#17April2021 - “A movement in formation” | Online Screening, this Sunday, 18 April 2021 - 12.00 CEST/ Harare
by La Via Campesina
“A MOVEMENT IN FORMATION” | ONLINE SCREENING, SUNDAY, 18 APRIL 2021
12 APRIL 2021 PUBLICATIONS [1], VIDEO [2], VIDEOS AND PODCASTS (WHAT
IS LVC?) [3], WHAT IS LA VIA CAMPESINA? [4], WOMEN [5], YOUTH [6]
We live in a historical age in which capitalism has exhausted all its
possibilities.
>From now on, more than ever, capitalism will only offer us more crises
of conflict, war, migration, global warming, hunger, pandemics and
death. In this context, formation in the La Via Campesina with a
perspective of human emancipation is strategic. It has the historical
task of contributing to forging collective political subjects, capable
of mobilising consciences, resources, and processes for the construction
of an emancipatory political project and to transform the reality, the
living conditions in the countryside and in the cities.
In La Via Campesina, the political-organisational formation processes
become not only trenches of resistance and defence of peasant ways of
life and agroecological production, but also seeds for the flourishing
of new social, political and economic relations with Mother Earth.
Formation as a comprehensive, systematic, broad, continuous and
permanent process must be present at every step of the organisation. If
the peoples of the countryside have the great task of producing healthy
food, the Movement at the international level has the most beautiful,
free and emancipatory work, to be part of the construction of
transformations and sovereign, free societies.
For this purpose, we built "A movement in formation" a new video of LVC
that shows this construction in the movement, with different voices and
actors from all over the world, showing the different practices and
methodologies but with the same objective, because to Globalise the
struggle and the Hope is not just a slogan, it is our permanent task.
See it this Sunday, APRIL 18 VIA FACEBOOK. TIME: 12.00 CEST/ Harare
https://www.facebook.com/viacampesinaOFFICIAL
Links:
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[1]
https://viacampesina.org/en/media-and-publications/publications-publicati...
[2] https://viacampesina.org/en/video/
[3]
https://viacampesina.org/en/who-are-we/what-is-la-via-campesina/videos-an...
[4] https://viacampesina.org/en/who-are-we/what-is-la-via-campesina/
[5] https://viacampesina.org/en/who-are-we/women/
[6] https://viacampesina.org/en/who-are-we/youth/
3 years, 8 months
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Food Sovereignty and Solidarity: A Historic Moment to Advance Our Peasant Struggles
by La Via Campesina
FOOD SOVEREIGNTY AND SOLIDARITY: A HISTORIC MOMENT TO ADVANCE OUR
PEASANT STRUGGLES
15 APRIL 2021 AGROECOLOGY AND PEASANTS'SEEDS [1], CAPITALISM AND FREE
TRADE [2], FOOD SOVEREIGNTY [3], GLOBAL CAMPAIGN FOR AGRARIAN REFORM
[4], INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY [5], TRANSNATIONAL COMPANIES AND
AGRIBUSINESS [6]
INTERNATIONAL DAY OF PEASANTS' STRUGGLE: DECLARATION BY LA VIA
CAMPESINA, HARARE, ZIMBABWE: 17 APRIL 2021
This April 17th, our international Day of Peasants' Struggle, is a
moment to reflect on our vision of food sovereignty, and strengthen
further our solidarity against the increased criminalization of our
struggles, and killing of peasants, indigenous peoples, and those
fighting for the rights of their communities, for dignity and equity
globally. As we join our hands for solidarity demanding full respect for
our rights and the end of impunity, criminalization, and killing, we are
alert to the current difficult social and economic context facing many
peasants and peoples globally.
Firstly, the continuing COVID19 pandemic, a health crisis that started
in 2020, has led to over two million deaths globally. Measures to
mitigate and stop the spread of the pandemic have caused a profound
social crisis with severe setbacks in workers' rights, unemployment,
corruption, misery, hunger, and violence. This health crisis occurring
in tandem with the prevailing climate crisis only worsens the social and
economic condition of the masses.
Secondly, the agribusiness and corporate lobbies increased their efforts
to capture democratic global governance spaces. Citing the worsening
hunger, some called on governments to lift the ban on the use of GMOs.
While some big businesses, under the cover of the pandemic, worked with
policymakers to relax laws that protect natural resources. We witnessed
deliberate attempts to close civil society participation in global
policymaking processes and UN spaces. Shifting Human Rights Council
meetings and other events online meant limited participation from
peasants and indigenous communities.
Thirdly, the current realignment of the geopolitical forces and actors -
exemplified by increased tensions between the economically advanced
nations (United States/EU versus China and Russia; etc), the on-going
heightened militarisation in tandem with repartition of global markets
among these big nations, and the re-introduction of trade tariffs to
fence off the foreign competition among allies (US vs. EU) are distress
calls of a capitalist system in decay. The competition for sources of
raw materials particularly rare minerals and the repartition of world
markets is the inevitable cause of armed conflicts and devastating wars.
This has worsened the migrant crisis in Africa, Middle East, Latin and
North America, and Europe.
THE MULTIPLE CRISES CONFRONTING THE WORLD ARE NOT NEW BUT A POLITICAL
MOMENT TO ADVANCE THE FOOD SOVEREIGNTY AGENDA
The food, climate, environmental, economic, democratic, and health
crises that culminated with the Covid-19 pandemic show clearly to all
humanity that a transformation of the current agricultural and food
model is vital. Each crisis, be it COVID-19 pandemic or food shortages,
has shown us the importance and resilience of the same local food
systems which neoliberalism continues to erode and weaken.
Since its birth in 1993, La Via Campesina has been developing and
promoting food sovereignty as an alternative to the dominant capitalist
relations of production, particularly in agriculture. Over the
twenty-eight years, food sovereignty has gained more ground among social
movements, civil society organizations, and others.
Thus, for us, food sovereignty and peasant agroecology continue to
triumph in each crisis as solutions to strengthen localized food systems
critical in the fight against hunger and to cool the planet, preserve
biodiversity, and respect peasants' and workers' rights. Moreover, food
sovereignty promotes solidarity, a key aspect of humanity - rather than
individualism as promoted by capitalism - that has strengthened our
collective will to survive. People and not profits matter the most! Now
is the time to transform and build a value-based society.
UN DECLARATION ON PEASANTS' RIGHTS IS OUR MAIN POLITICAL TOOL TO
STRENGTHEN THE GLOBAL PEASANT STRUGGLE
We, La Via Campesina, believe that the time is ripe for governments to
formulate and implement urgently the radical public policies to bring
relief, dignity, and equity to billions of people whose survival is
hanging by a thin thread. Without radical public policy changes, the
desperation will increase, so are the unintended outcomes, for instance,
the current rise of extreme right-wing, fascism, and other forms of
regressive nationalism in different countries. Food sovereignty
continues to offer the only coherent solution--a solution that benefits
rural families as well as consumers, in our countries.
After much work over the last 28 years generating proposals,
accumulation of experience, and building of alliances, we have a
historic opportunity to achieve good policies with the support of some
progressive governments, UN Special rapporteur for the right to food,
Committee on World Food Security (CFS)-Civil Society and Indigenous
Peoples' Mechanism (CSM) processes, and using the UN declaration of the
Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP).
UNDROP must be a tool for the worldwide promotion of urgently-needed
agrarian reform programmes, as essential components of public policies
that countries should implement in their respective territories for
decent living and working conditions in rural areas. We will work with
progressive governments and like-minded rural and urban movements, as
well as with other organizations to monitor and ensure proper
implementation of public policies. It's an opportunity that we cannot
let pass us by. Even the current attempts by the World Economic Forum
initiative to organize and hijack the UN Food System Summit should not
hinder our progress. Only peasants and their active participation in
shaping the food policies lead to lasting a solution - public policies
based on food sovereignty. We must gird ourselves as peasants to fight
and resist transnational corporations, agribusiness, large landowners,
and imperialism.
To take advantage of the political moment, to regain control over food
La Via Campesina together with our allies, call upon governments to
define and refine public policy proposals to achieve food sovereignty at
all levels. This means the recovery of national productive capacity,
_rooted in the peasant and family farm_ sector, through public sector
budgets, guaranteed prices, credits, and other forms of
support--including support for direct marketing between producers and
consumers, and genuine land reform. _ _We call for genuine comprehensive
agrarian reform programs to strengthen peasant and family agriculture,
food and farming systems that respond to both urban and rural
necessities and should reconstitute improved versions of research and
technical assistance systems based this time on the principles of the
"campesino to Campesino" (peasant to peasant) model.
We, as peasants, also fight for health to be treated as a human right,
especially in the global COVID-19 pandemic. As La Via Campesina, we
demand the Right to public and free health care for all peoples as
defined in Article 23 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of
Peasants (UNDROP), including the processes of prevention, vaccination,
and long-term treatment. Vaccines should not be patented neither should
they be left under the control and profit of large transnational
corporations. If patented, it allows the market further to commodify
life. All members of society must have access to information and be able
to evaluate the treatments offered. We affirm that health care must
begin with a healthy, sustainable diet that strengthens the immune
system, as proposed by Food Sovereignty, a way of caring for the
well-being of both people and the environment.
THE TIME TO TRANSFORM IS NOW!
It is unacceptable that in the 21st-century hundreds of millions are
hungry when there is enough food for all; inequalities and human rights
violations are worsening; criminalization, brutal repression, and
authoritarianism are increasing globally.
This April 17, we say: Struggle for dignity, for health, for public
policies based on food sovereignty, and for protecting our communities
and natural resources is not a crime but our right! The states must not
criminalize our struggles nor violate our rights! Neither must we be
killed by them! Their duty is to protect our rights. We, therefore,
stand in solidarity with all the peoples struggling for their rights in
all four corners of the world. With food sovereignty and solidarity, we
can attain social justice and dignity for all!
WE FEED THE WORLD AND BUILD FOOD SOVEREIGNTY!
GLOBALIZE THE STRUGGLE, GLOBALIZE HOPE!
#NoFutureWithoutFoodSovereignty #FoodSovereigntyNOW
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For media enquiries, questions or comments write to
lvcweb(a)viacampesina.org
Links:
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[1]
https://viacampesina.org/en/what-are-we-fighting-for/biodiversity-and-gen...
[2]
https://viacampesina.org/en/what-are-we-fighting-against/capitalism-and-f...
[3]
https://viacampesina.org/en/what-are-we-fighting-for/food-sovereignty-and...
[4]
https://viacampesina.org/en/what-are-we-fighting-for/agrarian-reform/glob...
[5]
https://viacampesina.org/en/what-are-we-fighting-for/international-solida...
[6]
https://viacampesina.org/en/what-are-we-fighting-against/transnational-co...
3 years, 8 months
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La Vía Campesina | e-Newsletter | #8March - Special Edition
by La Via Campesina
*|MC_PREVIEW_TEXT|*
La Vía Campesina | e-Newsletter | 8 March 2021
Donate [1]
This edition of the newsletter is the result of a collective effort
of organisations that are part of La Via Campesina around the world. To
subscribe click here [2].
08 MARCH: GLOBAL SOLIDARITY ACTIONS DEMAND EQUAL OWNERSHIP OF LAND,
RECOGNITION OF WOMEN'S WORK AND A WORLD FREE OF VIOLENCE
[3]
Across the world, peasant and indigenous movements carried out
solidarity actions to mark International Women's Day on (and during the
week of) the 8th of March 2021.
La Via Campesina had issued a clarion call to all its members worldwide
by pointing out that to defeat the virus of patriarchy and capitalism,
we need the vaccine of feminism and solidarity. Pastoralists, peasants,
fisherfolks, agricultural workers, indigenous and landless people across
member organisations responded positively to this call for solidarity
this year. They organised peasant fairs showcasing diversities in food
production and the work women and people of diverse identities do in the
farms and inside rural social movements.
Several solidarity actions that took place emphasised the urgent need
for food sovereignty to positively address the crisis humanity is
currently experiencing and transform our societies. PEASANTS ALSO
EMPHASISED THAT THE UN DECLARATION ON PEASANTS' RIGHTS ADOPTED IN 2018
IS A CRUCIAL TOOL TO GUARANTEE RIGHTS AND GENDER JUSTICE IN RURAL AND
URBAN COMMUNITIES.
With colourful marches, sit-ins, food donations, forums, meetings, and
even blood donations, they showed the importance of feminism in the
struggle against patriarchy and capitalism. We share a summary of the
actions carried out by our LVC member organisations in different
territories around the world. Read More [4]
FEATURED ARTICLES
Peasant movements, workers and activists in Asia mobilise on
International Women's Day. Here is a summary [5] of the many actions
that took place around Asia in March.
Gender-based violence in the rural sector, understood as physical,
sexual and psychological violence against women, is a central area of
work [6] for our member organisations since 2008.
As capitalist countries rush to save their economies, they have left the
workers who provide the basic necessities of human life to risk their
lives on the front lines. Women make up the overwhelming majority of
those who work in these industries. Read the statement [7].
On the 25th anniversary of the collective construction of Food
Sovereignty, this is our tangible and sustainable way to face the
different crises we live today. We need to end the systemic violence of
capitalism and patriarchy, which today violate the rights of women,
diversities, children, and the working class. Read La Via Campesina's
call for mobilization [8].
In the most difficult moment of the pandemic, which is plaguing Brazil
and which - so far - has killed more than 260 thousand people, women
from more than 80 organizations in the popular field, came together to
support and spread solidarity [9] in actions in the four corners of the
country.
Peasant Organisations in Spain - COAG and the Confederation of Rural
Women (CERES) - demand that [10] the new Common Agricultural Policy
(CAP) and the Rural Development Plans (RDP) be drawn up with a gender
perspective, as they marginalise the lands of peasant women and
livestock breeders.
This March 8, 2021, the peasant members of the Sindicato Labrego Galego,
SLG, also supported the feminist strike [11]. One year after the last
women's strike and for peasant women, in terms of equality, the
situation continues to deteriorate.
Srilanka: Women step up protest [12] against exploitative micro-finance
firms in rural areas. According to activists in Srilanka, an estimate of
28 million people are caught in a debt trap and over 200 were forced to
commit suicide.
RECENT PUBLICATIONS
NYÉLÉNI NEWSLETTER: FOOD SOVEREIGNTY IN A TIME OF PANDEMIC
When the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a Public
Health Emergency of International Concern on 30 January 2020, few
imagined the scale of the devastation that the disease would wreak
across the world, or for how long it would last. This edition of the
Nyéléni newsletter presents excerpts from some of the documentation and
research conducted by practitioners and advocates of food sovereignty.
DOWNLOAD NOW [13].
VIDEOS
[14]
#LaViaCampesina - Song "Triste, loca o mala", by the group Francisco El
Hombre [14]. The clip features more than 100 landless women from across
Brazil in a show of strength and solidarity.
YOU ARE AN IMPORTANT PART OF THE AUTONOMY OF OUR MOVEMENT
-------------------------
As a supporter who has contributed financial resources to La Via
Campesina, and as an activist who joins us on the streets and in the
fields, your support is always welcome and put to good use.
YOU CAN RENEW YOUR CONTRIBUTION TO LA VIA CAMPESINA BY CLICKING HERE
[1]. [15]
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For questions or comments, email LVCWEB(a)VIACAMPESINA.ORG
WEBSITE: www.viacampesina.org [19]
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To subscribe to this newsletter - Click Here [2]
Links:
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[1] https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/viacampesina
[2] https://mail.viacampesina.org/lists/listinfo/Via-info-en
[3]
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?vanity=viacampesinaOFFICIAL&set=a...
[4]
https://viacampesina.org/en/08-march-global-solidarity-actions-demand-equ...
[5]
https://viacampesina.org/en/peasant-movements-workers-and-activists-in-as...
[6]
https://viacampesina.org/en/cloc-via-campesina-gender-based-violence-in-t...
[7]
https://viacampesina.org/en/working-women-of-the-world-unite-against-impe...
[8]
https://viacampesina.org/en/8m2021-against-the-virus-of-patriarchy-and-ca...
[9]
https://viacampesina.org/en/brazil-landless-women-mobilize-in-defense-of-...
[10]
https://viacampesina.org/en/spain-peasant-women-find-it-more-difficult-to...
[11]
https://viacampesina.org/en/peasant-women-in-galicia-strike-against-inequ...
[12]
https://viacampesina.org/en/srilanka-women-step-up-protest-against-exploi...
[13] http://www.nyeleni.org/ccount/click.php?id=155
[14] https://www.facebook.com/342562582480986/videos/471196630576619
[15] https://viacampesina.org/en/donations/
[16] https://twitter.com/via_campesina
[17] https://www.facebook.com/viacampesinaOFFICIAL/
[18] https://vimeo.com/viacampesina
[19] http://www.viacampesina.org
[20] http://www.tv.viacampesina.org
3 years, 9 months
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