A/HRC/19/75 & Oryx Group bioenergy investment in Sierra Leone, AgriSol Energy and Pharos Global Agriculture’s land deal in Tanzania, Deciphering Emergent’s investments in Africa, Emvest Asset Management in Mattuba, Mozambique, Malibya in Mali, Nile Trading and Development, Inc. in South Sudan, Quifel International Holdings in Sierra Leone, and Saudi Star in Ethiopia. These reports demonstrate the rapid acceleration of the phenomenon of “land grab” across Africa and conclude that “these largely unregulated land purchases are resulting in virtually none of the promised benefits for native populations, but instead are forcing millions of small farmers off ancestral lands and small, local food farms in order to make room for export commodities, including biofuels and cut flowers”. 29 27. The phenomenon of the global “land grab” and its consequences were among the main issues discussed at the World Social Forum in Dakar in February 2011. During the World Social Forum, La Via Campesina and the West African Network of Peasants and Agricultural Producers (ROPPA), with the support of other organizations, including FIAN International, facilitated the adoption of the Dakar Appeal Against the Land Grab.30 By signing the Dakar Appeal between February and June 2011, more than 500 civil society organizations have recalled that “recent massive land grabs targeting tens of millions of acres for the benefit of private interests or third States – whether for reasons of food, energy, mining, environment, tourism, speculation or geopolitics – violate human rights by depriving local, indigenous, peasant, pastoralist and fisher communities of their livelihoods, by restricting their access to natural resources or by removing their freedom to produce as they wish, and exacerbate the inequalities of women in access and control of land”. They have also called on Governments to immediately cease all massive land grabs, current or future, and return the plundered land, and they have asked “states, regional organizations and international institutions (to) guarantee people's right to land and support family farming and agro-ecology”.31 28. The Dakar Appeal Against the Land Grab was sent to the participants of the meeting of G-20 Agricultural Ministers, which took place in Paris on 23 June 2011. But the appeal of civil society organizations was not heard. In response to the positions taken by the G-20 Ministers of Agriculture at this meeting, the Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter, regretted that the G-20 Ministers of Agriculture took no decision to stop incentives and subsidies for biofuels production and found “troubling that biofuels are mentioned as a source of rural development, when in practice, up to now at least, the production of biofuels primarily benefits large agro-export companies and use the natural resources from the South to feed the thirst for renewable energies in the North”. 32 B. Gender discrimination 29. Women living and working in rural areas often face discrimination in their access to and control over other productive resources, such as land, water and credit. In many countries, they suffer multiple discrimination: because they are women, poor, rural residents and indigenous, and rarely own land or other assets. De jure discrimination against women remains for example institutionalized in Guatemala, where article 139 of the Labour Code describes rural women as “helpers” of male agricultural workers rather than 29 30 31 32 Oakland Institute, “Hedge Funds Create Volatility in Global Food Supply with Land Grabs Across Africa”, Press release, 8 June 2011. The Dakar Appeal Against the Land Grab is available online, at www.fian.org/news/pressreleases/dakar-appeal-against-the-land-grab/pdf. Ibid. Olivier De Schutter, Special Rapporteur on the right to food, “G20 Action Plan addresses the symptoms, not the causes of the problem”, Brussels, 23 June 2011. 9