17 April: Faced with global crises, we build food sovereignty to ensure a future for humanity!
by La Via Campesina
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17 April: Faced with global crises, we build food sovereignty to
ensure a future for humanity!
17 April 2023 Food Sovereignty
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*Press Release | Bagnolet 17/04/23*
Today, April 17th, 2023, as we remember the “Eldorado dos Carajás
Massacre” that took place 27 years ago in Brazil, and our many struggles
in other places, we, La Via Campesina, raise our fists high in hope,
knowing that food sovereignty, peasant agroecology, comprehensive
popular agrarian reforms, popular peasant feminism and the
implementation of United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Peasants
and other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP) will ensure a future
for humanity and the planet.
Solidarity urgently needed!
Global protests are increasing due to the climate and environmental
crisis, food crisis, and conflicts caused by shifting geopolitical
contours. Social unrest has been observed in over 60 countries due to
economic inequalities deepened by the COVID-19 pandemic. These crises
expose the flaws in the dominant capitalist model, as capitalist
interests destroy territories and threaten every life system worldwide.
Governments have responded to protests with repression and persecution,
including killings and assassinations, to intimidate and subdue
movements. Social movements in various countries in Brazil, Palestine,
Paraguay, Colombia, Mali, Ecuador, France, Spain, Germany, Netherlands,
United Kingdom, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, South Korea, Kenya,
Canada, Haiti, Guatemala and Peru, among others, have alerted the world
about the violations of workers’ and peasants’ rights, where civil
unrest is high due to the high cost of living, and government policies
that are further increasing social and economic inequalities.
Most governments are failing to keep up with the demand for better
public services, leaving many citizens living precariously. For
instance, in Europe, which until recently enjoyed much stability after
the Second World War driven by unprecedented growth in production and
the distribution of some of the wealth to the majority of the
population, some countries face social instability as social
achievements regress. In this new context of crisis, most governments
prioritize the enrichment of the richest and the accumulation of
capital, placing the burden of restrictions on the majority of the
population. Governments are choosing capitalism at all costs, even
breaking away from the framework of liberal democracy and the rule of
law that has prevailed until now, with the so-called ‘defense of Western
values’ being shattered.
La Via Campesina (LVC) stands in and is also committed to building
solidarity with those who are being victimized by the criminalization of
social protest on all continents. It is time to build a more fraternal
world based on solidarity among peoples. We call for an immediate and
unconditional end to the persecution of peasant movements and their leaders.
Grabbing and commodification of commons for profits continues unabated
The industrial food system continues to make super profits while
trampling upon the lives and livelihoods of farming families and rural
people, whose lands, water and territories are being grabbed for export
land uses amid a worsening global food and economic crises. Water
grabbing is on the rise to make money for a few and to grow export crops
as the climate crisis worsens – climate change related droughts are now
extensive and frequent.
We emphasize the need to inform, educate, organize, and articulate to
build a social force that can *stop the tendency to convert the climate
crisis into business opportunities*. LVC denounces the government’s
indifference to the warming of the planet and the debate over
speculative financial business, the new green and blue economy, and the
privatisation of the commons, calling for political changes to cool it.
LVC calls for redoubling of efforts to defend the commons and stop their
commodification and demand the fair sharing of rights to use the commons.
Migrant crisis: result of an inhumane system of exploitation and
repression
The crises has forced, mostly rural populations from the South, to
migrate mostly to the Northern countries in search of better
livelihoods. Instead of better lives, most migrants have been subjected
to inhumane system of exploitation and repression. Thus struggles of
migrant farm labor are also a fundamental part of the April 17 Day of
Peasant Struggle.
Over a billion people work in agriculture fields, most of whom are
peasants displaced from their lands due to neoliberal policies that
favor agribusiness capital. Landless women make up almost 50% of this
population. The loss of peasant lands in rural areas continues, leading
to an increase in migrant workers seeking employment in agriculture in
northern countries to support their impoverished families. These workers
face unsustainable working conditions and receive the lowest wages in
the labor sector. From Brazil to the US and Europe, migrant farm-workers
are demanding their rights and standing against the exploitation of
agribusiness capital.
The full recognition of full rights for migrant and refugee peoples
constantly criminalised and murdered at the borders of our nations is
also part of our struggle towards the full achievement of food
sovereignty. We call on societies, social movements, and all people of
good will, both North and South, to join our Global Pact of Solidarity
in defense of the lives and human rights of all migrants and refugees
everywhere.
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Our solutions to the crises
Peasant organizations have a critical role to play in ensuring the
future of humanity and the planet by resisting the
hydro-agro-extractivism of transnational mega-corporations, which
threaten the lands of peasants, indigenous peoples, and other rural
inhabitants. This struggle for justice and dignity is significant as we
celebrate the Day of Peasant Struggle on April 17. On this day, La Via
Campesina reaffirms the central elements for a political project to
ensure a future for humanity. These elements include food sovereignty,
agrarian reform, peasant agroecology, demand for a UN Special Procedure
on the UNDROP, and peasant and popular feminism:
* *Food sovereignty offers an alternative to the current crises of
hunger*, climate, and ecology by transforming the industrial model
and creating local food systems that link rural and urban areas. It
prohibits speculation in food futures contracts and addresses two
significant sources of greenhouse gas emissions: long-distance
transportation of food and industrialized agriculture. Principles of
Food Sovereignty can provide us the framework for a new global trade
framework that can end the dominance of the World Trade Organization
(WTO), which currently is attempting to legitimise its work through
creation of a space for civil society in its structure and Free
Trade Agreements (FTAs).
* *Agrarian reform is necessary* to ensure fair sharing of rights to
use commons and democratize ownership of territories, which is
currently being concentrated by elites.
* *Peasant agroecology is a means of resistance to an economic system
that prioritizes profit over life* and is responsible for
deforestation, water contamination, and acidification of oceans. It
offers an essential alternative to industrial food production and
transforms the way we produce and consume food.
* *Demand for a UN Special Procedure on the UNDROP *will allow for
effective implementation at the international level.
* *Peasant and popular feminism cultivates defense of relationships
based on respect and care* for others and rejects modes of
relationship based on violence, domination, and control of others.
Towards the Eighth International Conference (#8ConfLVC)
In November this year, La Via Campesina will convene its 8th
International Conference in Nicaragua. And as we gather our proposals
towards this important event, our rallying call to unite and build a new
society is well expressed in the 8th Conference slogan: “Faced with the
Global Crises, we build Food Sovereignty to ensure a Future for
Humanity!” We will exchange and build a collective vision for the future
based on these existing alternatives that are being practiced in our
communities.
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Globalise the struggle! Globalise hope!
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For more information write to *press(a)viacampesina.org*
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Call for Solidarity with French Social Movements! Stop Police Violence NOW!
by La Via Campesina
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Call for Solidarity with French Social Movements! Stop Police Violence
NOW!
30 March 2023 Climate and Environmental Justice
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Solidarity Statement
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*La Via Campesina calls for international solidarity for the french
social movement, against police violence and the authoritarian drift of
the French government.*
*Bagnolet, 30th March 2023* | We observe with consternation the
evolution of events in France. For several months, millions of people
have been demonstrating peacefully against a pension reform that will
make the working poor, including peasants, pay even more while the
richest benefit. Last week, the French government pushed through this
reform without a vote in the National Assembly. That evening and every
day since, demonstrations and actions have multiplied to denounce this
authoritarian drift and to demand the immediate withdrawal of the
pension reform. Faced with this massive mobilisation, which is widely
supported by public opinion (75% of the French population is against
this reform, and in particular 93% of people of working age), the French
state is in denial and is responding with an escalation of the police
and violence.
Last weekend saw a further step in this authoritarian drift. Our
affiliate in France, the Confédération Paysanne, together with two other
organisations, Soulèvements de la Terre and Bassines Non Merci, called
for a demonstration against mega-basins, which are tools for water
grabbing by agribusiness. 30,000 people gathered to defend water, a
common good essential to the life of all people and ecosystems. The
French state deployed a police force worthy of war to protect an
18-hectare area. Grenades rained down on the demonstrators for hours,
injuring more than 200 people. The state deliberately prevented the
emergency services from reaching the area where the injured were
sheltering, refusing to allow ambulances to pass. Today, one person is
hanging between life and death, and dozens of others have lost an eye or
a hand, or are at risk of being paralysed for life.
Many voices, including the UN Special Rapporteurs on Human Rights and
the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, called on the
government to stop this repressive escalation. But the President of the
French Republic decided not to give in, and the Minister of the Interior
decided to ban Soulèvements de la Terre.
What will be the next step in this authoritarian drift? To ban the
Confédération Paysanne? To ban all demonstrations for climate and social
justice?
Is France, which presents itself everywhere as a great democracy and a
country of human rights, definitively falling into an authoritarian
regime outside the framework of international law?
La Via Campesina calls for international mediation to restore social
dialogue.
In this critical situation, international solidarity is essential. We
therefore call on our member organisations and allied social movements
around the world to support the social movements in France.
Here are some possible actions
* Write letters of solidarity to the Confédération Paysanne,
Soulèvements de la Terre and Bassine Non Merci, and more generally
to French social movements (contact(a)confederationpaysanne.fr,
contact(a)lessoulevementsdelaterre.org);
* Writing to French embassies and the French government to denounce
the repression of social movements;
* Organise demonstrations outside French embassies and consulates;
* Contact the elected representatives and the governments of your
countries to denounce the attitude of the French government, to
demand respect for human rights (in particular the right to
demonstrate) and to offer themselves as international mediators to
end this crisis.
*GLOBALIZE THE STRUGGLE!* *GLOBALIZE HOPE!*
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