A/HRC/19/75 68. In his report submitted to the Human Rights Council in 2007, the Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing recommended that the Council should recognize the right to land in international human rights law (A/HRC/4/18, para. 33 (e)). The Special Rapporteur on the right to food, in his report presented to the General Assembly in October 2010, recommended that international human rights bodies should consolidate the right to land (A/65/281, para. 43 (d)). The current process of elaborating voluntary guidelines on responsible governance of tenure of land and other natural resources at FAO is also intended to address the same gap. These recommendations and initiatives should be supported. C. New legal instrument on the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas 69. The above measures represent important ways and means to further advance the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas. But they will not be sufficient. The fact that the great majority of peasants and other people working in rural areas are engaged in the informal sector, and are therefore not covered by ILO Conventions, is of particular concern, as is the fact that their need to have a 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 for a new international instrument on the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas. 70. At the side-event on “The need of increased protection of human rights of peasants” organized on 9 March 2011, the Special Rapporteur on the right to food identified four main reasons for adopting a new international human rights instrument on the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas: it is needed in international law; it will improve the fight against hunger; it is a means of protecting small-scale, family-owned farms from the pressure of large, agro-industrial farms; and it will increase access to the means of production in rural areas. The Special Rapporteur also underlined that the adoption of a declaration on the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas would increase visibility on the rights that are already recognized in international law, and help to recognize new rights, such as the rights to land, to seeds and to compensation for the losses due to food subsidies given to farmers in other countries. 71. In June 2008, after more than seven years of consultation with the organizations of its members, La Via Campesina adopted its Declaration of the Rights of Peasants – Men and Women (A/HRC/13/32, annex). It presented the Declaration as a response to the world food crisis at the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly in 2009. 65 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. Fisher communities have expressed the same vision in seminars in different continents in 2010.66 The different groups working in rural areas, and in particular peasant farmers, small landholders, landless workers, fisher-folk, hunters and gatherers, are 65 66 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. 19