A/HRC/26/48 and products, migration to urban areas and an increase in the population of cities, climate change and the global economic crisis. A number of panellists considered that discrimination, racism, women’s rights and poverty among peasants and people working in rural areas were key issues affecting peasants’ rights. Moreover, they stressed that, although peasant production was often very effective in terms of productivity, food distribution was not equal throughout the world, and that often peasants who worked on the land still went hungry owing to a lack of access to food. It was noted that 870 million people suffered from hunger. It was further stated that three quarters of those who were in danger of dying from hunger were peasants, including peasants who had been forced to relocate to seek employment and had failed to find it. 16. Some panellists commented that a balance between large-scale and peasant agriculture must be found and that a new deal for peasants was needed. One panellist said that the United Nations had a fundamental role to play in protecting peasants, and highlighted the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture as an example of an international treaty that already defined farmers’ rights. He pointed out that a number of countries had ratified the treaty, and emphasized that a holistic approach must be incorporated into a United Nations declaration on the rights of peasants and others working in rural areas, in order to cover any gaps that remained in international treaties and to ensure that the declaration built on, and did not weaken, existing treaties. Other panellists noted that becoming economically viable was the main challenge facing peasants and others working in rural areas, and that their income needed to be addressed so that global food security could be protected through peasant agriculture. 17. Some panellists debated the need for a United Nations declaration on the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas. Some panellists spoke in favour of the declaration, arguing that it would act as a broad instrument and an umbrella declaration that recognized and complemented existing international instruments, thereby strengthening peasants’ rights, while elaborating on specific rights in further detail. The panellists furthermore noted that the declaration should not attempt to provide a “one-size-fits-all” solution to the issue of the protection of peasants and other people working in rural areas. B. Panel discussion II. The situation of human rights in rural areas, in particular in terms of discrimination, poverty and hunger 18. Several panellists noted that peasants and other people working in rural areas were frequently victims of land grabbing, eviction and forced displacement and that often the poorest were disproportionately affected. It was also noted that land grabbing and speculation on food commodities had increased exponentially and that arable land had become the target of large corporations, with its acquisition being facilitated by cheap leases and obscure practices. Panellists noted further that social mobilization against land grabbing, eviction and forced displacement, and in particular against single crops and megaprojects, had faced criminalization owing to weak legislation on land tenure, and that land grabbing continued to push many peasant farmers into even deeper poverty and led to violations of their right to adequate housing. Panellists agreed that the human impact of those phenomena included loss of earnings, drastic reductions in spending on food, destruction of assets, denial of education, homelessness and destitution. 19. A number of panellists highlighted the need for stronger international standards, given statistical evidence that demonstrated that hunger was on the rise for people living in rural areas. One panellist noted that, in its resolution 16/27, the Human Rights Council had requested the Advisory Committee to continue its work on the issue of discrimination in the context of the right to food, and that it was the rural population that suffered most from hunger and malnutrition. A number of panellists emphasized that the existing legal 6