cela signifie que l’État ne peut pas simplement consulter le syndicat majoritaire mais devrait aussi coopérer avec les autres représentants paysans.

L’article 2.4 fait de l’UNDROP un document clé pour l’élaboration, l’interprétation et l’application des autres engagements internationaux des États. Ainsi, la mise en œuvre des accords de l’OMC comme l’Accord sur les aspects des droits de propriété intellectuelle qui touchent au commerce (ADPIC) ou encore des politiques européennes comme la Politique Agricole Commune (PAC) doivent se faire en conformité avec la Déclaration. Cela protège aussi les droits consacrés dans l’UNDROP lors de la création de nouvelles normes internationales ou régionales qui ne pourront pas aller à l’encontre des droits des paysan.nes et des autres personnes travaillant dans les zones rurales.

Article 2.5 specifies the State’s obligation to ensure that the private actors they are in a position to regulate, such as commercial enterprises and transnational corporations (TNCs), not only respect peasants’ rights but also strengthen them. This is crucial, given that TNCs in the agri-food and agro-industrial sector cause serious damage to peasants’ rights. Ensuring that they respect and reinforce these rights requires considerable vigilance on the part of the State, and concrete measures.

Article 2.6 deals with the obligation of States to cooperate internationally to reinforce the rights contained in the UNDROP. States must cooperate with each other (bilaterally and multilaterally), with international and regional organizations, and with civil society, including farmers’ organizations. By way of example, five measures are listed in this paragraph. One is to improve global market management and facilitate timely access to market information, including on food reserves, in order to limit the extreme volatility of food prices and make speculation less attractive.

a. Ensuring that relevant international cooperation, including international development programmes, is inclusive, accessible and pertinent to peasants and other people working in rural areas;
b. Facilitating and supporting capacity-building, including through the exchange and sharing of information, experiences, training programmes and best practices;
c. Facilitating cooperation in research and in access to scientific and technical knowledge;
d. Providing, as appropriate, technical and economic assistance, facilitating access to and sharing of accessible technologies, and through the transfer of technologies, particularly to developing countries, on mutually agreed terms;
e. Improving the functioning of markets at the global level and facilitating timely access to market information, including on food reserves, in order to help to limit extreme food price volatility and the attractiveness of speculation.

La entrada INTERACTIVE UNDROP – Article 2 : States’ Obligations se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

This is the third of four thematic booklets—part of the popular education materials to be used as a crucial step in reconnecting those who inspired and created United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in the Rural Areas (UNDROP). The booklet focus on how are dignified lives and livelihoods protected by UNDROP, and what are the obligations of our states, and gives examples of selected experiences by peasants from different countries. It therefore outlines the UNDROP articles that most closely relate to the peasant struggle against discrimination and towards dignified lives and livelihoods in the context of food sovereignty. These include the right to development, the right to adequate living conditions, the right to water, the right to social security, and the right to physical and mental health, among others.

The ongoing struggle against capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism threatens the dignity of peasants and other people working in rural areas. In today’s globalized world, we fight together against corrupt, right-wing governments, capitalist agribusiness and the corporate food system, and all heteropatriarchal systems of oppression.

To live a dignified life means to be valued, respected, and treated ethically no matter your age, ethnicity, gender, physical and/ or mental ability, or socioeconomic status. To protect dignity and life is a key organizing principle of food sovereignty, and was a key reason for developing the UNDROP. UNDROP elaborates on all the rights peasants require in order to live with dignity.

La entrada Thematic Booklet No. 3: “Peasants’ Dignified Lives and Livelihoods” se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

La entrada Research brief: The implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.