A/HRC/16/63
secured access to productive resources, including land, seeds, small-scale irrigation, fishing
grounds or forests, is not recognized explicitly in any international human rights
instruments. There is therefore a need to elaborate a new international instrument on the
rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas.
65.
In June 2008, after more than seven years of consultation with the organizations of
its members, La Via Campesina adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Peasants – Men
and Women.86 It presented the Declaration as a response to the world food crisis before the
Human Rights Council and the General Assembly in 2009.87 The Declaration offers an
interesting basis for the recognition of the rights of peasants and other people working in
rural areas, elaborated by an organization that brings together 148 organizations in 69
countries and is estimated to represent more than 200 millions peasants, smallholder
farmers, agricultural workers, indigenous people, peasant women and landless people
worldwide.
66.
The Declaration of the Rights of Peasants could serve as a model. Its structure
follows that of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. In
article 1, it gives a definition of a peasant, which includes small-scale farmers, landless
peasants and non-agricultural households in rural areas, whose members are engaged in
fishing, making crafts for the local market or providing services, and other rural households
of pastoralists, nomads, peasants practising shifting cultivation, hunters and gatherers, and
people with similar livelihoods. It reaffirms the rights to life and to an adequate standard of
living (art. 3); the right to freedoms of association, opinion and expression (art. 12) and the
right to have access to justice (art. 13). In addition, it recognizes new rights that could
reinforce the protection of peasants against discrimination. These include the right to land
and territory (art. 4); the right to seeds and traditional agricultural knowledge and practice
(art. 5); the right to means of agricultural production (art. 6); the right to information and
agricultural technology (art. 7); the freedom to determine prices and markets for
agricultural production (art. 8); the right to the protection of local agricultural values (art.
9); the right to biological diversity (art. 10); and the right to preserve the environment (art.
11).
67.
Fisher communities have expressed the same needs in seminars in different
continents in 2010.88 The different groups working in rural areas, and in particular peasant
farmers, small landholders, landless workers, fisher-folk, hunters and gatherers, are coming
together to defend greater recognition of their rights in international human rights law.
VI.
Conclusion
68.
Smallholder farmers, landless people, tenant farmers, agricultural labourers
and people living from traditional fishing, hunting and herding activities are among
the most discriminated and vulnerable people in many parts of the world. Every year,
thousands of peasant farmers are the victims of expropriation of land, forced evictions
and displacements - a situation that could reach an unprecedented level owing to the
new phenomenon of the global “land grab”. At the same time, traditional fishing
communities are increasingly threatened by the industrialization of fishing activities;
86
87
88
20
A/HRC/13/32, annex.
See statement of La Via Campesina before the General Assembly of 6 April 2009, at
www.viacampesina.org.
See for example the conclusions of the workshop on the theme “Securing sustainable small-scale
fisheries: bringing together responsible fisheries and social development”, San José, 20-22 October
2010.
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