This article was originally published in the journal Lendemains Solidaires, available in French here.

Food Sovereignty is intended as the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food, produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and the right of peoples to define their own food and agriculture systems. La Via Campesina insists that diverse, peasant-driven agroecological modes of production, based on centuries of knowledge, experience and accumulated evidence, are central to guaranteeing healthy food to everyone, while ensuring harmony with nature. This paradigm puts the aspirations and needs of those who produce, distribute and consume food at the heart of food systems and policies rather than the demands of markets and transnational corporations. It defends the interests of next generations. It offers a strategy to resist and dismantle the current corporate trade and food regime, building food, farming, pastoral and fisheries systems determined by local producers and users.

Background

The history and background of the concept of Food Sovereignty declared by LVC in 1996 is linked to the failure of the implementation of the concept of food security initiated by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). It was conceived to overcome the challenge of hunger and malnutritinon that was and is particularly – and paradoxically – affecting the rural areas.

During the World Food Summit in 1996, La Via Campesina coined the term, insisting upon the centrality of small-scale food producers, the accumulated wisdom of generations, the autonomy and diversity of rural and urban communities and the solidarity between peoples, as essential components for crafting policies around food and agriculture.

We must remind ourselves that the only way to make our voice heard is by uniting and building new alliances within and across every border. Rural and Urban Social Movements, Trade Unions and civil society actors, progressive governments, academics, scientists and technology enthusiasts must come together to defend this shared vision for the future. Peasant women and other oppressed gender minorities must find equal space in the leadership of our movement at all levels. We must sow the seeds of solidarity in our communities and address all forms of discrimination that keep rural societies divided.

In the commomeration of the 25 years of La Via Campesina, it was declared that Food Sovereignty offers a manifesto for the future of our planet. It is an idea that unites humanity and puts us at the service of Mother Earth that feeds and nourishes us.

"Food Sovereignty offers a manifesto for the future of our planet."

Linking Food Sovereignty to Right to Development

Linking food sovereignty to the framework and concept of the Right to Development (RtD) is very relevant, as the latter must be intended as the right of peasant and rural populations to design and build their own rural development models, autonomously and independently, thus aligning with the perspective and principles of food sovereignty.

The Right to Development is conceived as a process of empowerment that necessarily implies social mobilization and struggle. It becomes a programmatic right that requires structural and specific measures from public authorities in favor of rural workers and communities. Hence the RtD is also a political instrument, a strategic counter-hegemonic legal framework aimed at resisting the dangerous policies imposed by the architecture of globalization, which primarily benefits transnational agribusiness corporations and financial capital, which have always contributed to marginalizing peasantry.

The interrelation between the RtD, food sovereignty and peasants’ rights is further confirmed in the ongoing negotiation of the Draft International Covenant on the Right to Development within the United Nations¹. This process aims at legally strenghtening and further consolidating the legal framework of RtD, initially codified through the UN Declaration on the Right to Development (1986).

The Draft Covenant text includes a specific provision recognizing the right of peasants “to determine and develop priorities and strategies to exercise their right to development.” This explicit reference represents both a legal and political advancement. It strengthens the interpretation of the RtD as a right belonging not only to States, but also to organized peoples and communities—particularly rural populations historically excluded from decision-making.

By inserting peasants and rural people as a constitutive element of development, this new legal instrument reinforces the centrality of self-determination in defining agricultural, economic, and territorial priorities. It also consolidates the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP) recognition that peasants must not merely be beneficiaries of policies, but rights-holders capable of designing, implementing, and monitoring their own development models (art. 3 and 10).

What Is Peasant-Led Rural Development?

Our vision of development is cantered on the development of peasant agriculture through agroecology, the only guarantee of dignified and just livelihoods and working conditions for people across the world, especially in rural areas as centre of food production. Therefore LVC proposed and finally success in getting the United Declaration on the rights of peasant and other people in rural areas ( UNDROP) as tool of struggle for Food Sovereignty.

To achieve this, we require public policies that regulate agricultural and food markets, as peasants always do not get the decent income from their food production’s activities for their livelihood and continuing food production ( article 16 of UNDROP). This is because of market mechanism-based food system with corporation control the market .

Among these regulatory mechanisms, we advocate for Minimum Support Prices (MSP), meaning that States must set support prices that cover peasants’ production costs and guarantee a fair income margin. This mechanism reverses the logic of dumping, which depresses prices, thereby protecting peasant dignity.

We also defend public procurement and public reserves. We demand the restoration of public food stock systems to regulate markets and stabilize prices. Public authorities should buy crops during harvest seasons to guarantee floor prices and release them during shortage periods to avoid speculation. Minimim Support Price, Public Procurement and public reserves are for instance implemented in Indonesia and India.

"Public authorities should buy crops during harvest seasons to guarantee floor prices and release them during shortage periods to avoid speculation."

These mechanisms are indispensable because the neoliberal model dismantled these regulatory tools, exposing small producers to competition with large subsidized agribusiness farms. LVC calls for strengthening local and regional supply chains, arguing that trade must prioritize short circuits over transcontinental flows.

Agrarian Reform, the right to land and the RtD

Agrarian reform is linked to access to and control of land and territory, which is now considered a fundamental right, enshrined in international human rights law, particularly through Article 17 of UNDROP. Many phenomenas and corporate initiatives violate and/or threaten the right to land: agrarian conflicts, criminalization, evictions, land grabbing, green grabbing and land concentration driven by agribusiness for large scale of agriculture (monocultures); carbon markets, biofuel and biodiversity offset; mining activities; and “development projects”, as the construction of highways, dams and others. These are the reasons why LVC fights at all levels for comprehensive and people-centered agrarian reform.

This approach goes beyond mere land titling, calling for effective and equitable redistribution of land. It includes setting to clearly limit property size, banning the sale of land to others and foreign entities, and expropriating holdings that rely on illegal or slave labour, especially in large scale agriculture and big plantations.

"This approach goes beyond mere land titling, calling for effective and equitable redistribution of land."

This vision directly opposes market-based “counter-reforms” promoted by the World Bank in the 1990s, which led to land privatization and a new wave of land concentration, imposing a single rural development model, rooted in neoliberalism and favourable to agribusiness interests.

The struggle for rights to land through implementing agrarian reform is therefore part of the RtD, it is a struggle for self-determination and for the right to define one’s own land systems. We advocate for a political understanding of land — as a social and productive ecosystem essential to life — and not as a mere financial asset.

Agroecology, the right to seeds and the RtD

In 2015, during the Second Nyeleni Forum², delegations representing diverse organizations and international movements of small-scale food producers and consumers gathered to get to a common understanding of agroecology, as a key component of Food Sovereignty.

Agroecology is intended to transform and repair our material reality in food systems, facing a rural world devastated by industrial food production and today by the so-called Green and Blue Revolutions. Agroecology is, thus, also political: it aims at challenging and transforming structures of power in society. It puts the control of seeds, biodiversity, land and territories, waters, knowledge, culture, and all the commons, in the hands of the peoples who feed the world.

The control of local/native seeds is a key mean of production amid the corporate offensive of seed industries to keep consolidating chemical agriculture. These industries develop genetically modified organismes (GMOs) seeds, while promoting patents (intellectual property rights) at the expenses of local/native seeds. Therefore, LVC strongly rejects the commodification of living organisms, notably through GMOs, patents, and the privatization and commercialization of biodiversity.

In this sense, the movement defends the collective and inalienable right of peasants to save, use, exchange, and sell their seeds, in accordance with Article 9.3 of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources and Article 19 of UNDROP.

Faced with industrial attempts to use synthetic biology and genomics, LVC organizes seed exchanges and campaigns to safeguard traditional community-based systems of biodiversity management. Here again, the struggle for seed rights is rooted in the RtD, in the right of peasants to design and implement their own seed development models based on their traditional and Indigenous practices.

The neoliberal globalization against the rights of peasants

International financial and trade institutions are the main forces behind violations against peasantry and the dismantling of peasant based food systems. The triptych composed of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) prevents governments—especially those of the Global South—from implementing essential public policies in favor of rural populations through coercive mechanisms and conditions. These neoliberal actors forced a reduction in the role of the state in the provision of public services, while increasing the role of the private sector (through privatization).

"These neoliberal actors forced a reduction in the role of the state in the provision of public services, while increasing the role of the private sector."

In this regard, it is important to recall that the integration of agriculture into the global free-trade regime through the WTO Agreement on Agriculture (1994) was a devastating turning point. This policy transformed food into a mere commodity and systematically deregulated the agricultural sector, dismantling market regulation tools such as minimum intervention prices and public reserves. The consequences have been systemic: falling agricultural prices, destruction of local peasant markets, loss of autonomy over seeds, and the expulsion of millions of peasants from their territories in favor of large landholders.

The tragic act of South Korean peasant Lee Kyung Hae, who took his life in Cancún in 2003 while wearing a banner that stated “WTO Kills Farmers,” remains emblematic of the violence of this neoliberal and neocolonial-imperialist system.

However, the neoliberal trade regime is not only the WTO, but it is also characterized by the spread of free trade and investment agreements at both regional, mulitilateral and bilateral level. In addition, today we are also facing Trump’s trade policies, which force countries to open market fully, but not vice-versa.

The Struggle for an Alternative Trade Framework

In response to the damage caused by the WTO Agreement on Agriculture, LVC launched a process to urgently claim for the creation of a new international trade framework grounded in food sovereignty. This new framework must be based on solidarity, international cooperation, and social justice. Its main purpose is to redefine the function of trade—from a tool that maximizes the profits of large transnational corporations to one that guarantees human rights and food sovereignty.

By asserting that agricultural and food trade must comply with human rights—and that the right to food is a fundamental human right, not a commodity—LVC advocates for a new trade framework that protects peasants’ rights and legitimizes States’ measures such as market protections against dumping and guaranteed support prices for producers.

"La Via Campesina advocates for a new trade framework that protects peasants’ rights and legitimizes States’ measures such as market protections against dumping and guaranteed support prices for producers."

To this end, LVC identifies the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) as the legitimate forum to build this renewed multilateral consensus, considering it a counterweight capable of realigning global trade norms with human rights.

Conclusion

Development, as conceptualized by La Vía Campesina, is an integrated and radical response to the systemic failures of the neoliberal model. It is defined by the achievement of dignity, social justice, and ecological sustainability for rural populations.

We will continue to fight for our rights by all means at our disposal, but above all through the popular mobilization of our masses. We will continue to consolidate advocacy through international legal instruments, such as UNDROP, to demand the implementation of redistributive and regulatory public policies that can realize our right to development, namely our right to define our own rural and agricultural development systems and models, in light of the food sovereignty paradigm.

By emphasizing autonomy and peasant knowledge, and by placing rural women and youth at the center of struggle, LVC proposes a pathway that prioritizes the protection of ecosystems and communities over capital accumulation, reaffirming its commitment to systemic transformation of the global economic, trade, financial, and social order.

1 https://docs.un.org/en/A/HRC/54/50

2. https://nyeleni.org/en/homepage/

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

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

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

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Ghana: Rural transformation risks leaving peasants behind, political will needed to move forward, say UN experts

ACCRA – Ghana stands on the cusp of an agricultural transformation, but there is an urgent need to ensure small-holder farmers, artisanal fishers, and pastoralists are not left behind through the country’s implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP), the Working Group on the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas said in a statement today.

“Ghana has a robust human rights framework and has demonstrated genuine willingness to engage with its commitments through the Fisheries and Aquaculture Act 2025, the Social Protection Act 2025, the Affirmative Action (Gender Equity) Act 2024, and the ratification of ILO Work in Fishing Convention (No. 188),” the Working Group said in a statement at the conclusion of their official visit to the country.

“However, there is a persistent gap between the law and policy and their meaningful implementation on the ground. Small-holder farmers, artisanal fishers and pastoralists, who constitute the actual backbone of food production, continue to suffer from poverty and exclusion,” they said.

The experts warned that the government’s drive toward mechanised, export-oriented agriculture risks entrenching a dual food system. This model heavily serves large-scale, input-intensive commercial agriculture, while the family-based agrarian sector is left increasingly marginalised.

Land tenure insecurity is an ongoing challenge, as the country’s dual tenure system exposes subsistence farmers to sudden dispossession with limited legal recourse.

“Women, youth and elderly farmers face compounded disadvantages within both statutory and customary systems. Despite their critical roles throughout farming and fishing, and despite strong legal protections, women remain excluded from land ownership and decision-making due to deeply entrenched social norms,” they added.

Ghana is simultaneously confronting a severe environmental emergency fuelled by illegal gold mining, or “galamsey”.

“Galamsey is the most acute, rapidly expanding and politically charged environmental emergency facing the country. The contamination of rivers, destruction of farmland and the spread of heavy-metal contamination reach far beyond mining sites,” the experts said. Sustained by powerful interests, it has become a national security, food and nutrition security, and public health emergency intertwined with elite capture.

The experts also highlighted the deep, multi-dimensional exclusion of pastoralists.

“Their nomadic way of life renders them structurally invisible to governance systems designed around settled tenure. Many in Fulbe communities face barriers to citizenship documentation, effectively placing them outside the reach of any legal protection framework.”

The erosion of grazing pastures, worsened by climate pressure and agricultural expansion, is generating an escalating cycle of conflict between pastoralists and settled farmers.

Economic barriers such as intermediary dominance, poor rural road infrastructure, and an absence of cold-chain facilities lead to catastrophic post-harvest losses, which are compounded by climate change shocks. Smallholder farmers and artisanal fishers are additionally excluded from finance by their inability to provide conventional collateral.

“The policy and legislative framework that Ghana has assembled constitutes a strong foundation that commands respect for human rights. Yet implementing laws to address all these issues demands genuine political courage that challenges entrenched interests, and a commitment to deeper social norm change without which legal frameworks remain aspirational,” the experts said. UNDROP calls for nothing less, on behalf of peasant farmers, fisherfolk, pastoralists and other rural workers.

The Working Group will present a report on the visit including findings and recommendations to the UN Human Rights Council in September 2026.

See the End of Mission Statement on the country visit to Ghana below:

The Working Group on Peasants and other people working in rural areas is comprised of five independent experts from all regions of the world. The Chair-Rapporteur is Carlos Duarte (Colombia), other members are Geneviève Savigny (France); Shalmali Guttal (India), Uche Ewelukwa Ofodile (Nigeria) and Davit Hakobyan (Armenia).

Special Rapporteurs/Independent Experts/Working Groups are independent human rights experts appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council. Together, these experts are referred to as the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. Special Procedures experts work on a voluntary basis; they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. While the UN Human Rights office acts as the secretariat for Special Procedures, the experts serve in their individual capacity and are independent from any government or organization, including OHCHR and the UN. Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the UN or OHCHR.

Country-specific observations and recommendations by the UN human rights mechanisms, including the special procedures, the treaty bodies and the Universal Periodic Review, can be found on the Universal Human Rights Index https://uhri.ohchr.org/en/

UN Human Rights, country page – Ghana

For inquiries and media requests, please contact: Cynthia Prah (prah@un.org) Public Information Officer in Accra, or Stee Asbjornsen (stee.asbjornsen@un.org) in Geneva.

For media inquiries related to other UN independent experts please contact Maya Derouaz (maya.derouaz@un.org) or Dharisha Indraguptha (dharisha.indraguptha@un.org)

Follow news related to the UN’s independent human rights experts on Twitter: @UN_SPExperts.

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Within this framework, the text identifies a series of concrete lines of action to advance in this direction. Among them, it highlights the need to promote sustained advocacy strategies—combining pressure, lobbying, and dialogue with States—as well as to strengthen alliances between peasant organisations, civil society, universities, and trade unions. It also underlines the importance of producing and disseminating data-based information, structuring a public communication strategy, and addressing in a well-founded manner the main criticisms raised by States that voted against or abstained during the declaration’s adoption process.

Finally, the article proposes measures at both international and national levels, understood as part of a broader process of legal and political development. These include the creation of specific mechanisms within the United Nations system, the integration of UNDROP as a reference framework in global policies, the adaptation of domestic legislation, and its use in judicial and administrative decisions. Likewise, it emphasises the importance of documenting violations of these rights and analysing their application to different groups, with the aim of translating these standards into tangible impacts on the lives of rural populations.

The full article is available below (Spanish only):

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

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

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

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

Interpreting the UNDROP from the perspective of aquatic territories

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

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

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

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

The Threats: “Ocean Grabbing” and the Blue Economy

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

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

The Defensive Triad: UNDROP, SSF Guidelines, and Tenure

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

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

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

Women at the Heart of Fisheries

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read the Yaoundé Declaration

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Impact

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

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

APPEAL FOR INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY

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

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

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

In solidarity, MONLAR TEAM.

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

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

A new communication initiative has recently been launched in Colombia with the aim of bringing academic knowledge closer to the general public. It is a podcast series led by the Institute of Intercultural Studies and the Specialisation in Agrarian Jurisdiction at Universidad Javeriana in Cali, in partnership with the Observatory of Rural Lands. The initiative seeks to transform recent research into accessible and engaging content, expanding the reach of key debates on the rights of rural peoples.

On air for about a month, the project embraces clear language and multimedia formats to engage with peasant organisations, rural workers, Indigenous communities, pastoralists, and fisherpeople. The initiative publishes around two pieces of content per month, combining audio and written formats, making specialised knowledge more accessible to diverse audiences.

The topics addressed are rooted in the Colombian context but go beyond national borders. Episodes include reflections relevant to Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as global analyses, such as land concentration and its social, economic, and political implications. In this way, the podcast establishes itself as a space for the circulation of critical knowledge on contemporary agrarian issues.

Readers and interested audiences from different regions are invited to explore and follow this initiative. Episodes, available in Spanish and English, can be accessed at https://soundcloud.com/carlos-duarte-44 and https://www.observatoriodetierras.org/podcast/, while written publications are available at https://www.observatoriodetierras.org/publicaciones/. This is a valuable opportunity to engage with current debates in more inclusive and accessible formats.

We particularly highlight the latest episode, which examines the current state of discussions on governance, access, and inequality in access to land at the global level, broken down by analytical regions. Available in English and Spanish.

La entrada From Colombia to the World: A Podcast Bringing Peasant Rights Research to Wider Audiences se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

Indigenous Peoples And Social Movements Reaffirm Unity And Support To ICARRD+20 Organisers, But Reject Conference Declaration

By La Via Campesina (28 February 2026)

PRESS RELEASE | CARTAGENA DE INDIAS, COLOMBIA

At the closing session of the International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD+20), Indigenous Peoples and social movements, represented by the International Planning Committee for food sovereignty (IPC)*, issued a strong political statement affirming their “irreducible unity” in the face of ongoing attacks on their rights.

The movements expressed appreciation for the Government of Colombia and Brazil for bringing agrarian reform back into the agenda of the international policy dialogue, and for including their voices in the conference process. They also highlighted the need for Global South governments and peoples to stand united in defense of international law and human rights, noting that Iran is currently facing what they describe as another imperialist attack.

The IPC statement reaffirmed that the rights of Indigenous Peoples and peasants are firmly recognized under international law, including instruments adopted by the United Nations General Assembly such as the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP). The IPC rejected any attempt to roll back these recognised rights.

A central concern raised was the conflation of Indigenous Peoples with the vague concept of “local communities”, repeated multiple times in the declaration of governments presented to the plenary. While acknowledging the importance of the Conference, the movements stated that they “cannot accept the declaration” adopted at its conclusion. They committed to continued engagement in follow-up processes to ensure that their rights are respected, protected, and guaranteed.

Indigenous Peoples organisations articulating through the IPC under the International Indian Treaty Coouncil (IITC), emphasised that the three UN mechanisms on the rights of Indigenous Peoples have clearly distinguished the unique characteristics, origins, and legal status of Indigenous Peoples’ rights, and warned that grouping them with undefined communities undermines those protections. Similar concerns were expressed for fisher peoples, nomadic pastoralists, peasants, rural workers, and mobile and artisanal communities whose territorial and mobility rights must be explicitly recognized.

The declaration called for a 21st-century agrarian reform that is inclusive of Indigenous Peoples, peasants, fisher peoples, pastoralists, women, youth, gender-diverse people, Afro-descendant communities, family farmers, and rural workers. It stressed that agrarian reform must go beyond land redistribution to encompass forests, oceans, rivers, grazing lands, and migratory routes. Redistribution, Recognition, Restitution and Regulation must form the mutually reinforcing axes of an intergal agrarian reform – speaking to the different realities that exists worldwide. Food sovereignty and agroecology, they affirmed, must be central pillars of this transformation. The strategy and the concrete steps towards a transformative agrarian reform are laid out in the IPC position paper launched ahead of ICARRD+20.

The statement concluded with a call to all governments to engage in good-faith dialogue on Indigenous Peoples’ rights, the rights of fisher peoples and nomadic pastoralists, women’s rights, and agroecology.

“Agrarian reform, food sovereignty, and social, agrarian, and environmental justice will only be achieved through struggle”, the declaration affirmed. “We are going home to organize our peoples and defend the future of our communities and Mother Earth”.

* WHO WE ARE: The International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty

The International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC) is an autonomous and self-organised global platform of small-scale food producers and rural workers organisations and grassroots/community-based social movements whose goal is to advance the Food Sovereignty agenda at the global and regional level.More than 6000 organizations and 300 millions of small-scale food producers self-organise themselves through the IPC, sharing the principles and the 6 pillars of Food Sovereignty as outlined in the Nyeleni 2007 Declaration and synthesis report. 

The IPC facilitates dialogue and debate among actors from civil society, governments and other actors in the field of Food Security and Nutrition, creating a space of discussion autonomous from political parties, institutions, governments and the private sector.

The legitimacy of the IPC is based on the ability to voice the concerns and struggles that a wide variety of civil society organisations and social movements face in their daily practice of advocacy at local, sub-national, regional and global levels.

View the closing statement

View the IPC position paper in the three languages

View the LVC briefing note on agrarian reform

Collaborative interview on the conclusions of ICARRD+20 and the Forum of Peoples and Social Movements (Spanish only)

La entrada The outcomes of the ICARRD+20 from the perspective of rural and indigenous movements se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.

Held in the context of the UN Working Group’s latest report, which focuses specifically on rural peoples’ right to participation, the discussion explored how this right—far from being a procedural formality—constitutes a cornerstone of democratic governance and a central pillar of rural peoples’ civil and political rights. The webinar created a space for exchange between grassroots actors and international human rights mechanisms, strengthening bridges between local struggles and global advocacy.

The webinar placed the findings of the UN Working Group’s report at the centre of the discussion, examining:

• The democratic and political significance of participation under UNDROP
• Barriers that prevent rural communities from influencing public decision-making
• The Working Group’s recommendations to States
• Practical strategies and good practices that enhance meaningful participation
• The role of collective advocacy and solidarity in advancing implementation

Panellists:

• Carlos Duarte, Current Chair of the UN Working Group on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas
• Loupa Pius, World Alliance of Mobile Indigenous People (WAMIP)
• Modesta Arevalos Ortiz, International Federation of Rural Adult Catholic Movements (FIMARC)
• Jones Spartegus, World Forum of Fisher People (WFFP)
• Norah Mlondobozi, Rural Women Assembly (RWA)
• Saúl Vicente, Unidad de la Fuerza Indígena y Campesina (UFIC – Mexico)
• Paula Gioia, La Via Campesina (LVC)

Through their interventions, the panellists shared regional experiences, community perspectives, and movement strategies for strengthening participation at local, national and international levels.

We invite you to watch the recording and engage with this important dialogue as part of the broader collective effort to ensure that those who feed the world and protect its ecosystems are fully included in shaping the policies and decisions that determine their future.

Webinar held on 10 December 2025.

La entrada Video of our Webinar | Nothing About Us Without Us – Realising the Right to Participation of Rural Peoples and Workers through UNDROP se publicó primero en Defending Peasants' Rights.