This April 17th – We defend the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas
by La Via Campesina
THIS APRIL 17TH –WE DEFEND THE RIGHTS OF PEASANTS AND OTHER PEOPLE
WORKING IN RURAL AREAS [1]
PRESS RELEASE
(Harare, April 17, 2017) Today La Via Campesina, the international
peasant movement, commemorates the International Day of Peasants'
Struggle[1] [2] with a focus on strengthening, protecting and
recognizing the human rights of peasants. The initiative towards a
United Nations (UN) Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other
People Working in Rural Areas is one of the ways to legitimatize our
struggles to build and reinforce food sovereignty where by our social,
cultural, economic and political values are fully respected and upheld.
We believe that in championing the rights of peasants and other people
working in rural areas, humanity also wins.
Hundreds of millions of peasants are forced to live and lead undignified
lives as their basic rights are increasingly very vulnerable as a result
of capitalist and neoliberal logic of profit maximisation. Our rights to
land, water, seeds, biodiversity, decent income are continuously being
compromised, denied, violated and usurped. We, the Peasants, despite
producing the bulk of the food consumed globally, continue to face
criminalisation and discrimination.
We, the peasants, women, youth, men, and indigenous peoples, however,
continue to build our struggles globally to defend our rights against
corporate interests, persecution and violence against peasants and other
people working in rural areas. We struggle for a genuine agrarian reform
and a better protection of rights to land against land-grabbing; we
continue to conserve, use, and exchange our seeds - denouncing laws and
interests that seek to prohibit such practises; we promote agroecology,
traditional practices and knowledge to combat climate change; we
continue the struggle to end corporate control of our food and reject
free trade agreements; and we keep on building gender equality and move
forward for the rights of peasant women, youth, migrants and other
people working in rural areas.
Next month in May, the 4th session of UN Open Ended Intergovernmental
Working Group will be held to finalize the UN Declaration on the Rights
of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas. Our collective
struggles will pressure governments and other parties to support and
commit to a strong UN declaration. We believe that the UN declaration
will be crucial to solve malnutrition, hunger, poverty, and climate
crisis.
Join us today by organising demonstrations, public debates and
discussions, film screenings, farmers' markets, festivals, lobbying
governments, or any other solidarity actions. We are calling to all
people's movements, women, youth, indigenous, fisher folk, migrants,
workers, environmentalists, to support this movement. Share your actions
by sending to lvcweb(a)viacampesina.org so that we can capture and
circulate them on our MAP [3] of actions.
SPOKESPEOPLE
Diego Montón (ES) +54 9 261 561 5062
Elizabeth Mpofu (EN) +263 772 443 716
Geneviève (FR) +33 6 25 55 16 87
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[1] [4] On April 17th 1996, in the Amazonian state of Pará, at Eldorado
dos Carajás, the state military police massacred peasants organized in
the Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST), killing 19 individuals and
injuring 69. That day, 1500 women and men organized in the MST occupied
and blocked the BR-150 highway in Eldorado dos Carajás, with the aim of
bringing pressure to bear on the State and Federal governments to
implement agrarian reform. State authorities, the police, the army and
powerful local landowners were involved in the planning and executing of
the massacre.
Links:
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[1]
https://viacampesina.org/en/index.php/actions-and-events-mainmenu-26/17-a...
[2]
file:///C:/Users/nyoni/Documents/Final%20Press%20Release%20for%20April%2017th%20-%20Peasant%20Rights.docx#_ftn1
[3] http://u.osmfr.org/m/136989/
[4]
file:///C:/Users/nyoni/Documents/Final%20Press%20Release%20for%20April%2017th%20-%20Peasant%20Rights.docx#_ftnref1
7 years, 8 months
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Join the movement demanding a UN Declaration on Peasants’ Rights!
by La Via Campesina
Join the movement for Peasants' Rights!
STRENGTHEN THE HUMAN RIGHTS OF PEASANTS!
SIGN THE PETITION [1]
Peasants, fishers, pastoralists and other people working in rural areas
produce most of the healthy and diverse food that we eat every day. In
Europe and all around the world, they play a leading role in ensuring
the food sovereignty of our communities and the resilience of our food
system in the face of climate change. However, small farms are rapidly
disappearing and peasant agriculture is under threat due to the
expansion of industrial agriculture, land grabbing, and the dismantling
of public support.
Peasants and other rural working people face systematic discrimination,
with rural women particularly affected. They need your support to
continue creating agroecological, resilient alternatives to industrial
agriculture and develop healthy and sustainable local food systems for
the future of our planet.
Join the movement for Peasants' Rights and ask the EU and its Member
States to actively participate in good faith in the elaboration of a "UN
Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and other People Working in Rural
Areas". Demand from your Ministry of Foreign Affairs to recognize
Peasants' Rights, including their rights to land, seeds, biodiversity,
decent income and livelihood and the means of production.
Demand the right of peoples to food sovereignty now by SIGNING THIS
PETITION [1]!
BACKGROUND:
The process towards the "UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and
other People Working in Rural Areas" aims to create an international
human rights instrument to improve the promotion and protection of their
rights and draw attention to the threats and discrimination suffered by
peasants and people involved in small-scale food production across the
world.
The current draft Declaration is the result of the work undertaken by La
Via Campesina (LVC) over more than 15 years, supported by FIAN
International and CETIM (Europe Third World Centre), with the support of
other social movements. This process has a unique strategy, namely to
have the Declaration recognised by the UN and the international human
rights governance system through the voices, concerns, and issues raised
by grassroots peasant movements.
With the next session of the intergovernmental working group, scheduled
for May 2017 at the UN Human Rights Council, we need to put pressure on
our governments and strengthen our position.
Links:
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[1] https://peasantsrights.eu/
7 years, 9 months
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