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African Civil Society Refuses To Engage With UNFSS Without Radical Change

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4 years ago

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Members of the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa 

Dr. Agnes Kalibata 

Special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General for the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit 

Prerequisites for engaging with the UNFSS 

Dear Dr. Kalibata 

AFSA acknowledges your invitation of 17th September 2020 to be part of the champions group and represent African civil society. At first, we declined, for reasons set out below. However, after careful deliberation, we, the undersigned 36 network members of AFSA, came to a consensus that we would be prepared to engage with the United Nations Food Systems Summit (UNFSS), scheduled to take place in September 2021 in New York, USA, dependant upon the UNFSS agreeing to the conditions set out below. 

AFSA initially welcomed the UN Secretary-General’s announcement to convene the world Food Systems Summit in 2021 with profound hope and enormous optimism. The food systems transformation agenda is long overdue, and many social movements and civil society actors, in Africa and globally, have been fighting for systemic and structural transformation of food systems, stressing the urgent need for a radical shift from fossil fuel-based industrial agriculture and corporate monopolies of food and agriculture to food sovereignty and agroecology. 

However, our genuine hope for a vibrant, inclusive, and democratic summit on food systems transformation has consistently been eroded. Below, we declare the reasons that pushed AFSA to officially refuse the invitation and set conditions for engaging with the UNFSS summit. 

Industrial agriculture is a key driver of biodiversity loss and a significant contributor to carbon emissions. Further, as COVID-19 illustrates, there are complex interactions among deforestation, reduced biological diversity, ecosystem destruction, and human health and safety, in large part driven by globalised agricultural and food systems. Exposure to existing and emerging pathogens, as ecosystem destruction continues and essential protective barriers provided by nature are breached, are tremendous public health threats. 

The inextricable connections between climate change, deforestation and industrial agriculture – a prime mechanism of agrarian extractivism and extractivist development – drive social and political instability and food insecurity on the continent, which further fuel the systemic, existential crises we face globally. 

Development interventions to date have and continue to reinforce indebtedness, inequalities and social exclusion. They deepen dependency on destructive, short-sighted and short-lived fossil fuel and capital intensive projects, and global agricultural and forest value chains, which all contribute to creating conditions for extreme vulnerability to shocks, including but not limited to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Rapid and unplanned urbanisation, with the consequent shift in the labour force from largely food producing to non-food producing jobs, and a rising African middle class, is affecting rural land use and changing our food systems. The rapid erosion of Africa’s culture coincides with the degradation of our soils, which is becoming a major issue affecting the livelihoods of many, while the growing retail/supermarket sector is also destroying and displacing local food systems and local markets. 

Yet Africa remains essentially a continent of smallholder food producers. Solutions will only work for Africa if they work for millions of farmers, pastoralists, fisherfolks, indigenous communities, custodians of nature, and women and youth in the food system. Hence, how Africa will feed itself in a situation of rapidly changing, catastrophic and chaotic climate change, and in a manner that heals nature and cools the planet, is one of our most urgent and pressing survival questions. 

About 20% of Africans – more than 250 million people – go to bed hungry every night. At the same time, industrial ultra-processed foods and sweetened beverages have penetrated African markets – many of which are high in sugar, salt, saturated fats and preservatives, thus contributing to the spread of non-communicable diseases, such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and cancer. This has also contributed to a major rise in excess weight and obesity, with the rate of overweight children under five having increased by nearly 24% since 2000. And affected populations are more vulnerable to COVID-19. 

Fiscal policies and regulations, such as sugar taxes, labelling of unhealthy foods, and restricting marketing, often face strong opposition from large food companies that dominate markets. Thus, Africa faces a triple burden of hunger, malnutrition, and obesity and ill health from poor quality food. Clearly, the people of Africa are facing a multitude of intertwined crises linked to changes in our farming and food systems. 

Even so, Africa has much to offer its citizens and to the world. With appropriate redirection of policies and investment, the wealth of our seed, agrobiodiversity, land, vibrant cultures and nature can contribute to solving the food crisis affecting so many of our people. 

The answer lies in our collective ability to effect holistic and systemic transformation of our food systems. Such a fundamental transformation would tackle the climate crisis, lift millions out of chronic poverty, help our people defeat hunger, nurture a healthy life for all, revive vibrant cultural practices, address structural inequality, and rejuvenate the biosphere. 

We are deeply concerned that the current rushed, corporate-controlled, unaccountable and opaque process for this UNFSS will not lead towards the transformation we envision of revitalised, sustainable and healthy food systems. A summit geared towards repeating the agri-business-as-usual model to solve the food and climate crisis cannot deliver on this visionary future. 

The current multi-stakeholder approach and structure of the UNFSS give major influence over our food system to a few corporations and philanthro-capitalists, many of whom are part of the problems. We are profoundly concerned that the UNFSS will be used as a conduit to echo the business-as-usual, quick-technofix policy prescriptions of the agribusiness agendas. 

The science is clear. Climate chaos, land-use change and erosion, and alarming biodiversity loss are the biggest existential threats to all life forms on Earth. The industrial food chain and corporate concentration around food and agriculture is the primary driver of many of the underpinning crises that humanity faces today – including health, hunger, malnutrition, deforestation, land degradation, loss of soil fertility, structural injustice and inequality. 

Nothing short of a fundamental rethink of our food systems will reverse the trajectory of chaos and crises. Incremental change is no longer enough. “Agriculture at the Crossroads,” the 2009 report by the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), clearly indicated more than ten years ago that the future of the food supply lies in the hands of smallholder and peasant farmers. That report is still relevant today, with several of its authors having issued a follow-up earlier this year titled “Transformation of Our Food Systems: The Making of A Paradigm Shift”. 

Agroecology is an alternative bottom-up paradigm that fundamentally addresses the nexus of environmental, economic, cultural and social regeneration in agriculture and overall food systems. AFSA, as part of the food sovereignty movement, stands in solidarity with peasant/family farmers, indigenous peoples, pastoralists, fishers and other citizens to exercise their fundamental human right to determine their own food and agricultural policies. AFSA stands in solidarity with thousands of farmers’ organisations and social movements worldwide to push for this holistic vision of a transition to agroecology and food sovereignty. We believe embracing agroecology is the right path to restore the damage done to our nature and cultures, cool the planet, feed the increasing population, fix the nutrition and health crisis, and build fair and just economies and thriving livelihoods. We demand that agroecology is put at the centre of the recommendations coming from the FSS. 

The current UNFSS process gives little space to traditional ecological knowledge, the celebration of traditional diets and cuisine, and the social sciences, which are critical for the future of our food system. Indigenous and local community Africans have experience and knowledge relevant to the current and future food system. Any process or outcome that does not recognise this is an affront to millions of African food producers and consumers. 

Therefore, AFSA must see the following conditions fulfilled before we engage with the summit: 

– A transition to agroecology should be central to any outcomes of the UNFSS, based on the 13 principles of agroecology outlined in the High Level Panel of Experts for Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE) report on agroecology and how these can effectively be implemented globally in support of the Sustainable Development Goals. 

– The formal FSS process should establish an additional track to focus on the transformation of corporate food systems to food sovereignty, as also demanded by the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism (CSM) of the Committee on World Food Security. 

– The CSM should be given the mandate to lead proceedings of this 6th Action Track, in collaboration with relevant UN bodies and governments, and attention must be given to cross-cutting implications in the other Action Tracks. 

– The traditional knowledge and practices of people, inclusive of Indigenous peoples, must be included in all processes and outcomes in a clear and demonstrable way. 

– The AFSA strongly believes that the ideal and legitimate forum to host and facilitate debates as significant, complex, and crucial as rethinking global food systems should remain under the United Nation’s Committee for World Food Security (CFS). 

– The FSS must commit to turning over any recommendations or outcomes to the CFS for implementation, and commit resources to strengthening the CFS and reversing its capture by corporate interests and governments. 

Sincerely, 

Original Source: afsafrica.org

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NGO WORK

Communities stand up against corporate land grabs and State violence

Published

7 days ago

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May 6, 2025

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Across the global South, communities that oppose corporate control of their territories face not only corporate violence but also tear gas, batons and state repression. Challenging the expedient misinterpretation of “all land belongs to the State” that governments use to protect corporate interests, communities stand strong in the struggle to reclaim their ancestral lands “because it is a sacred place; it is a place that gives meaning to our existence.”

This editorial is about the courage and determination of communities who are mobilizing to denounce and resist corporate control over community lands. Often, they face not only corporate violence and control over their lands but also tear gas, batons and state repression unleashed by governments resorting to ‘a greedy misinterpretation of “all land belongs to the State”’ to protect corporate interests. (1)

This is what has been happening in the Litoral region of Cameroon, where the community of Apouh à Ngog is opposing the replanting of industrial oil palm plantations on their ancestral lands by Socapalm, a Cameroonian subsidiary of the notorious multinational Socfin. For nearly 50 years, the company operations have been making life miserable for the community of Apouh à Ngog, whose original village site was eradicated by the corporate oil palm plantations decades ago.

As Socapalm replaces sections of old oil palm plantations, it not only ignores community requests for retrocession of vital spaces immediately around the village; the new company plantings are creeping even closer to the village edge. “If they do not stop these operations, the women who live close to Socapalm in Edéa will have to endure another 50 years of suffering, abuse, rape, theft, hunger, frustration and violation of our rights, our privacy and our dignity”. This is what the Association of Women Neighbouring SOCAPALM Edéa (AFRISE) explains in a petition calling for an end to this occupation of the village’s vital life spaces by RSPO-certified Socapalm. (2)

In January 2025, the women of AFRISE planted banana saplings on some 35 hectares of disputed land being prepared for replanting by Socapalm. The company sprayed the young banana plants with chemicals shortly after and on 24 March, returned under the protection of dozens of armed military personnel to continue the replanting. Overcoming fear and facing tear gas and batons, the community stood in the way of the company’s bulldozers, blocking the corporate replanting for days. As the company forged on with its planting, over 60 organisations called for an immediate stop to the continued corporate encroachment on the community’s ancestral lands. They also urged the government of Cameroon to guarantee vital living space for the community of Apouh à Ngog – instead of sending in armed military forces to protect the corporate interest of Socfin, a company that like few others epitomizes the colonial pattern of exploitation of the region.

It is also what has been happening in the municipality of Aracruz, in the Brazilian state of Espírito Santo, where about 1000 women from the Rural Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) took action to demand agrarian reform and against the multiple forms of violence perpetrated against women. (3) Under the slogan, “Agribusiness means violence and environmental crimes. The struggle of women is against capital”, they occupied land controlled by Suzano, the world’s largest exporter of wood pulp.  For years, the company has gone about its business with impunity, amassing large areas of fertile land and committing violations against Indigenous Peoples, quilombola and landless peasant communities. In a press release, the MST points out that “Multinationals are not worried about obtaining land in order to solve the problem of hunger in the country” and that it would be possible to settle more than 100,000 families on the 2.7 million hectares of fertile land in Brazil that are held by Suzano. In 2011, Suzano agreed to provide 22 areas occupied by the corporation for settlements of landless peasants, but the company has been failing to comply with its commitment.
Just as AFRISE in Apouh à Ngog, the women occupying the land in Aracruz vow to continue their struggle for land to grow food, as they, too, are confronted with a state siding with the company, not peasants. (4)

It is also what has been happening in Cote d’Ivoire, where 20 members of the indigenous Winnin community were arrested in December 2024. The Winnin have been voicing their opposition to the privatization of their ancestral lands at the Monogaga forest. (5) The Winnin have called these forests their home for more than six centuries. The Ivorian Ministry of Water and Forests, meanwhile, granted a concession to Roots Wild Foundation whose operations have already been causing conflict with the communities. The arrests and the threats to individuals of the Winnin prior to their detention highlight serious concerns about the criminalization of land defenders in the region.

It is also what is happening in Indonesia, in Papua, and across the Mekong region, as we read in two declarations we share in this edition of the bulletin. In Papua, the Solidaritas Merauke Movement came together to share stories of collective suffering and trauma caused by state-corporate crimes, especially in the name of what the government of Indonesia declared National Strategic Projects (PSN). The declaration, collectively prepared by the Solidaritas Merauke Movement, highlights community struggles against the dispossession of their living space by such state-corporate mega-projects that defile what communities hold sacred. In Thailand, communities from the Mekong region and Punan communities from North Kalimantan in Indonesia came together to exchange and learn about community struggles against mega-hydrodam projects.  On the occasion of the International Day of Action Against Dams on 14 March, they reaffirm through a declaration the importance of standing together to show that “we are united and firm in the collective struggle to defend our rivers, forests and futures from false green solutions and corporate greed”.

In an interview with WRM in 2018, a leader of the Akroá-Gamela Peoples in Brazil explains why despite the fear of state repression and violence from greedy corporations, communities stand strong in the struggle to reclaim their ancestral lands: “because it is a sacred place; it is a place that gives meaning to our existence.” (6)

Because land gives meaning to their existence, communities are standing up against corporate violence and governments’ greedy misinterpretation of “all land belongs to the State”. In Apouhs à Ngog, Aracruz and the many other places, communities are organizing to protect and reclaim the lands of their ancestors – The struggle continues!

WRM Secretariat

(1) WRM Bulletin 241. 2018. A Reflection from Africa: Conquer the Fear for Building Stronger Movements.  
(2) Petition. Cameroon: Testimony of women who reclaim their land back.
(3) Against capital and patriarchy, MST women hold day of struggle and occupy Suzano-owned eucalyptus plantations in Brazil.
(4) Brasil de Fato. 2025. Justiça determina despejo de ocupação de mulheres do MST em área da Suzano no ES.  
(5) Mongabay. 2025. Des leaders communautaires emprisonnés après s’être opposés à la privatisation controversée d’une forêt classée en Côte d’Ivoire.
(6) WRM Bulletin 241. 2018. Brazil: I am Kum’tum, I am of the Akroá-Gamela People.  

Source: World Rainforest Movement

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NGO WORK

Under Guise of Climate Action, the World Bank Launches Fresh Offensive on Land Rights

Published

2 weeks ago

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May 2, 2025

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  • A new report exposes the exploitation of the climate crisis by the World Bank to advance a global land grab agenda for corporate interests that will fuel dispossession across the Global South.
  • Under the guise of accessing land for climate action, the Bank intends to open lands for agribusiness, mining, and carbon offsetting schemes – while undermining Indigenous and community land rights.
  • The Bank’s agenda to change land tenure directly contradicts recommendations made by climate experts, who uphold agroecology and the protection of lands from conversion and overexploitation as real solutions to the climate crisis.

Ahead of the World Bank’s 2025 Land Conference starting on May 5th in Washington D.C., a new Oakland Institute report exposes how the financial institution is using the pretext of climate crisis to push a global land “reform” agenda that favors corporate interests at the expense of people and the planet.

Climatewash: The World Bank’s Fresh Offensive on Land Rights reveals how the Bank is appropriating climate commitments made at the Conference of the Parties (COP) to justify its multibillion-dollar initiative to “formalize” land tenure across the Global South. While the Bank claims that it is necessary “to access land for climate action,” Climatewash uncovers that its true aim is to open lands to agribusiness, mining of “transition minerals,” and false solutions like carbon credits – fueling dispossession and environmental destruction. Alongside plans to spend US$10 billion on land programs, the World Bank has also pledged to double its agribusiness investments to US$9 billion annually by 2030.

“Hijacking the climate crisis, the Bank is attempting to breathe new life and political buy-in to an agenda it has pushed in the Global South for several decades – often met with resistance from local communities against the commodification of their land for exploitation and extraction,” said Frédéric Mousseau, Policy Director of the Oakland Institute and lead author of the report. “Instead of strengthening and securing land rights, this plan will enable land grabs and exacerbate inequity and climate destruction,” he continued.

Climatewash details how the Bank’s land programs and policy prescriptions to governments dismantle collective land tenure systems and promote individual titling and land markets as the norm, paving the way for private investment and corporate takeover. These reforms, often financed through loans taken by governments, force countries into debt while pushing a “structural transformation” that displaces smallholder farmers, undermines food sovereignty, and prioritizes industrial agriculture and extractive industries.

Drawing on a thorough analysis of World Bank programs from around the world, including case studies from Indonesia, Malawi, Madagascar, the Philippines, and Argentina, Climatewash documents how the Bank’s interventions are already displacing communities and entrenching land inequality. The report debunks the Bank’s climate action rhetoric. It details how the Bank’s efforts to consolidate land for industrial agriculture, mining, and carbon offsetting directly contradict the recommendations of the IPCC, which emphasizes the protection of lands from conversion and overexploitation and promotes practices such as agroecology as crucial climate solutions.

“There is a blatant contradiction between the Bank’s narrative of accessing land for climate action and its support for industrial agriculture, which is a major driver of climate change and biodiversity loss,” said Andy Currier, Policy Analyst and co-author of the report. “The Bank’s fresh offensive on land rights highlights an untenable position of the institution. It claims to support climate action while it stands by its core objective – catering to corporate and financial powers seeking more economic growth and profits,” he concluded.

Source: oaklandinstitute.org

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NGO WORK

World Bank Fails to Remedy Harms it Caused in Tanzania, Despite a Scathing Investigation by its Inspection Panel

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1 month ago

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April 3, 2025

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Oakland, CA – A scathing investigation by the Inspection Panel of the World Bank confirms the responsibility of the Bank in enabling the expansion of Ruaha National Park and related severe human rights abuses in Tanzania. The Panel confirms “critical failures” of the institution in the planning and supervision of the Resilient Natural Resource Management for Tourism and Growth (REGROW) project that resulted in “serious harm” to communities and violated Bank’s safeguards and operating procedures.1

“The independent Inspection Panel has confirmed the Bank’s grave wrongdoing which devastated the lives of communities. Pastoralists and farmers who refused to be silenced amidst widespread government repression, are now vindicated, and Bank’s efforts to sweep human rights abuses under the rug laid bare,” said Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director of the Oakland Institute.

The REGROW project enabled the government to expand the Ruaha National Park and move ahead with eviction plans – formalized in October 2023 through Government Notice 754. The Bank directly funded TANAPA rangers who committed atrocities with no oversight. In a drastic turn from its initial defense of the project, the financial institution has been forced to recognize “weaknesses in the project design, preparation, implementation, and Bank supervision.” As a result, at least 84,000 people from 28 villages face eviction while pastoralists and farmers have suffered gruesome human rights abuses by Bank-funded rangers and over US$70 million in economic damages.

In documents made available today, the Bank’s management concedes that by “enhancing TANAPA’s capacity to enforce the law,” the project “increased the possibility of violent confrontations” between rangers and villagers. The Inspection Panel found the Bank to have failed to adequately supervise TANAPA and to be unaware of the agency’s operating framework which permits the rangers to use “excessive force,” in violation of international standards. As documented by the Institute, over the course of the project, at least 11 individuals were killed by police or rangers, five forcibly disappeared, and dozens suffered physical and psychological harm, including beatings and sexual violence. The Bank provided TANAPA rangers with 21 different types of equipment to strengthen their patrolling capacity in the project area – including bush knives that the Panel found “could potentially have been used to burn or strip naked” Maasai women in a May 2023 incident.

The Panel’s report documents the timeline of Bank’s failure to act after April 2023, when it was informed by the Oakland Institute about the abuses and violations of its safeguards. Instead, the Bank disbursed over US$33 million to the project over the next year. REGROW task team leader, Enos Esikuri, even publicly stated that the Bank was “very impressed with what is going on,” when meeting with government agencies implementing the project. In April 2024, disbursements were finally suspended as a result of Tanzania’s noncompliance with Bank safeguards, followed by cancelation of the project in November 2024.

“The World Bank failed to act after it was informed of the harms it was financing. It continued disbursements for a full year, allowing cattle seizures and farm closures to drain family savings, kept children out of school, and let TANAPA rangers murder more innocent villagers with impunity. No institution is above law and can be allowed to get away with crimes like this,” said Mittal.

The Bank’s Executive Directors, however, approved the Management Action Plan (MAP) that does not address the Panel’s findings. In blatant disregard of the facts and official documentation, the World Bank has conveniently refused to acknowledge its responsibility in allowing the park expansion, which it falsely claims took place prior to the project.  It is this expansion of Ruaha National Park that triggered murders, evictions, and decimated livelihoods. The MAP delusionally places trust in the government that there will be no resettlement while it is already well underway. The impacted communities conveyed their rejection of the MAP to the Bank’s Board and called for it to remedy the harms caused by park’s expansion by reverting boundaries to the 1998 borders, suspending livelihood restrictions, resuming basic services, and providing justice and reparations for victims.

“Instead of remedying harms identified by the Panel, the MAP patches together two projects that have nothing to do with REGROW and are in no way designed to provide redress. The Action Plan put forward by the World Bank is beyond shameful. Suggesting that tens of thousands of people forced out of their land can survive with “alternative livelihoods” such as clean cooking and microfinance is a slap on the face of the victims. It demonstrates World Bank’s continued lack of remorse for harms financed by tax dollars and makes a mockery of its own accountability mechanism. Financing of this institution – responsible for misery of the poor instead of ending poverty – must be challenged,” commented Mittal.

Despite fear of retribution from Tanzania’s repressive regime, the impacted communities were relentless in demanding justice till they forced the cancellation of the project. “For years we have waited for the World Bank to fix the disaster it created. Today the Board of the Bank has undoubtedly failed in its own mission, but we will not give up, no matter what it takes,” said a community representative.

“The World Bank’s financing commitments for operations in Tanzania amount to US$10 billion. It does have the leverage and authority to fix this catastrophe. The United States, as the largest shareholder and funder of the World Bank Group, must also take responsibility,” concluded Mittal.

Source: oaklandinstitute.org

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