A/HRC/16/63 discrimination is still codified in national laws; in others, it is part of customary law (see paragraphs 25-27 below). III. Causes of discrimination and vulnerability of peasants and other people working in rural areas 19. The main causes of discrimination and vulnerability of peasants and other people working in rural areas are closely linked to human rights violations: (a) expropriation of land, forced evictions and displacement; (b) gender discrimination; (c) the absence of agrarian reform and rural development policies; (d) the lack of minimum wages and social protection; and (e) the criminalization of movements defending the rights of people working in rural areas. A. Expropriation of land, forced evictions and displacement 20. From 1995 to 2005, Foodfirst Information and Action Network International worked on more than 100 cases of violations of the right to food, and concluded that the majority of them were related to expropriation of land, forced evictions and displacements.31 Most urgent appeals made by the Special Rapporteur on the right to food are also based on allegations of expropriation of land, forced evictions and forced displacements.32 The recent phenomenon of global “land-grab” has added another dimension to these concerns as Governments and companies seek to buy and lease large tracts of productive land in other countries, to food to be exported back to their countries, or to grow biofuels to fill the petrol tanks of those in the global north.33 21. In many countries, the recurrence of forced evictions in the last 20 years is closely linked to a long history of expropriation of productive resources from smallholder farmers and local communities. In Guatemala, for example, there are often multiple claims to the same land following a history of land expropriation by powerful landowners. In the past 10 years, the response of the Government to land occupations has been the use of force.34 For example, local and international non-governmental organizations reported more than 30 forced evictions in 2004, affecting 1,500 families.35 In the case of the Nueva Linda farm (Champerico, Retalhuleu), it was alleged that, while some officials were negotiating a peaceful evacuation with the representatives of 22 communities who had occupied the land three years earlier, the Civil National Police intervened violently, leaving 9 dead, over 40 injured and 13 detained, as well as the destruction of the communities’ crops and houses.36 In another case recorded at El Maguey farm (Fraijanes), it was alleged that a group of 86 peasant families had been forcibly evicted from their land by the police and the army on several occasions, their crops and irrigations system destroyed, despite the recognition that 31 32 33 34 35 36 8 Jennie Jonsén, “Developing Indicators for the Right to Food. Lessons learned from the case work of FIAN International”, paper presented at the expert symposium on the theme “Measuring developments in the realization of the right to food by means of indicators: the IBSA-procedure”, 2223 May 2006, Mannheim, Germany. 2006, pp.115-117. See for example A/HRC/4/30/Add.1. A/HRC/13/33/Add.2. A/HRC/13/33/Add.4, paras. 18-20. Colectivo de Organizaciones Sociales, Otra Guatemala es Posible: Acuerdos de Paz, Unidad y Lucha de las Organizaciones Sociales, 2004; Amnesty International, Memorandum to the Government of Guatemala: Amnesty International’s concern regarding the current human rights situation, AMR 34/014/2005. Foodfirst Information and Action Network (see footnote 7).