While the United Nations Human rights Council is planning to discuss a declaration of the rights of peasants in the coming days, FIAN International together with La Via Campesina has organized a parallel event to the 19th session of the UN Human Rights Council on 8 March. The event, which was entitled “Land Grabbing and the Urgent Need to Protect the Rights of Peasants“, is acting as a warm-up event for the current session of UN Human Rights Council. The objective is to lobby and connect parties who are supportive of the peasants´ rights initiative. State members, Advisory Committee members, as well as experts and NGOs were invited to participate in the event.
The scale of land grabbing
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“Land grabbing is clearly a gross violation of the rights of peasants”, said Jean Ziegler, former special rapporteur on the right to food. “Most of these land grabs are not even for food production but for agro fuels, which are destroying our land, society, environment and our food sovereignty”. “We have to forbid land grabbing if we want to protect our food system”, concluded Mr Ziegler, currently a UN Human Rights Council Advisory Committee member. Henry Saraigh from La Via Campesina argued, “We have been saying this for 11 years already; land grabbing is not a new phenomenon, however it is getting worse”. One the most recent examples of such trend is the government of Saudi Arabia, which currently owns 1.6 million hectares (ha) of land in Sudan and Indonesia. In Madagascar around 1.3 million ha were leased, bought or transferred to private corporations of South Korea. “If this trend continues, it will not only affect rural people in Southern countries, but it will also affect Northern countries, as land grabs will undermine the whole food system”, the General Coordinator of La Via Campesina emphasised.
Study on the rights of peasants
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During this 19th session, the Advisory Committee will present final report on the advancement of the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas (document A/HRC/19/75). Besides the focus on the rights of the most vulnerable people working in rural areas, the study discusses the need to create a new special procedure to improve the promotion and protection of the rights of peasants and develop a new international human rights instrument for these rights. A declaration based on the La Via Campesina Declaration of the Rights of Peasants Women and Men is attached to the study and could serve as a model. “The inequalities in land tenure as well as for other productive resources, discrimination against rural women peasants, the increase in hunger and malnutrition, and the difficulties in meeting the Millennium Development Goals are all very good reasons why we need a breakthrough in dealing with the food situation”, said Jean Feyder, Ambassador of Luxembourg. The recommendations in the final study are meant to serve this objective; business as usual definitely will not solve the problem.
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“Food is not a commodity, food has cultural and social dimensions too”, Ana María Suárez Franco from FIAN International said. “Therefore, our food, our culture, and our social cohesion will be destroyed should the land grabbing phenomenon persist”. Ms. Suárez Franco further explained, “Food produced by peasants is as important as peace and security in the world”. “Peasants and other rural people are now claiming their rights and are offering real alternatives to improve the food system and human rights mechanisms. It is about time for the international community to respond to this”, she concluded.
The final study was discussed with states on 14 March on item 5 in the 19th session of UN Human Rights Council. While all participated states agreed on key conclusions made in the final study, the important point was raised by Germany. Germans stated they cannot support final conclusions, because there is no legal foundation in international law to recognize the rights to land, seeds and means of production, therefore it would be better to focus on voluntary implementation of guidelines on the right to food adopted within the framework of FAO. Finally all states agreed that additional rights such as rights to education and rights to sanitation should be added to the final study of Advisory Committee.
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The full video of UN Human rights Council can be found here
The full study on the advancement of the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas can be found here
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 estimates that between 50 and 80 million ha of land in poor and developing countries have been negotiated, acquired or leased by international investors. Large-scale land transactions are undermining food security, livelihoods and the environment of local populations. This wildly spreading global phenomenon has been the reason why there have been so many reports of human rights violations in rural areas recently, especially with regards to land rights.&redirect_uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2F){kind=link}