The Network of Rural Women of Ecuador has set out to analyze the realities affecting life in their territories in light of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP). This declaration constitutes a substantive tool for rural women, as it guarantees fundamental rights that enable adequate conditions to sustain a dignified life in the territories where they care for and nurture life. Having this instrument is particularly essential in the current adverse context the country is facing.

The paid and unpaid work that rural women perform creates the necessary conditions for human life, nature, and organizational capacity to continue reproducing. Consequently, when they fully exercise the rights recognized in UNDROP and in the Constitution of the Republic of Ecuador (CRE), and have the dignity conditions required, that dignity is also extended to the spaces in which they operate daily. Rural women are pathbreakers; through their work “plowing the land,” in multiple ways, they make it possible for life to persist and continue flourishing in their environments, even amid structural and situational adversities. For this reason, it is imperative that they be recognized as subjects of special protection: rural women must be fully recognized as rights holders.

This report was prepared by the Network of Rural Women of Ecuador through a collective and participatory process, with the aim of making visible and denouncing the violations they face. It is an exercise in naming, denouncing, and amplifying commonly silenced violences, as well as creating spaces for strengthening, reflection, and organizational unity. Based on their voices, knowledge, and experiences, rural women prioritized the analysis of four rights enshrined in UNDROP that are severely affected and compromise their capacity for subsistence: 1) land and territory; 2) adequate food and nutrition; 3) non-discrimination; and 4) environment and water.

The document is structured in four sections: first, a brief contextual analysis; second, an argument regarding the binding nature of UNDROP within the framework of the CRE; third, an examination of the four prioritized rights, including a contextualization of their situation and an analysis of the applicable legal framework in UNDROP and the CRE; and finally, a set of recommendations directed to the Ecuadorian State.

Organizations from the Network of Rural Women of Ecuador participated in the preparation of this report, with the support of FIAN Ecuador in facilitating and systematizing the process.

Full report (Spanish only):

La entrada Rural Women as Rights Holders: UNDROP from the Perspective of Those Who Safeguard Life se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

Human beings depend on care; societies and economies depend upon unpaid and paid care work to function.¹ Unpaid care work is mostly provided within households or families and contributes an estimated US$11 trillion to the global economy each year. More than three quarters of this unpaid care work is performed by women and girls², and this restricts their choices and opportunities, adversely affecting a wide variety of human rights, including the rights to work, social security, education, health, rest and leisure.³ Rural areas are often underserved, in terms of social and public infrastructure, transportation, childcare and health services, increasing the unequal share of unpaid care work⁴ performed by women and girls, further impacting the full realization of their human rights.

In our goal towards universal freedom, dignity and equality, and considering the complex variables and challenges rural women and girls encounter, it is vital that a human rights perspective be used to recognise and redress the realities faced by them.⁵ International human rights law can be a useful tool in this regard. Drawing on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), particularly Article 14, and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP), this article analyses the normative gaps and opportunities within international human rights frameworks to address this systemic issue faced by rural women and girls in relation to the unpaid care work they perform. The article concludes by advocating for legal and institutional reforms, grounded in an intersectional approach, to advance the rights of rural women and girls.

What is “unpaid care work”?

Unpaid reproductive labour can be described using various terms, depending on disciplinary perspectives and research interests⁶, including unpaid domestic and care work, domestic labour, social reproduction, care work, caregiving, familial care, unpaid caregiving, and affective labour.⁷ For this article, the term ‘unpaid care work’ will be employed per the definition articulated during a roundtable convened in November 2022 by the United Nations Deputy Secretary-General, heads of UN agencies, and external experts:

‘Unpaid care work refers to services provided within a household or community for the benefit of its members without remuneration. It includes both direct care for people, such as children, family and community members, older persons or persons with mental or physical conditions, persons with disabilities, and indirect care, such as cooking, cleaning, washing, collecting water and fuel, and household management, including tending to animals and livestock and agricultural work for own consumption, as well as transportation and travel. This work also encompasses unpaid voluntary community care work, like community kitchens and peer support.’⁸

Factoring in unpaid care work is crucial, considering that every day, 16.4 billion hours are spent on it. When valued at hourly minimum wage, it amounted to 9 per cent of global GDP, which corresponds to US$11 trillion. Women and girls perform 76.2 per cent of this work, accounting for almost 12.5 billion hours. In no country in the world do men and women provide an equal share of unpaid care work, and based on region, women can spend anywhere between 1.7 times more (the Americas) to 4.7 times (the Arab States) on unpaid care.⁹ Even when one considers total work (paid and unpaid work), women, on average, across 82 countries, spend an extra 38 minutes each day. This gap in total work between men and women may seem minor, but it has several repercussions and consequences and cannot be ignored.¹⁰ For instance, gender divisions in care responsibility limit women’s access to decent work. In 2023, 708 million women, as opposed to 40 million men, aged 15 and above, cited care responsibilities as the reason for being outside the labour market.¹¹

Rural women’s unpaid care work: a triple responsibility

Rural women account for approximately 22% of the global population¹², nearly a quarter. Although not a globally homogenous group, and with only a few exceptions, rural and indigenous women fare worse than rural men, and their respective urban equivalents on every indicator for which data is available.¹³ The barriers and opportunities they face vary across their lifetimes and their circumstances, and are influenced by their location, socio-economic status, identity, ethnicity, political identity, citizenship status, and other factors.¹⁴ Furthermore, apart from the region, farming system and other changing conditions like seasons, markets, and climate, the lives of these women are often affected by changes occurring in the lives of their male counterparts. Some of these include seasonal changes in tasks leading to labour peaks, men’s migration or off-farm employment, which results in women taking over agricultural production and marketing, household purchases, and social and community duties.¹⁵ Rural women like smallholder farmers, livestock keepers, fishers, and so on, simultaneously manage triple responsibilities. As part of a paid workforce, they can be wage workers, self-employed individuals, or contribute to the family business, performing a variety of tasks in agricultural production and operations, marketing, and maintenance. Household tasks include caring for the children and the elderly, collecting firewood, cooking, fetching water and so on. Community work is linked to preserving culture and tradition, including organising for religious ceremonies and other such functions like funerals, weddings, community service, etc. ¹⁶ In developing countries, rural women’s tasks often add up to a 16-hour day.¹⁷

Unpaid care work is most intensive, and disproportionate for girls and women living in rural areas of low and middle-income countries because of the lack of basic services and infrastructure, such as adequate access to a water supply, sanitation, financial services, electricity, roads, safe transportation, time-saving technology, education, health care and other social protection policies and services. Climate change and other extreme weather events also increase household drudgery (limited availability of firewood, water scarcity, etc.) and have negative impacts on the health of family members, who would then require additional care.¹⁸

This exacerbated unpaid care work constrains rural women’s opportunities for better-paid work. In coping with household poverty, they are left to find work within the informal economy, which is often precarious and poorly paid. Unpaid care work cannot be reduced or outsourced by market substitutes like purchasing ready-made foods or hiring care workers. Furthermore, because of discriminatory social norms and gender stereotypes, these tasks cannot be distributed to men and boys. Often, unpaid care work is delegated to older children, particularly daughters, which might eventually jeopardise their education and other opportunities. This invariably creates a trap where they are likely to face both income poverty and time poverty¹⁹, alongside other deprivations like education, health, and so on, thereby inhibiting the ability of societies to achieve gender equality.²⁰

CEDAW AND UNDROP: two main instruments for rural women rights

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against (CEDAW, 1979) and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP, 2018), are to this day the two main international law instruments used in the defence of peasants and rural women’s rights.

Article 14 of CEDAW was the first international treaty provision to explicitly recognize the rights of rural women. It affirms their right to participate fully in community life and in the elaboration and implementation of development planning at all levels. It also guarantees their ability to organize self-help groups and cooperatives to secure equal access to economic opportunities, and to benefit from agricultural credit and loans, marketing facilities, appropriate technology, and equal treatment in land reform and resettlement schemes. Building on the rights already enshrined in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR, 1966), Article 14 broadens these protections by tailoring them to the realities of rural women, explicitly recognizing their rights to adequate health care, social security, training and education, and to decent living conditions – including housing, sanitation, electricity, water, transport, and communications.

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP), adopted after more than 17 years of intense lobby by La Via Campesina and its allies, framed peasants and rural women as individual and collective rights-holders and dedicated a specific article to their rights. Indeed, Article 4, built on CEDAW’s heritage, reaffirmed the rights mentioned in Article 14, deepening rural women’s equal rights to land and natural resources, participation in decision-making and the necessary protection from all types of violence.

Filling the gaps in the recognition of rural women’s unpaid care work in the corpus of international human rights law

The CEDAW argues for a de facto, i.e. substantive equality²¹ directed at addressing the root causes of (gender) inequality embedded in society. While progressive for its time, CEDAW missed an opportunity in articulating unpaid care work as a form of discrimination, offering a narrow interpretation that limits care work only to ‘sharing of childcare responsibilities.’ It treats maternity-related responsibilities as exceptions rather than the norm, inadvertently reinforcing stereotypes where care becomes a woman’s role. Additionally, Article 11 on the right to work does not acknowledge unpaid care work as a limitation in accessing paid employment, while associating work only with paid, productive opportunities, thereby ignoring unpaid care work as work.²²

Like CEDAW, UNDROP too reiterates the emphasis to ensure women’s substantive equality, however, more nuanced feminist claims, like redressing the disproportionate burden of unpaid care work performed by women, were diluted because the UNDROP reinforced the “traditional” language from CEDAW which did not lead to newer inclusions and most notably many States firmly opposed the elaboration of a strong and ambitious language for this article 4.²³

However, further examination and interpretation of CEDAW and UNDROP’s provisions allow to recognise and create formidable opportunities for the redressal of the disproportionate impact of unpaid care work has on (rural) women.

In August 2013, the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Magdalena Sepúlveda, put forward a report that analysed ‘the relationship between unpaid care and poverty, inequality and women’s human rights.’ While pointing out the gender discriminatory nature of unpaid care work in households, the Special Rapporteur highlighted the relational nature of care work; the rights of caregivers and care receivers are intertwined. She further emphasised that care work is not a matter for the private sphere but one that needs to be assessed by a broader social lens while requiring immediate State intervention. The report highlights that unpaid care work affects several economic, social and cultural rights, especially of the caregivers (mostly women and girls in vulnerable societies). These rights include the right to work, rights at work, the right to education, the right to health, the right to social security, the right to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress (as a result of the lack of basic infrastructure and technology), the right to participation, and the right to rest and leisure.

Soon after, in March 2016, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women released their General Recommendation No. 34 on the rights of rural women, expanding the provisions of Article 14 of CEDAW, while reiterating the State’s duty to respect, protect and fulfil the rights of rural women. The document recognised the unpaid work burden of rural women and girls due to ‘stereotyped gender roles, intra-household inequality, and lack of infrastructure and services, including with respect to food production and care work.’ The document points out State failure in acknowledging ‘the role of rural women and girls in unpaid work, their contribution to the gross domestic product’ while closely linking it to ‘the macroeconomic root of gender inequality.’²⁴ Amongst other things, the General Recommendation advises State parties to adopt gender-responsive social protections for rural women engaged in unpaid and informal work, put in place programs that reduce the engagement of rural girls in unpaid care work, provide childcare and other such services to alleviate unpaid care work burdens rural women face, and lastly ensure environmentally sound and labour saving technologies be developed in consultation with rural women and should be available and accessible to them, to reduce their burdens.²⁵

The 2013 report by the Special Rapporteur and the General Recommendation No. 34 help establish a foundation, going beyond Article 4 of the UNDROP and Article 14 of the CEDAW, in the reconciliation of the rights of rural women and girls, regarding the unpaid care work they perform.

A progressive recognition of unpaid care work on rural women’s economic, social and cultural rights

Discriminatory gender stereotypes like “male breadwinners” and “women as carers/nurturers,” deem women as second-class citizens belonging in the home. Such stereotypes cause and perpetuate this unequal distribution of work.²⁶ Like the CEDAW, the UNDROP also condemns any kind of discrimination on the grounds of sex, social or other status, while directing States to eliminate conditions that perpetuate discrimination (Article 3). Article 5(a) of the CEDAW advises States to take measures ‘to modify the social and cultural patterns of conduct […] on stereotyped roles for men and women.’

Stereotypical assumptions coupled with chronic time deficits due to intense workloads limit opportunities to participate in decent employment.²⁷ Furthermore, women and girls from rural communities have limited opportunities in the formal labour market, and can be at special risk of violence, sexual exploitation and harassment when they seek employment outside their localities.²⁸ In rural areas, the gender pay gap can be as high as 40 per cent.²⁹ Article 11 of the CEDAW and Article 13 of the UNDROP establish the right to work of rural women. Interestingly, Article 13.2 focuses on the right of children to be protected from work that is likely ‘to interfere with the child’s education […]’ thereby, protecting ‘girls (who) are sometimes taken out of school to undertake unpaid care work.’ ³⁰ Article 10(f) of the CEDAW reestablishes the duty of the State to protect girls/women in such situations. Article 13.2 also gently establishes the right to education of rural girls, which is further expanded in Article 25 of the UNDROP and Article 10 of the CEDAW.

Unpaid care work inhibits a ‘women’s capacity to participate in public life […| in important decision-making processes at the community and national level.’ ³¹ Article 7 of the CEDAW, along with Article 10 of the UNDROP, reinforces rural women’s right to participate in ‘political and public life’ and in the ‘preparation and implementation of policies, programmes and projects that may affect their lives, land and livelihoods’ respectively.

Rural women and girls are most affected by water scarcity, which is further fuelled by the lack of access to basic infrastructure and services, including water and sanitation facilities. This exacerbates unpaid care work since they must dedicate a huge amount of time, often walking long distances, and sometimes risking violence to fetch water.³² Article 21 of the UNDROP establishes rural people’s right to water and directs States to ‘respect, protect and ensure access to water […] in particular for rural women and girls […]’. ‘Various forms of low-cost and effective technology exist that could ease the burden’ of water collection.³³ Article 21.1 of the UNDROP established the right to water supply systems and sanitation facilities, while Article 21.3 directs States to ‘promote appropriate and affordable technologies […] for water collection and storage.’ Tacitly, these statements underline rural women’s right to the benefits of scientific progress since governments rarely make investments in the development of infrastructure that can reduce the intensity and duration of unpaid care work.³⁴

Unpaid care work often forces women into precarious and informal jobs that are insecure, hazardous, poorly paid and not covered by social protection schemes like paid parental leave, unemployment insurance, or pensions.³⁵ Social protection measures can be protective, preventive, promotive and transformative³⁶ to rural women, but poor rural women not only lack access to information but also basic identification documents that could help them access such services.³⁷ The UNDROP directs States to recognise rural peoples’ right to social protection (Article 4.2(c) and Article 22). This is further strengthened by Article 11.1(e) and 11.2 (focused on maternity entitlements) of the CEDAW. The lack of infrastructure and services in rural areas can also mean that unpaid care work can be taxing (physically and emotionally), stressful, and even dangerous. Exposure to disease, risk and challenges from cooking and water collection can compromise the physical and mental well-being of rural women. Additionally, time and income poverty can hinder access to health services, especially in areas that are underserved by health services.³⁸ Article 12 and 14.2(b) of the CEDAW, read along with Article 23 of the UNDROP, validate rural women’s indiscriminatory access to healthcare.

Out of the several rights pointed out by Special Rapporteur Ms. Sepúlveda that are impacted by unpaid care work, there is no mention of the right to rest and leisure, both in the UNDROP and the CEDAW. However, these rights do find a place within the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 24) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (Article 7).

The above exercise of building and expanding on the normative framework of the human rights impact unpaid care work has on rural women and girls, helps pave ‘the way for care being increasingly seen today as a public policy issue as opposed to a private issue, as a social and economic issue, and as critical to thriving and just societies.’³⁹

A slow but growing recognition of rural women’s unpaid care work as a policy issue

It has been only in the last three decades that (unpaid) care work has started becoming a visible policy issue.⁴⁰

In September 1995, the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action linked the lack of public services to women taking on unpaid work and thereby impacting the economic rights and employment of women. Furthermore, in its objective to eliminate occupational segregation and employment discrimination, it directed governments, employers, employees, trade unions and women’s organisations to ‘address the excessive demands made on some girls for unpaid work in their household and other households.’⁴¹

In 2013, the 19th International Conference of Labour Statisticians (ICLS), with its standard-setting agenda in labour statistics, which is hosted by the International Labour Organisation, revised the definition of work to encompass unpaid care work. This definition states that work is ‘any activity performed by persons of any sex and age to produce goods or to provide services for use by others or for own use,’ where one of the five forms of work is ‘own-use production work.’ Own-use production work includes activities performed to produce goods or provide services mainly for the worker’s own final use or household consumption, and include: producing or processing agricultural and other products (including collecting firewood, etc.), fetching water, manufacturing household goods, building or repairing dwellings, household management including purchase and transport of goods, preparing and serving meals, cleaning and maintaining the household, and childcare, elder care and other such responsibilities.⁴²

In 2015, one of the Sustainable Development Goals, target 5.4, aimed to ‘recognize and value unpaid care and domestic work through the provision of public services, infrastructure and social protection policies and the promotion of shared responsibility within the household and the family as nationally appropriate.’⁴³ In August 2023, the General Assembly of the United Nations proclaimed 29 October as the International Day of Care and Support, ‘to raise awareness of the importance of care and support and its key contribution to the achievement of gender equality and the sustainability of our societies and economies…’ In July 2024, the Economic and Social Council adopted a resolution, the first of its kind that was solely focused on care and support, which urged States to create ‘enabling environments for promoting care and support systems for social development and implement all measures necessary to ensure the well-being and rights of care recipients and caregivers…’⁴⁴

However, despite the growing recognition of the value of (unpaid) care work, and the fact that in the past 20 years, men have never been more involved in family life than they are at present, change comes at a glacial pace. Data from 23 countries reveal that with current progress, closing the gender gap in unpaid care work is likely to take around 210 years (i.e. not until 2228).⁴⁵ It becomes even more concerning since at all levels, rural women’s rights and needs continue to remain ignored or overlooked in laws, policies, investments, etc.⁴⁶

Nevertheless, there have been promising signs. In October 2023, the Human Right Council adopted a resolution that expressed ‘concern that the difficulties, intensity and gendered distribution of unpaid care work create and perpetuate inequalities in the enjoyment of human rights… in particular for women and girls in vulnerable situations, women and girls in contexts of poverty, migrant women, rural women, Indigenous women…’ It further stresses ‘the need to adopt measures, with an intersectional approach’ in recognising, reducing and redistributing unpaid care work.⁴⁷ The resolution resulted in a comprehensive thematic study prepared by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, on the analysis of international human rights standards relevant to care and support. For comprehensive and integrated legislation and policies, one of the five-part conceptual framework is to recognise not only the rights but also the ‘the diversity and intersectionality⁴⁸ of the identities’ of care providers.⁴⁹

Introducing intersectionality into a human rights issue offers ‘transformative potential,’ while becoming ‘a tool for equity’ through a contextual programmatic approach. Furthermore, it helps connect ‘international human rights instruments through one lens,’⁵⁰ facilitating the human rights systems in overcoming its siloed thinking and structures where there specific instruments are used to address for discrimination affecting a group (women, migrant workers, persons with disabilities, etc.), rights categories (civil and political, and economic, social, and cultural), and phenomena (racial discrimination, torture, etc.).⁵¹

Intersectionality maps the role that characteristics like race, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation, migrant status, and poverty play in creating a reinforcing web of disadvantages.⁵² Rural spaces are shaped by policy interventions and omission choices that carry human rights implications, while intersecting with other identities such as gender, race, disability, age and so on, to produce distinct experiences of structural inequality and discrimination.⁵³ Additionally, there is an assumption that rural life mirrors the characteristics of urban life, resulting in a ‘metronormativity’ that fails to address the lived realities of rural life, creating further obstacles and exacerbating violations, ⁵⁴ herein creating grounds for discrimination, drawn from space and geography. Rurality then becomes an axis of inequality and needs to be added to the canon of intersectional identities. ⁵⁵

In the past, human rights instruments have not engaged with rurality as an intersecting axis of inequality affecting the rights set out in the foundational human rights treaties. ⁵⁶ Then there is the fact that rural girls and women are too often invisible⁵⁷ and continue to ‘face systematic and persistent barriers to the full enjoyment of their human rights.’⁵⁸ It is here, then, that Article 14 of CEDAW and the UNDROP (especially Article 4) come to our rescue, bringing both rurality and women to the law’s attention, expanding existing human rights norms and practices to explicitly include and apply to rural people.⁵⁹ These instruments recognise the ‘marginalization that rural women already experience by virtue of the physical geography…’⁶⁰ offering a sense of spatial justice, to ‘advance frames and solutions that identify and transform structural inequality related to space and geography.’⁶¹

It must be noted that UN systems tend to acknowledge rural differences within the context of (i) underdevelopment, deprivation, or limited access to services and resources, and (ii) conditions in developing countries. ⁶² Plus, progress and challenges reported under Article 14, focus on women’s roles in agriculture, access to services such as health care, education, and job creation and training. ⁶³ Although it is important to address these implications, they are framed in neutral terms and seldom clarify how such dynamics specifically affect rural livelihoods, as we have seen with the lack of recognition of the unpaid care work done by (rural) women and girls.

Conclusion

Still, Article 14 of the CEDAW, the UNDROP, General Recommendations like No. 34, thematic reports such as that by the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Human Rights Council resolutions like the one in October 2023 can be used to challenge and prompt law and policy makers to consider the relevance of the rural axis, and the needs of rural women and girls concerning infrastructure and the delivery of key services, such as health care and education. ⁶⁴ As Hilary Charlesworth points out, the ‘rights discourse offers a recognized vocabulary to frame political and social wrongs.’ ⁶⁵ By simply introducing the concept of rural as an intersection in policy design, it can prove critical in the implications of the impact it has on individuals, communities and societies.⁶⁶

In doing so, one can, for example, leverage the ILO’s 5R framework, which recommends that policies should recognise, reduce, and redistribute unpaid care work; reward paid care work; and guarantee representation for care workers through social dialogue and collective bargaining⁶⁷ to find innovative solutions to addressing rural women’s needs. For example, cash structures can shake-up or undermine, the rigid hierarchy of power and social structures⁶⁸ as seen in Brazil’s Bolsa Família program, where gender transformation was observed in urban areas with respect to the autonomy of women in making various household decisions. However, in rural areas these effects were either absent or negative, possibly even reinforcing typical gender norms by requiring mothers to fulfil traditional responsibilities while at the same time excluding men from participation.⁶⁹ In such cases, innovative complementary approaches like engaging religious and community leaders to promote a change in social norms for better recognition, reduction and redistribution of women’s unpaid work, exploring pay-as-you-go model to facilitate access to modern energy and technologies for domestic and productive uses, offering group insurance memberships to rural women networks and cooperatives for reduced premiums, capacity building interventions to improve technological literacy to access financial services, seek relevant information, and find new market opportunities, and so on, may prove to be more successful.⁷⁰

Ultimately, the normative developments surveyed in this article suggest that international human rights law offers a meaningful repertoire of legal tools through which rural women and girls can articulate claims, contest structural inequalities, and demand accountability. Politically, when these frameworks are invoked through collective organizing, strategic litigation, shadow reporting, and participation in policy-making spaces, they can serve as leverage to bring visibility to unpaid care work, contest its gendered tone, and reframe it as a matter of rights, redistribution, and public responsibility. Advancing such claims requires strengthening legal literacy, supporting rural women’s movements and networks, and fostering alliances across feminist, agrarian, labour, and human rights struggles. In this sense, the effective realization of rural women’s rights in relation to unpaid care work depends not only on the progressive interpretation of international norms, but also on their active appropriation by those most affected, transforming law from a declaratory framework into a site of social and political change.

Bibliography:

1International Labour Organization, Decent work and the care economy: Report VI, International Labour Conference, 112th Session (Geneva, 2024).

2Laura Addati, Umberto Cattaneo, Valeria Esquivel and Isabel Valarino, Care Work and Care Jobs for the Future of Decent Work (Geneva, International Labour Organization, 2018), available at: https://www.ilo.org/sites/default/files/wcmsp5/groups/public/@dgreports/@dcomm/@publ/documents/publication/wcms_633135.pdf (accessed 1 April 2025).

3United Nations, Escalating backlash against gender equality and urgency of reaffirming substantive equality and the human rights of women and girls: Report of the Working Group on Discrimination against Women and Girls, A/HRC/56/51 (Geneva, 15 May 2024).

4United Nations, Gendered dimensions of care and support systems: Report of the Working Group on Discrimination against Women and Girls, A/HRC/59/45 (Geneva, 20 May 2025).

5 Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, International Fund for Agricultural Development, and World Food Programme, Rural women and girls 25 years after Beijing (n 2).

6Shahrashoub Razavi, “Care and social reproduction: Some reflections on concepts, policies and politics from a development perspective,” in Rawwida Baksh and Wendy Harcourt (eds), The Oxford handbook of transnational feminist movements (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199943494.013.031 (accessed 10 April 2025)

7Prabha Kotiswaran, “Laws of social reproduction,” Annual Review of Law and Social Science, vol. 19 (2023), pp. 145-164, available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-121922-051047 (accessed 9 April 2025).

8United Nations, Transforming Care Systems in the Context of the Sustainable Development Goals and Our Common Agenda (UN System Policy Paper, 2024).

9Laura Addati, Umberto Cattaneo, Valeria Esquivel and Isabel Valarino, Care work and care jobs for the future of decent work (n 11).

10United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, The World’s Women 2020: Trends and Statistics, chapter 4, p. 353, available at: https://worlds-women-2020-data-undesa.hub.arcgis.com (accessed 1 April 2025).

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12World Health Organization, International Day for Rural Women (15 October 2024), available at: https://www.who.int/news-room/events/detail/2024/10/15/default-calendar/international-day-for-rural-women (accessed 1 April 2025).

13Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, International Fund for Agricultural Development, and World Food Programme, Rural women and girls 25 years after Beijing: Critical agents of positive change (Rome: FAO, IFAD, and WFP, 2020), available at: https://openknowledge.fao.org/items/7337a107-fd66-4b8e-9026-408e52d29f7d (accessed 1 April 2025). Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, General recommendation No. 34 (2016) on the rights of rural women, CEDAW/C/GC/34 (7 March 2016), available at: https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/835897?ln=en&v=pdf (accessed 10 April 2025).

14Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, International Fund for Agricultural Development, and World Food Programme, Rural women and girls 25 years after Beijing (n 2).

15Flavia Grassi, Josefine Landberg, and Sophia Huyer, Running out of time: The reduction of women’s work burden in agricultural production (Rome: FAO, 2015), available at: https://www.fao.org/3/a-i4741e.pdf (accessed 4 April 2025).

16 Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Addressing Women’s Work Burden: Fact Sheet (Rome, 2016), available at: http://www.fao.org/3/a-i5586e.pdf (accessed 10 April 2025) ; Flavia Grassi, Josefine Landberg and Sophia Huyer, Running Out of Time: The Reduction of Women’s Work Burden in Agricultural Production (n 5).

17Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Addressing Women’s Work Burden: Fact Sheet (Rome, 2016); citing World Bank, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, and International Fund for Agricultural Development, Gender in Agriculture Sourcebook (Washington, D.C., 2009).

18 Laura Addati, Umberto Cattaneo, Valeria Esquivel and Isabel Valarino, Care Work and Care Jobs for the Future of Decent Work (n 11).

19Time poverty is broadly understood as the lack of time needed for individuals to meet their basic requirements for rest and leisure, also known as discretionary time, owing to an excess of paid work and unpaid care and domestic work. This understanding draws on the work of Vickery (1977), as cited in: United Nations, World Survey on the Role of Women in Development 2019: Why Addressing Women’s Income and Time Poverty Matters for Sustainable Development (New York, United Nations, 2020), ST/ESA/371, available at: https://www.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2019/06/world-survey-on-the-role-of-women-in-development-2019 (accessed 10 April 2025).

20United Nations, World survey on the role of women in development (n 18).

21The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women states that a purely formal legal or programmatic approach is insufficient to guarantee women identical treatment to men. Biological, social and culturally constructed differences must be taken into account, and non-identical treatment may be required to overcome the underrepresentation of women and to ensure the redistribution of resources and power. An enabling environment is essential to achieve equality of results and to transform systems grounded in historically determined male paradigms of power and life patterns. From: Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, General Recommendation No. 25 on Article 4, Paragraph 1, of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, on Temporary Special Measures (2004), paras. 8–10, available at: https://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/recommendations/General%20recommendation%2025%20(English).pdf (accessed 11 July 2025).

22Ana Belen Sobrino Gonzalez, CEDAW: Why Care about Equality? Exploring the Principle of Equality and Non-Discrimination in the Context of Women’s Unpaid Care and Domestic Work in Development Discourse and Practice (Oslo, University of Oslo, 2016), available at: https://www.duo.uio.no/bitstream/handle/10852/51389/HUMR5200_thesis_uio_Candidate_8021.pdf (accessed 1 April 2025).

23Priscilla Claeys and Joanna Bourke Martignoni, Women are peasants too: Gender equality and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants (n 7).

24Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, General recommendation No. 34, CEDAW/C/GC/34 (n 3).

25Ibid.

26UN General Assembly, Report of the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, A/68/293 (n 23).

27Ibid.

28Ibid.

Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, General recommendation No. 34, CEDAW/C/GC/34 (n 3).

29International Labour Organization, Rural Women at Work: Bridging the Gaps (Geneva: ILO, 6 March 2018), available at: https://www.ilo.org/publications/rural-women-work-bridging-gaps (accessed 10 April 2025).

30UN General Assembly, Report of the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, A/68/293 (n 23).

31Ibid.

32UN General Assembly, Report of the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, A/68/293 (n 23) ; Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, General recommendation No. 34, CEDAW/C/GC/34 (n 3).

33UN General Assembly, Report of the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, A/68/293 (n 23).

34Ibid, para. 55.

35UN General Assembly, Report of the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, A/68/293 (n 23); Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, General recommendation No. 34, CEDAW/C/GC/34 (n 3).

36Stephen Devereux and Rachel Sabates-Wheeler, Transformative social protection, IDS Working Paper No. 232 (Brighton: Institute of Development Studies, 2004), as cited in Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Empowering rural women through social protection, Rural Transformations – Technical Papers Series No. 2 (Rome: FAO, 2015), p. 5.

37UN WomenWatch, Rural women – overview: Social protection, available at: https://www.un.org/womenwatch/feature/ruralwomen/overview-social-protection.html (accessed 10 April 2025).

38UN General Assembly, Report of the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, A/68/293 (n 23).

39 United Nations, Transforming Care Systems in the Context of the Sustainable Development Goals and Our Common Agenda, UN System Policy Paper (New York, 2024), p. 29, available at: https://unsdg.un.org/sites/default/files/2024-07/FINAL_UN%20System%20Care%20Policy%20Paper_24June2024.pdf (accessed 1 June 2025).

40While policy discourse typically addresses care work in its entirety, this document focuses specifically on unpaid care work. Care work includes both paid and unpaid activities that “encompass direct care for people (physical, emotional, psychological and developmental) as well as indirect care (e.g. household tasks, including collecting water and firewood, travelling and transporting), taking place within and outside the home.” Definition adapted from: United Nations, Transforming Care Systems, p. 6.

41United Nations, Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, A/CONF.177/20 (1995), adopted by General Assembly resolution 50/142, available at: https://archive.unescwa.org/sites/www.unescwa.org/files/u1281/bdpfa_e.pdf (accessed 11 June 2025).

42International Labour Organization, Resolution concerning statistics of work, employment and labour underutilization, ICLS/19/2013/R.1 (adopted 11 October 2013), available at: https://www.ilo.org/global/statistics-and-databases/standards-and-guidelines/resolutions-adopted-by-international-conferences-of-labour-statisticians/WCMS_230304/lang–en/index.htm (accessed 11 June 2025).

43 United Nations, Goal 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls, Sustainable Development Goals, available at: https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal5#targets_and_indicators (accessed 11 June 2025).

44United Nations Economic and Social Council, Promoting Care and Support Systems for Social Development, resolution E/RES/2024/4 (2024), available at: https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/4054737?v=pdf (accessed 16 July 2025).

45Laura Addati, Umberto Cattaneo, Valeria Esquivel and Isabel Valarino, Care work and care jobs for the future of decent work (n 11).

46Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, General recommendation No. 34, CEDAW/C/GC/34 (n 3).

47United Nations Human Rights Council, The Centrality of Care and Support from a Human Rights Perspective, Resolution A/HRC/RES/54/6 (11 October 2023), available at: https://docs.un.org/en/A/HRC/RES/54/6 (accessed 16 July 2025).

48Intersectionality is a concept and theoretical framework that facilitates recognition of the complex ways in which social identities overlap and, in negative scenarios, can create compounding experiences of discrimination and concurrent forms of oppression. United Nations Network on Racial Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, Guidance Note on Intersectionality, Racial Discrimination and Protection of Minorities (Geneva: ILO, 2023), available at: https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/issues/minorities/30th-anniversary/2022-09-22/GuidanceNoteonIntersectionality.pdf (accessed 16 July 2025).

49United Nations Human Rights Council, Human Rights Dimension of Care and Support: Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, A/HRC/58/43 (30 January 2025), available at: https://docs.un.org/en/A/HRC/58/43 (accessed 16 July 2025).

50UN Women, Intersectionality resource guide and toolkit (New York: UN Women, 2021), available at: https://www.unwomen.org/sites/default/files/2022-01/Intersectionality-resource-guide-and-toolkit-en.pdf (accessed 16 July 2025).

51Allison J. Petrozziello, “Intersectionality as method for human rights research,” Journal of Human Rights 24, no. 2 (2025): 182-198, https://doi.org/10.1080/14754835.2025.2477493 (accessed 16 July 2025).

52Meghan Campbell, “The distance between us: Sexual and reproductive health rights of rural women and girls,” in Shreya Atreya and Peter Dunne (eds), Intersectionality and human rights law (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2020), pp. 112-130, available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3587464 (accessed 16 July 2025).

53 Amanda Lyons, “Rurality as an intersecting axis of inequality in the work of the UN treaty bodies,” Washington and Lee Law Review 79 (2022): 1125-1148, available at: https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/wlulr/vol79/iss3/8 (accessed 16 July 2025).

54Meghan Campbell, The distance between us (n 53).

55Amanda Lyons, Rurality as an intersecting axis of inequality (n 54); Meghan Campbell, The distance between us (n 53).

56Ibid.

57Meghan Campbell, The distance between us (n 53).

58Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, General recommendation No. 34, CEDAW/C/GC/34 (n 3).

59Lisa R. Pruitt, “Deconstructing CEDAW’s Article 14: Naming and explaining rural difference,” William & Mary Journal of Women and the Law 17 (2011), available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1770054;  Amanda Lyons, Rurality as an intersecting axis of inequality  (n 54).

60Ibid (n 60).

61Amanda Lyons, Rurality as an intersecting axis of inequality (n 54).

62Ibid.

63Lisa R. Pruitt, Deconstructing CEDAW’s Article 14 (n 60).

64Ibid.

65Hilary Charlesworth, “What are ‘Women’s International Human Rights’?” in Human Rights of Women: National and International Perspectives, p. 58 (1994), as cited in Lisa R. Pruitt, Deconstructing CEDAW’s Article 14 (n 60), p. 347.

66Sarah Redshaw, Cate Thomas, Nathan Kerrigan, Branka Krivokapic-Skoko, and Susan Flynn, “Rurality and intersectionality: a literature review,” Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal 44, no. 9 (2025): 208-226, available at: https://doi.org/10.1108/EDI-10-2024-0482 (accessed 16 July 2025).

67Laura Addati, Umberto Cattaneo, Valeria Esquivel, and Isabel Valarino, Care work and care jobs for the future of decent work (n 11).

68 Francesca Bastagli, Jessica Hagen-Zanker, Luke Harman, Valentina Barca, Georgina Sturge, and Tanja Schmidt, with Luca Pellerano, Cash transfers: What does the evidence say? A rigorous review of programme impact and of the role of design and implementation features (London: Overseas Development Institute, 2016), available at: https://odi.org/en/publications/cash-transfers-what-does-the-evidence-say-a-rigorous-review-of-programme-impact-and-of-the-role-of-design-and-implementation-features (accessed 16 July 2025).

69Francesca Bastagli, Jessica Hagen-Zanker, Luke Harman, Valentina Barca, Georgina Sturge, and Tanja Schmidt, Cash transfers: What does the evidence say? (n 69); United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women), The effect of cash-based interventions on gender outcomes in development and humanitarian settings (New York: UN Women, 2019), available at: https://www.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2019/12/effect-of-cash-based-interventions (accessed 16 July 2025).

70 United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women), Innovative Solutions to Recognize, Reduce and Redistribute the Unpaid Care Work of Rural Women in Senegal (2023), available at: https://africa.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2023/06/innovative-solutions-to-recognize-reduce-and-redistribute-the-unpaid-care-work-of-rural-women-in-senegal (accessed 16 July 2025)

La entrada Rural Women and Unpaid Care Work: Gaps and Opportunities within International Law se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

GENEVA – October 15, 2025 – On the International Day of Rural Women, the UN Working Group on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas issued an urgent call to action, demanding States and corporations end the systemic discrimination, violence, and economic exclusion faced by rural women worldwide. Despite producing over 70 percent of the developing world’s food supply and leading climate adaptation efforts, peasant women and other women working in rural areas (rural women) remain among the most marginalized groups, facing profound violations of their fundamental human rights.

The urgent call to action highlights a series of intersecting rights violations that shape the stark realities faced by rural women worldwide. The Working Group thereby urges states, multilateral institutions, the private sector, and civil society to uphold the rights of rural women as enshrined in the UNDROP, through concrete actions within their respective domains.

See full call to action below:

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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.

La Via Campesina and CETIM have organized a training course for La Via Campesina members in August 2023, and are now making training materials available to all. This material is also available in PDF version here.

Session 2 of the UNDROP training seminar aims to provide a general overview and analysis of the key rights of the UNDROP, those that form the backbone of the instrument. This does not mean that other rights are less important, but we have identified these “key rights” as being the most buoyant and, in a way, the most claimed: right to land and natural resources; right to food and food sovereignty; right of rural women; right to social security; right to seeds; right to the environment, water and biodiversity; right to participation; right to an adequate standard of living and means of production; economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights in the context of peasant activities.

Objective of Session 2 “Key rights”: To gain a practical understanding of the core content of the UNDROP and what these articles mean in practice for peasants in the field.

Methodology: Participants will follow a series of video training sessions on key UNDROP rights. They will also be asked to read some key documents relating to each right.

RIGHT TO FOOD SOVEREIGNTY (art.15)

• Read the definition established at the Nyeléni Forum in 2007
• Read article 15 of the UNDROP
• See video training on food sovereignty, by Elizabeth Mpofu (ZIMSOFF, Zimbabwe)

• See the video of La Via Campesina “What is food sovereignty”?

Compulsory training sheets to read:

• La Via Campesina’s Thematic Booklet “Peasants’ rights and food production”
• CETIM’s training sheet “The right to food and food sovereignty”

Complementary materials for further reading:

• FIAN International’s briefing “Right to Adequate Food and Nutrition, and to Food Sovereignty”
• Research brief from the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights “The rights to food and to food sovereignty
• Report from Friends of the Earth International “The UN Declaration on the rights of peasants as a tool for promoting collective rights“

RIGHT TO LAND (art.17)

• Read article 17 of the UNDROP
• See video training on right to land, by Paola Gioia (ABL, Germany)

Compulsory training sheets to read:

• La Via Campesina’s Thematic Booklet “Access to resources and means of production” (see in particular pages 4-5-6)
• CETIM’s training sheet “The right to land and natural resources”

Complementary materials for further reading:

• FIAN International briefing “The right to land and other natural resources”
• Research brief on the right to land by the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights “The right to land and other natural resources”
• CETIM’s book “Right to land”
• International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPCFS) “People’s Manual on the Guidelines on Governance of Land, Fisheries and Forests“

RIGHT TO AN ADEQUATE STANDARD OF LIVING, A DECENT LIVELIHOOD AND THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION (art.16)

• Read article 16 of the UNDROP
• See video training on this right, by Diego Monton (MNCI Somos Tierra – UTRST, Argentina)

Compulsory training sheets to read:

• La Via Campesina’s Thematic Booklets “Access to resources and means of production” (see in particular pages 9-10) and “Peasants’ Dignified Lives and Livelihoods“
• CETIM’s training sheet “The right to an adequate standard of living, a decent livelihood and the means of production”

Complementary materials for further reading:

RIGHT TO SEEDS (art.19)

• Read article 19 of the UNDROP
• See video training on right to seeds, by Christophe Golay from the Geneva Academy (Switzerland)

Compulsory training sheets to read:

• La Via Campesina’s Thematic Booklet “Access to resources and means of production” (see in particular page 8)
• CETIM’s training sheet “The right to seeds”

Complementary materials for further reading:

• FIAN International briefing “The rights to seeds and biodiversity”
• Research brief on the right to land by the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights “Right to seeds and intellectual property rights”
• Research brief on the right to land by the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights “The right to seeds in Africa”
• Research brief on the right to land by the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights “The right to seeds in Europe”

RIGHT TO PARTICIPATION (art.10)

• Read article 10 of the UNDROP
• See video training on right to participation, by Michelle Zufferey (UNITERRE, Switzerland)

Compulsory training sheets to read:Training sheets to read:

• La Via Campesina’s Thematic Booklet “Access to resources and means of production” (see in particular page 10)
• CETIM’s training sheet “The right to participation”

RIGHTS TO THE ENVIRONEMENT, BIODIVERSITY AND WATER (art. 18, 20 and 21)

• Read articles 18, 20 and 21 of the UNDROP
• See video training on right to participation, by Morgan Ody (Confédération paysanne, France)

Compulsory training sheets to read:

• La Via Campesina’s Thematic Booklet “Access to resources and means of production” (see in particular page 8)
• CETIM’s training sheet “The right to the environement”

Complementary materials for further reading:

• FIAN International briefing “Environmental and Climat Justice”
• FIAN International briefing “Rights to water and sanitation”

RIGHTS OF RURAL WOMEN (art. 4)

• Read article 4 of the UNDROP
• See video training on right to participation, by Chengeto Zumira (ZIMSOFF, Zimbabwe)

Compulsory training sheets to read:

• La Via Campesina’s Thematic Booklets “Peasants as political subjects” and “Peasants’ Dignified Lives and Livelihoods” (see in particular pages 6-7)
• CETIM’s training sheet “Non-discrimination against rural women“

Complementary materials for further reading:

• FIAN International’s briefing “Rural Women’s Rights“

RIGHT TO SOCIAL SECURITY (art. 22)

• Read article 22 of the UNDROP
• See video training on right to participation, by Pramesh Pokharel (All Nepal Peasants Federation, Nepal)

Compulsory training sheets to read:

• La Via Campesina’s Thematic Booklet “Peasants’ Dignified Lives and Livelihoods” (see in particular pages 2-3-4)
• CETIM’s training sheet “Right to social security“

ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND CULTURAL RIGHTS (art. 5, 13, 14, 21, 23, 24, 25 and 26)

• Read articles 5, 13, 14, 21, 23, 24, 25 and 26 of the UNDROP
• See video training on economic, social and cultural rights, by Melik Özden (CETIM)

Compulsory training sheets to read:

• CETIM’s training sheet “Economic, social and cultural rights“

CIVIL AND POLITICAL RIGHTS (art. 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11 and 12)

• Read articles 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11 and 12 of the UNDROP
• See video training on civil and political rights, by Melik Özden (CETIM) see above

Compulsory training sheets to read:

• La Via Campesina’s Thematic Booklet “Peasants as political subjects“
• CETIM’s training sheet “Civil and political rights“

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After adopting the Declaration, we are now in a new phase: implementation. It is absolutely vital to bring the Declaration to life so that peasants and other people working in rural areas can make the content their own, to use it in their daily advocacy work. For this reason, CETIM, alongside La Via Campesina, organizes seminars aimed at peasant leaders. These courses allow them to consolidate their practices, advocacy strategies and other projects linked to the Declaration. Through this type of training, we are striving for a multiplier effect. Once the leaders have been trained, they disseminate their knowledge to their members, to other peasants and allies. The aim in the long term is for everyone to have access to this crucial knowledge.

Training sheets

The twelve fact sheets have been produced in a spirit of popularisation of the content and scope of the rights contained in the Declaration. Produced in several languages in an A5 format, the sheets explain in an accessible way one or a series of rights of the Declaration grouped by theme:

1. Introduction of the UNDROP
2. Right to land
3. Right to seeds
4. Right to food and food sovereignty
5. Right to an adequate standard of living, a decent livelihood and to means of production
6. Non-discrimination against rural women
7. Right to participation
8. Right to the environment
9. Right to social security
10. Economic, social and cultural rights
11. Civil and political rights
12. Strategies for implementation

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These briefings take a close look at the rights, principles and states obligations adopted in UNDROP by the United Nations General Assembly on 17 December 2018.
 

1.    Rural Women’s Rights
How are the rights of women rural in rural areas now strengthened by UNDROP?

2.    The Rights to Biodiversity and Seeds
Why are biodiversity and seeds essential for peasants and other people in rural areas, and how should they be internationally protected? 

3.    Rights to Water and Sanitation
Water plays a key role in the lives of peasants and rural population, how are these rights defined and how should access be fulfilled?

4.    Right to Adequate Food and Nutrition, and to Food Sovereignty
How are right to food and the right to food sovereignty recognized in UNDROP?

5.    Environmental and Climate Justice
Environmental destruction and climate change are threatening the human rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas around the world, how does UNDROP contribute to achieving environmental and climate justice?

6. Agroecology
Agroecology promotes a set of agricultural practices that are environmentally sustainable and socially just. How is UNDROP helping foster agroecology?

7. Filling the gaps in protecting the human rights of a diverse rural world
People living in the countryside are diverse. While their identities are dynamic and fluid, they face similar systemic challenges for the realization of their human rights. How can a mutually supportive interpretation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and UNDROP help advance the rights of the rural world?

8. The right to land and other natural resources

Land is a common good. Access, control, management and use of land is essential for rural communities to live a dignified life. How is the human right to land recognized in UNDROP?

La entrada Peasants’ rights briefings se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

On 25th November, La Via Campesina’s global campaign to eliminate gender-based violence finds resonance in a newly launched graphic book that traces The Path of Peasant & Popular Feminism in the movement. On this day, when members of the global movement amplify our International Solidarity Actions to End Violence Against Women and Girls, this book echoes our critique and condemnation of a capitalist and patriarchal system that perpetuates these violations. At this moment, in a united voice, La Via Campesina demands justice and dignity for those affected by the violence and condemn the impunity enjoyed by the perpetrators. It is time to say “enough!” to gender-based violence experienced by women, girls and non-binary genders.

The book is a vital political-pedagogical tool for training at the grassroots, regions and continents. Organized by the Women’s Articulation of La Via Campesina and beautifully illustrated by the FemGarabat Feminist Collective of the Basque Country, this book synthesis the historical struggle of peasant and indigenous women around the world.

The artists who worked on the book also expressed their support and respect for these struggles when they said, “As a feminist graphic collective, we use illustrations as a tool for transmitting ideas that we believe in and value. Through our work we had the opportunity to learn about women’s struggles from all over the world and, in that sense, working with La Vía Campesina has been a very enriching experience. It has been a pleasure to visually illustrate these diverse struggles, those in which Femgarabat firmly believes”

Twenty-eight pages of stunning illustrations reveal the role of women in the global fight for Food Sovereignty and their centrality in promoting Peasant and Popular Feminism in their territories and organizations. It also offers several testimonies of peasant leaders from across continents in implementing the Global Campaign to End Violence Against Women promoted by LVC since 2008.

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La entrada The Path of Peasant and Popular Feminism in La Via Campesina – illustrated se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.