Posts tagged World Food Security
UN Tackles Land Grabbing
In Geneva, March 2012, the High Level Panel of Experts (HLPE) of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) 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. Along with a history-long discrimination against rural people, 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.
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 organised a parallel event to the 19th session of the UN Human Rights Council on Thursday (8/3/2012).
In 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 event, 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 peasants´ rights initiatives. State members, Advisory Committee members, as well as experts and NGOs were invited to participate.
Others said …
Land grabbing is clearly a gross violation of the rights of peasants. Most of these land grabs are not even for food production but for agrofuels, which are destroying our land, society, environment and our food sovereignty. ~ Jean Ziegler, former special rapporteur on the Right to Food.
“e have to forbid land grabbing, if we want to protect our food system. ~ Mr. Ziegler, currently a UN Human Rights Council Advisory Committee member
Henry Saraigh from La Via Campesina noted, “We have been saying this for 11 years already; land grabbing is not a new phenomenon, however it is getting worse. 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 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,” . Jean Feyder, Ambassador from Luxembourg.
Food is not a commodity, food has cultural and social dimensions too. Therefore, our food, our culture, and our social cohesion will be destroyed should the land grabbing phenomenon persist.
Peasants and other rural people are now claiming their rights and offer real alternatives to improve the food system and human rights mechanisms. It is about time for the international community to respond to this.” Ana Maria Suarez Franco from FIAN International.
UN Food Security Guidelines
FAO Voluntary Guidelines finalised
(Rome, 09/03/2012) The Committee on World Food Security (CFS) has completed the intergovernmental negotiations of the UN FAO Voluntary Guidelines on the Tenure of Land Fisheries and Forests in the context of National Food Security.
With the successful completion of these negotiations, after a participatory process lasting nearly 3 years, the CFS has shown clearly that it has the capacity to bring a wide variety of social actors to the debate and to seek solutions to one of the most difficult and delicate issues we face today … that of access to natural resources for food production/provision. More than 45 persons representing 20 civil society organisations attended the final round of these negotiations.
The Guidelines contain valuable points that will provide backing for organisations in their long struggle to ensure the care and use of Resources and Natural Goods in order to produce more nourishing food, so helping to eliminate hunger from the world by addressing its root causes.
Progress for Food Sovereignty
Ensuring access to land, fisheries and forests is absolutely vital, not just to enable small food producers to nourish the world. Access to natural resources is a question of dignity and a matter of life and death for millions of peasant communities, pastoralists, indigenous Peoples and fisher folk. In many parts of the world, land-grabbing causes great suffering by displacing people and communities and destroying and confiscating their lands, further increasing the incidence of violent conflicts.
Just in the last few months, while this document was being negotiated, leaders of social movements in different parts of the world have been persecuted or assassinated for involvements in this very struggle. In Latin America, we wish to remember Jerónimo R. Tugri & Mauricio Méndez of Panamá, Bernardo Méndez Vásquez of México, Christian Ferreyra of Argentina, and the Esteban peasants who were assassinated in the land conflicts in Bajo Aguán, Honduras.
We also want to show our solidarity with Herman Kumara, leader of the World Forum of Fisher Peoples, who has been threatened with death and forced to leave his country, Sri Lanka.
