NGO WORK
Food Sovereignty is the only solution and way forward.
Published
3 years agoon

Our fragile world faces an impending global food crisis. The impact of COVID-19 pushed more people into poverty. Lockdowns devastated family livelihoods, the economy, and disrupted supply chains. Globally, according to the Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC 2022), levels of hunger remain as alarmingly high as in 2021, around 193 million people are acutely food insecure and in need of urgent assistance across 53 countries. This acute hunger is driven by conflicts, climatic shocks, the dramatic economic and social fallout from the COVID pandemic and lately by war in Ukraine. Food commodity prices at the start of 2022 were at a 10-year high, and fuel prices at a seven-year high. The current food crisis is about affordability; even in places where food is available its cost is beyond the reach for millions of people while rising prices deepen the challenges for those barely able to pay for food in normal times.
The food crisis at the moment is unique because it is unfolding amid a more difficult global context than with the food and fuel crises of 2008. The intensity and frequency of climatic shocks have more than doubled compared with the first decade of this century. About 1.7 billion people were affected by climate-related disasters, almost 90 per cent of them became climate refugees in last 10 years. Hunger, malnutrition and poverty are harder to overcome because of on-going wars, conflicts and natural disasters. These disrupts all aspects of a food system, from the harvesting, processing and transport of food to its sale, availability and consumption.
But ending hunger isn’t only about supply. Enough food is produced today to feed everyone on the planet. The problem is access and availability of nutritious food, which is increasingly impeded by multiple challenges including the COVID-19 pandemic, conflict, climate change, inequality, rising prices and international tensions.
As the shift from multilateralism to multi-stakeholderism proliferates across UN platforms, corporations have continued to gain control of the narratives for change. Corporate power in food and agriculture systems has continued to grow too, and financialization is converting food and land into objects of speculation. The recent UNFSS process is a clear example of this tendency. The failure of the neoliberal policies and industrial agriculture (including GMOs) in increasing yields and profits led to the concentration of corporate power in few transnational corporations (TNCs) which are controlling Big Data, agricultural land, ocean resources, seeds and agrochemicals, and aim to increasingly dominate our food systems and appropriate the 80% of the food produced by Family Farmers. Financialization led to an unprecedented market concentration to enhance new investments in Research and Development (R&D and (bio)technologies, with the aim to extend the frontiers of capitalism to capture all the world biodiversity.
World-wide, there is a trend towards shrinking space for civil society and reduced ambition for defending human rights. The activists at the local level are more and more vulnerable to human rights violation, oppression, and criminalization. The physical violence of state-sponsored repression using security and military forces have targeted individuals and embattled masses of peaceful protesters around the world. On the other hand, the primacy and legitimacy of the public sector is increasingly threatened by corporate capture of policy processes and a development narrative that assigns a lead role to private sector investment, while multilateralism is under attack from virulently populist nationalism and corporate-promoted multi-stakeholderism.
In the past three decades there has been a growth of an increasingly robust, diversified and articulated network of small-scale food producers, workers and other social actors ill-served by the corporate-led globalized food system who advocate for a radical transformation of food and agricultural systems based on food sovereignty. These movements have been resolutely engaged in defending and building ecologically and socially sustainable, and territorially embedded food provisioning arrangements that tend to be termed ‘alternative,’ although they are responsible for up to 70% of the food consumed in the world. Rethinking agriculture policies as a matter of economic and national security must be a priority.
The food sovereignty movement has been a dynamic part of the articulation of transformation and solutions since 1990s, through the landmark Nyéléni Food Sovereignty forum in 2007 and agroecology forum in 2015. 25 years after the creation of the concept of Food Sovereignty, our movements join their voices to call for systemic change to open the path for a future of hope.
We demand immediate action to:
- End of speculation on food and the suspension of trading food products on stock markets. The price of food traded internationally should be linked with the costs of production and follow the principles of fair trade, both for producers and for consumers;
- End of the WTO’s control of food trade and keep food production out of free trade agreements. Countries should have public food stockpiles, and regulate the market and prices, so that they can support small-scale food producers in this challenging context;
- Create a new international body to conduct transparent negotiations on commodity agreements between exporting and importing countries so that countries which have become dependent on food imports can have access to food at an accessible price;
- Forbid the use of agricultural products to produce agrofuel or energy. Food should be an absolute priority over fuel.
- Bring a global moratorium on the payment of the public debt by the most vulnerable countries. Pressuring such countries to pay the debt is highly irresponsible and leads to socio, economic, and food crises.
We demand radical changes in international, regional and national policies to re-build food sovereignty through:
- A radical change in international trade order. WTO should be dismantled. A new global framework for trade and agriculture, based on food sovereignty, should open the way for strengthening local and national peasant agriculture, to ensure a stable basis for a re-localized food production, the support for local and national peasant-led markets, as well as to provide a fair international trading system based on cooperation and solidarity;
- The implementation of popular and integral Agrarian Reform, to stop the grabbing by TNCs of water, seeds and land, and ensure small-scale producers fair rights over productive resources. We protest against the privatization and grabbing of territories and commons by corporate interests under the pretext of nature protection, through carbon markets or other biodiversity off-sets programs, without consideration to the people who are living on these territories and who have been taking care of the commons for generations;
- A radical shift towards agroecology to produce healthy food for the world. We must face the challenge of producing enough quality food while reviving biodiversity and drastically reducing GHG emissions.
- Effective input market regulation (such as credits, fertilizers, pesticides, seeds, fuel) to support peasants’ capacity to produce food, but also to ensure a fair and well-planned transition toward more agroecological farming practices;
- A food governance based on the people, not on TNCs. The capture of food governance by TNCs should be stopped, and people’s interests should be put at the center. Small producers should be given a vital role in all bodies dealing with food governance;
- The transformation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants into a legally binding instrument for the defense of rural peoples.
- The development in every country of public stockpiling capacities. The strategy of food stockpiling should be held both at the national level but also through the creation and public support to food reserves at the community level, with locally produced food coming from agroecological farming practices;
- A global moratorium on dangerous technologies that threatens humanity, such as geoengineering, GMOs or cellular meat. The promotion of low-cost techniques that increase peasant autonomy and of peasant’s seeds;
- The development of public policies to ensure new relationships between those who produce food and those who consume, those who live in rural areas and those who live in urban areas, guaranteeing fair prices defined based on the cost of production, allowing a decent income for all those who produce in the countryside and a fair access to healthy food for the consumers;
- The promotion of new gender relations based on equality and respect, both for people living in the countryside and among the urban working class. The violence against women must stop now.
Source: viacampesina.org
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NGO WORK
World Bank-Funded TANAPA Rangers Murder Two Villagers in Ruaha National Park
Published
15 hours agoon
May 22, 2025
In the last two weeks, TANAPA rangers have killed two villagers within the disputed boundaries of the Ruaha National Park in Tanzania. These murders shatter promises made just a month ago by the Tanzanian government and the World Bank to end ranger violence and allow livelihood activities to continue within the park.
On April 26, 2025, six fishermen were confronted by rangers outside of Mwanjurwa, near Ikanutwa and Nyeregete villages in the Ihefu Basin. As they tried to escape, rangers shot 27-year-old Hamprey Mhaki in the back. It is believed that Mr. Mhaki succumbed to his gunshot wound, as the search party only found a large amount of blood where he was last seen. He remains missing – while his pregnant wife and grieving family search for answers and demand justice.

In another incident, on May 7, 2025, a group of herders and their cattle in the Udunguzi sub-village of Iyala village were attacked by a TANAPA helicopter that opened fire with live ammunition. Eyewitnesses report that Kulwa Igembe, a 20-year-old Sukuma herder, was shot in the chest by one of the rangers on the ground. He died at the scene. Mr. Igembe is survived by his widow and young daughter.
According to Tanzanian media, four TANAPA rangers are being held by the Mbeya Regional Police Force for their involvement in Mr. Igembe’s killing. His body remains at the Mochwari Mission hospital, as his family has refused to proceed with burial until authorities conduct a full and transparent investigation. Furthermore, local sources state that over 1,000 cattle belonging to several herders were seized and impounded at the Madundasi ranger post following the attack. About 500 cattle have been reclaimed after herders paid TSh100,000 per head [US$37] in fines – delivering a substantial financial blow.
The Bank’s REGROW project, now cancelled, built the enforcement capacity of the rangers who committed these murders. In the 2024 investigation by its Inspection Panel, the Bank conceded that by “enhancing TANAPA’s capacity to enforce the law,” the project “increased the possibility of violent confrontations” between rangers and villagers. The Panel found the Bank to have failed to adequately supervise TANAPA and ignored rangers use of “excessive force,” in violation of international standards. Already over the course of the REGROW project, at least 11 individuals were killed by police or rangers, five disappeared, and dozens suffered physical and psychological harm, including torture and sexual violence.
“The murders of Mr. Igembe and Mr. Mhaki make it painfully clear that the Tanzanian government has no intent to end atrocities against local communities for tourist revenue. These brutal actions not only constitute abject crimes but are also a blatant violation of the commitments the government made to the World Bank,” said Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director of the Oakland Institute. “The Bank created a monster in TANAPA and must be held accountable along with the rogue ranger force,” Mittal added.
In its April 2, 2025 press release, the World Bank stated that “The Government of Tanzania has committed to implementing the MAP [Management Action Plan], and the World Bank will support and supervise its implementation.” The Action Plan is based on the premise that the government will honor its now broken promise that there will be no resettlement and villagers can continue their livelihood activities, like grazing and fishing. Iyala village, where Mr. Igembe was killed, is one of the five villages consumed by the October 2023 expansion of Ruaha National Park.
The Bank also committed to addressing violence by TANAPA rangers through a grievance mechanism and trainings on “relevant good international practice in protected area management.” Unfortunately, the Oakland Institute’s warning to the Bank’s officials, that given the extent of TANAPA’s human rights abuses, these measures would fail in preventing future harms, has come true.
“The violence hasn’t stopped. Villagers are being killed, their cattle stolen, their lives destroyed. Local communities are desperate for the world to listen. The Oakland Institute joins them in demanding that the World Bank take responsibility and act now. Every day of silence costs lives. The victims and their families deserve justice, truth, and the chance to live without fear,” concluded Mittal.
Source:The Oakland Institute
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NGO WORK
Defending rights and realising just economies: Human rights defenders and business (2015-2024)
Published
15 hours agoon
May 22, 2025
Over the past decade, human rights defenders (HRDs) have courageously organised to stop corporate abuse and prevent business activities from causing harm – exposing human rights and environmental violations, demanding accountability, and advocating for rights-respecting economic practices. From Indigenous Peoples protecting forests from mining activities to journalists exposing health and environmental harms related to logging to workers advocating for better conditions in the garment sector, HRDs are at the forefront of creating a more equitable, sustainable and abundant world where rights are protected, people and nature thrive, and just economies can flourish.
Every one of us has the right to take action to protect our rights and environments and contribute to creating a more just and equitable world, and yet those who do often face great risk. Businesses have the responsibility to respect human rights, including the right of all people to defend human rights. When companies fail to listen to HRDs, they lose important allies – people and groups fighting for transparency and accountability, and against corruption, which are all essential elements of an open and stable business operating environment. With authoritarianism on the rise, the imperative of realising a just global energy transition, and deepening inequality around the world, the role of business has rarely been so important – especially as HRDs pressing for rights-respecting corporate practice face increasing challenges.
From January 2015 to December 2024, the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (the Resource Centre) recorded more than 6,400 attacks across 147 countries against people who voiced concerns about business-related risks or harms. This is close to two attacks on average every day over the past ten years. In 2024 alone, we tracked 660 attacks.
Civic space – the environment that enables all of us to organise, participate, and communicate freely in our societies – has also continued to deteriorate over the past decade. According to Civicus, only 3.6% of the world’s population currently lives in countries with open civic space, where citizens and civil society organisations are able to organise, participate and communicate without restrictions. In every region, governments have abused their power to limit the civic freedoms of people advocating for responsible business practice by detaining journalists, passing restrictive legislation (such as foreign funding bills and critical infrastructure laws), criminalising and prosecuting HRDs, and using violent force at protests, among other actions.
This is harmful for business. Civic space restrictions create an ‘information black box,’ leaving companies and investors with gaps in knowledge about potential or actual negative human rights impacts, which can lead to legal, financial, reputational and other risks. Democracy and full enjoyment of civic freedoms are central to addressing the key challenges humanity faces and to sustainable economic growth – some economists have found that democratisation causes an increase in GDP per capita of between 20% and 25%. In addition, under the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) and subsequent guidance, business actors also have a responsibility to respect human rights, which includes engaging in robust human rights due diligence that identifies and mitigates risks to civic freedoms and HRDs.
In our current context of continued erosion of democracy, deregulation, backlash against environmental, social and governance (ESG) concerns, increased conflict, and the weaponsation of both law and technology against human rights defence, HRDs remind us to transcend polarisation and persist in realising a more just and abundant future for us all. Key wins over the past decade include a legally binding instrument to protect environmental defenders, regulations to curb strategic lawsuits against public participation, and important victories advancing corporate accountability following advocacy and judicial efforts. Representatives from Indigenous communities have shared a powerful vision for a rights-respecting energy transition – an essential framework for the future. They are innovating, at times together with progressive businesses, to bring about transformative new business models designed to deliver shared prosperity in alignment with Indigenous Peoples’ self-determined priorities.
Between January 2015 and December 2024, the Resource Centre documented more than 6,400 cases of attacks globally against HRDs challenging corporate harm. These attacks were against Indigenous Peoples, youth leaders, elders, women defenders, journalists, environmental defenders, communities, non-profit organisations and others, negatively affecting tens of thousands of people.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Our research is based on publicly available information, and given the severity of civic space restrictions in some countries and security concerns, many attacks go unreported. In addition, governments are largely failing in their duty to monitor attacks. In countries and regions where few attacks are documented, this does not mean that violence against defenders is nonexistent, but rather that the information is not accessible. Learn more about our research methodology.
Restrictions on civic space helped to facilitate these attacks. Other drivers included weak rule of law and unaccountable governance, economic models focused on profit maximisation through unsustainable resource extraction, racism and discrimination, and lack of consultation with potentially affected stakeholders.
“I routinely hear from Indigenous defenders working in isolated, remote or rural areas that businesses and governments do not consult with them properly – and that their right to give or withhold their free, prior and informed consent for activities negatively affecting their lives or their territories is either manipulated or ignored. Some attacks are committed by agents acting for businesses, others by government authorities and businesses acting together.”
– Mary Lawlor, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders
Latin America and the Caribbean and Asia and the Pacific have consistently been the most dangerous regions for HRDs raising concerns about corporate harm, accounting for close to three in four (71%) attacks in the past decade. Africa follows with 583 instances of attacks – close to a third of these occurred in Uganda.
In Latin America, the majority of attacks are concentrated in six countries that account for 35% of all attacks globally – Brazil (473), Mexico (455), Honduras (418), Colombia (331), Peru (299) and Guatemala (256). Despite comprising only 0.1% of the world’s population, 6.5% of attacks took place in Honduras. In Asia, the highest number of attacks occurred in the Philippines (411), India (385), Cambodia (279) and Indonesia (216).
Another trend is an increase in attacks in the United Kingdom, where 91% of attacks have been judicial harassment (arrests, criminal charges and SLAPPs). Attacks in the UK notably increased from seven in 2022 to 21 in 2023 – the same year the UK Government’s Public Order Act, which significantly increased the police’s power to respond to protests, came into force, undermining freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association. Attacks further increased in 2024 to 34. Almost all of these attacks were against people raising concerns about the fossil fuel sector.
Attacks target individuals, organisations and communities, causing physical harm, draining resources and obstructing human rights work. They can also have a chilling effect on civic space and weaken the social fabric vital for resistance, community cohesion, and an inclusive and peaceful society. In addition to harming physical security, attacks can also negatively affect HRDs’ mental, emotional and economic well-being.
Since 2015, the Resource Centre has tracked 5,323 non-lethal attacks on HRDs challenging corporate harm.Through our research and collective work with the ALLIED Coalition, we have also identified numerous cases of escalations and cyclical attacks against HRDs where threats and judicial harassment precede physical violence.
Escalation of attacks: Tumandok Peoples’ opposition to dam project
Co-authored with ALLIED and ANGOC
The Tumandok People are an Indigenous group whose ancestral lands in the Philippines have been targeted for numerous private and public development projects, driving ongoing conflict for the community. Community members have actively opposed the Jalaur River Multipurpose Project (JRMP) II infrastructure project, which includes the construction of a dam that would displace Indigenous villages and proceed without their FPIC. Daewoo Engineering & Construction Co. Ltd was awarded the construction contract and the project is supported by Export-Import Bank of Korea.
Numerous attacks have been carried out against community members who voiced opposition to this project. This cyclical violence against the Tumandok is reflected in data from the Asian NGO Coalition for Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ANGOC), ALLIED and other sources.
We invited Export-Import Bank of Korea and Daewoo E&C to respond. Export-Import Bank’s full response to the killing of HRDs in December 2020 is available here. Daewoo E&C did not respond.
Killings and disappearances
Over the past decade, we documented close to 1,100 killings of HRDs who bravely spoke out against corporate harm. In 2024 alone, we recorded the murders of 52 people.
We commemorate the lives, courage and vital work of these HRDs and their communities. While governments have a duty to investigate these murders, the majority of attacks – both lethal and non-lethal – go uninvestigated and unpunished, fostering a culture of impunity that only emboldens further violence.
Indigenous defenders are particularly at risk. Close to a third (31%) of those killed were Indigenous defenders. Most of the killings of Indigenous defenders occurred in Latin America, as well as the Philippines.
We also tracked 116 abductions and disappearances, which leave families and communities bereft, in the dark as to the safety and whereabouts of their loved one. Most took place in Mexico and the Philippines.
Disappearence of two defenders in Mexico
Co-authored with Global Rights Advocacy
The mining sector is the most dangerous sector for HRDs in Mexico. Over the past decade, a quarter of attacks were against HRDs raising concerns about mining; 40% of those attacks were killings. In the coastal mountains of Michoacán, there is powerful resistance by Indigenous Peoples to mining, amidst a generalised atmosphere of violence. Indigenous Peoples are defending their territories against private interests and organised crime, facing criminalisation, persecution, aggression and killings.
Read full report: Business & Human Rights Resource Centre
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NGO WORK
Indonesia: 46 companies linked to allegations of human rights and environmental abuses associated with 2nd largest palm oil producer; incl. cos. responses and non-responses
Published
16 hours agoon
May 22, 2025
The United Nations singled out PT Astra Agro Lestari (AAL), the second-largest palm oil company in Indonesia, raising specific allegations of systemic human rights and environmental abuses linked to its palm oil production on the island of Sulawesi.
The allegations include land grabbing by operating without necessary permits on Indigenous ancestral lands and farming communities’ land; intimidation and criminalization of local communities peacefully protesting against AAL; and environmental degradation, such as pollution of water resources.
In June 2024, Friends of the Earth (FOE) released a report naming consumer brands, agribusiness traders, investors, and banks linked to AAL’s palm oil production.
Business & Human Rights Resource Centre invited AAL, its parent company, and the companies named in FOE’s report to respond to the allegations. Jardine Matheson, Astra Agro Lestari, Musim Mas, Neste Oil, L’Oréal, Procter & Gamble, Hershey, Wilmar International, KLK, Apical, Unilever, Kao, Mizuho Financial Group, SMBC, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Blackrock and Danone responded. Their responses are linked below.
The rest of the companies did not respond.
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Resource Center
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- RESEARCH BRIEF -TOURISM POTENTIAL OF GREATER MASAKA -MARCH 2025
- The Mouila Declaration of the Informal Alliance against the Expansion of Industrial Monocultures
- FORCED LAND EVICTIONS IN UGANDA TRENDS RIGHTS OF DEFENDERS IMPACT AND CALL FOR ACTION
- 12 KEY DEMANDS FROM CSOS TO WORLD LEADERS AT THE OPENING OF COP16 IN SAUDI ARABIA
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- FROM LAND GRABBERS TO CARBON COWBOYS A NEW SCRAMBLE FOR COMMUNITY LANDS TAKES OFF
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