The Right of Peasants and Rural People to Determine Their Own Food and Agricultural Systems: Food Sovereignty to Tackle the Multidimensional Crisis

Event

The adoption of the UN Declaration of the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in the Rural Areas (UNDROP) marked a major normative advancement not only in protecting the rights of rural communities and workers to live and work in dignity but also in empowering peasants, rural workers, fishers, pastoralists, nomadic people, hunter-gatherers, Indigenous Peoples working in the rural areas, rural women, migrant workers and landless communities. UNDROP also, ensures their participation in decision-making processes affecting their lives, as enshrined in Article 2 and Article 10 of the UNDROP, among others.

Participation lies at the very heart of the concept of food sovereignty, serving as a fundamental precondition. In fact, the major actors of change in agricultural and food systems must be at the center of decision-making processes. This is key for enabling people and communities, especially organized peasants, rural workers and Indigenous peoples working in the rural areas, to have a significant role in major decisions to define their own policies, food and agriculture systems, in order to produce healthy and culturally appropriate food according to their needs and customs.

In the current year, Peasants and farmers protest have been carried out in a number of European cities stemmed largely from people working and living in the rural areas’ inability to meet their needs within the dominant food and agricultural systems captured and controlled by the agribusiness sector. Therefore, the fundamental demands of the protests centered on claiming the right of peasants and rural workers to live and work in dignity, with fair remuneration for their work and just prices for their products, opposing the liberalization of food markets and the unjust free trade agreements that put peasants in different parts of the world in competition with each other. This precise configuration – characterized by the progressive dispossession of peasant communities and small-scale food producers at the benefit of a predatory agribusiness sector through rural development policies imposed from above – is what we have been witnessing in most parts of the planet. Indeed, this is the logical result of the globalized food chains and trade model introduced by neoliberal policies, designed to transfer all the economic and political power to the dominant economic powers, at the expenses of States’ sovereignty and of the right of peoples to development and self-determination.

In the face of the unbridled multidimensional crisis affecting our societies, further dispossessing the rural areas and failing to recognize food sovereignty as a compass for rural development models, the implementation of the UNDROP has become a vital necessity. The creation of a UN Working Group in October 2023 to follow-up on the situation of peasants’ rights worldwide and report on implementation progress is a significant step forward. It will be instrumental in promoting structural changes in the food systems architecture through the realization of the rights and obligations enshrined in the UNDROP. The vision report of the Working Group will tackle these fundamental issues.

This side-event will provide an opportunity to discuss key structural issues that will determine to which extent the current and future food systems and models align with a human rights perspective and with the international commitments at the UN level. It will also be a space to present cases of good practices that show how peasants and rural communities can take ownership at various institutional levels. This includes participating in discussions and negotiations affecting their lives thus allowing them to promote the tangible implementation of the provisions of UNDROP from their perspective. Such efforts advance the realization of food sovereignty and the right to food for all, and more broadly support the realization of people’s and States’ sovereignty and their right to self-determination.

For more on this topic see our 2022 Research Brief on the subject.

Moderation

• H.E.Ms. Maira Macdonal, Ambassador of the Plurinational State of Bolivia to the UN

Panelists

• Ms. Geneviève Savigny, Chair of the UN Working Group on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in the Rural Areas
• Mr. Mihir Kanade, Member of the Expert Mechanism on the Right to Development
• Professor Carlos Correa, Executive Director of the South Centre
• Mr. Diego Monton,  La Via Campesina, Movimiento Somos Tierra Argentina
• Ms. Yasmeen El-Hasan, La Via Campesina, Union of Agricultural Working Committees (Palestine)
• Video-message by World Forum of Fisher People (WFFP)

This event is co-organised by: the Permanent Missions of the Plurinational State of Bolivia, Republic of South Africa, Republic of Gambia, Republic of Cuba and Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg, Kyrgyz Republic, La Via Campesina, CETIM, FIAN International, Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, South Centre, OHCHR, Friends of the Declaration – Switzerland, and the RAISE Project