The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas: One Step Forward in the Promotion of Human Rights for the Most Vulnerable

This article is a Research Paper from the South Center, it was first published in November 2020.

In this paper the two authors, who were key actors of the adoption of UNDROP, explain how the UNDROP came to be, some of the rights enshrined in it and finally they open perspectives for the future.

There are many reasons to consider the Declaration as one of the most relevant actions in the realm of human rights law taken by the United Nations in recent years. Some of them are the recognition of peasants as specific subjects of rights; the reaffirmation of existing standards tailored for the reality of people living in rural areas; and the development of international law to address existing gaps in the protection of their rights in complex subject matters such as the right to land, the right to seeds, and the right to means of production. In underscoring the importance of the Declaration for the world, this research paper narrates the process of construction of the Declaration, its contributions to international human rights law and stresses on its potential […]

Maria Natalia Pacheco Rodriguez and Luis Fernando Rosales Lozada