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	Access to, and control over, seeds are critical for the realization of the right to food by OHCHR, FIAN International, agencies   Apr. 2022   International Day of Peasants' Struggles   The UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Michael Fakhri, draws attention to the struggles of peasants and others which have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic alongside the rise of extrajudicial violence against peasants and armed conflicts around the world. On the International Day of Peasants' Struggles, he issues the following statement:   “On the International Day of Peasants' Struggles the world recognizes the essential contribution of peasants and other people working in rural areas such as small farmers, pastoralists, artisanal fishers, landless rural workers, and Indigenous Peoples to feeding communities and ensuring food systems flourish all over the world. I call for a stronger recognition of their crucial contribution to the global and local food security and their indispensable role in combatting hunger.   It is now more urgent than ever for States to commit to and implement the 2018 UN Declaration on the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas (UNDROP). Peasants include small farmers, pastoralists, and artisanal fishers.   Peasants’ rights include the rights to food; food sovereignty; an adequate standard of living; seeds, land, and other natural resources; and to a safe, clean, and a healthy environment. These rights should be protected and respected even during times of conflict to ensure rural life recovers and food systems are safeguarded after the conflict ends.   Even though UNDROP was passed by an overwhelming majority in the General Assembly, peasants’ vital contribution to society remains inadequately recognized and supported. The risks they encounter, as well as the lack of protection they often face, jeopardize the global population's food security.   For decades, peasants around the world have been disproportionately affected by hunger and extreme poverty. During the COVID-19 pandemic, peasants continue facing enormous threats from negligent governments, transnational corporations, foreign and domestic investors, and unfair trading rules. During the pandemic, peasants have also shown great strength in their resistance against exploitation and response to climate change.   Despite this moment of profound adversity, peasants, rural workers, and Indigenous peoples all over the world have strengthened bonds of solidarity amongst each other ensuring that communities and their food systems remain resilient. Urgent global efforts are needed to support and protect peasants in the context of the pandemic and conflicts.”   http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/04/international-day-peasants-struggles-17-april-2022-un-expert-applauds-vital http://viacampesina.org/en/peasants-advocate-for-the-creation-of-a-new-special-procedure-on-the-undrop/ http://grain.org/en/article/6790-peasants-still-feed-the-world-even-if-fao-claims-otherwise   Mar. 2022   Seeds, right to life and farmers’ rights - Report of the Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Michael Fakhri.   Since humankind relies on plants for food, feed, fibre and a functional ecosystem, nothing less than the right to life is at stake when farmers’ seed systems are challenged or poorly supported.   Farmers’ seed systems are integral to the world’s genetic and cultural diversity, and are foundational for all food systems.   The right to life has been described not only as a fundamental right but also as the supreme right from which no derogation is permitted, even in situations of armed conflict and other public emergencies.   The right to life with dignity is to be interpreted broadly, with the understanding that threats stemming from environmental degradation, climate change and unsustainable development are some of the most pressing and serious threats of today and tomorrow. To establish adequate conditions for protecting the right to life, it is recognized that measures should be designed to ensure access without delay by individuals to essential goods and services such as food.   People also have a right to an adequate standard of living, which includes the right to food. The right to food is inherently tied to farmers’ seed systems. A seed system that allows farmers to freely save, use, exchange and sell seeds ensures that people can adequately feed themselves directly from productive land. Farmers’ seed systems allow farmers to grow food in a way that responds and adapts to change, making communities stronger and food systems more resilient.   Such systems also determine farmers’ ability to distribute seeds and food to others either by sharing or selling through a market. Finally, a robust farmers’ seed system ensures that people have access to food that meets their cultural values.   In sum, the more a seed system recognizes and supports farmers as stewards of a seed system for all of humankind, the more likely this system fulfils people’s human rights.   http://www.ohchr.org/en/stories/2022/03/seeds-central-peoples-food-systems-cultures-and-human-rights   * Access the full report (20pp): http://bit.ly/3in0AGQ   Mar. 2022   Stop corporate attack on seeds and safeguard right to food and biodiversity - FIAN International   Seeds cultivated by peasants and Indigenous Peoples for generations are under attack from corporations via intellectual property laws and biotechnology aimed at expanding corporate control over food.   This is causing many farming communities to lose control over the seeds that they cultivate and select in their fields to feed most of the world’s population.   In a new policy paper, Time for Human Rights-based Seed Policies: Safeguard Biodiversity and the Right to Food, FIAN International warns that seeds are an urgent human rights issue. Protecting and promoting peasant and Indigenous Peoples’ seed systems is essential to safeguard the fundamental right to food and nutrition and protect the world’s rapidly decreasing biodiversity.   Just four agrochemical companies – Bayer-Monsanto, DowDuPont/Corteva, ChemChina-Syngenta and BASF – control more than half of the global seed market and three quarters of the global pesticides market. Intellectual property regimes have massively contributed to cementing their dominance over seeds and food systems in general.   “Governments urgently need to take action to protect and promote peasant and Indigenous Peoples’ seed systems. If corporations succeed in obtaining monopolistic control over seeds, this will have major impacts on all of us,” says policy paper author Philip Seufert.   “Over millennia, peasants and Indigenous Peoples have developed the crops and varieties that still feed most of the world. Their seed management systems ensure that crops are adapted to changing climatic conditions. Corporations, by contrast, are primarily interested in generating profits, not the realization of the right to food and nutrition.”   Peasant and Indigenous Peoples’ seed systems face existential threats from corporations’ gaining intellectual property rights over seeds. This restricts peasants’ and Indigenous Peoples’ right to save, use, exchange and sell their seeds.   Contamination by genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and the illegitimate appropriation and exploitation of traditional seeds through patenting of genetic sequences also undermine peasant seed systems, as does the rapid growth of pesticides – often in conjunction with wide scale promotion of hybrid seeds and GMOs.   The FIAN International paper comes ahead of a presentation to the UN Human Rights Council by the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Michael Fakhri, of a groundbreaking report on seeds and farmers’ rights to which FIAN International has contributed.   The Special Rapporteur rightly emphasizes that access to, and control over, seeds are critical for the realization of the right to food and hence the right to life.   Peasant and indigenous seeds play a central role in enabling people to live with dignity, feeding themselves directly from productive land and developing resilience to the multiple challenges of environmental degradation, climate change, unsustainable development and the corporate capture of food systems.   These seed systems also offer solutions to some of the biggest challenges facing the world today. They form the basis of sustainable, agroecological farming practices that conserve and promote biodiversity, provide healthy, varied diets and are more readily adapted to climate change.   FIAN International calls on states to adopt laws to protect peasant and Indigenous Peoples’ seed systems. Their human rights obligations further require them to ensure that all intellectual property laws, certification schemes, seed marketing laws and biotechnology policies respect the rights, needs and realities of peasants and Indigenous Peoples.   Finally, states should adopt measures to transition food systems to agroecology, including phasing out all pesticides with known harmful effects on human, environmental, and ecosystem health, starting with a ban on highly hazardous pesticides.   http://www.fian.org/en/press-release/article/stop-corporate-attack-on-seeds-and-safeguard-right-to-food-and-biodiversity-2927 http://www.fian.org/en/press-release/article/ukraine-war-highlights-growing-global-food-crises-and-need-for-new-world-food-security-strategy-2951 http://ww3.rics.org/uk/en/journals/land-journal/initiative-casts-doubt-on-benefits-of-land-rush-.html http://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/view/30940-little-progress-in-practice-assessing-transparency-inclusiveness-and-sustainability-in-large-scale-land-acquisitions-in-africa http://www.etcgroup.org/content/press-conference-15-march-no-nature-based-solutions http://www.foei.org/bogus-nature-based-solutions-wont-solve-the-climate-crisis/ http://www.foei.org/ipcc-wgiii-report-on-climate-mitigation/ http://www.etcgroup.org/content/cop26-resembles-global-trade-fair-geoengineers-big-ag-and-big-dat http://newint.org/special/food-justice-files http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/land-rights-issue http://www.landcoalition.org/en/uneven-ground/ Visit the related web page
	IMF’s persistent push for austerity reckless in face of Ukraine conflict by ActionAid International, agencies   Apr. 2022   ActionAid urges governments to resist advice to tighten public spending as Spring meetings expose huge gulf between IMF’s progressive rhetoric globally and actions on the ground in the countries hardest hit by soaring food and fuel prices.   By Arthur Larok, Acting Secretary General of ActionAid International, and Hibo Adam, Women’s Rights Officer at ActionAid Somaliland.   The war on Ukraine is being felt in every corner of the world as food and fuel prices soar. But it is communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis and women and girls whose lives have long been devastated by ongoing conflicts and deepening humanitarian emergencies, who are being hardest hit by a near-global cost of living crisis.   “The crisis outside Somaliland is reaching here,” 80-year-old Amina Ibrahim Ege, told us, as she explained how 25kg of rice has risen from $20 to around $30 over the past month, while petrol has soared from $12 to around $30 for five litres.   These skyrocketing food and fuel price increases of more than 50% and 150%, respectively, reported at local level, are far outstripping global averages.   Hunger is rising and another global food crisis is looming. New figures released by the United Nations (UN) earlier this month, show that world food prices hit an all-time high in March following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The UN’s Food Price Index saw a 17.1 per cent rise in the price of grains, including wheat, oats, barley and corn, last month.   Countries in Africa and the Middle East are major trading partners with Russia and Ukraine, particularly for supplies of wheat, sunflower oil and fertiliser. Somaliland depends on imports for the majority of its food supplies, including for products like spaghetti, flour and rice, making it hugely susceptible to shocks in the global food market.   Many of these same countries in the Global South are still reeling from the economic impacts of Covid, conflict and political turmoil from Afghanistan to Haiti, drought, severe storms and flooding fuelled by the climate crisis across Eastern and Southern Africa.   But despite progressive-sounding rhetoric from its Washington HQ during this week’s Spring Meetings, including calls for governments to target support at vulnerable families hit hardest by food and fuel price hikes, the IMF’s advice at country level couldn’t be more regressive.   The IMF is persistently pushing austerity measures in countries struggling to recover from Covid and embroiled in debt. Despite briefly recommending governments increase public spending during the pandemic, analysis shows that austerity cuts are expected to reach 159 countries by the end of 2022, with 6.6 billion people expected to be affected - 85% of the world’s population.   In reality, this means a package of policies including cuts and freezes to public sector wages, pension and social security reform, reducing social protections and promoting privatisation. ActionAid’s analysis found that IMF policy advice to constrain public sector wage bills in 15 countries, blocked the recruitment of three million essential workers, including doctors, nurses and teachers both before and even at the height of the pandemic.   An aggressive new austerity push happened in 2010 after the financial crisis and the 2008 food crisis, which the IMF’s Independent Evaluation Office has since called “premature” and “damaging to growth”. But these lessons are not being learnt.   Our international financial institutions seem unable to move beyond seeing public spending on public services as ‘consumption’ and acknowledge it as vital investments for the fulfilment of human rights obligations and development goals.   We know from experience that austerity is too often the IMF’s response to rising prices, which in the current context feels reckless. Countries need to invest more, not less, in public services, ensuring that they are responsive to the needs of women and girls who are hardest hit during humanitarian emergencies and crises, when cases of gender-based violence soar.   Rather than enforcing cuts to public spending, now is the time for governments to increase revenues through ambitious and progressive tax reforms that put the burden on the richest individuals and companies.   The latest, alarming reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) could not be clearer about the need for an accelerated shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy to avoid catastrophic climate change.   We are also witnessing the fallout from rising fuel and energy prices, which are pushing millions more families into debt and poverty. Secure, reliable, affordable and universal access to renewable energy would address price volatility and put global climate goals within reach.   To fix our broken food systems, we need to invest in and transition to agroecological farming techniques, which work with nature, build climate resilience and protect the rights of farmers, especially women. This is essential to reducing dependence on chemical and fossil fuel-laden fertilisers and cutting emissions from harmful intensive agriculture and meat and dairy production.   Governments must also invest in building national and regional food reserves to act as buffers and reduce vulnerability to food shortages and intervene to fix prices.   Families in the global south are being pushed to the brink of starvation by a war on the other side of the world. Meanwhile, our international financial institutions push austerity policies and fail to address the debt burden, while vast sums of public and private money continue to be pumped into fossil fuels and climate-harming agribusiness.   We must cut off this endless supply of funds perpetuating climate and hunger crises, and shift money to agroecology and climate-resilient, low-emission alternatives.   * ActionAid Country Directors working in 19 countries across Africa have written to their heads of state and regional bodies, including the Africa Union, Southern Africa Development Community, Economic Community of West African States and the East African Community, urging governments to resist advice from the IMF to tighten public spending and harmful austerity policies.   http://actionaid.org/news/2022/imfs-persistent-push-austerity-reckless-face-ukraine-conflict-and-looming-food-crisis http://actionaid.org/news/2022/new-research-local-food-and-fuel-prices-more-triple-some-worlds-most-risk-communities http://www.2030spotlight.org/en/book/2495/chapter/chapter-33-steps-prevent-global-debt-and-austerity-pandemic   * Reclaiming Public Services for a Just Recovery. (GI-ESCR)   Nine global and regional human rights representatives reflect on the crucial role of public services in building a more sustainable, inclusive, socially-just and resilient economy and society, in this 2 hour webinar.   http://www.gi-escr.org/latest-news/enough-is-enough-the-future-is-public-a-unique-and-well-attended-conversation-with-nine-human-rights-officials http://futureispublic.org/global-manifesto/ http://www.ohchr.org/en/statements/2021/10/joint-statement-independent-united-nations-human-rights-experts-warning-threat Visit the related web page
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