UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and other people working in rural areas (UNDROP)

By staff - La Via Campesina, December 4, 2023

On the afternoon of Sunday, December 3^rd, La Via Campesina representatives from every continent and Palestine offered critical analyses of their regional contexts, drawing connections between the climate crisis, migration, and political instability. This is a critical component of building and advancing a global movement for food sovereignty to foster critical consciousness of disparate geographic realities, struggles and victories.

César Villanova, a LVC representative from El Salvador, shared that Latin America is one of the final critical battlegrounds in the struggle against neoimperialism. A war is being fought over the blood—that is the resources—of Latin America, and that war is not simply symbolic but very real, and felt in territories from Mexico and El Salvador, through Colombia, and to the south in Chile.

Building upon Villanova’s discussion of territorial conflict, Albert Bahana Manzambi (COPACO, Democratic Republic of Congo), next offered insights into the African experience, emphasizing that a number of multinational corporations are pushing to destabilize Africa. “We see the lack of security increasing,” Bahana Manzambi suggested, “taking the form of increasing coup d’états and contestation governments.” Importantly, this lack of security is deeply rooted in questions of food sovereignty, and its interconnections with the political context. Bahana Manzambi drove home the point that “there is no security, and no one is protecting peasants”. The question of political instability is driving an increasingly grave migration crisis. “People are fleeing to Europe, and are trying desperately to get there in whatever way possible, and are dying on the way, and when they die, whole families are lost, children, partners; everyone is losing.”

By staff - La Via Campesina, November 3, 2023

On the 11th of October, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) adopted a resolution to establish a Working Group on the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas. This resolution (A/HRC/54/L.11), tabled by the Plurinational State of Bolivia and supported by other members, including Cuba, Costa Rica, South Africa, Gambia, Paraguay, Indonesia, Kyrgyzstan, Germany, and Luxembourg, was adopted at the 54th session of the Council in Geneva, with an overwhelming majority, with 38 out of the 47 members supporting it.

The group, which will be established for a period of three years, will consist of five independent experts, with balanced geographical representation, to be appointed by the Human Rights Council at its fifty-fifth session.

This marks a great leap forward in meaningfully translating the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP) into pragmatic public policies at the national and local levels.

As the resolution rightly notes, ‘the UNDROP is an important recognition of the past, present, and future contributions of peasants and other people working in rural areas in all regions of the world to development and to conserving and improving biodiversity, which constitutes the basis of food and agricultural production throughout the world, and their contribution to ensuring the right to adequate food and food security, which is fundamental to attaining the internationally agreed development goals, including those in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’.

The 28 specific articles within UNDROP offer a much-needed framework for governments worldwide to craft national and state-level policies that genuinely support and strengthen local food production and empower local food producers. UNDROP lays down the pathway to fight against hunger, protect and nourish biodiversity, and preserve cultural heritage. It forms the basis for advocating food sovereignty, agroecology, climate justice, agrarian reform, and human rights.

Hunger, like poverty, is still predominantly a rural problem. It is also ironic that in the rural population, it is those who produce food who suffer disproportionately. Eighty percent of people suffering from hunger live in rural areas, particularly in developing countries, and 50 percent are small-scale and traditional farm-holders, as well as subsistence peasants and other people working in rural areas, and they are especially vulnerable to food insecurity, malnutrition, discrimination, and exploitation.

It is this difficult reality that prompted the majority of countries in the Global South to overwhelmingly support the adoption of the Declaration in 2018 at the UN General Assembly in New York, with 121 nations voting in favour. Notably, 54 countries abstained from voting. In essence, 90% of the world’s nations either supported or did not oppose the need for a global framework that addresses the concerns and aspirations of billions of small-scale food producers.

However, like many UN Declarations, even after five years, UNDROP has yet to meaningfully influence national food and agriculture policies because it is not legally binding on the member states of the United Nations to implement it. This is why the resolution for a UN Working Group is all the more important in facilitating mechanisms that encourage member states to frame national policies based on the framework this Declaration provides.

By staff - La Via Campesina, November 1, 2023

We, La Via Campesina, the international peasant movement with over 182 local and national organisations in 81 countries from Africa, Asia Europe and Americas stands in solidarity with the Kenyan Peasants League (KPL) our member organization in their legal struggle to continue the ban on GMOs in Kenya. In October 2022 the Kenyan Government lifted the ban on importation and cultivation of genetically modified organisms (GMO) that had been in place for ten years.

The conservatory orders maintaining the GMO ban by the High Court in December 2022 and the decision of the Court of Appeal to uphold the conservatory orders due to a lack of adequate public participation in the decision by the government to lift the GMO ban gave a temporary relief to the struggle.

The legal struggle will start at the High Court soon. We call upon all social movements and activists to mobilize and support the Kenya Peasant League in their continued struggle against the lifting of the ban on importation and cultivation of genetically modified organisms (GMO) in Kenya.

We call on the government of Kenya to respect the rights of peasants to determine their future. Lifting the GMO ban goes against the rights of the peasants (article 10 – Right to Participation; 15- Right to Food and Food Sovereignty; 19 – Right to Seeds and 20 – Right to Biological Diversity) enshrined in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP).

Again, lifting the GMO ban contravenes Article 9 of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA), also known as “Seed Treaty”, which affirms that no law(s) should “limit any rights that farmers have to save, use, exchange and sell farm-saved seed/propagating material”. We know from experiences in many countries that have allowed GMO production that the local seed systems suffered a lot. The local biodiversity and the environment suffered too due to excessive use of toxic agro-inputs required to guarantee GMO crops maximum yield. People’s health suffered too.

We, thus believe that if the ban on GMOs is lifted, this will not only be a direct attack on the peasants way of life in Kenya, but the East African region and the African Continent as it will unleash the untold destruction of the peasant managed seeds systems. The continent is already under enormous pressure to reformed seed legislations in favour of commercial seed companies and big agribusinesses.

Peasants’ organizations and other social movements will continue to mobilize so that the general GMO ban in Kenya prevails.

By staff - La Via Campesina, October 30, 2023

By Paola Romero and Paula Gioia - La Via Campesina, October 27, 2023

By staff - La Via Campesina, July 21, 2023

La Via Campesina has launched a powerful message of denunciation of the murder of thousands of people in the Mediterranean.

During the V Maghreb Social Forum on Migration (Nador, June 20-23), it warned of the serious violation of human rights promoted by the European Union through its migration policy, which follows the guidelines of the Global Compact for Safe and Orderly Migration, signed by several states five years ago in Marrakech.

By Morgan Ody - La Via Campesina, July 13, 2023

By Jessie MacInnis - La Via Campesina, July 11, 2023

When the UNDROP was adopted at the United Nations General Assembly in December 2018, Canada abstained. Despite that, Canada is one of the first places where UNDROP has been explicitly cited by a provincial court in a case related to migrant workers’ rights. Jessie MacInnis explains for us the dynamics at play in Canada on Peasants’ Rights and the importance of case law.

First, to give us some context, could you describe us the general landscape of agriculture in Canada?

Agricultural policies have increasingly tied agriculture to a corporate system in Canada. Recent examples relate to the reduction of government oversight of seeds and gene-edited plants. The Canadian government has put its faith in agribusiness and biotech corporations instead of science and public interest. It’s very scary for farmers, especially for organic farmers, such as myself, who may suffer financial, health, and ecological implications from increasing corporate capture of seeds and the gutting of publicly-funded seed research and development.

COVID-19 has shown the cracks and deep rooted inequities that keep land inaccessible, rural communities gutted of resources, and farmers indebted and dependent on the companies selling inputs and chemicals. It also showed the dependence on a constant supply of migrant workers who suffer from human rights abuses. Yet it has been a time of enormous profit increases for corporations in the sector. On top of that we have the climate crisis and the income crisis, with income that have been stagnant for years and many farmers relying on off-farm work to make ends meet. Agriculture policies are beginning to wake up to the realities of the climate crisis, with more funding available for on-farm climate adaptation, but the income crisis is still prevalent for small-scale and family farms, which are the backbone of the food system.

Ƒinally, If we talk about agriculture in Canada, we have to acknowledge that it is built on settler colonization and stolen land. The National Farmers Union (NFU) is engaging in conversations between farmers and Indigenous Peoples, conversations about land equity, land back, and food sovereignty, but it’s just the beginning. Our agriculture is built on colonial violence that still hasn’t been reconciled. Farmers have a critical role to play in both acknowledging our relationship to the land and finding pathways forward towards living in right relations with Indigenous Peoples.

In this agricultural landscape we have a plurality of perspectives with regards to how agriculture policies should be developed, and whose goals it seeks to achieve. Some of the bigger agriculture organizations definitively may have historically had more sway with policymakers, but the NFU and other food sovereignty activists are gaining ground, especially at local and regional levels.

In 2020, Ontario Superior Court of Justice released a decision based on UNDROP in defense of a group of migrant farm workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Can you tell us more on this decision?

This case shows the legal potential of the UNDROP, I think legal action is one pathway for countries who have not approved the Declaration at the United Nations to incorporate its articles and set legal precedents.

In 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic the Canadian Lawyers for International Human Rights used Article 23 of UNDROP in a provincial court in defense of a group of migrant workers facing dangerous, overcrowded living conditions.

To give some context, Canadian farms employ nearly half a million agricultural workers through a federal program. This program has been riddled with accusations of human rights violations over the years: poor living conditions, low wages and no pathways to permanent residency. At the same time, Canada is dependent on their labour to ensure the food supply.

In March 2020, just after the state of emergency was announced, the federal government mandated a 14-days isolation period for all temporary foreign workers entering Canada, at the same time ensuring workers subjected to isolation in groups would have at least 2 meters per person at all time and limiting the numbers of workers living together in a lodging.

When this policy was mandated, a major industrial farm in Ontario (central Canada) that employs migrant workers, submitted two inadequate self-isolation plans before requesting a hearing regarding the public health order limiting the numbers of farm workers in one lodging. At the hearing the farm argued that the requirement of three farm workers per lodging was arbitrary and failed to recognize the significance of migrant farm workers to Canada food supply. They argued they had not been able to bring in as many migrants as they would normally, and this jeopardized their food production.

The Superior Court of Justice of Ontario responded by saying that: “decreasing health inequities as required under the guidelines requires that the number of workers that are allowed to isolate together is such that the risk posed to their health is comparable to the rest of the population when they’re quarantined. Allowing larger numbers to isolate together exposes migrants farm workers to a level of risk not tolerated for others in the community, thereby increasing vulnerability of an already vulnerable group.”

In reaching this outcome, the Court cited the UNDROP for the first time in Canada. The way they cited it is important: “…furthermore the UNDROP is part of the body of HR laws and norms to which Canadian adjudicators may look in interpreting statutory or common-law obligations and in reviewing administrative decisions.”. They cited article 23.1, which states: “Peasants and other people working in rural areas have the right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.”.

So the context and the outcome of the case is demonstrative of the applicability of the Declaration in the Canadian context. Promoting this case is something we need to keep doing. It’s strategic to expand the network of human rights lawyers that are aware of UNDROP and to give them this as an example.

By Zainal Arafin Fuad - La Via Campesina, July 6, 2023

By Ramona Dominiciou - La Via Campesina, July 6, 2023