A/HRC/13/32 C. The rights of peasants 50. The background paper on peasant farmers and the right to food: a history of discrimination and exploitation (A/HRC/AC/3/CRP.5), presented at the third session of the Advisory Committee, concluded that smallholder farmers, landless people, tenant farmers, agricultural labourers and people living from traditional fishing, hunting and herding activities were among the most discriminated people and the first victims of violations of the right to food in many parts of the world. 51. These people are victims of many violations of the right to food.29 Every year, thousands of them are victims of land expropriation, forced evictions and displacements, many as a consequence of mining activities, logging, building dams and highways, or expanding industrial agriculture, a situation which could reach an unprecedented level with the new “global land grab” phenomenon. While being forcibly evicted or displaced, these people also lose their right to live in rural societies with cultural and local agricultural values, such as solidarity. They are also often excluded from their local markets, owing to market deregulation in their countries and cheap imports coming from the global north as a result of dumping practices, and lose access to seeds, confiscated by transnational corporations. When they organize themselves against these violations, they are often criminalized, arbitrarily arrested and detained or physically attacked by private or State police forces, which constitute other violations of their fundamental rights. 52. Peasants, like all human beings, benefit from the protection of the rights enshrined in the universal instruments for the protection of human rights, in particular the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Many of these rights offer significant protection to the rights of peasants.30 But these instruments remain clearly insufficient to protect fully the rights of peasants and address de facto discrimination against peasants, who have been historically and socially discriminated in many countries, in accordance with the definition of discrimination put forward by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.31 53. In June 2008, after more than seven years of consultation with its members organizations, La Via Campesina adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Peasants – Men and Women (see annex, below)32 and presented it as a response to the world food crisis before the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly in 2009.33 The declaration of La Via Campesina is an important example of anti-discriminatory strategy that could improve the protection of the right to food. It follows the structure of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of indigenous Peoples. Its first article 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. 29 30 31 32 33 14 See C. Golay, “Towards a convention on the rights of peasants”, in S. Murphy and A. Paasch, The Global Food Challenge. Towards a Human Rights Approach to Trade and Investment Policies, 2009. See C. Golay, The Rights of Peasants, CETIM, 2009 (available in English, French and Spanish at www.cetim.ch/fr/publications_cahiers.php). General comment No. 20 on non-discrimination in economic, social and cultural rights, para. 8. Available in Spanish, English and French on the website www.viacampesina.org. See La Via Campesina’s statement to the General Assembly of 6 April 2009 at www.viacampesina.org.