A/HRC/13/32 Access to health services and to education is decreasing in rural areas and peasants’ political role in society is undermined. As a result of these violations of peasants' rights, today millions of peasants live in hunger and suffer malnutrition. This is not because there is not enough food in the world, but because food resources are dominated by transnational corporations. Peasants are forced to produce for export instead of producing food for their communities. III. The policies of neo-liberalism worsen the violations of Peasants' Rights The violations of peasants' rights are on the rise because of the implementation of neoliberal policies promoted by the World Trade Organisation, Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), other institutions and many governments in the North as well as in the South. The WTO and FTAs force the opening of markets and prevent countries from protecting and supporting their domestic agriculture. They push for the deregulation in the agriculture sector. Governments of developed countries and transnational corporations are responsible for trade dumping practices. Cheap subsidised food floods local markets thus forcing peasants out of business. The WTO and other institutions force the introduction of food such as GMOs and the unsafe use of growth hormones in meat production. Meanwhile, they prohibit the marketing of healthy products produced by peasants through sanitary barriers. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has implemented structural adjustment programs (SAPs) leading to massive cuts in subsidies for agriculture and social services. Countries have been forced to privatize state companies and to dismantle support mechanisms in the agricultural sector. National and international policies directly or indirectly give priority to transnational corporations or food production and trade. TNCs also practice biopiracy and destroy genetic resources and biodiversity cultivated by peasants. The capitalist logic of accumulation has dismantled peasant agriculture. IV. The struggle of the Peasants to uphold and protect their Rights Facing these realities, peasants all over the world are struggling to live. All over the world, thousands of peasant leaders are being arrested because they are fighting to protect their rights and livelihood. They are being brought to court by unfair justice systems, incidents of massacre, extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests and detention, and political persecution and harassment are common. The global food crisis in 2008 precipitated and exacerbated by policies and transnational corporations (which unilaterally act according to their own self-interest) clearly shows the failure in promoting, respecting, protecting and fulfilling the rights of peasants. This affects all people in the world, in developed and developing countries. While peasants work hard to ensure the sustainability of seeds and food, the violation of the rights of peasants damages the world’s capability to feed itself. The struggle of the Peasants is fully applicable to the framework of international human rights which includes instruments, and thematic mechanisms of the Human Rights Council, that address the right to food, housing rights, access to water, right to health, human rights defenders, indigenous peoples, racism and racial discrimination, women’s rights. These international instruments of the UN do not completely cover nor prevent human rights violations, especially the rights of the peasants. We see some limitations in the International 24