Newsletters Nyéléni in English

The international Nyéléni newsletter is the voice of the international movement for Food Sovereignty. Its main goal is to strengthen the grassroots of the movement, by providing accessible material on key issues and creating a space – for individuals and organisations involved in the struggle – to exchange their experiences and share information.

In the spotlight

Newsletter no 27 - Smallholders' markets

In the spotlight 1

Recognize, support and protect territorial markets*

(…)The bulk of the food consumed in the world (70%) is produced by smallholder producers and workers. Most of this food is channeled through what we propose to call “territorial markets”, as explained below. Only 10-12% percent of agricultural products is traded on the international market, particularly 9% of milk production, 9,8% of meat production, 8,9% of rice, and 12,5% of cereals [FAO (2015) 2015-2016 – The State of Agricultural Commodity Markets; FAO (2015) Food Outlook – Biannual Report on Global Food Markets.]. The idea of “connecting smallholders to markets” is misleading: globally more than 80% of smallholders operate in the territorial markets that are the most important for food security and nutrition [T.Reardon and J. Berdequé (forthcoming), “Agrifood markets and value chains” in IFAD, Rural Development Report; E. Del Pozo-Vergnes (2013) From survival to competition: informality in agrifood markets in countries under transition. The case of Peru, IIED]. We want these markets to be recognized, supported and defended by appropriate public policies.

We propose to call these markets “territorial” because they are all situated in and identified with specific areas. The scale of these areas can range from the village up to district, national or even regional, so they cannot be defined as “local”. Their organization and management may incorporate a weaker or a stronger dimension of formality but there is always some connection with the competent authorities, so they cannot be defined as purely “informal”. They meet food demand in different kinds of areas: rural, peri-urban and urban. They involve other small-scale actors in the territory: traders, transporters, processors, traders. Sometimes these other functions are performed by smallholders or their associations. Women are the key actors here, and so these markets provide them with an important source of authority and of revenue whose benefits are passed on to their families.

These markets are extremely diverse but they are all distinguished by certain characteristics, as compared with global food supply systems, including the following:
– They are directly linked to local, national and/or regional food systems: the food concerned is produced, processed, traded and consumed within a given “territory”, the gap between producers and end users is narrowed, and the length of the circuit is shortened.
– They perform multiple economic, social and cultural functions within their given territories – starting with but not limited to food provision.
– They are the most remunerative for smallholders since they provide them with more control over conditions of access and prices than mainstream value chains.
– They contribute to the territorial economy since they enable a greater share of value addition to be retained and returned to farm level and local economies. They thus constitute an important contribution to fighting rural poverty and creating employment.

Markets linked to territories exist throughout the world. They are overwhelmingly the most important spaces of food provision in regions like Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Near East. They are gaining importance In Europe and North America. (…)Yet they have been ignored in research, data collection, and public policy decision-making and investment, so their functioning is insufficiently understood, supported and protected. This explains why there is not yet a single agreed term to describe them.

The territorial approach – of which markets are an important component – is widely and increasingly used in the context of natural resource management, development planning, managing evolving relations between rural and urban spaces, and promoting decentralized sub-national government. (…)

* This article has been excerpted from the document “Connecting Smallholders to Markets. What the CSM is advocating.” Full document here.

In the spotlight 2

La Via Campesina declaration on Trade, Markets and Development in the context of UNCTAD 2016

In the context of the Fourteenth Session of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) scheduled for 17–22 July 2016 in Nairobi, Kenya, we of La Vía Campesina reiterate our commitment to Food Sovereignty and the Right to Food as well as our resolve to put an end to neoliberalism’s so-called “free trade paradigm” and “market-driven development” schemes that serve only to consolidate corporate control over our food systems. As a UN body, we expect UNCTAD and its member states to prioritize democratic and participatory processes aimed at policies that successfully promote food sovereignty. UNCTAD should not be used to promote the very same Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), including the European Union’s Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) in Africa, that one after another have resulted in more hunger, poverty, and exclusion for people around the world.

On UNCTAD

We of La Via Campesina very much welcomed the 2015 publication of the UNCTAD Report titled “Smallholder Farmers and Sustainable Commodity Development” and its recognition of our vital role in food production and markets, as well as the need for governments and multilateral institutions to work directly with us in order to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, we strongly oppose the report’s numerous recommendations, most of which support the commodification of our agricultural production. We firmly reject the report’s underlying premise that only as successful profit seekers, or “business enterprises”, are we a viable long-term source of food and nutrition for our people. We also denounce ongoing attempts to commodify food and nutrition, and remind all those gathered at UNCTAD 14 that food is a Human Right.

The UNCTAD we are seeing in motion presents a free market driven neoliberal trade paradigm which stands in stark contrast to the food sovereignty paradigm where smallholder farmers are social, cultural, and historical actors that make decisions based on a diversity of personal, ethical, and cultural factors and not just based on profit, business and markets. Instead of corporate-backed trade promotion schemes, we want an UNCTAD that protects us from the destructive and secretive FTAs promoted by the undemocratic World Trade Organization (WTO) such as the TTIP, TPP, CETA, TiSA, EPAs, and their so-called Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS).
We, the peasants of the world, currently feed the global majority, and we do so in spite of the numerous Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) aimed at displacing peasant production and trade worldwide.

Peasant-Based Production and Local Markets

Globally, more than 80% of smallholders operate in local and domestic food markets, with the majority trading through informal means. These highly diverse markets are the ones through which most of the food consumed in the world transits. They operate within territorial spaces that can range from local to transboundary to regional and may be located in rural, peri-urban or urban contexts.

These markets are directly linked to local, national and/or regional food systems: the food concerned is produced, processed, traded and consumed within a given space and the value added is retained and shared there, helping to create employment. They can take place in structured arrangements or in more ad hoc or informal ways which provide greater flexibility for smallholders and fewer barriers to entry and more control over prices and market conditions. They perform multiple functions beyond commodity exchange, acting as space for social interaction and exchange of knowledge. These are the most important markets, especially for rural women, when it comes to inclusion and access, contributing significantly to our fulfillment of our right to food and nutrition.

Despite their importance, informal markets are often overlooked in data collection systems which impacts negatively on the evidence base for informing public policies. As women smallholders mostly operate in informal markets, their essential contribution to food systems, including food distribution, and economic growth remains largely invisible in trade and development policy-making processes and, they face particular socio-economic barriers in accessing resources and marketing opportunities resulting in further marginalization and violation of their rights. Given their importance for food security and smallholder livelihoods, public policies and investments should be oriented towards strengthening, expanding and protecting local and domestic peasant-fed markets.

We call on the UNCTAD and its member states to support the collection of comprehensive data on local, domestic and informal–both rural and urban–markets linked to territories to improve the evidence base for policies, including sex-disaggregated data, and incorporating this as a regular aspect of national and international data collection systems.

We recommend transparent and fair pricing of all agricultural products that provides full remuneration for smallholders’ work and their own investments, including rural women. Pricing policies should give smallholders access to timely and affordable market information to enable them to make informed decisions on what, when and where to sell, guarding against the abuse of buyer power, particularly in concentrated markets.

We demand public and institutional procurement programs that allow smallholders to rely on regular and stable demand for agricultural products at fair prices and for consumers to access healthy, nutritious, diverse, fresh and locally produced food, including during crises and conflicts. We want these procurement programs to service public institutions such as schools, hospitals, prisons, homes for the elderly and public servants’ canteens, by providing food produced by smallholders through participatory mechanisms involving them in the process. We reiterate our calls for a permanent solution to the public stockholding issue – considering the imbalances in the domestic support allowances accorded to developed countries – and our commitment to building these robust public and institutional procurement programs.

For these to succeed, we remind national governments that they must guarantee fair and equitable access to land, water, territory, and biodiversity, referring them to the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security.

Food is a human right and must not be treated like a simple commodity. We call on the 2016 UNCTAD Conference to rethink how it addresses the issue of food and its relationship to trade and development. Peasants are at the heart of food production and what we urgently need is Food Sovereignty – requiring the protection and renationalization of national food markets, the promotion of local circuits of production and consumption, the struggle for land, the defense of the territories of indigenous peoples, and comprehensive agrarian reform — not the false promises of Green Revolution driven input- and capital-intensive and dependent production systems that operate under the false premise of competitiveness that only works when it undermines the livelihoods of farmers elsewhere.

We remind governments that they have obligations to meet when it comes to providing quality public services required for a dignified life in the countryside (health, education, etc.), and that these obligations cannot be met without fair prices that protect local farmers from profit-hungry transnational corporations (TNCs) and an international trade system that currently only serves the interests of agribusiness and other corporate elites. As a UN body, UNCTAD should strive to be coherent with its other ongoing efforts, including but not limited to the effective realization of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Together with allies in Nairobi, and throughout the world, we invite all to join us in the struggle for Food Sovereignty and an end to corporate-led “free trade” promoted through undemocratic institutions such as the WTO.

Newsletter no 27 – Editorial

Newsletter no 27 - Smallholders' markets

Smallholders’ markets

Illustration : Rigel Stuhmiller – www.rigelstuhmiller.com

In practically every Indian town, vendors pushing handcarts move from one neighborhood to another, supplying customers with seasonal and perennial fruits and vegetables. By the coasts, fresh catch from small fishing boats are laid out for sale every morning and evening. Itinerant traders purchase fish from these markets and transport them to different villages. Daily fish and seafood markets are commonplace in every coastal area in the Asia-Pacific region. In Thailand, the best places to source traditional foods, herbs and spices are local fresh markets. In rural Cambodia, it is common to see small stands along the roads selling newly harvested corn, gourds, vegetables, seasonal fruits, palm sugar, and dried meats and fish. Similar scenes can be seen in many parts of the world, in varying climatic and geographic areas.

All this food, raw, cooked and preserved, is produced and sold by local small-scale farmers, fishers, pastoralists, livestock and poultry raisers, food processors and entrepreneurs–majority of them women–through different types of markets: temporary, permanent, travelling, direct deliveries, cooperatives, etc. Bulk of the food consumed in the world is produced by smallholders and workers, and channeled through “territorial markets,” which reflect the huge diversity of contexts that characterise small-scale food production and distribution. Territorial markets are an important source of employment and critical in battling hunger and poverty.

These markets increasingly face threats from corporate led super/hyper-markets, procurement, storage, certification and food safety systems. Corporations use neoliberal trade and investment agreements, and sophisticated marketing systems to control how food is produced, priced, distributed and consumed. Protecting and strengthening the markets of smallholders are crucial aspects of food sovereignty and restoring societal control over the economy.

Shalmali Guttal, Focus on the Global South

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Smallholders' markets, no 27

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Voices from the field

Newsletter no 26 - Land reform and food sovereignty

Voices from the field 1

The struggle for the planet is part of peoples’ daily struggle for life

María Everarda, Guatemala, Conavigua

My name is María Everarda de León. I am 42 years old and was born in a town called Maya Achí. I work with the national coordinating committee for the widows of Guatemala (CONAVIGUA), a part of La Vía Campesina. We don’t own land. Instead, we rent plots where we sow beans, maize and vegetables. Today, climate change has made production very difficult. We believe this results from the destruction of our mother earth. Since 2000, even basic grain production has been riddled with problems. The yield of the land has plummeted, riverbeds are dry and hydroelectric dams have destroyed our hillsides.

The struggle for the planet is part of peoples’ daily struggle for life; for capitalists it is just another commodity. Land is increasingly concentrated, estates ever-more massive. We want comprehensive land reform that is principled and value-based. It must be inclusive, and not only ensure Food Sovereignty but also the survival of communities. I have two children. Things are very tough for kids today. I believe that women’s struggles have given recent generations the possibility of a decent life. They have made possible the prospect of a fulfilling rural existence, in tune with mother earth.

Voices from the field 2

Agrarian reform is in the hands of the youth!

Zainal Fuad, Indonesia ,SPI

My name is Zainal Fuad. My family is in East Java. We produce cassava, corn and peanuts. I am on the national board of the Indonesian Peasant Union(SPI) – also part of La Via Campesina in East and South east Asia.
In Indonesia, in the pre-independence era, millions of acres of land were grabbed by the Dutch. Even though after our Independence land was nationalized through the agrarian reforms initiated in the 60s, it was a failure because of the wave of capitalism that swept through, pushed aggressively by corporations and the State. This continues even now.
SPI is pushing agrarian reform by occupying the land! We have targeted the occupation of 1 million hectares of land by 2019, while also pushing the government to distribute about 9 million hectares of land. This is important for our peasants whose lands are very small or are landless. We need land in order to build a livelihood. On occupied land, we produce through agroecological methods and distribute through our cooperatives. Mobilizing young people and keeping them on the land is a huge challenge. We have taken up that challenge because we believe that the dream of agrarian reform is in the hands of the youth!

Voices from the field 3

We share a special relationship with our land

Themba Chauke, South Africa, LPM

I am Themba Chauke, with the Landless People’s movement from South Africa. In South Africa, we are currently faced with one of the worst droughts in memory caused by El Nino, which is pushing the price of food higher and higher. The government must urgently implement Agrarian Reform, using a form of agriculture that people can understand. We call this agriculture peasant agriculture or agroecology. In this, we do not use agro-chemical inputs – instead we use what we have, the seeds that we have. My family comes from the region that is now known as the Kruger National Park. They were evicted from this land during the apartheid era, in the 60s. But we still share a special relationship with our land and go there to conduct our rituals. While growing up, I would often go to the field to see what my community was doing in the farms – to help and to learn. That is how I learnt about farming. I even tell my young daughter, who is 11 years old, that she has to respect this form of agriculture and that she should always support small scale farmers. Through the network of La Via Campesina, peasants learn from each other about new techniques of agroecology, which is very important in the current context.

Voices from the field 4

To be a peasant is to be proud

Attila Szocs, Romania, Eco Ruralis

I am Attila Szocs, a seed producer from Romania and I come from a peasant organization called Eco Ruralis. I produce peasant seeds and distribute them in our network. We have a collective farm together with Eco Ruralis members near our headquarters where we do this. At the International Conference on Agrarian Reform I was glad to witness the work of MST and their ideas on land management. Agrarian reform is urgently needed in Europe and Eastern Europe. In Romania, three peasants disappear every hour and the country is turning towards agro-industry. It is important to keep the peasants on the land and also to ensure that our youth are excited about agriculture. Agrarian reform presents an alternative. We need this concept to produce agroecologically and the only people who can do this in Romanian society are Romanian Peasants. It is also important for La Via Campesina to be present in Romania. The energy and enthusiasm of the movement is an inspiration and it is important for our members to see this energy and to know that to be a peasant is to be proud.

Boxes

Newsletter no 26 - Land reform and food sovereignty

Box 1

Classic land reform vs…

In the past, land reforms were won in numerous countries because large estates were seen as growth-inhibitors and unproductive. Landowners focused their efforts on high production and low investment and generally failed to use even half of the land they held. This was obviously unjust: a select few had vast swathes of underworked land while millions of families were deprived of any at all.

Class alliances were forged between peasant farmers and domestic industrial capital, a process that bolstered land reform. It meant that peasant farmers made corporate-held, unproductive land productive again and so contributed to domestic economic growth. These land reforms were fragmented and put peasant farmers’ interests above those of shepherds, forest peoples and other rural inhabitants. They were partial and inadequate reforms and, what is more, today’s conditions have rendered the alliances those reforms had once hinged on unviable. The reason is that financial capital is turning unproductive big farms into agribusiness and mining operations, which means there is longer a capitalist justification for land reforms as a means to achieve growth.

Box 2

…Popular land reform

If classic land reform was inadequate and is no longer feasible, a new call must be launched: for “Popular Land Reform”. This would mean peasant farmers, indigenous peoples, shepherds, fishermen and other rural communities all striving for community control over land, where healthy food is produced in harmony with nature, harnessing agroecology and tapping into long-standing popular learning and practices.

This sort of land reform requires its own class alliances, though not with capitalist domestic sectors. Rather, the alliances must be forged between rural and urban communities. For that to happen, we must use environmentally sustainable production. We must show that community-run, food-conscious and environmentally-sound land use is better for society and Mother Earth than land use ruled by capital. Community-run land is a way to ensure lives with dignity, healthy food production, respect for natural resources like soil, water, forests and biodiversity. Moreover, it is a step towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Vast monocrops, open-air mines, pesticides, GMOs, toxic waste, misery, migration and global warming are the hallmarks of land managed by capital.

Box 3

West Africa caravan for land, water and seeds

Over 400 representatives from 15 African countries[1] took part in a Caravan that trekked and traversed three West African countries (Burkina Faso, Mali and Senegal), challenging the large grabbing of peasant land, water and territories by international agribusinesses.
The caravan was first mooted at the 2014 African Social Forum in Dakar, to denounce land grabbing. This dialogue continued at World Social Forum in Tunis, in March 2015, leading to the creation of a Global Convergence of Land and Water Struggles[2] by several organizations from 11 West African countries in June 2015.

The caravan sought to raise awareness and mobilize communities to advance the struggles for the right to food, land, water and peasant seeds and challenge decision on the commitments made by authorities in land and agricultural development by adhering to conventions, regional mechanisms and international guidelines.

Starting in Burkina Faso on the 3rd of March the caravan moved to Mali and ended in Dakar, Senegal on the 19th. During the 2,300km journey, over 17 days with about 3 stopovers per country, the caravan gathered farmers’ concerns, learnt about issues related to access to land, water and preservation of peasant seeds, and also met political and administrative leaders. Throughout the journey, the caravan witnessed several cases of violations of peasant rights, most involving land grabs facilitated by governments and driven by the Bretton Woods institutions.
Banners and placards aptly conveyed the messages “halt to the project jatropha, stops the silence and indifference of the authorities”, “food sovereignty = sovereignty of peoples”, “Earth, water and farmer s’ seed is my life”… “don’t touch my land, my land is my life”.

Ibrahim Coulibaly of ROPPA said, “Every day we come across peasants dispossessed of their lands. Local elected officials and heads of villages … making corrupt deals with agro industries and eventually prevent access of people to water, seeds. These projects are a death knell to our region”.

Land and water are common goods, not commodities and are our common heritage, should be secured, preserved and governed by each community for the common good of all. In West Africa, over 70% of the population depend on peasant agriculture that feeds about 80% of the region’s population. Secure access and control over land, water, forests, fisheries and seeds are therefore vital for communities and must be protected and enforced as rights.

On March 8th, rural women across West Africa also took a stand for their Land Rights. They lack adequate and secure access to land and financial support and are the first victims of land and related natural resources grabbing.
The caravan more importantly strengthened the building of a strong movement struggling for the peoples’ rights based on food sovereignty.
On the last day, in Dakar, the green book of the convergence, a synthesis that listed both the demands and proposals regarding land, water and seeds was handed over to the President of Senegal Macky Sall, Chairman of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

Read more about the caravan here.

Box 4

News on an emblematic fight for land: The Notre Dame des Landes ZAD

In Europe, the term “agrarian reform” is seldom used. It is true that some voices speak up regarding young people’s access to land, rights to use the land and collective rights in contrast to private property. Nevertheless, the strategy isn’t one of mass mobilizations by occupying land and demanding land redistribution, as in Brazil or Honduras. As such, those opposing the airport project at Notre Dame des Landes, a few miles from Nantes, in France, stand out. It is a true fight for land, one which goes much beyond the classic “not in my backyard”.


In 1974, a 1200 hectare area was delineated and named ZAD by those sustaining the airport project. For them is stood for “Deferred Construction Zone”[” Zone d’Aménagement Différé “]. At the same time, a protection association, involving farmers alarmed by the project was created. In 40 years, the project kept evolving. Today, the association is an international scale economic platform extending from Nantes to Saint-Nazaire. Those opposing the project replaced the acronym’s meaning to “Area to Protect”[” Zone À Défendre “]. Sixty residences (collectively occupied houses, cabins, trailers and other dwellings) have been brought to light and hundreds of hectares of land have been reclaimed from the private company in charge of the project. The land is now used for farming (market gardening plots, pastures, cereal crops, etc.). Today, ZAD is a place of several experiments, a place to learn to live together, to cultivate the land, to be more autonomous, and it is known across several countries in Europe. In France, there are many local support groups who are ready to mobilize in case of an impending eviction of the “zadistes”[Name given to the residents of the ZAD].


In the autumn of 2015, in spite of the appeal of the European Commission which states that no work must be undertaken before a satisfactory answer is given by France regarding the environmental compensation measures which will be taken, the French prime-minister once again stated his desire to complete the project. On the one hand, during the COP21, French diplomacy was priding itself on leading noteworthy negotiations in order to obtain a pledge from all the countries in the world to lower their CO2 emissions; on the other, it re-started eviction proceedings of the remaining inhabitants and farmers in the ZAD. Consequently, at the beginning of 2016, strong citizens’ movements took place in Nantes and in several other cities in France. The government therefore announced that a referendum will be held. It was soon renamed a “consultation” and was geographically limited to only one French department, Loire-Atlantique.

Currently, the Committee of the opposing parties (over 50 groups- associations, communities, unions and political movements) decrying this charade of a democracy, appealed to the citizens for them to massively attend the polls and vote NO in order to not give leeway to the project managers. Such a consultation cannot by itself legitimize a disastrous airport project which would damage nourishing lands and wetland areas of great biological richness.
In December 2015, about 40 peasants from La Via Campesina went to ZAD to give their support for this symbolic struggle for the land. We hope the consultation in the coming weeks is only one more step in this long fight to completely stop this useless cementing project; one more step so that in Europe, as everywhere else in the world, the awareness of the importance of the land in producing our food continues to spread.

[1] Niger, Nigeria, Togo and Benin joined the Caravan in Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso. Ghana joined in Bobo-Dioulasso in Burkina Faso. Côte d’Ivoire joined in Sikasso in Mali, Mauritania in Rosso north of Senegal, Guinea Conakry in Tambacounda (Senegal). Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Sierra Léone joined in Kaolack.

[2] In West Africa comprise more than 300 organizations and networks representing victims of land and water grabbing in rural, peri-urban and urban areas; evictees of popular districts; youth; women and; NGOs from 15 countries of ECOWAS and the West African Economic and Monetary Union.

In the Spotlight

Newsletter no 26 - Land reform and food sovereignty

Marabá Declaration

International Conference of Agrarian Reform
Marabá, Pará, Brasil, 13- 17 April 2016 [Full version available here.]

There are ever more cases of land-, forest- and water-grabbing, attacks against democracy and popular will, political prisoners, etc. in Latin America, Asia Africa, Europe and North America. In the current historical period, we are witnessing the emergence of an alliance between financial capital, transnational corporations, imperialism, broad sectors within national states (almost without regard to their purported ideology), particularly but not only judicial and public security institutions, the private sectors in industrial agriculture, fishing and food (including agribusiness and aquaculture), mining, construction, forestry and other extractive sectors, and the mainstream media. The members of this new alliance are promoting an avalanche of privatizations, grabbing and taking over the commons and public goods, such as land, water resources, forests, seeds, cattle raising, fisheries, glaciers and entire territories. In order to achieve their goals, they are using financialization to convert everything into commodities, free trade and investment agreements, the corruption of our politicians and leaders, control of the mass media and financial system, and mergers and acquisitions of companies.

The offensive of Capital is threatening rural life and our entire society, including our health, Mother Earth, the climate, biodiversity, and our peoples and cultures. Mass migration, the destruction of the social fabric of our communities, urban sprawl, insecurity, agrochemicals, GMOs, junk food, the homogenization of diets, global warming, the destruction of mangrove forests, the acidification of the sea, the depletion of fish stocks, and the loss of anything that resembles democracy, are all symptoms of what is taking place.

Any resistance by rural peoples is demonized by the mainstream media, as organizations, their leaders and supporters face repression, criminalization, persecution, assassinations, enforced disappearances, illegitimate jailing, administrative detentions, sexual harassment and rape. Laws are being changed to criminalize peasant and working class struggles even more, as well as granting total impunity to perpetrators of crimes against peasants, workers, fisherfolk, indigenous peoples and all rights defenders.

We ask, which is better? Do we want a countryside without peasants, trees or biodiversity? Do we want a countryside full of monocultures and feedlots, agrochemicals and GMOs, producing exports and junk food, causing climate change and undermining the adaptive capacity of communities? Do we want pollution, illness, and massive migration to cities? Or do we want a countryside made up of the food producing territories of peasants, indigenous peoples, family farmers, artisanal fisherfolk, and other rural peoples, based on human dignity and diverse knowledges and cosmovisions, with trees, biodiversity, and the agroecological production of healthy food, which cool the planet, produce food sovereignty and take care of Mother Earth?

In this sense, we consider the proposal of our Brazilian comrades for a Popular Agrarian Reform, an agrarian reform not only for landless peasants, but for all of the working classes and for all of society. This agroecological and territorial approach to agrarian reform can only be won through class struggle and direct confrontation of the project of Capital, including its profits, media outlets and its national and international agents. This is an agrarian reform to maximize the potential of peasant agriculture, economy and territory.

Throughout the Americas, Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, our organizations, movements and convergences are putting forth similar proposals and territorial approaches in their dispute with the global project of Capital. These include the convergence among our diverse popular and traditional knowledges and ways of knowing the world in agroecology, artisanal fishing, traditional herding, and in our diverse strategies and ways of life. Our proposals, though similar, differ based on the nature of our different realities. In places where land is concentrated in few hands, we struggle for its redistribution.

In some countries, we speak of an “agrarian revolution.” In places where our peoples still hold onto their lands and territories, we struggle to defend those territories, and prevent land and water grabbing. Meanwhile, in places where land was nationalized and is now being conceded to foreign entities by governments, we struggle for the return of ancestral land rights to our communities. The fisherfolk among us speak of the struggle for the recovery and defence of artisanal fishing territories. In Europe we have once again taken up the strategy of land occupations, and organized struggles against land use changes, making clear to all that the problems of land grabbing and concentration are also a growing problem in Northern countries. In Palestine we struggle against a brutal occupation and we call to boycott Israeli products. And everywhere, there are burning struggles by young people to access land and other resources.

We have achieved great victories, such as the massive agrarian reform carried out after peoples’ land occupations and recuperations in Zimbabwe, the “Education for and by the Countryside” policy in Brazil, the cancellations of mining concessions and plantations in many parts of Africa and Asia, and the permanence of Cuba’s agrarian reform and its successful “peasant-to-peasant” agroecology movement. We also have partial but promising victories, such as the possibility of a large scale agrarian reform in Indonesia, for which we must mobilize in order to make our governments follow through on their promises.

Our challenges

– We will transform the struggle for land into the struggle for territory, along with developing a new productive model for food sovereignty, based on a more “independent” agroecology by using our own local resources and inputs and recovering our ancestral knowledges.

– We will organize the struggle for public policies supporting peasant and small farmer production as well as health, education, culture and sports in our communities.

– We will carry out our political and ideological training on a mass scale, fortify our work with our membership and our work with the masses, in order to improve the internal structure and operation of our organizations, and progressively integrate the leadership and participation of woman and youth.

– We will confront the ways by which the mass media demonize our movements and promote the culture of consumption and the hollowing out of democracy. We will work hard to build our own media, which foster dialogues with our membership as well as with the working class and the entire society.

– We will oppose more effectively the criminalization and repression of our movements as well as militarization, and organize an international struggle in support of our political prisoners. We will organize an ongoing solidarity campaign that will be based on the principle of sharing what we have rather than on sharing only what we don’t need.

– We will continue to carry out our permanent task of building class alliances, without dependencies, between the country and the city, between food producers and consumers, and with progressive researchers, academics and support organisations that share our vision.

– We will denounce and oppose so-called “anti-terrorist” laws and their use against our legitimate struggles.

– We will oppose the institutional tendency (for example by the World Bank, FAO, and some academia and NGOs) to try to dilute the content of concepts such as “agrarian reform” and “agroecology”, by launching “light” versions of these concepts, as in “access to land”, “corporate social responsibility” and “industrial organic” food production in monocultures, with the objective of green-washing agribusiness.

– We will struggle to achieve international mechanisms to defend and support our visions and strategies that are not “voluntary” but rather compulsory and actionable.

– We will strengthen the participation of women and youth in our social movements. We will develop mechanisms to increase the number of youth who remain in the countryside. We will struggle against the dominant model of patriarchy in the capitalist system, and demand the full rights of peasant and indigenous women to land, water and territory.

Newsletter no 26 – Editorial

Newsletter no 26 - Land reform and food sovereignty

Land reform and food sovereignty

A wave of financial capital is crashing down upon the resources held in rural corners of the planet in the world today. In this process we see a financialization of rural goods and assets along with a (re)capitalizing of capitalistic extractive efforts through agribusiness. This is especially apparent in terms of monocrop exports, forestry plantations, agrofuels, mining companies and in the construction of megaprojects like dams, highways and tourist complexes. This in turn translates into land grabbing, dispossession, eviction, displacement and migration. Furthermore, peoples are criminalized, social protest stifled and our movements and struggles vilified by the media.

Capital is appropriating our territories. Hence, we must respond by turning the struggle for land into a struggle for territory. This will require forging unions between –on one side– peasant farmers, day laborers, indigenous peoples, nomad shepherds, artisan fishermen, forest peoples and other rural communities, and –on another– city dwellers, especially those in suburban communities and consumers. It will require producing healthy food using agroecology and know-how handed down from our ancestors and steeped in popular traditions. We must show that land in community hands is better for society and Mother Earth than land which is at the mercy of capital.

La Via Campesina


« In our world-views, we are being who come from the Earth, from the water and from corn. The Lenca people are ancestral guardians of the rivers, in turn protected by the spirits of young girls, who teach us that giving our lives in various ways for the protection of the rivers is giving our lives for the well-being of humanity and of this planet. ( …)
Let us wake up ! Let us wake up, humankind! We are out of time. We must shake our conscience free of the rapacious capitalism, racism and patriarchy that will only assure our own self-destruction. »
Berta Cáceres [Berta was a leader from the indigenous rights organisation COPINH in Honduras, assassinated on March 3, 2016 for her struggle in the defense of her people, their territory and water.]

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Land reform and food sovereignty, no 26

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Voices from the field

Newsletter no 25 - Corporate governance of food systems

Voices from the field 1

Fisherfolks say no to the coastal fisheries initiative

World Forum of Fisher Peoples (WFFP) and World Forum of Fish Harvesters and Fish Workers (WFF)

FAO, the World Bank, Conservation International and others have launched in June 2015 the Coastal Fisheries Initiative (CFI), a wide reaching program aiming at the reform of fisheries policy across the world. Through a period of 4 years, 235 million USD will be distributed through a number of projects in countries spanning Latin America, Africa and South-East Asia.

We, as representatives of over 20 million fisher people, wish to express our firm opposition to the CFI, which directly contradict the implementation of the recently endorsed Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries (VGSSF).

The program framework document (PFD) of the CFI has been developed and written in a top-down process, involving an exclusive set of people from Global Environmental Facility (GEF), one of the main sponsors of the initiative. CFI contravened the basic principle of participation of the VGSSF, which emphasizes that affected small-scale fishing communities should be involved in decision-making prior to decisions being taken. We were reduced to the level of other ‘stakeholders’ on par with private sector representatives, academics etc., although we represent the ones most affected by the CFI.

Consequently, it became clear to us that the programs for the targeted countries of CFI all focus on implementing Rights-Based Fisheries (RBF). RBF approach disregards existing local management and governance systems and fails to acknowledge that problems in fisheries result mainly of poor governance or management, ascribing inefficiencies to a lack of private property [See also “The Global Ocean Grab”]. The privatization process generated by RBF clearly benefits a small elite, while dispossesses the majority.

The introduction of RBF in the targeted countries and everywhere else would stand in direct contrast to the progressive content of the VGSSF, which stresses the need for a human rights-based approach as a key tool to poverty reduction. In this light, CFI introduces policies clearly prioritizing the interests of the private sector and/or narrow environmental concerns.

Therefore, we have declined an invitation to become a member of the CFI-steering committee. Accepting the invitation, where the content of the CFI is already clearly defined, would legitimize the RBF-policies that we have spent years fighting against. It would be a huge blow to the implementation of the VGSSF, which we continue to strive for.

Voices from the field 2

Wilmar: no land for sale*

Friends of the Earth US and Nigeria

The oil palm tree is native to West Africa and palm oil, in its rawest form, is a staple of the West African diet. However, what is non-native, and is having drastic impacts in the Nigerian rain forest province of Cross River State, is the industrial-scale expansion of palm oil plantations by the world’s largest palm oil trading company, Wilmar International. Since 2010, Wilmar has acquired 30,000 of hectares of land for palm oil plantations in southeastern Nigeria, and has already expanded its Nigerian land bank to hundreds of thousands of hectares.

Nigeria is one of ten African countries that have signed on to the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, the G8 countries’ strategy to mobilize large-scale foreign investment in Africa’s agricultural sector. As a New Alliance partner, Wilmar may be “guaranteed land acquisition”, benefit from “low average wages”, and be given tax holidays in a process designed to “make it easier to do business in Nigeria.” However, the New Alliance may do more harm than good to small-scale food producers, by increasing the risk of land grabs while undermining land rights and land tenure.

Friends of the Earth’s report, “Exploitation and empty promises: Wilmar’s Nigerian land grab” reveals that Wilmar’s recent acquisition in Cross River State has left local people destitute, and threatens protected forest areas that are home to some of Africa’s greatest biodiversity. One farmer recently displaced by Wilmar’s Nigerian operations said, “By taking our farms, Wilmar is declaring us dead.”

Therefore, Wilmar International and its subsidiaries in Nigeria should, among others:
1 – Halt its expansion plans effective immediately;
2 – Publish all concession maps, Socio-Environmental Impact Assessments, employment policies, minutes of community consultations;
3 – Thoroughly review and overhaul its protocols for seeking the Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) in line with global best practices; and reinitiate a process of open consultation with all affected people.

Besides, the Nigerian government should encourage and incentivize small-holder agricultural production and undertake a process of reforming its land tenure systems in line with FAO Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security.
In the words of Friends of the Earth Nigeria and Rainforest Resources Development Centre, “If Wilmar fails to improve its operations, the company had better pack and go.”

* Text based on “Exploitation and empty promises: Wilmar’s Nigerian land grab” summary, available here.

Voices from the field 3

Corporate capture of cities in Honduras: a special threat to women*

Andrea Nuila and Ismael Moreno

Charter Cities are tiny states within the State: they are territories that are released and handed over to third parties. In the 2010-2013 legislative period, the Honduran National Congress, comprised by a majority of lawmakers that supported the 2009 coup d’État, approved the Charter Cities’ bill. Citizen opposition saw this as an act of treason to the country and forced the Supreme Court to declare this bill as unconstitutional in October 2012. Even so, a new version of the bill was approved in 2013.

For the political and business elite, Charter Cities are not uncommon. They are an extended form of the maquila industry, imposed since the 90s: real tax havens where human trafficking is practiced with policies that ignore the Labor Code and dismiss workers arbitrarily.
The so-called Organic Law on Zones for Employment and Economic Development (Charter Cities’ bill) allows pieces of territory to be handed over and administered by one or several countries or transnational corporations, creating autonomous cities oriented to encourage foreign investment.

A Charter City within the territory of a country with an economic, social and politically failed society will increase inequality and deepen imbalances to unsustainable extremes. Especially women and feminist organizations have raised their voices and added their concerns regarding the negative impacts that such “special zones” will inevitably generate against the body and life of women nationwide.

It is important to highlight that women in Honduras already live in an extremely violent patriarchal society (1 woman killed every 16 hours) that is reinforced by impunity, criminalization of women rights defenders and an institutional discrimination against women. In the rural areas, where the majority of the Charter Cities are being planned, high rates of violence against women prevail together with an increasing number of evictions, limited access to healthcare and to natural resources.
Peasants, indigenous and afro-descendant women will undoubtedly be the most affected groups from the construction of such cities. According to Garifuna leader Miriam Miranda, with the construction of the Charter Cities, the Honduran government is putting 70% of the Garifuna territory (afro-descendant communities) at risk.
An absent State and the possibility of Charter Cities to provide public services, to decide over local norms and discretion over tax regulations will only put women in a more vulnerable position.

* Text based on “A Charter City Amidst a Tattered Society” published in FIAN’s “Right to Food Journal 2015”, vol. 10.

Voices from the field 4

Dematerialization of seeds: the case of “DivSeek”

La Via Campesina

After a week of arduous debates at the FAO headquarters in Rome, on 9 October 2015, the Governing Body of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food Agriculture, the Seed Treaty, in its sixth session had to choose between plague and cholera: to accept as fait accompli its irregular “governance arrangements”, to say the least, or to sink into an open crisis.

To prevent immediate burst, it has declared valid:

1 – The commitment of its secretariat to the DivSeek program that organizes biopibiopracy at a global level. DivSeek aims to sequence the genomes of all varieties of the plant genetic resources stored in gene banks, working towards the electronic publication of genetic information on seeds entrusted to the gene banks, for which the Seed Treaty is responsible. It will enable the ownership of all plants that contain those sequences and which have a related characteristic. All this without including any prohibition to patent nor to share benefits, thus violating the rules of the Treaty.
2 – A resolution leaving farmers without any possibility to defend themselves against this violation of their rights, which nevertheless are stipulated in the Treaty. Patents on genetic information published by DivSeek will indeed prohibit farmers to continue to grow the seeds they have graciously given to the collections for which the Treaty is responsible.
3 – The renewal of the contract of its secretary-general, which was carried out secretly, thereby violating its own rules of procedure.

Since the ratification of the Convention on Biological Diversity in 1992, the seed industry has accumulated a huge debt by tapping into the huge reservoir of peasant seeds collected in fields worldwide without sharing any of the profits generated. In 2013 in Oman, the Treaty’s Governing Body required the seed industry to find a fair solution. So far, no progress has been made. Quite the contrary, with DivSeek, the industry organizes further pillage by letting all the seeds, in their dematerialized form, escape from the Treaty’s control, enabling patenting without any restrictions.

La Via Campesina expects a strong reaction from all the governments, which in Rome have witnessed these unacceptable diversions from the Treaty’s objectives, so that it be put back on the right track. La Via Campesina hopes that the next consultation on Farmers Rights (article 9 of the Treaty) organized by Indonesia in 2016 will make these rights a priority, guaranteeing food sovereignty against the theft of seeds by industry’s property rights.

Boxes

Newsletter no 25 - Corporate governance of food systems

Box 1

Multistakeholder governance: the corporate capture of global governance*

In 2009, the World Economic Forum (WEF) convened an international expert group to formulate a new system of global governance, the so-called Global Redesign Initiative (GRI) – a system of multi-stakeholder governance (MSG) as a partial replacement for intergovernmental decision-making [See also Nyéléni Newsletter n. 22]. The GRI program established, in 2010, 40 Global Agenda Councils and industry-sector bodies, setting up WEF’s framework for a MSG system.

What WEF means by multi-stakeholder is, first, that multi-stakeholder structures do not mean equal roles for all stakeholders; second, that the corporation is at the center of the process; and third, that the list of WEF’s multi-stakeholders is principally those with commercial ties to the company.

WEF proposals for MSG are a timely reminder that we need to take a new look at the current rules of engagement in international affairs. In my analysis, there are four options to control the drive toward MSG that is acting outside multilateralism:
1. To outlaw TNCs’ involvement in global policy-making and program implementation, as is done in the tobacco convention;
2. To rebuild the UN system, giving economic, environmental, and social decision-making the same legal mandatory status as decision-making in the Security Council;
3. To legally recognize the de facto status that civil society and TNCs have in global decision-making and design a new global institution that incorporates an appropriate political balance between these sectors and supplants the existing government-based UN system;
4. Governments should adopt a new Vienna Convention specifying the rules for how MSGs could operate as an adjunct part of multilateralism.
It is time for a broader range of other social groups, particularly those most adversely affected by globalization, to re-think how they believe global governance should work.

* This text is a short summary of Harris Gleckman’s article published in TNI’s “State of Power 2016” report.

Box 2

Multistakeholderism: a trap for peoples’ food and nutrition security*

Advocating multi-stakeholderism in the area of food and nutrition has been one of the main strategies for advancing a pro-corporate agricultural agenda that disempower small-scale farmers. One of the most advanced pilots of corporate-led multi-stakeholderism, promoted by WEF’s Global Redesign Initiative (GRI), is the Global Food, Agriculture and Nutrition Redesign Initiative (GFANRI), established in 2010.

GFANRI has integrated several initiatives including the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), the African Green Revolution Association (AGRA), the G8 New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition for Africa, the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Task Force on the Global Food Security Crisis (HLTF), the Global Partnership for Agriculture and Food Security, and the Scale Up Nutrition (SUN) initiative.

These multi-stakeholder bodies advocate policies based on a belief that the liberalization of international trade can guarantee global and national food and nutrition security (FNS) with no need for specific global or national governance, and aim to:
1. Restrict the political mandate of the FAO to providing agricultural technical assistance;
2. Dismantle the Committee on World Food Security (CFS); and
3. Close the UN Standing Committee on Nutrition (SCN), the UN harmonizing body of global nutrition.

Throughout 2015, this strategy has advanced even more, with close allies of SUN seeking to increase its visibility and role within the CFS and UN Secretary General announcing he would nominate the new coordinator of SUN. The overall drive has been to progressively transfer governance from intergovernmental to multi-stakeholder spaces, strongly influenced, if not led, by the interests and agenda of the private corporate sector.

The peoples of the world must call on states to reject corporate capture and the logic of “multi-stakeholderism” and reaffirm people’s sovereignty and human rights as a fundamental step to addressing all forms of inequity, oppression and discrimination, and to democratize national and global societies.

* This text is a short summary of Flavio Valente’s article published in TNI’s “State of Power 2016” report.

Box 3

On the move to Dismantle Corporate Power

The global Campaign to Dismantle Corporate Power and Stop Impunity & for Peoples Sovereignty was launched by a network of over 100 organizations, movements and affected communities from all over the world during the Rio+20 Conference in 2012 in response to the UN corporate agenda to further the privatization, commoditization and financialization of nature.

The Campaign has built a Peoples Treaty which articulates the views, strategies and proposals undertaken by a diversity of social actors aiming to dismantle corporate power.
The Peoples Treaty is divided in two sections – the first outlines the successful implementation of social, political and economic alternatives that have liberated politics and territories from corporate greed and power.

The second part presents concrete and in depth proposals for an internationally legally binding system to bring TNCs to justice for their human rights violations and was presented prior to the historic vote in the UN Human Rights Council that established an ongoing open ended intergovernmental working group (IGWG) to elaborate a UN Treaty to regulate TNCs and other business enterprises.

The UN Treaty is an opportunity to establish obligations under International law for TNCs to respect all human rights; to establish an international court for giving access to justice and remedy for victims and to judge TNCs liability and impose sanctions to TNCs for their environmental crimes, as well to challenge corporate capture at UN level.
While TNCs are the object of the Treaty they are not, as perpetrators, in a position to define juridical instruments or sanctions they would be willing accept – unlike the voluntary guidelines and corporate social responsibility tools they helped define when invited as “stakeholders” by a UN more and more dominated by TNCs interests.

The recognition of Peasants’ rights, which is now part of language and object of the UN agenda –and also needs to be kept out of corporate takeover – is an inspiration to the movements working to control TNCs and stop their impunity. The convergence of both struggles empowers us to dismantle corporate power and build peoples sovereignty on a sustainable world free of all forms of exploitation.

In the spotlight

Newsletter no 25 - Corporate governance of food systems

Identifying the patterns: crimes and abuses by TNCs*

Transnational corporations (TNCs) have become leading actors in accelerating global trade during the last decades, thereby redefining modes of production and patterns of consumption, as well as prompting social and environmental consequences. There is an increasing number of cases of TNCs and other business enterprises severely restricting the enjoyment of all rights. These societal actors have been involved in offenses against economic, social and cultural rights, as well as breaching civil and political rights. Despite the principle of the indivisibility and interdependency of human rights, enshrined in the International Bill of Human Rights, TNCs have impeded the full realization of the right to adequate food and nutrition of individuals and communities, especially of those most disadvantaged and marginalized.

TNCs’ threats and offenses against the right to food and nutrition

TNCs and other business enterprises have the potential to adversely impact on peoples’ food sovereignty. Extractive industries, agribusinesses, programs for the compensation of CO2 emissions, tourism and megaprojects are some of the main causes of forced evictions and displacements of people from public lands, forests, grazing lands and mobility routes, which they use to collect or produce food [Illustrated by cases such as Mubende and Benet in Uganda, el Hatillo in Colombia, GuaraniKaiowá in Brazil, and Sawhoyamaya in Paraguay].

In addition to denying people access to productive resources, business activities also negatively affect the access to natural resources and harm ecosystems, which are crucial for communities to feed themselves and their families. The spreading of agro-chemicals not only destroys crops and poisons animals but also harms the health of agricultural workers and food consumers.

The human right to adequate food and nutrition is further jeopardized by TNCs’ labor practices, based on the subcontracting of cheap workforce. Agricultural workers, for instance, are victims of modern forms of slavery, forced labor, non-payment of wages, illegal detention, and unsafe working conditions. On top of that, rural women workers are severely discriminated, with unequal pay, social marginalization and sexual harassment. The human rights defenders and trade unionists that raise their voices against these injustices are physically and psychologically harassed and criminalized through private armed forces and are prevented from a due process of law.

TNCs’ commercial practices also severely harm peoples’ right to food. By dumping their products on small food producers’ markets, they impede the economic subsistence of farming communities who are unable to compete with the prices of imported products. To maintain low costs and high profit, these products may be unsafe, causing physical and mental diseases to the consumers, including diabetes, obesity and depression. Breast milk substitutes, highly-industrialized and with elevated levels of added sugar, are an example of such harmful products.

Additionally, the access to adequate food and nutrition is harmed by price-fixing cartels, buyer cartels or other cartels, when companies manipulate food and agricultural prices, rendering basic food products too expensive for many families. The abusive loan conditions imposed on small farmers, as well as the speculation with land and other natural resources, which cause food price volatility, further contribute to the impoverishment and high rates of suicide of small farmers – one finds such cases in countries like India, Belgium and France. Finally, TNCs’ complicity with States in food blockades during armed conflicts has deadly consequences by impeding entire populations from accessing food, as in some communities in Colombia.

The hurdles to stopping impunity

Unfortunately, the victims of such human rights offenses are often left without any effective legal remedy. Meanwhile, a great number of TNCs continue to operate with gross impunity. A series of structural hurdles to stopping impunity and achieving remedy for victims have been observed. Amongst them, one finds the lack of regulation, monitoring, investigation and sanction of businesses in the countries where the harm takes place, due to States’ lack of will or capacity.

Many States lack effective criminal, civil and administrative mechanisms capable of holding national and transnational companies liable for human rights offenses and abuses. Furthermore, where mechanisms are available, the implementation of protective judicial decisions is often undermined by undue corporate influence on the authorities responsible for implementing them.

Home and host States’ reticence to regulate TNCs and other enterprises of transnational character and to provide effective remedies to victims of corporate human rights abuses have prompted the elaboration of different international regulatory frameworks. However, these frameworks fail to include clear and obligatory international standards on the duties of States regarding crimes and abuses by TNCs and other business enterprises, ignoring their territorial and extraterritorial human rights obligations.

How states are failing

States have failed to regulate, monitor, adjudicate and enforce judicial decisions regarding abuses perpetrated by TNCs, towards ensuring the liability of the involved companies and enable individuals and communities to access effective remedies. The undue influence and lack of cooperation of States where the parent companies of TNCs are headquartered, impedes States from effectively complying with their obligation to protect human rights and to enforce judicial decisions.
Furthermore, the home States of TNCs – or those where controlling legal entities are based – very often fail to comply with their extraterritorial obligations to protect and respect human rights, by influencing the drafting of laws that are favorable to the investments of their “national companies”, which cause harm to human rights beyond their national borders.

An additional hurdle to stopping impunity and achieving a remedy for victims stems from the complex nature of global supply chains, where manufacturing and services are subcontracted at different levels. Currently, difficulties exist in determining the liability of the diverse legal entities involved in human rights abuses, such as the companies in a parental-filial relationship, a contractual relationship, a supply chain relationship or those who have a business link with the company directly involved in an abuse [It was the case of the Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh].

Last but not least, the inclusion of arbitration clauses in investment and trade agreements, such as investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) [For instance, in the case of the Tran-Pacific Partnership (TTP) trade agreement], has opened the door for companies to present claims against States when the latter decide to suspend the implementation of such agreements in order to protect the human rights of their citizens. The arbitration tribunals, as private justice mechanisms in which the application of human rights and the access to traditional justice systems are fully excluded, are blocking the compliance of States with their international human rights obligations, causing systematic violations to these rights, including the right to food and nutrition [Such as the case of Chevron vs. Ecuadorian citizens on alleged oil pollution].

Corporate impunity and States’ non-compliance with their international human rights obligations have spurred civil society to claim for an international binding instrument (treaty) [Such as the Treaty Alliance, which is comprised of a large and growing group of human rights organizations, platforms, social movements and affected communities]. An Intergovernmental Working Group at the UN level is, since 2014, in charge of drafting such an instrument to regulate TNCs and other business enterprises with regard to human rights. This will hopefully oblige States to regulate and sanction activities of TNCs and other businesses in their or in other countries’ territories where they exercise jurisdiction [Extraterritorial Obligations Maastricht Principles, 2011, Principle 9, “Scope of jurisdiction”]. With such a future treaty, human rights-minded individuals and civil society groups aim to put an end to such corporate impunity and ensure adequate remedy for the affected individuals and communities.

* Ana-Maria Suárez Franco and Daniel Fyfe. This article was first published in FIAN’s “Right to Food Journal 2015”, vol. 10.

Newsletter no 25 – Editorial

Newsletter no 25 - Corporate governance of food systems

Blocking the path of corporate governance of food systems

Illustration: Daniel Pudles, danielpudles.co.uk

From our oceans and seashores, crossing our lands and reaching deep into the minerals of our earth, there is a dangerous threat dominating our current political and economic relations around the world: the so-called private corporate capture of policy-making public spaces. For decades, civil society and social movements have been struggling to democratically strengthen these spaces in order to achieve the so needed peoples’ food sovereignty. But this process is under a severe threat these days.

In this Nyéléni Newsletter, we raise our voices against the growing power transnational corporations (TNCs) are gaining and the negative impact this is having on people’s lives. In times we witness the reproduction of colonial relations, where private actors – especially TNCs – have weakened and blurred the role of states, particularly within intergovernmental policy-making spaces – including the UN – every attempt to establish a global “multi-stakeholder governance” must rapidly be ruled out.

Water, seeds, land and other essential natural resources are becoming, more and more, part of the business of a small group of TNCs. This “corporatization” has been developed within the context of global initiatives such as the Global Redesign Initiative (GRI), spearheaded by the World Economic Forum (WEF). This represents a growing privatization of the governance of peoples’ food systems and nutrition, and initiatives based on this GRI logic, such as the Scaling-Up Nutrition (SUN), Coastal Fisheries Initiative (CFI) or the G8 New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition for Africa, are definitely “no-go” solutions for the peoples.

Such initiatives also represent the erosion of the role of states at international political fora – and therefore of people’s sovereignty, as they put private speculation above public interests. This leads to a kind of “corporate colonialism”, where even seeds’ genetic mapping – as proposed by “DivSeek” – happens to be a form of dispossessing peasants.

On top of that, the absence of public policies and states’ commitment to their human rights obligations have led to the TNCs pursuing their activities with impunity. As echoed in this edition, crimes committed by TNCs against communities in Nigeria or the privatization of cities in Honduras, show the urgent need for states to start urgently regulating TNC’s actions. This is also why civil society call for an international binding instrument to fully regulate and sanction TNCs’ activities as a very first step to protect and reaffirm peoples’ sovereignty globally.
Together with social movements and civil society organizations, we must work to reinvent and rebuild public policy spaces at the local, national, regional and international levels. Only through a strong linkage between these spheres, can peoples’ sovereignty be exercised worldwide.

Sofia Monsalve, FIAN International

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Corporate governance of food systems, no 25

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