Food sovereignty and convergence spaces

In this paper we reflect on the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism to the UN Committee on World Food Security as a policy convergence space for the global food sovereignty movement. Addressing a gap in the convergence literature around inclusivity, we assess the extent to which the Mechanism is a diverse and inclusive space. More specifically, we analyze whether constituencies and quotas have worked as effective tools to protect diversity while avoiding fragmentation. We further contribute to the growing literature on convergence spaces by highlighting what changes and challenges occur when convergence is situated and managed in relation to a more formal institutional space. Analyzing how the it has addressed the two challenges of fragmentation and institutionalization, we show how the Mechanism has moved towards greater inclusivity and diversity by reinforcing weaker constituencies, changing its name, and opening up to new constituencies. At the same time, we identify five issues which require further attention if the Mechanism is to remain an inclusive convergence space: risk of a concentration of power; the role of NGOs; gender equality and generational balance; multiple identities that cut across constituency categories; and, tensions related to sub-regions.</p

Peasant and indigenous transnational social movements engaging with climate justice

International audienceThis article offers a comparative account of the engagement of two key transnational social movements, the agrarian movement La Via Campesina (LVC) and the International Indigenous Peoples’ Forum on Climate Change (IIPFCC), in global climate discussions, particularly the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Since 2007 these movements have each developed their own framing of climate justice and sought political and legal opportunities to advocate rights-based policies. LVC has advanced a development paradigm grounded in food sovereignty and agroecology, and IIPFCC has sought to increase indigenous participation in United Nations climate schemes and regain control over ancestral territory

The United Nations Declaration on the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas

In December 2018, the United Nations adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas. UNDROP is the product of 17 years of struggle by La Via Campesina, other transnational agrarian movements and allies that included NGOs, states, UN mandate holders, and academics. It recognises the dignity of rural populations, their contributions to global food production, and their ‘special relationship’ to land, water and nature, as well as their vulnerabilities to eviction, hazardous working conditions and political repression. It reiterates rights protected in other instruments and sets new standards for individual and collective rights to land and natural resources, seeds, biodiversity and food sovereignty. This Grassroots Voices forum includes interviews and articles by activists in the UNDROP campaign: peasants from Indonesia, Belgium, France, Germany, Senegal and Argentina; a US farmworker leader; a women’s rights activist from Spain; a Bolivian diplomat; the Indian leader of a transnational Catholic farmers’ movement; an advocate for fishers from Uganda; a Swiss jurist; a Mexican indigenous rights leader; and human rights advocates from the NGOs CETIM and FIAN. They describe a new kind of people’s diplomacy and an innovative, bottom-up process of building alliances, lobbying, and authoring international law