This day wants to promote and celebrate the solidarity and resistance of peasant movements. It is also an opportunity to recall the adoption in 2018 by the UN of the Declaration on the Human Rights of Peasants and Other Rural Workers.
The latter “aims to better protect the rights of all rural people, including peasants, indigenous peoples, fisherfolk and agricultural workers. This framework aims to ensure their rights to education and health care, as well as access to land, water, seeds and natural resources.”
The website of the International Peasant Movement La Via Campesina offers documents and information on current actions. It is available in English, Spanish and French.
We discover the importance of the struggle to ensure food sovereignty. It’s worth noting that the healthy, high-quality food of 70% of the world’s population comes from the work of peasants. We better understand the fundamental nature of the struggle waged by peasants to “counter genocides, wars, violations of people’s sovereignty, evictions of peasant families, the criminalization and persecution of peasants and their leaders, as well as extractivism and violations of peasants’ rights. “
Several organizations are marking this day in their own way, created to commemorate the 1996 massacre of 19 peasant members of Brazil’s Landless Movement, fighting for the right to own their land.Development and Peace is using this day to highlight the struggles of many groups around the world to counter the threats to their way of life, from Colombia to Cambodia, Paraguay and Sierra Leone, not to mention Canada.
To understand more about peasant struggles, visit the Réseau in-terre actif website.