UN Working Group to Hold First Meeting on Draft Declaration on Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas

The United Nations is one step closer to specially protecting the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas, as the open-ended intergovernmental Working Group on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas prepares to hold its first meeting. [OHCHR] Underscoring the need to achieve the Millennium Development Goals to eradicate poverty and hunger by 2015,[1] and voicing its grave concern that “it is those who produce food who suffer disproportionately,” the UN Human Rights Council last year approved Resolution 21/19, establishing a Working Group to negotiate, finalize, and submit a draft declaration articulating the rights of peasants. The group will convene its first session from July 15 to July 19 in Geneva.

The creation of this international instrument is one of the many recommendations made by the Advisory Committee to the Human Rights Council in its Final Study on the advancement of the rights of peasants and people working in rural areas, A/HRC/19/75, prepared pursuant to Human Rights Council Resolution 16/27 (March 25, 2011). According to the Advisory Committee, “80 per cent of the world’s hungry live in rural areas.” Final Study, para. 9. Half are smallholder farmers who produce crops for subsistence and sale in local markets but cannot produce sufficient food for themselves given their lack of access to resources such as water and seed. Id. Twenty percent are landless tenant farmers who generally pay high rents and are vulnerable to being displaced from their land each season. Id. Others are agricultural laborers paid wages insufficient to meet the needs of their families, often resulting in frequent relocation to seek employment. The remaining ten percent subsist through fishing, hunting, and herding. Id. But, “[i]n many countries, the traditional way of life of these people and their means of livelihood are threatened by competition over productive resources, leading to increasing hunger and malnutrition.” Id., para. 18. Moreover, although women cultivate a majority of food grown, they “account for 70 percent of the world’s hungry and are disproportionately affected by malnutrition, poverty and food insecurity.” Id., para. 22. Many women engaged in farming are unpaid. Id.

Vulnerability of Peasants and Rural Populations Linked to Human Rights Violations

The Advisory Committee linked the problems faced by rural workers to a variety of human rights violations, including: “(a) expropriation of land, forced evictions and displacement; (b) gender discrimination; (c) the absence of agrarian reform and rural development policies; (d) the lack of minimum wages and social protection; and (e) the criminalization of movements defending the rights of people working in rural areas.” For example, land-grabs, entailing government or company leases or purchases of “large tracts of productive land in other countries, for food to be exported back to their countries or to grow biofuels,” force smallholder or tenant farmers from their meager land possessions and means to subsist. Id., para. 25. Women are systemically prohibited from accessing or controlling land.[2] In the absence of agrarian reform, smallholder and tenant farmer rights to landholdings are unprotected, States have failed “to harness water resources for both drinking water and irrigation” for individuals in rural areas, and farmers are unable to freely plant or resell seeds. Indeed, access to seeds is restricted since, according to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, the majority of the global seed market is controlled by ten transnational corporations. Peasants can no longer afford to purchase these seeds necessary for basic subsistence farming.

While the Advisory Committee acknowledged that a variety of international human rights instruments – such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples – recognized many of these populations’ fundamental rights, the Committee found existing law insufficient to protect the specific interests of peasants and individuals in rural areas. This is partly because State enforcement of rights enshrined in these instruments has been inconsistent or nonexistent. Moreover, these individuals need “to have a secured access to productive resources, including land, seeds, small-scale irrigation, fishing grounds or forests, [rights] not recognized explicitly in any international human rights instruments.” The Advisory Committee determined that the gap in protection required a new international instrument to reaffirm existing human rights as well as to promote and protect additional rights.

Pursuant to this need, the Advisory Committee prepared a proposed draft Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas intended to serve as a model for the Human Rights Council. It defines a peasant to include smallscale 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 practi[c]ing shifting cultivation, hunters and gatherers, and people with similar livelihoods.” Draft Declaration, art. 1.

In addition to reaffirming provisions found in other international instruments – such as the right to life, freedom from discrimination, an adequate standard of living, freedom of expression, and access to justice – the draft declaration incorporates new rights specific to peasants, including: “the right to land and territory (art. 4); the right to seeds and traditional agricultural knowledge and practice (art. 5); the right to means of agricultural production (art. 6); the right to information and agricultural technology (art. 7); the freedom to determine prices and markets for agricultural production (art. 8); the right to the protection of local agricultural values (art. 9); the right to biological diversity (art. 10); and the right to preserve the environment (art. 11).”

In March 2012, the Advisory Committee presented its Final Study, including the proposed draft declaration, to the Human Rights Council, which in September 2012 decided to create a Working Group dedicated to preparing a draft UN Declaration. See UN Human Rights Council Res. 21/19 (Sept. 27, 2012).

First Meeting of the Working Group

The Working Group will base its discussion on the draft declaration prepared by the Human Rights Council Advisory Committee. According to its Draft Programme of Work, the Working Group will hold several panel discussions on topics related to the rights of peasants and human rights conditions in rural areas. The speakers participating on the panels are a diverse group of experts from civil society and academia, including former UN special rapporteurs on the rights to food and housing.

All UN Member and Observer States, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations with United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) status are authorized to attend the public sessions. The Working Group’s first session agenda, information on accreditation, programme of work and other materials are available on its First Session wegpage.

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