Latest edition of Nyéléni Newsletter on Climate Justice is out!
by La Via Campesina
NYÉLÉNI NEWSLETTER NO 32 – CLIMATE JUSTICE
Oh! Oh! Nature mourns, Humanity perishes!
Why? Seasons have changed
Now unpredictable and unreliable!
Hotter, drier and shorter!
Winds and storms harsher and destructive
Mother Earth mourns, the land is barren.
Women, men and children, plants and animals perish!
Capitalist industrial agriculture, what have you done?
Everywhere, Mother Earth crumbles
As toxics and harmful GMO seeds swell her belly.
Heavy machines trample her belly
Their dark plumes polluting the sky,
A new baby, Climate Change, is conceived and born!
Oh! What is all this?
Ecological niches shrink
Biodiversity fast disappears
Greater uncertainty hovers everywhere
Heightened risks for us the food producers
Traditional agriculture knowledge is fast eroding
What and who shall save us?
Climate change knows no peace,
Hungers only for destruction!
Greed for profits feeds him!
Extreme, extreme, extreme weather phenomena are your fruits!
Environmental and humanitarian disasters!
Floods, droughts, landslides, diseases!
Humanity cries: No Food!
Nature cries: Inhabitable! Inhabitable!
Is there a remedy?
Yes but we hear only false solutions!
Free Markets, REDD, Climate Smart agriculture,
Green economy, Agrofuels, Carbon trading, land grabbing, more
industrial farming,
Massive use of herbicides, inorganic fertilizers and
More GMOs!
Oh Lord! All to grow climate change! Why?
Profits! Profits! More profits! Cries Capitalism, his father!
But hope looms in the horizon
Food sovereignty, our hope!
Comes to restore social justice to humanity,
Ecological sustainability to nature
Biodiversity and cultural diversity to all peoples of Mother Earth!
Arise ye peoples, women and men, the landless, peasants,
indigenous farmers, forest and fisherfolks,
Let your hope be heard in all the corners of the earth!
Peasant Agroecology for Climate Justice NOW!
Globalise Struggle! Globalise Hope!
_ZIMBABWEAN PEASANT MOVEMENT_
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DOWNLOAD THE NEWSLETTER HERE [1]
Links:
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[1]
https://viacampesina.org/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Nyeleni_Ne...
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Press Release: “WTO Kills Peasants! 21 Years is Enough!! WTO Out of Agriculture!!!” | La Via Campesina to step up its resistance at MC11
by La Via Campesina
"WTO KILLS PEASANTS! 21 YEARS IS ENOUGH!! WTO OUT OF AGRICULTURE!!!" LA
VIA CAMPESINA TO STEP UP ITS RESISTANCE DURING THE XI MINISTERIAL
CONFERENCE
PRESS RELEASE:
10 DECEMBER 2017: A large delegation of La Via Campesina comprising
peasants, rural workers, indigenous peoples, women and youth from around
the world will converge outside the venue of the 11th Ministerial
Conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), which is scheduled to
take place in Buenos Aires, Argentina from the 10th to13th December.
During the week of the conference, La Via Campesina (LVC) will mobilise,
organise and join social movements and allies to expose the devastative
effects that WTO has had on peasant agriculture and to reiterate our
long-standing demand of 21 years, to oust the multilateral trade body
from any discussions and decisions regarding agriculture.
La Via Campesina, a global peasant movement with more than 180 member
organisations from 79 countries, has consistently demanded to take
agriculture out of the WTO's scope. Instead it has demanded a systemic
change that brings about food sovereignty to the worlds peoples. Once
again the rallying call from the global peasants' movement is _"FOR FOOD
SOVEREIGNTY, WTO OUT OF AGRICULTURE!"._
Since its beginnings in 1995 as derivative of General Agreement on
Tariff and Trade (GATTs), the World Trade Organization has promoted the
most brutal form of capitalism, better known as trade liberalization. At
successive Ministerial Conferences, the WTO has set out to globalise the
liberalisation of national markets, promising economic prosperity at the
cost of sovereignty. In more or less the same terms, by its
"liberalization, deregulation and privatization", which is called
Package of Neoliberalism, WTO has encouraged the multiplication of free
trade agreements (FTAs) between countries and regional blocs, etc. In
this context, with help from governments that have been co-opted, the
world's largest transnational corporations (TNCs) continue to expand
globally and are blatantly undermining democracy and all of the
institutional instruments that are meant to defend the lives, the
territories, and the food and agricultural ecosystems of the world's
peoples.
Through AoA (Agreement on Agriculture) regulated in the WTO, peasant
communities become the most disadvantaged because they have minimal
capital resources and little or no protection from national governments
as WTO prohibits any protection that stand in the way of market
liberalisation. Its role was replaced and eroded by corporations with
large capital resources, slowly forming a monopoly scheme. As a result,
peasants have to deal with dangerous implications such as land grabbing,
criminalization, environmental pollution and the importation of
agricultural products.
In the previous Ministerial Conference (MC) in Nairobi in 2015, WTO had
made six decisions on agriculture, cotton and issues related to LDCs.
The agricultural decisions cover commitment to abolish export subsidies
for farm exports, public stock-holding for food security purposes, a
special safeguard mechanism for developing countries, and measures
related to cotton. Decisions were also made regarding preferential
treatment for least developed countries (LDCs) in the area of services
and the criteria for determining whether exports from LDCs may benefit
from trade preferences.
In the 11th Ministerial Conference the WTO wants to return to the
subject of agriculture in relation to public stock-holding, to put an
end to small-scale fishing, and to make progress with multilateral
agreements such as the misnamed General Agreement on Trade in Services
(GATS). Notwithstanding the misleading protectionist statements coming
from the developed countries, the WTO will meet again to try to impose
the interests of capital at the cost of Planet Earth, of the democratic
aspirations of the world's peoples, and of life itself.
During these 21 years of struggle against the WTO, the world's peoples
have resisted its attempt to globalize everything, including the food
and agricultural systems, for the benefit of the TNCs. Our struggles
have been the biggest impediment to the advance of the WTO. Our
resistance to market liberalisation under this neo-liberal regime has
continued since the Uruguay round conducted within the framework of the
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Ever since, La Via
Campesina has mobilised against almost all of the Ministerial
Conferences since Seattle (1999) and Cancún (2003) - where our brother
Lee Kyung Hae, holding a banner declaring that "The WTO kills peasants",
sacrificed his own life [1] - and up to Bali (2013) and Nairobi (2015).
This week, our delegation in Buenos Aires will join the Peoples' Summit
"WTO Out! Build Sovereignty [2]' and denounce the WTO as the criminal
organization that it is and will raise our flag of Food Sovereignty. We
will denounce all governments, which, after having understood that the
WTO had been weakened, resorted to mega free trade agreements, bilateral
and regional, that threaten to annihilate our food systems, just as the
WTO has done in the last two decades.
We will talk about the peasants who died due to the WTO and expose to
the people of the world that hundreds of millions of people have died of
starvation and poverty due to its free trade polices. The WTO is nothing
more than an interest group of transnational monopoly capital and
sympathetic governments colluding with it. The various agreements and
treaties of the WTO have driven peasants and small farmers who have been
producing food in rural areas. It has destroyed rural communities and
has caused food crises and food contamination. We demand that the WTO
cease all discussions on agriculture and stop the its attempts to
suppress peoples' food sovereignty.
Food is the universal right of everyone. Food sovereignty is the right
of all peoples to define their own food system and puts food producers
in the centre of it. Our alternatives for food sovereignty will save
Mother Earth and our communities.
To this end, the La Via Campesina will keep fighting. We will organise,
resist and conduct solidarity events across the world with the
participation of our members and the support of allies, demanding that
national governments reject WTO and take agriculture out of its scope.
-------------------------
FOR PRESS ENQUIRIES
* Francés: Claude Girod - Confederación Campesina, La Vía Campesina,
Francia. (54) 91121824509
* Inglés: Kim Jeong Yeol - Asociación de Mujeres Campesinas de Korea -
Comisión Coordinadora Internacional - La Vía Campesina, Korea. (54)
91138781935
* Español: Deolinda Carrizo - Movimiento Nacional Campesino Indígena -
Cloc - Vía Campesina, Argentina. (54) 91133489316
* Nury Martínez - Federación Nacional Sindical Unitaria Agropecuaria -
Fensuagro - Comisión Coordinadora Internacional - La Vía Campesina,
Colombia. (54) 91133489316
FOR MORE INFORMATION
viacampesina.org | facebook.com/viacampesinaofficial [3] |
@via_campesina [4]
Links:
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[1]
https://viacampesina.org/en/take-agriculture-out-of-the-wto-farmer-lee-ky...
[2]
https://viacampesina.org/en/event/peoples-summit-wto-building-sovereignty/
[3] https://www.facebook.com/viacampesinaOFFICIAL/
[4] https://twitter.com/via_campesina
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