Author: Zsófia Rába
“Nature shrinks as capital grows. The growth of the market cannot solve the very crisis it creates.” Vandana Shiva
A Global Struggle for Control Over Food
In today’s world, global food production is predominantly led by corporate global agribusiness giants, shifting focus away from small-scale farming. This concentration of power, coupled with modern, invasive agricultural practices, has significantly contributed to ecosystem destruction and numerous social and environmental issues, such as hunger and loss of biodiversity. These practices have marginalized communities that rely on the land for their livelihoods, pushing them into deeper vulnerability. Communities worldwide are struggling to make ends meet and survive, and they are even further threatened by constant environmental degradation.
Vandana Shiva – an environmental activist, scholar, and an outstanding food sovereignty advocate – has been involved in many activist programs and advocacies regarding anti-GMO movements, seed freedom, and ecofeminism. Reflecting on her quote, she rightly highlights the contradictions our society has to live in daily. Corporate agriculture prioritizes quantity over quality, revolving around large-scale production and profit. This approach leads to increased waste production and the destruction of the ecosystem, ultimately worsening the global issues it fails to address, such as hunger.
The right to food is a fundamental human right, aiming to guarantee access to sufficient food and nutrition for all. It places legal responsibilities on States to combat hunger and malnutrition, striving to achieve food security universally. However, this right cannot be upheld for all we do not also properly address corporate power and control as well as the right of rural communities at the heart of sustainable food production. That is why food sovereignty has emerged as a movement, supporting this goal and empowering small-scale production and marginalized communities to make change. Long-term changes requires the inclusion of reclaiming control over food systems and advocating for sustainable and locally-led agriculture, tackling the issues of systematic injustices.
While the right to food is enshrined in different international legal frameworks, they often fall short of addressing the power imbalances disadvantaging small-scale farmers, and Indigenous communities. Food sovereignty goes beyond the right to food and food security by emphasizing fair and just food production, empowering communities to control their resources and sustain their livelihoods. The UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP) provides a pivotal framework in this context, as it aims to secure the rights of peasants and promote fairer food production and supply chains. This blog looks at how the UNDROP framework supports food sovereignty and explores the question: How does the UNDROP help uphold the rights of small-scale farmers and peasants in creating a more equitable food system?
Sowing Injustice: The Cost of Corporate Farming
For decades, the food system has been in a crisis caused by corporate control, caused by industrialization and globalization. This food insecurity results in hunger, food waste, and many different health issues. Transnational companies (TNCs), such as Cargill, have consolidated immense power over the food supply chain, resulting in a concentration of powers. These TNCs not only have influence over the working of the food supply chain, but they also take part in influencing consumer decisions, UN decision-making processes, inflation, and greenwashing. Corporate high amount of control over food production and distribution leads small-scale and peasant-led farming to become more and more marginalized. While profit and land exploitation are prioritized on a global level, independent farmers, focusing on local sustainability, are suppressed and not taken into account.
The current industrialised food chain is highly driven by capitalist and patriarchal values, causing the exploitation of land and natural resources, mainly for profit. These corporations take part in constant land grabbing; deforestation; pollution of rivers, oceans, and the air; and poisoning communities’ vital ecosystems systematically. daily. These social costs listed are devastating and reflect a disregard for human and environmental well-being – undermining the basic human right to food.
All these issues portray how the global supply chain is insufficient and irrational to uphold the global food system effectively. Food insecurity is on the rise, and there needs to be steps taken to stop the process before it is too late. The clear contrast between peasant-led food systems and corporate-controlled agriculture emphasizes the urgency to create a more equitable approach. For that, several different NGOs and organizations have called for action and started advocating for justice and agroecological practices in order to dismantle corporate power, fight against corporate capture over food systems, and address hunger. One solution all organizations are advocating for is food sovereignty and its international recognition.
What is food sovereignty?
La Via Campesina, an international movement for peasants and indigenous workers around the world. They launched the concept of food sovereignty as a reaction to the limitations of food security. While food security focuses on access to sufficient food, it does not tackle the issues of production, causing the marginalization of small-scale and Indigenous farmers. La Via Campesina aims to unite peasant agriculture and advance food sovereignty. Food sovereignty was officially defined in 2007 during the Nyeleni Declaration, where they came up with the following definition:
“the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods and their right to define their food and agriculture systems”.
In order to ensure such access, La Via Campesina believes in the maintenance of a variety of peasant-driven agroecological production methods. This approach prioritizes small-scale, diverse farming that preserves the land, water, and biodiversity necessary for sustainable agriculture while simultaneously ensuring food security.
The Geneva Academy considers food sovereignty essential to “ensure that peasants and other people working in rural areas are able to exercise control over local food systems and natural and genetic resources”. The Academy identified food sovereignty as a double-dimensional concept. First, the internal dimension, guaranteeing the right to define food and agricultural systems to individuals and communities, alongside participation in decision-making. Second, the external dimension, where states can define their own policies regarding food, agriculture, and development.
The movement is also supported by Friends of the Earth International, who consider food sovereignty prioritizing the principle of food as a human right over free market and individualism. The organization advocates opposing corporate power, and the promotion of agroecological methods, fairness, and solidarity. Such change is needed to confront the challenges of hunger, climate change, and biodiversity. The organization additionally encourages artisanal, indigenous, family, and peasant production and distribution in both urban and rural regions. They also support women in taking a key role in food production and as political subjects, calling for equal wages, respectable working conditions, and access to food.
Food security vs Food sovereignty
The right to food is a fundamental human right, guaranteed by numerous international legislations. Its primary purpose is to ensure all individuals have access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food, without discrimination. Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), binds its State Parties to guarantee adequate food and prevent hunger for everyone. This legally binding Covenant obligates its member states to respect, protect, and fulfill their obligations.
Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) also provides the right to adequate food to all individuals. However, the Declaration was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), making it merely a non-binding soft law.
In the interpretation of La Via Campesina, the right to food is a human right, defending individual rights to a dignified life free from malnutrition, hunger, and food instability. States have the obligation to respect, protect, and fulfill the right to food.
Food security ensures sufficient and reliable access to food at all times to all. It focuses on availability, accessibility, adequacy, and sustainability. However, food security in itself, does not address equitable distribution of food resources, nor does it balance the food system. The concept often involves external assistance or interventions during crises, leaving questions of autonomy and control unanswered. In times of crisis, the concept requires states or international interventions to ensure access to food, complementing the guarantee of the right to food.
While food security guarantees immediate access to food, it still fails to tackle autonomy and control over production. The concept does not address large-scale food production and corporate-controlled agriculture. Although the concept might offer short-term solutions and access, it limits self-sufficiency and local food production. Therefore, it is clear that food security cannot exist and complement the right to food in itself, without the implementation of the concept of food sovereignty.
As previously mentioned, food sovereignty complements food security by focusing on power imbalances within food systems. It gives communities the power to decide what they grow, how they grow it, and for whom they grow it, encouraging individual autonomy, Food sovereignty places a strong emphasis on self-sufficiency, making sure that communities can make their own food themselves, without relying on external sources. Food sovereignty emphasizes dignity and self-sufficiency in communities, therefore supporting food security and ensuring that the right to food is upheld equitably for everyone.
Several different domestic and regional courts have rendered decisions in cases where the primary issue was the access to or the right to food. The Sawhoyamaxa Indigenous Community v. Paraguay case highlights the close relationship between land rights and food sovereignty. The case was about the denial of access to the Indigenous community’s ancestral land. Even though the community received several food aids, hunger was still an ongoing issue. The land was crucial for them for the production of their food, and cultural identity. The land provided the community with sufficient resources to food, hunting, and agriculture. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled in favor of the community, stating the Paraguay violated the right to life by not ensuring adequate access to land. The court highlighted states’ positive obligation to guarantee access to food as a part of right to life, and that Paraguay failed to fulfill its duty. The case illustrates communities must have control over their lands and resources so they may grow their own food using their own knowledge, and therefore enjoy of their right to food.
Similarly, in SERAC and Others v. Nigeria, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights concluded that the Nigerian government had infringed upon the right to food by permitting oil firms to contaminate the land, thereby denying Indigenous communities the opportunity to obtain and grow their own food. This case shows that food sovereignty is impossible to achieve without authority over land and natural resources.
Closing the gaps: legal frameworks for food sovereignty
While there is existing legislation that guarantees the right and access to food, complemented by guidelines from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), and case law from all around the world, nothing addresses properly the broader issues of control over food production systems and empowerment of peasant rights. The UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP), adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2018, aims to fill in these gaps. It is an international instrument recognizing human rights for peasants and other rural workers people, both for individuals and as a collective. Its purpose is to secure fair treatment for those working in rural areas, preserve traditional agricultural practices, and advocate for sustainable food production that respects local cultures and natural resources. Even though the Declaration is based on binding international treaties, such as the ICESCR or the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), it is only a non-binding soft law. The document does not have any direct enforcement mechanisms and is only a guiding principle to strengthen food sovereignty internationally and regionally.
One key provision of the UNDROP is Article 15, essential recognizes the right to adequate food, and the fundamental right to be free from hunger.
Peasants and other people working in rural areas have the right to adequate food and the fundamental right to be free from hunger. This includes the right to produce food and the right to adequate nutrition, which guarantee the possibility of enjoying the highest degree of physical, emotional and intellectual development.
States shall ensure that peasants and other people working in rural areas enjoy physical and economic access at all times to sufficient and adequate food that is produced and consumed sustainably and equitably, respecting their cultures, preserving access to food for future generations, and ensuring a physically and mentally fulfilling and dignified life for them, individually and/or collectively, responding to their needs. UNDROP Article 15(1-2)
The Article supports the concept of food sovereignty by empowering peasants and rural communities to have control over their food sources, fostering self-sufficiency, and reducing dependency on large-scale agriculture systems. It guarantees the right to adequate food and freedom from hunger, alongside peasants’ right to produce food. Additionally, the Article provides peasants with a high level of physical, mental, and emotional well-being and access to resources needed for the production of food.
For peasants, Article 15 affirms their rights to produce and access food sustainably, therefore upholding the concept of food sovereignty. These rights allow them to maintain autonomy over their food systems, as well as protect and practice their local traditions.
Alongside Article 15, the UNDROP, non-exhaustively, provides the interdependent rights of (1) the right to land and other natural resources (Articles 5 & 17); (2) the right to adequate standard of living (Article 16); (3) the right to a safe, clean and healthy environment (Article 18); or (4) the right to water for personal and domestic use and for farming, fishing, and livestock keeping (Article 21).
Despite its potential, UNDROP faces its own challenges due to its non-binding nature, and the absence of direct enforcement mechanisms. Article 2 of the Declaration highlights the obligations of states, including respecting, protecting, and fulfilling the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas; and the acknowledgment and addressing the discrimination these individuals and communities suffer from on a daily basis.
Article 27 requires international organizations, and UN specialized agencies to contribute, assist and cooperate in the realization of the Declaration. Consequently, since its adoption in 2018, several UN mechanisms have integrated the Declaration into their everyday work. For example, the Human Rights Council and Special Procedures have promoted UNDROP through the Universal Periodic Reviews (UPR). Many countries, such as Bolivia have made UPR recommendations on how to implement UNDROP. As a response, a special Working Group on UNDROP was created in 2023, with the responsibility of promoting the Declaration, identifying gaps, sharing best practices, and facilitating international cooperation.
To show best practices, Bolivia and Ecuador are two countries that incorporated food sovereignty into domestic constitutions. The inclusion of the concept into domestic legislation represents advocacy practices towards a more self-sufficient agriculture within the countries. However, several developed countries, with well-established industrial agricultural practices oppose the implementation of UNDROP, creating mixed opinions on the Declaration itself.
By advocating for equitable food systems, the preservation of rural traditions, and the protection of the rights of peasants, UNDROP provides a transformative approach to food sovereignty by addressing power imbalances and aiming to secure a more sustainable way of living for rural communities.
Conclusion, call to action
The concept of food sovereignty is a powerful attempt to transform global food distribution, shifting from corporate control to community-led autonomy. We at United Rising believe that our mission to support sustainable and community-led food production as well as empowering Indigenous communities aligns well with the struggle for food sovereignty. We recognize how corporate dominance over food systems disproportionately affects vulnerable communities all around the world. Drawing back to Vandana Shiva’s quote, it is important to recognize that while we are relying on a system that causes crises all over the world, we cannot rely on the same system and wait to give us sustainable solutions and a nicer future. It is important that we call for action for the reorganization of agricultural systems for equal participation and discussion. La Via Campesina and the Landworkers’ Alliance are just two of many organizations with ongoing initiatives to advocate for change and protect peasants’ rights.
