La Via Campesina (LVC) delegates from Asia, Europe and Latin America together with their allies, CETIM and FIAN International, meeting for the UNDROP Working Group in Geneva on October, 2024. Photo: La Via Campesina
From the 21st to the 25th of October 2024, the United Nations Working Group on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (the Working Group) held its second session in Geneva. The Working Group on peasants was established in October last year when the member states of the UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution tabled by Bolivia and a core group of states agreeing to further implement the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP).
La Via Campesina (LVC) delegates from Asia, Europe and Latin America together with their allies, CETIM and FIAN International, attended and participated in this first in-person historic meeting of the UNDROP Working Group in Geneva. LVC was represented by Zainal Fuat from the Indonesian Peasant Union (SPI) in Indonesia, Paola Goes from the Movement of People Affected by Dams (MAB) in Brazil, and Pierre Maison from the Confédération Paysanne in France.
During the session, the Working Group organized a meeting on the 23rd of October with civil society organizations to consult and receive information on progress made and the main obstacles encountered in the promotion and implementation process, thus initiating a discussion on the priorities of the Working Group. On the 24th of October, the Working Group also met and engaged with State representatives.
The Working Group started the consultation process through the call for inputs issued this year. So far, over 60 inputs were submitted – 14 from States, 41 from Civil Society and 14 from different human rights and academic institutions.
Zainal presented the efforts of LVC to disseminate UNDROP and highlighted some important achievements and challenges faced so far by the member organisations to disseminate and create wider awareness among the right-holders in their respective countries. After the adoption of UNDROP in 2018, LVC and its member organisations, working together with their allies, CETIM and FIAN International, developed popular materials, organised numerous training sessions at national, regional and international levels and translated the declaration into over 18 languages in addition to the six official UN languages. An online repository was created to provide a common platform to facilitate knowledge-sharing and connect different organizations and movements, and to link the UNDROP to other international instruments and standards.
La Via Campesina shared also on the legislatives, administratives, policies and other related measures which the peasant movement regarded as good practices and lessons learned on the implementation of the UNDROP before the creation of the Working Group.
Paula Goes from MAB Brazil and the Latin American Coordination of Rural Organizations (CLOC) in South America highlighted how the pandemic and the far-right governments have generated a delicate political situation in Latin America, which has had impact on the implementation of UNDROP. Despite these challenges, the CLOC has never stopped pressuring the States to implement this important tool. For example, the new Cuban constitutional approval in 2019 to incorporate important elements of the UNDROP, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights is producing a relevant jurisprudence about peasants’ rights, while in Ecuador in 2023 the declaration was ratified – an important step to defend those who feed the country and to focus the State’s debate on the elaboration of agrarian policy, – and Honduras declared the Monsanto Law (Decreto Nº 21-2012) unconstitutional.
Sibylle Dirren and Ana Maria Suarez-Franco from FIAN International stressed the urgent need for systemic reforms to uphold human rights, ensure food sovereignty, and promote social justice. They outlined the concerning trend of the commodification of natural resources, which disproportionately impact peasants by consolidating resources under corporate and elite control and emphasized the importance of agroecology – rooted in the knowledge and practices of peasants and rural communities – as a foundation for sustainable food systems, with rural women championing transformative models that align with social, economic, environmental and gender justice.
In Europe, Pierre Maison from Confédération Paysanne highlighted how LVC members have been lobbying their governments, especially in the process of the adoption of UNDROP and the resolution to establish the UN Working Group. He pointed out that the relationship that member organisations have with their governments varies from country to country. Some members are very close to their governments, some not. At the European level, the European Coordination Via Campesina (ECVC) region keeps pushing for public policies that are aligned to the declaration.
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Raffaele Morgantini from CETIM intervened to talk briefly about the case of Switzerland and its challenges in terms of promotion and implementation of the UNDROP. Indeed, the Swiss case is complex, and has unfortunately had little or no progress to date, despite the advocacy work carried out by the coalition of “Friends of the Declaration – Switzerland”, of which CETIM, Uniterre (LVC member in Switzerland) and FIAN Switzerland are members. Among the main obstacles in Switzerland, but mirrored in many other countries where the agribusiness sector exerts almost total control over food and agricultural systems, the delegates identified the centrality of the dominant commercial and financial architecture. In fact, the international free-trade and investment regime involves a fundamental contradiction with the commitments made at UNDROP level. CETIM stated that the Swiss coalition wishes to participate constructively and actively in the activities of the new Working Group, so that it can play a major role in helping to promote and implement the peasant rights declaration in Switzerland.
LVC is convinced that UNDROP is a very relevant tool to foster agroecology and truly sustainable farming practices, climate and environmental justice, ensure the right to food for everyone, enhance the right to health, and generally protect human rights. In this regard, the peasant movement suggested that the Working Group should (1) examine how peasants, rural communities, and indigenous peoples’ initiatives could contribute to safeguarding biodiversity; address and reverse the structural dispossession of peasants and rural communities from means of production (such as seeds, land, water, etc.); (2) address the issue of dismantling the transnational architecture of the dominant trade and investment regimes that promote monopolistic and predatory agribusiness and other harmful corporate practices at the expense of peasants’ rights; and (3) explore how food sovereignty and social justice serve as alternative principles for better access to markets.
FIAN also highlighted the potential of UNDROP as an instrument of collaboration among the different groups that constitute a diverse rural world, such as Indigenous Peoples, rural women, peasants, pastoralists, artisanal fishers and fish workers, forest dwellers, and agricultural and food workers. They urged the adoption of an intersectional approach in addressing systemic discrimination, recognizing the barriers posed by gender, race, class, and other social factors, particularly for women and LGBTIQA+ individuals in rural areas. This comprehensive approach, they argued, is essential for building inclusive, resilient communities and ensuring the full realization of human rights for all rural people.
Zainal gave additional inputs on the priorities of La Via Campesina that need to be addressed in the implementation of the declaration. These include (1) promotion of best practices and lessons learned, fostering collaboration between States, rights holders, and civil society groups and organizations, (2) technical capacity-building support to States, rights holders, civil societies, and relevant UN mechanisms and bodies, (3) how agroecology and truly sustainable farming practices can foster climate and environmental justice, ensure the right to food for everyone, enhance the right to health, and generally protect human rights and (4) trade issues on the urgent initiative to build a new global trade order based on food sovereignty to address the failures of the current trade system and to promote collective action towards a new trade framework emphasizing solidarity, internationalism, human rights, and food sovereignty. Hence, it is also important for the Working Group on peasants to conduct a dialogue with UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and Food and Agriculture Organisation to realize this framework.
In closing, Zainal said that La Via Campesina welcomes the good news that Committee on World Food Security (CFS) approved the proposal of the Colombian government to hold International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD +20) in 2026. He called for implementation of Agrarian Reform (article 17 of UNDROP) with land distribution and that the ICARRD +20 will go a long way in addressing many agrarian conflicts, criminalization, repression, eviction and land grabbing for export production of food, feed and for climate change-carbon markets, bio fuel etc.
