A/HRC/19/75
coming together to defend greater recognition of their rights in international human rights
law.
72.
The Advisory Committee is convinced the best way to further advance the
protection of the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas is to adopt a new
instrument – initially, a declaration – to better promote and protect these rights. In the
annex to the present study, it therefore proposes a declaration on the rights of peasants and
other People Working in Rural Areas. The Declaration adopted by the Advisory Committee
could serve as a model for a new instrument to be developed by the Human Rights Council.
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 and other people working in rural
areas, 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 their rights to life and to an adequate standard of living (art. 3);
their right to freedoms of association, opinion and expression (art. 12) and their right to
have access to justice (art. 13). In addition, it recognizes new rights that could reinforce
their protection 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).
VI. Conclusion
73.
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 is reaching 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;
people living from hunting activities, by the creation of development projects; and
pastoralists, by conflicts with farmers over land and water resources. All together,
these people constitute 80 per cent of the world’s hungry. Women alone represent 70
per cent of the world’s hungry; peasant women are particularly affected by hunger
and poverty, largely as a result of discrimination in access to and control over
productive resources, such as land, water and credit.
74.
To overcome this situation, the Advisory Committee makes the following
recommendations:
(a)
More attention should be given to agrarian reforms that benefit smallscale land holders and promote security of tenure and access to land, in particular for
women;
(b)
Government policies should be sufficiently well formulated in order to
address the needs of the most vulnerable people working in rural areas;
(c)
Human rights instruments protecting the rights of peasants and other
people working in rural areas, including the International Covenant on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,
the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and
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