Human rights and the food sovereignty movement : reclaiming control

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Human Rights and the Food Sovereignty Movement

Our global food system is undergoing rapid change. Since the global food crisis of 2007–2008, a range of new issues have come to public attention, such as land grabbing, food-price volatility, agrofuels and climate change. Peasant social movements are trying to respond to these challenges by organizing from the local to the global to demand food sovereignty. As the transnational agrarian movement La Via Campesina celebrates its twentieth anniversary, this book takes stock of the movement’s achievements and reflects on challenges for the future. It provides an in-depth analysis of the movement’s vision and strategies, and shows how it has contributed not only to the emergence of an alternative development paradigm but also of an alternative conception of human rights. The book assesses efforts to achieve the international recognition of new human rights for peasants at the international level, namely the ‘right to food sovereignty’ and ‘peasants’ rights’. It explores why La Via Campesina was successful in mobilizing a human rights discourse in its struggle against neoliberalism, and also the limitations and potential pitfalls of using the human rights framework. The book shows that, to inject subversive potential in their rights-based claims rural social activists developed an alternative conception of rights, one that is more plural, less statist, less individualistic and more multicultural than dominant conceptions of human rights. Further, they deployed a combination of institutional (from above) and extra-institutional (from below) strategies to demand new rights and reinforce grassroots mobilization through rights. Priscilla Claeys received her PhD in Political and Social Sciences from the University of Louvain (UCL) in 2013 and is now a postdoctoral researcher. Priscilla worked as an adviser to the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food from 2008 to 2014. She previously worked for a number of human rights organizations and development NGOs. Her research interests include transnational agrarian movements, human rights, alternative food economies and the ecological transition.

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Routledge Studies in Food, Society and Environment

Street Food Culture, economy, health and governance Edited by Ryzia De Cássia Vieira Cardoso, Michèle Companion and Stefano Roberto Marras Savoring Alternative Food School gardens, healthy eating and visceral difference Jessica Hayes-Conroy Human Rights and the Food Sovereignty Movement Reclaiming control Priscilla Claeys Food Utopias Reimagining citizenship, ethics and community Edited by Paul Stock, Michael Carolan and Christopher Rosin Food Sovereignty in International Context Discourse, politics and practice of place Edited by Amy Trauger For further details please visit the series page on the Routledge website: http://www.routledge.com/books/series/RSFSE/

Human Rights and the Food Sovereignty Movement Downloaded by [University of California, San Diego] at 23:29 07 April 2017

Reclaiming control

Priscilla Claeys

First published 2015 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

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© 2015 Priscilla Claeys The right of Priscilla Claeys to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Claeys, Priscilla. Human rights and the food sovereignty movement : reclaiming control / Priscilla Claeys. pages cm. – (Routledge studies in food, society and environment) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Food supply. 2. Right to food. I. Title. HD9000.6.C53 2015 363.8–dc23 2014029463 ISBN: 978-1-138-79301-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-79302-6 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-76163-3 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by HWA Text and Data Management, London

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‘This is the first and most systematic theoretical and empirical study of (trans)national agrarian movements from the perspective of human rights. Brilliant. It changes the boundary of how we understand and study (trans)national agrarian movements.’ – Jun Borras, International Institute of Social Studies, Netherlands ‘This is a uniquely well informed and lucid discussion of how one of the most innovative social movements of this century has been gradually transforming our understanding of human rights in general, and of the right to food in particular. Priscilla Claeys provides a contribution both to the sociology of social movements and to the history of ideas, and she offers a rich discussion of how peasants’ rights are emerging in human rights law. This book is three books at once: a significant achievement.’ – Olivier De Schutter, University of Louvain (UCL), Belgium, and former UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food (2008-2014) ‘The book is groundbreaking, interesting, impressive, original and solid academic work. It is a significant contribution to our understanding of the politically relevant human rights dimensions of current agrarian movement struggles. It will, no doubt, prompt some lively debate particularly around the concept of the “right to food sovereignty” and La Via Campesina’s broader social and political transformational framework of “food sovereignty”.’ – Annette Aurélie Desmarais, Canada Research Chair in Human Rights, Social Justice and Food Sovereignty, University of Manitoba, Canada ‘Claeys brings a unique experience and legal eye to the food sovereignty movement’s development of a politics of human rights for the food question of our times. In recounting the movement’s philosophical and political trajectory, she critically evaluates how a small-producer based movement can make its presence and claims felt in raising the possibility of alternative, sustainable paths to the future. As such it is a singularly consequential contribution.’ – Philip McMichael, Cornell University, USA ‘This intriguing study of the creation of food sovereignty as a human right provides valuable insight into how social movements are translated into human rights terms and the complicated social and cultural interactions between local and global understandings inherent in the translation process.’ – Sally Engle Merry, New York University, USA ‘On a methodological level, Priscilla Claeys’ book shows that conducting a global, multi-site and multi-scale research is not only possible but indispensable to understand actors, claims, debates and tensions that articulate global, national and local dimensions. On an analytical level, it shows how the use of global rights may contribute to new paths of emancipation that are emerging in less statist, less individualist and more plural ways.’ – Geoffrey Pleyers, University of Louvain/EHESS, Belgium and Research Committee 47 ‘Social movements’ of the International Sociological Association

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Contents

Acknowledgements Abbreviations 1 Introduction

viii x 1

2 The right to food sovereignty

12

3 The rights of peasants

42

4 The right to food

62

5 The challenges of using rights

82

6 Transforming the right to food

109

Appendix I: Interviews

131

Appendix II: Participant observation sites

135

Notes References Index

141 168 193

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Acknowledgements

I thank all the food sovereignty activists and right to food defenders who have shared their ideas and convictions with me over the last ten years. Many of them have become great friends and will no doubt recognize themselves in this book. It was an immense pleasure to exchange views and impressions. I am indebted to Olivier De Schutter who gave me the opportunity to undertake the research necessary for this book. His academic work, colossal knowledge and his commitment and dedication as UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, have been a great source of inspiration. Working as his special adviser between 2008 and 2014 was a privilege. Doing my PhD at the University of Louvain (UCL), I benefited greatly from an inspiring group of scholars. I thank all the members of my PhD supervising committee, Olivier De Schutter at the Centre for Philosophy of Law (CPDR), Isabelle Ferreras, Jean De Munck and Geoffrey Pleyers, at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Democracy, Institutions, Subjectivity (CRIDIS), and Jean-Philippe Peemans at the Center for Development Studies (IED). I am particularly indebted to Geoffrey Pleyers who encouraged me but also positively challenged me throughout my writing process. Geoffrey helped me refine my use of concepts from social movements’ studies and gave me very constructive guidance on how to conduct research on a transnational social movement. I also thank Cristoph Eberhard for initiating me into the field of legal anthropology. I took great pleasure in attending the various conferences and seminars he organized at the Université Saint-Louis in Brussels. I had the great fortune of having Annette Desmarais, of the University of Manitoba (Canada), and Jun Borras, of the International Institute of Social Studies (Netherlands), sit on my PhD jury. Their encouragement, enthusiasm and challenging feedback have meant a lot. Both of them have all the rare qualities I personally value in academics. They are intellectually and emotionally smart, and manage to articulate their academic life with a deep and critical commitment to social struggles. I also benefited greatly, throughout the course of this research, from intellectual exchanges with various people, colleagues and friends. I am grateful in particular to Carole Samdup, Sofía Monsalve, Antonio Onorati, Isabelle Delforge and Michel Buisson for the many discussions we had.

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Acknowledgements ix My academic colleagues have been a source of great support, understanding and intellectual stimulation. Thank you Audrey, Nadia, Mathias, Christine, Elise, Gaëtan, Nick, Julie, Bernard, Laurence, Alain, Anne, Emeline, Deborah, Samuel, Christian, Grégoire, Carlos, Julien, Etienne, Laura and Ingeborg. My recognition also goes to the UCL-based team of the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food (and all those who have visited us through the years) and to my colleagues at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, for the shared experiences and great teamwork. For their specific support on parts of this book, I thank Natalie Rulloda who conducted research on public policies for food sovereignty, Sara Bailey who gave me insightful comments on the whole manuscript, Monica Rawlinson, Nick Jacobs and Nadia Lambek for their edits and corrections. All the mistakes are mine. Some of the arguments in this book as well as earlier versions of various sections were previously published in Sociology and Globalizations, as well as in the book Rethinking Food Systems: Structural Challenges, New Strategies and the Law published by Springer (2014). I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for those publications for their useful comments. The works of Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Balakrishnan Rajagopal and Neil Stammers have been a tremendous source of inspiration, and I owe a special debt to their research on the ways in which social movements can bring about a cosmopolitan, multicultural and anti-hegemonic conception of human rights. This book was finalized during my post-doctoral research stay at the Collège d’Etudes Mondiales in Paris, which was funded by the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013 – MSCA-COFUND) under grant agreement no. 245743 – Post-doctoral programme Braudel-IFER-FMSH. I also wish to thank Ashley Wright at Routledge for her support and sound advice. I thank my family and friends for their patience, love and support. My sons Raoul and Isaac were born in the years I conducted this research and gave me the strength and distraction I needed. I send my regards to María Eugenia Sánchez Díaz de Rivera and Eduardo Almeida, in Mexico. If I had not met them, I would never have become an academic.

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Abbreviations

AIAB ALBA ALBA-TCP ANEC ANPFA APC ASOCODE ATC CECCAM CESR CETIM CFS CIDSE CIEL CLOC CNC-Eloy CNCR CNOC CNOP COAG CONIC

Associazione Italiana per l’Agricoltura Biologica (Vía Campesina member in Italy) Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra AméricaTratado de Comércio Asociación Nacional de Empresas Comercializadoras de Productores del Campo (Vía Campesina member in Mexico) All Nepal Peasants’ Federation (Vía Campesina member in Nepal) Asian Peasant Coalition Association of Central American Peasant Organizations for Cooperation and Development Asociación de Trabajadores del Campo (Vía Campesina member in Nicaragua) Centro de estudios par el cambio en el campo mexicano Center for Economic and Social Rights Centre Europe Tiers Monde Committee for World Food Security International Alliance of Catholic Development Agencies Center for International Environmental Law Coordinadora Latinoamericana de Organizaciones del Campo Alfaro Coordinadora Campesina-Eloy Alfaro (Vía Campesina member in Bolivia) Conseil National de Concertation et de Coopération des Ruraux (Vía Campesina member in Senegal) Coordinadora Nacional de Organizaciones Campesinas (Vía Campesina member in Guatemala) Coordination Nationale des Organizations Paysannes (Vía Campesina member in Mali) Coordinadora de Organizaciones de Agricultores y Ganaderos (Vía Campesina member in Spain) Coordinadora Nacional Indígena y Campesina (Vía Campesina member in Guatemala)

Abbreviations xi CONAIE CONSEA COPACO

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COPISA CSM CSO CSUTCB CUC EAA EAFF ECOSOC ECOWAP ECOWAS ECVC EHNE FAO FENACLE FENOCIN FIAN FONGS FUGEA FWA GCAR GMO HIC HLPE HRC IATP IBASE ICC

Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del Ecuador Conselho Nacional de Segurança Alimentar e Nutricional (Brazil) Confédération paysanne du Congo (Vía Campesina member in the DRC) Conferencia Plurinacional e Intercultural de Soberanía Alimentaria (in Bolivia) Civil Society Mechanism Civil society organization Confederación Sindical Unica de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia (Vía Campesina member in Bolivia) Comité de unidad campesina (Vía Campesina member in Guatemala) Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance Eastern Africa Farmers Federation Economic and Social Council of the United Nations Agricultural Policy of the Economic Community of West African States Economic Community of West African States European Coordination Vía Campesina Euskal Herriko Nekazarien Elkartasuna (Vía Campesina member in the Basque country) Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Federación Nacional de Trabajadores Agroindustriales, Campesinos e Indígenas Libres del Ecuador (Vía Campesina member in Ecuador) Federación Nacional de Organizaciones Campesinas, Indígenas y Negras (Vía Campesina member in Ecuador) FoodFirst Information Action Network Fédération des Organisations Non Gouvernementales du Sénégal Fédération Unie de Groupements d’Eleveurs et d’Agriculteurs (Vía Campesina member in Belgium) Fédération wallonne de l’agriculture (Belgium) Global Campaign for Agrarian Reform Genetically Modified Organism Habitat International Coalition High Level Panel of Experts of the Committee on World Food Security Human Rights Council of the United Nations Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy Instituto Brasileiro de Análises Sociais e Econômicas International Coordinating Committee of the Vía Campesina

xii

Abbreviations

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ICESCR ICJ IFAD IHCS IIED ILO IMF IPC KMP KRSS LOA LOASP LRAN MAF MAP MIJARC MPNKP MPP MST NFU OECAS OECOM OECD OHCHR PAN-AP PSSA PWESCR RAIP ROPPA SISAN

International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights International Commission of Jurists International Fund for Agricultural Development Indonesian Human Rights Committee for Social Justice International Institute for Environment and Development International Labour Organization International Monetary Fund International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (Vía Campesina member in the Philippines) Karnataka State Farmers’ Association (Vía Campesina member in India) Loi d’orientation agricole/Agricultural Orientation Law (Mali) Loi d’orientation agro-sylvo-pastorale (Senegal) Land Research Action Network Mesa Agropecuaria y Forestal (Vía Campesina member in Nicaragua) Mouvement d’Action Paysanne (Vía Campesina member in Belgium) International Movement of Catholic Agricultural and Rural Youth Mouvman Peyizan Nasyonal Kongre Papay (Vía Campesina member in Haiti) Mouvement Paysan de Papaye (Vía Campesina member in Haiti) Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra (Vía Campesina member in Brazil) National Farmers Union (Vía Campesina member in Canada) Organizaciones Económicas Campesinas, Indígenas y Originarias de Bolivia/Economic Peasant Organisations of Bolivia Organizaciones Económicas Comunitarias/Economic Community Organisations (Bolivia) Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights Pesticide Action Network, Asia Pacific Política de Seguridad y Soberanía Alimentaria (Bolivia) Programme on Women’s Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Regional Agriculture Investment Plan (ECOWAS) Réseau des organizations paysannes et des producteurs agricoles d’Afrique de l’Ouest Sistema de Soberanía Alimentaria y Nutricional/Food Sovereignty and Nutritional System (Ecuador)

Abbreviations xiii SOC SPI TNI UNAC

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UNAG UNORCA UPA WFS WFS: fyl WSFS WTO

Sindicato de Obreros del Campo de Andalucía (Vía Campesina member in Spain) Indonesia Peasant Union (Vía Campesina member in Indonesia) Transnational Institute União Nacional de Camponeses (Vía Campesina member in Mozambique) Unión Nacional de Agricultores y Ganaderos de Nicaragua (exVía Campesina member in Nicaragua) Unión Nacional de Organizaciones Regionales Campesinas Autonomas (Vía Campesina member in Mexico) Union des Producteurs Agricoles (Quebec) World Food Summit (1996) World Food Summit five years later (2002) World Summit for Food Security (2009) World Trade Organization

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1

Introduction

Today we face a double social crisis. On one hand, a crisis of regulation has emerged, in the shape of failing regulatory and welfare states. On the other hand, a crisis of emancipation has arisen, in terms of the decline of social revolution and socialism as paradigms of radical social transformation. Human rights, as an incarnation of both regulatory and emancipatory politics, are trapped in this double crisis and are struggling to overcome it (Santos 1997, 80–1). Since they are globally recognized, human rights are at the heart of contemporary global governance debates, and are closely tied to what some have called the emergence of a global civil society (Kaldor et al. 2007) or transnational public sphere (Habermas 2010, 475). A large number of social movements and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) use the human rights framework for its legitimizing force and universalizing effect, to the extent that some are able to argue that human rights have become a near-hegemonic ideology (Gauchet 2000, 280). Indeed, it is against a backdrop of failing ideologies that human rights have risen to their current prominence (Moyn 2012), leading to a situation where other emancipatory strategies may now be marginalized (Kennedy 2002, 108). At the same time, human rights are increasingly criticized for having individualizing, Western and liberal implications (Engle Merry 1997; Rajagopal 2003), for reducing their subjects to victims (Rancière 2004), for being imperialistic (Douzinas 2007) and for supporting the expansion of liberalism (Charvet and Kaczynska-Nay 2008) and capitalism (Sardar 1998). They have also been accused of being tied to the state (Baxi 2007b) and domination processes (Agrikoliansky 2010), of not addressing issues of power (Stammers 1995, 2009), and of promoting unrealistic expectations, thereby discouraging political dialogue and increasing social conflicts (Glendon 1991). Finally, it has been argued that human rights alienate activists from their own local cultural understandings (Engle Merry 1997), and reduce social solidarity and appreciation of the public good (Kneen 2009). Human rights stand at a crossroads. Can they serve as a progressive form of politics? Or are human rights just one more variety of a global, state-centric and individualistic (Gauchet 1980, 22, 25) hegemony (Santos and Rodríguez-Garavito 2005, 14)? The food sovereignty movement, a transnational movement of rural social organizations that work towards achieving structural changes in the global food

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2 Introduction system (Holt-Giménez 2011), has widely relied on the discourse of rights to advance its claims (Patel 2007; Rosset and Martinez 2010). Those who call themselves peasants – and make up the vast majority of the almost 870 million people chronically undernourished on the planet (FAO 2012) – have put the right to produce, the right to land, the right to protection from dumping and the right to food sovereignty at the core of their struggles over the last decades. The transnational agrarian movement Vía Campesina1 has even adopted a Declaration on the Rights of Peasants, and succeeded in putting it on the agenda of the United Nations Human Rights Council (Edelman and James 2011; Golay 2009; Claeys 2012b). If human rights are indeed of little use to the oppressed, why are we witnessing ‘the increasing frequency of the language of rights in the statements of peasant movements’ (Kneen 2009, 2)? What can be made of this apparent contradiction (Landy 2013), and under which conditions can the use of human rights by social movements be subversive?2 In other words, is it possible for social movements’ activists to use human rights in a way that challenges power (Stammers 1999, 1005)? To answer this question, this book explores the following themes: (a) why are assertions of rights so prevalent in the discourse of contemporary agrarian movements, and what are the advantages of framing claims as rights?; (b) what are the various understandings of human rights that circulate within the food sovereignty movement, and how do these conceptions differ from dominant conceptions of human rights?; (c) what constraints are associated with the human rights framework and what strategies are adopted by social movements to overcome these constraints?; (d) how did the food sovereignty movement succeed in transforming its concerns into internationally acknowledged human rights claims? Where and why did it fail?; (e) how did human rights organizations and rights-based development NGOs react to the emergence of the food sovereignty movement and its demand that new rights be recognized for peasants?; and (f) how are human rights being reconfigured under the impetus of contemporary agrarian movements? Human rights have enabled the common framing of claims across different political, economic, cultural and ideological contexts (Borras 2004), and have facilitated the food sovereignty movement’s insertion into global food governance debates (Patel 2009). But rights claims have also presented food sovereignty activists with a challenge in the shape of the paradox of institutionalization, because human rights praxis tends to be reduced to a praxis that is organized through and oriented towards institutionalized structures of power. This may seriously endanger the ‘emancipatory thrust’ of human rights (Stammers 2009, 106, 225), and sheds light, in my opinion, on why those who arguably need the right to food the most have found the existing human rights framework lacking. My main argument is that, to inject subversive potential into their rights-based claims, food sovereignty activists have developed an alternative conception of rights that is more plural, less statist, less individualistic and more multi-cultural than dominant conceptions of human rights. In parallel, they have deployed a combination of institutional and extra-institutional strategies to demand

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Introduction 3 new rights and reinforce grassroots mobilization through rights. Their rightscreating activity has had considerable impacts: various dimensions of the right to food sovereignty have been institutionally recognized at local or national levels (Beuchelt and Virchow 2012), and new rights that are constitutive of the food sovereignty paradigm are in the process of being recognized at the UN Human Rights Council (Golay 2013). In addition, the emergence of transnational peasant movements in the 1990s has led to a partial reconceptualization of the right to food, a human right already recognized in international human rights law. The transnational right to food network has placed an increased emphasis, in recent years, on the importance of moving toward sustainable, relocalized and pro-smallholder agricultural development models. At the same time, food sovereignty activists face many challenges: how can new rights for peasants be advanced while alliances with other rural constituencies are built? How can the effective implementation of the new legal frameworks be ensured? How can local food sovereignty practices be developed, state action secured (and of what kind?) and structural changes in global governance obtained? In this book, I adopt a ‘social constructionist’ view of rights which does not see human rights as a given but instead as products of human social interaction (Short 2009, 103). I look at the reconfiguration of human rights under the impetus of contemporary transnational agrarian movements, following the efforts of indigenous peoples to ‘reconstruct’ human rights (RodríguezGaravito and Arenas 2005; Daes 2004; Kenrick and Lewis 2004; Díaz-Polanco and Sánchez 2002; Sieder and Witchell 2001; Falk 1988). I explore grassroots perspectives on human rights, from North and South, and show that the study of both institutional and extra-institutional arenas is necessary to analyse the process of emergence of ‘new rights’ (Bob 2010c). I demonstrate that, if social actors are indeed ‘forced to resort to using exogenous, internationally legitimated means to secure their right to be different’ (Hirtz 2003, 910), this is not the end of the story. Peasant movements have proven to be extremely creative in their grappling with human rights, although serious consideration of the limits of the human rights framework will be needed to further advance food sovereignty. Vía Campesina’s use of rights moves beyond the Marxist critique of human rights because the movement deploys rights to challenge capitalism itself. Marx, and many Marxist intellectuals after him, rejected human rights as part of their wider critique of capitalism (Douzinas 2010). At the heart of this critique was the belief that the recognition and enforcement of rights for the disadvantaged was unlikely to improve their well-being in absence of reforms altering distribution of wealth and power, an argument that has also been advanced by some liberal thinkers (Simon 2003, 20). The question raised by Vía Campesina is no longer: are human rights bourgeois rights (Marx 1875) but by whom are they appropriated? Are they defined by social struggles or by hegemonic powers? This book shows that, as nearly every social controversy today is framed as a clash of rights (Glendon 1991, 4), the struggle to determine human rights is highly political.

4 Introduction

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The actors Two broadly defined categories of social actors are discussed in this book: food sovereignty activists and right to food defenders. The food sovereignty activists discussed in this book are, for the most part, small-scale farmers, peasants and indigenous people who belong to the transnational agrarian organization Vía Campesina. Many are movement leaders,3 some are support staff, but most are grassroots members. This category also includes activists from agrarian movements other than Vía Campesina, as well as academics and NGO representatives. All demand food sovereignty. Right to food defenders are NGO staff, academics, legal experts and UN representatives who work towards the promotion and protection of the human right to adequate food. A good proportion of these human rights defenders are lawyers, although many are not. Food sovereignty activists have been at the forefront of the global justice movement,4 while right to food defenders have played an important role in advancing economic, social and cultural rights. It is striking that human rights defenders have played only a minor role in the global justice movement,5 while food sovereignty activists, despite their use of the human rights framework, remain somewhat on the margins of the human rights community. The reasons for this double disconnect are explored in this book. Both food sovereignty activists and right to food defenders form part of the global food movement6 (Holt-Giménez 2011, 110). In their efforts to defend alternative, fair and more sustainable or healthy food systems, they are joined by many other types of activists – for example, organic, fair trade, slow food and local/community food activists – who would not necessarily identify with either food sovereignty or the right to food, although some might. The global food movement is rapidly growing, and the 2007–8 global food crisis revealed its vitality. It is multifaceted and diverse, in large part because the members of this movement – consumers, landless people, agricultural workers, peasants, indigenous peoples, rich and poor, rural and urban – all experience the global food system differently. Within the global food movement, the transnational movement for food sovereignty7 (see Figure 1.1) is particularly vibrant. The food sovereignty movement is, at its core, a movement of rural social movements and organizations that work towards achieving food sovereignty.8 Analysis of this movement is highly relevant because the rise of transnational agrarian movements in the 1990s has reinforced worldwide opposition to neoliberal capitalism, and has given a new resonance to centuries of debates on the agrarian question (Byres 1982; Bernstein and Byres 2001; Bernstein 2014, 2010; Araghi 1995) and on the role of peasantries in revolutionary processes. Contemporary peasant movements have found ways to simultaneously localize and internationalize their actions, in response to both state decentralization and globalization (Borras 2009, 11). Their mobilizations against genetic crops, dams, mining concessions and trade liberalization have questioned the nature of the relationship between food producers and consumers, between cities and the countryside, between nature and humanity, between North and South (Claeys 2012a, 105). The food

Introduction 5 Transnational Agrarian Movements APC, People’s Coalition on Food Sovereignty (Asia) CLOC (Latin America) MIJARC, FIMARC (Catholic) ROPPA (Africa) …

International Planning Committee (IPC) for Food Sovereignty Social Organizations of small farmers, fishers, pastoralists, indigenous peoples, agricultural workers, and NGOs

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Transnational NGOs ETC Group Focus on the Global South Food First Friends of the Earth GRAIN LRAN …

Academics The Food Sovereignty Movement

J. Borras A. Desmerais E. Holt -Gimenez P. McMichael R. Patel P. Rosset …

Via Campesina

NFU, Union paysanne (Canada) NFCC (USA) ANEC, UNORCA (Mexico) MPNKP (Haiti) CNOC, CUC, CONIC (Guatemala) ATC, MAF (Nicaragua) CSUTCB, Bartolina Sisa (Bolivia) MST (Brazil)

Confédération Paysanne(France) FUGEA, MAP (Belgium) Uniterre (Switzerland) COAG, SOC (Spain)

ANPFA (Nepal) SPI (Indonesia) KRSS (India) …

COPACO (DRC) CNCR (Senegal) CNOP (Mali) UNAC (Mozambique)

Figure 1.1 The food sovereignty movement

sovereignty movement has put an alternative vision on the table (Desmarais 2008b), at a time when the convergence of the financial, food, energy and environmental crises forces us to look for an alternative development model. This may explain why food sovereignty has had so much resonance: numerous NGOs, academics, environmentalists, and even states today defend some version of food sovereignty. In this book, I focus on the transnational and formally organized network Vía Campesina, but I also give the floor to many other food sovereignty activists, who belong to other agrarian movements,9 or to agrarian-oriented NGOs,10 and/or to academia.11 Vía Campesina was formally constituted on 16 May 1993, by 46 farm leaders from around the world who had gathered together in Mons, Belgium.12 Twenty years later, the network claims to represent 200 million peasants worldwide (Vía Campesina 2012b). As of the last International Conference of Vía Campesina in Jakarta in June 2013, membership amounts to 164 national and subnational organizations in 79 countries.13 Some of its member organizations have become famous for their struggles over land, against genetically modified organisms (GMOs) or against the World Trade Organization (WTO), such as the landless workers movement MST (O Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra) in Brazil, and the Confédération paysanne in France.14 Vía Campesina relies on a decentralized structure and derives its vitality and legitimacy from its

6 Introduction Church organizations Bread for the World CIDSE EEA ICCO …

United Nations Committee on ESCR FAO Right to Food team OHCHR UN Special Rapporteur on the RTF

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Right-based development NGOs Action Aid (Oxfam) …

Right to Food Network

Human Rights organizations

FIAN International (works exclusively on the Right to Food)

Amnesty International ESCR-NET Human Rights Watch ICJ Rights & Democracy

Academics P. Alston O. De Schutter J. Drèze O. Eide E. Riedel A. Sen H. Shue K. Tomasevski …

Figure 1.2 The transnational Right To Food Network

member organizations at local and national levels.15 Among these organizations, differences in worldviews, political agendas and methods of work abound, despite the fact that all defend the interests of economically and politically marginalized sectors of society (Borras 2004, 9). Vía Campesina has a mixed membership, ranging from farm workers and landless peasants to indigenous peoples and ‘small’ farmers with different types of economic activity, land sizes and methods of production and distribution (from direct consumer sales to contract farming). The ideological, religious, cultural and political persuasions of its member organizations vary too, from those coming from the communist party-based frameworks to those of the anarcho-syndicalist tradition, from those of broadly liberal provenance to those arising from environmental or feminist activism. Divisions between member organizations of Vía Campesina are common in national contexts (Desmarais 2008b). In recent years, the movement’s membership has considerably expanded to take in new members from Asia and Africa, but the Latin and North American regions, as well as Europe, remain very influential. Also located within the global food movement, the transnational right to food network (see Figure 1.2) has a very different feel. It consists of a constellation of human rights organizations, development NGOs and individual experts attached to various national or international institutions. Advocates of the right to food form what Keck and Sikkink (1998) have termed a transnational advocacy network, but not, in my opinion, a social movement.16 Right to food defenders use advocacy and campaigning as key repertoires of action, but do not (or rarely) engage in protests. They speak on behalf of the hungry and malnourished, but

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Introduction 7 do not seek to improve their own life situation (they usually enjoy a decent standard of living and work to improve the welfare of others). Expressions of solidarity and support towards ‘victims’ of human rights ‘violations’ (Kennedy 2002, 111) form a central part of their work. At the heart of the transnational right to food network is the international human rights organization FIAN, which stands for FoodFirst Information and Action Network.17 Inspired by the approach of Amnesty International, FIAN has advocated for the realization of the right to food since the mid-1980s, mostly reacting to threats of eviction of rural communities and land conflicts through letter-writing campaigns. The organization still actively follows a number of cases of violations worldwide, but is today more renowned for its advocacy and awareness-raising.18 Since its creation, FIAN has stressed the importance of securing ‘peoples’ access to the resources that they need in order to feed themselves, now and in the future’.19 This ‘agrarian-oriented’ identity has facilitated joint work with Vía Campesina on land issues.20 Over the last 15 years, a growing number of development organizations have incorporated the right to food into their mandate and activities. Of those working on food security issues, ActionAid21 and Oxfam22 are amongst the NGOs that have most explicitly incorporated human rights into their mandates. Many church-affiliated organizations have also sought to address food-related injustices through a right to food lens.23 Finally, researchers and legal experts from universities and from the United Nations,24 such as Amartya Sen, Jean Drèze, Philip Alston, Katarina Tomaševski, Asbjorn Eide, Eibe Riedel, Wenche Barth Eide, Henry Shue, Jean Ziegler, Olivier De Schutter, and others, have played a key role in advancing the right to food. Global mainstream human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, in contrast, have been slow in taking up the economic and social rights agenda and are barely discussed in this book, as they have been almost entirely absent from food security debates.25 Right to food defenders and food sovereignty activists often work together. They take part in the same alternative global summits, follow the same international processes and may be involved in the same national coalitions or local struggles. At the international level, they often debate joint statements at NGO forums that are organized in parallel to international gatherings, or discuss joint (or separate) strategies in institutional processes under way at the UN. At the national or regional level, they may join forces in food sovereignty campaigns or events (e.g. Campaña sin maíz no hay país in Mexico) or meet regularly in food sovereignty ‘platforms’ (e.g. Plate-Forme Souveraineté Alimentaire in Belgium). Yet they are surprisingly easy to distinguish. The right to food sovereignty and the right to food are not merely, as we will see, human rights in the making, or frames deployed by social actors to make sense of their environment. They are social markers, or identifiers, which actors use to talk about themselves and recognize each other. One cannot be both a right to food defender and a food sovereignty activist (although some people have succeeded in positioning themselves on the threshold).

8 Introduction

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Moving across different sites of engagement The study of transnational networks needs to be located at multiple scales, both the globalized and the localized (Baletti et al. 2008). The ideas and activists of these movements travel from the local to the global, and back again. The study of human rights also requires navigating between the local and the global (Goodale 2007). In order to select my different sites of engagement (Scoones 2008), I travelled within the transnational food sovereignty movement with a view to identifying the spaces in which the issue of rights was most often discussed. Vía Campesina functions both as an actor at the international level, with agendas and aims that broadly reflect those of its member organizations, and as an arena of action, because these agendas and aims are products of internal negotiations among the different member organizations (Borras 2004, 3). Looking at Vía Campesina as an arena of action, I followed discussions within the movement’s Human Rights commission and Food Sovereignty and Trade commission,26 as well as the debates on food sovereignty and rights taking place at the local level. Some contexts proved particularly conducive to the exploration of alternative conceptions of human rights: Mexico and Central America (fieldwork in 2008, 2009) where food sovereignty originated; Indonesia (2010) where peasants’ rights emerged; and Bolivia (2011) where food sovereignty is tied to indigenous peoples’ territorial struggles and the rights of Mother Earth. Fieldwork in Nepal (2007), Haiti (2008), India (2010), Malaysia (2010) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (2011), and in France, Belgium, Spain and Canada (between 2008 and 2014), enabled me to witness wide variations in the ways in which human rights and food sovereignty were perceived across regions. Looking at Vía Campesina as a transnational actor, I identified a number of international and local arenas in which I could study the interactions of food sovereignty activists with representatives from other movements and from human rights and development NGOs, but also with opponents, such as states and international institutions. My selection of the transnational sites (Engle Merry 2006, 38) to study was facilitated by the very choices made by Vía Campesina itself. Strategic decisions on which institutions to engage with are made very carefully by the movement and only a limited number of arenas are identified as potentially useful. I focused my attention on UN processes where the institutionalization of new rights was actively pursued or at least envisaged: the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the UN, the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) and the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS). In the course of this research, I conducted more than 110 semi-structured interviews with food sovereignty movement leaders and activists, and with right to food defenders.27 In the book, I have changed the names of my interviewees, with the exception of public figures. I have not included long descriptions of the various national and local contexts in which I conducted fieldwork, in spite of the influence of local contexts on how activists frame their claims. Some of these contexts I was able to study in some depth; others I could only imagine. A potential drawback of studying transnational processes is that local

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Introduction 9 complexities can be glossed over. In addition, participant observation at around 70 various meetings and events informed my views on how rights are framed by food sovereignty activists.28 In order to complete my exploration of the movement’s rights discourse, I have analysed the statements, declarations and press releases issued by the food sovereignty movement in the period ranging from 1993 to 2014. Food sovereignty forums and parallel conferences provided important opportunities to discuss the food sovereignty concept and elaborate food sovereignty as an alternative vision.29 Protests and marches also played an important role as they helped to identify what food sovereignty stood against.30 Before becoming a researcher, I worked for a number of human rights and development NGOs during the 2003–8 period. This NGO experience allowed me to develop a good grasp of the issues at the intersection of food and agriculture, trade, globalization and human rights, and gave me a solid understanding of the working practices of the NGO world. Subsequently, I worked as an adviser to the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food during his six-year mandate, from 2008 to 2014. Much of what I did in that period can be described as studying sideways (Hannerz 2004). Studying up became a well-known figure of speech in anthropology some decades ago, in relation to Laura Nader’s observation that anthropologists mostly engaged in studying people less powerful and prosperous than themselves (Nader 1972), that is studying down. In contrast, my position was closer to that of a colleague activist (and I already knew many of the people that I interviewed). There is something inevitably uncomfortable about studying sideways. On many levels, when writing, I was confronted with the uneasy feeling that I was revealing stories that had been shared with me in confidence, and discussing tensions that many people felt very sensitive about. Agrarian activists invest a lot of energy in presenting coherent and ‘official’ narratives about their movements (Edelman 2009, 249). The same goes for human rights defenders. The challenge for researchers is how to react when aspects of the NGO’s or movement’s practices conflict with the official line. Edelman argues that portraying movement practices and strategies in a critical way is often complicated by the fact that most university researchers who study or accompany social movements are profoundly sympathetic to the activists’ goals (Edelman 2009, 250). This is certainly a challenge with which I felt confronted personally. Aware that the extent of my contribution to the struggles of agrarian movements would depend directly on my ability to pose ‘difficult questions’ (Edelman 2009, 258), I have tried to be as honest and respectful as possible. Finally, I have used the term ‘peasant’ to describe all family farmers, peasant farmers, community-based farmers and small and medium-scale farmers31 who are members of the Vía Campesina network. Although this term is the adequate translation of the Spanish ‘campesino’ and of the French ‘paysan’, and is widely used in Asia, I am aware that it is not used in the US, Canada and the UK, particularly in a domestic context. I am also aware that the term peasant may conjure up a somewhat archaic image in the eyes of the reader of what are often very complex and modern rural realities. Despite the fact that the term

10

Introduction

peasant does not do justice to the huge diversity of economic, social and cultural situations in which Vía Campesina members find themselves today, I have chosen to use it for its prominence in my various fieldwork sites and because of its political significance.

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Structure of the book In the first three chapters, I discuss the various conceptions of human rights that circulate among food sovereignty activists and right to food defenders. Three case studies are presented: the right to food sovereignty (Chapter 2), the rights of peasants (Chapter 3) and the right to food (Chapter 4). Chapter 2 describes the emergence of the right of peoples to food sovereignty, probably the most emblematic invention of the Vía Campesina movement in the area of human rights. The food sovereignty concept was born in the mid-1980s and appeared on the international scene in 1996, in a context of opposition to neoliberal policies in agriculture, in particular in Latin America. This context is described in some detail, as is the alternative model (relocalization) put forward by Vía Campesina. In the second part of Chapter 2, I analyse food sovereignty as a human right. I show how claims by Vía Campesina that food sovereignty should be recognized as a human right signal and contribute to an alternative conception of human rights. I close with a discussion of attempts by the movement to institutionalize this new right, and describe the advances made at the national and international levels. Chapter 3 describes another instance of rights creation by Vía Campesina: the ‘Declaration of the Rights of Peasants – Women and Men’, which was adopted by the movement in 2008. While the right to food sovereignty can be understood as a direct reaction to trade liberalization and the dismantling of state services, the rights that are proclaimed in the Declaration question the agrarian transition to capitalism. In Chapter 3, therefore, I discuss some of the long-term transformation processes that are denounced by Vía Campesina, such as the commodification of nature, the incorporation of farmers into (global) markets and the modernization of agriculture. This leads me to describe the alternative (repeasantization) that is put forward by Vía Campesina, with a particular emphasis on autonomy and control over land and territories. In the second part of Chapter 3, I describe the conception of human rights that underpins the Declaration of the Rights of Peasants and discuss the institutional advances that have been attained thus far. I explore the various factors which enabled the successful uptake of the draft Declaration from Indonesian peasant activists, to other organizations in the Vía Campesina network, to supportive NGOs, and finally to the UN Human Rights Council. Chapter 4 looks at the interpretation and implementation of the human right to food by a transnational network of human rights experts dedicated to its realization. An analysis of the foundations of the right to food is offered as this will assist in identifying the conceptual innovations introduced by peasant movements. Chapter 4 is distinct from the previous two chapters because of the

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Introduction 11 nature of the social actors analysed and because of the institutional trajectory of this right. The right to food is a legally recognized human right that has been elaborated primarily in UN, academic and NGO circles. It cannot be considered to constitute a reaction to neoliberalism or capitalism. Nonetheless, it was not conceptualized in a vacuum and as I demonstrate in Chapter 4, its current interpretation is reflective of multiple theoretical influences over recent decades, many of which indicate an (at least conceptual) dialogue between human rights and development theorists and practitioners. In the next two chapters, I consider the various categories of rights described above as evolving and contested frames deployed by social actors, and analyse the tensions between them. Chapter 5 explores some of the challenges that peasant movements are confronted with when using rights frames. It discusses the advantages and constraints – both conceptual and strategic – of the human rights framework and explores the various ways in which peasant movements have tried to overcome these obstacles. It analyses framing as a contested activity and looks at the impact of ‘framing disputes’ and ‘framing contests’ on the way that rights are (or are not) institutionalized. The second part of Chapter 5 discusses the paradox of institutionalization and efforts by movements to ensure that the subversive potential of their rights-based claims is kept intact. It compares the institutional trajectory of the right to food sovereignty with that of the rights of peasants. Chapter 6 offers a peasant critique of the human right to food and attempts to assess the extent to which the conceptualization of the right to food has evolved in response to peasant claims. Chapter 6 describes the various tensions that have surfaced between right to food defenders and food sovereignty activists over the years, as well as the strategies used to deal with these tensions. It suggests that some right to food defenders feel presssed to endorse a more pluralistic conception of human rights because they feel that their legitimacy depends on their ability to respond to the claims formulated by peasants themselves, who form the bulk of the hungry and food insecure. Other right to food defenders prioritize other sources of legitimacy, such as the universality and codified nature of human rights, and therefore resist such changes. The future of the right to food, as well as that of the new rights put forward by peasant movements, will largely depend on how these legitimacy and representation issues are dealt with.

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2

The right to food sovereignty

Introduction Vía Campesina leader Paul Nicholson, from the farmer organization EHNE in the Basque country in Spain, recalls: ‘When the concept came out, it was intuitive and uncontrollable; it came out of a small group, which today is the whole world.’1 The genealogy of food sovereigny is the subject of intense debates. The term appears to have emerged in the discourse of peasant organizations in Mesoamerica in the mid-1980s, in response to drastic structural adjustment programmes, the vanishing of state support for agriculture and the arrival of US food imports. The food sovereignty rhetoric was used by the Mexican government in its 1983 National Food Program (Edelman 2014, 4–5), and its initial meaning probably designated something like national food security. Increasingly, however, peasants used it to claim their ‘right to continue being producers’ (Edelman 1999, 102–3). Two central factors enabled the emergence of Vía Campesina as a transnational agrarian movement. First, a new generation of peasant organizations appeared in the mid-1980s, that were either born from the older ones – often attached to political parties – or founded virtually from scratch, and that were less clientelist and corporatist than their forebears and refused to be subordinated to urban interests (Rosset and Martínez-Torres 2010, 5). Second, there was a shared understanding that their national governments were weak and that the issues at stake required some kind of organizing at the transnational level. Exchanges between peasant organizations from North America, Central America and Europe (Desmarais 2008b, 114, 115) helped develop ties between peasants who soon realized that they were faced with similar problems, and the victims of a similar system. Together, they demanded a mixture of restoring improved versions of the state services, and structural changes, such as land redistribution. Marc,2 a French peasant from the Confédération paysanne who raises pigs in the Côtes-d’Armor region, attended the 1993 meeting in Mons, Belgium, which was to lead to the creation of the Vía Campesina network. He recalls: ‘before, the state of mind was, we need to help the starving poor in Africa, but then we realized that we were destroying each other’.3

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The right to food sovereignty 13 By the time Vía Campesina held its second International Conference in Tlaxcala, Mexico, in April 1996, food sovereignty had already acquired a certain standing. Food sovereignty was associated with the right to produce, with access to land and with the democratic control of food systems. A first list of food sovereignty principles was established. The negative impacts of the dumping of food surpluses produced by the North and the growing presence of transnational corporations in agriculture were clearly identified as being in contradiction with food sovereignty (Vía Campesina 1996a). Food sovereignty made its appearance on the international scene in 1996. At the World Food Summit (WFS) that was held in Rome in November 1996, an NGO Forum was organized. The NGO Forum Declaration stated that ‘food sovereignty’ should take ‘precedence over macro-economic policies and trade liberalization’ (NGO Forum to the World Food Summit 1996). Vía Campesina, in a statement released at the WFS, defined food sovereignty as ‘the right of each nation to maintain and develop its own capacity to produce its basic foods respecting cultural and productive diversity’ (Vía Campesina 1996c). The diagnosis was explicit: ‘The neo-liberal agricultural policies have led to the destruction of our family farm economies and to a profound crisis in our societies’ (Vía Campesina 1999). In the Seattle Declaration of 3 December 1999, Vía Campesina demanded ‘the right to produce our food for our own consumers, with great diversity in production and consumption according to cultural preferences’ (Vía Campesina 1999). The Seattle Declaration lists some of the implications of food sovereignty: • To secure food sovereignty in each and every country giving priority to food production for its people, social aspects and environment; • To give each country the right to define their own agricultural policies in order to meet their internal needs; This includes the right to prohibit imports in order to protect domestic production and to implement Agrarian Reform providing peasants and small to medium-sized producers with access to land; • To stop all forms of dumping. To protect the production of staple domestic foods. (Vía Campesina 1999) Although the Seattle Declaration focuses on food and agricultural policies, food sovereignty includes many other dimensions than trade and WTO-related claims, such as access to resources, territory, seeds, local knowledge, local markets and so on. In this chapter, I focus on trade issues, because of their visibility and prominence in the international arena, certainly up to the mid2000s. Non-trade issues are addressed in the next chapter, which focuses on peasants’ rights. At the Nyéléni Food Sovereignty Forum, which was held in 2007, food sovereignty was conceptualized as relying on six pillars: (1) the right to food for all and the rejection of the commoditization of food; (2) support and respect for

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The right to food sovereignty

food producers; (3) localized food systems (against dumping and dependency towards transnational corporations); (4) local control over natural resources and territories (against privatization and exploitation, for access to land); (5) development and exchange of local knowledge (against genetically modified organisms); and (6) work in harmony with nature (against monoculture, industrial farming, for agro-ecological practices) (Nyéléni Food Sovereignty Forum 2007a). These different pillars are highlighted by certain activists more than others, and their interpretation varies across regions. The implications of food sovereignty, in all these areas, are still being discussed and defined. Food sovereignty means something different in each local context, and evolves as it is being debated. In the words of Josie Riffaud, a French peasant woman from the Confédération paysanne (in the Gironde department), former member of the International Coordination Committee of the Vía Campesina: ‘food sovereignty is what we have in our gut’.4

Food sovereignty and relocalization: a reaction to neoliberalism When peasant organizations’ representatives from Europe, North America and Central America met in April 1992, in Managua, at the initiative of the Unión Nacional de Agricultores y Ganaderos (UNAG) of Nicaragua, they identified three core issues: the burden of external debt and fiscal deficits; the protection of the environment; and the negative impacts of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) (Vía Campesina 1992). The Managua Declaration, issued at the end of the meeting, states: ‘We as producers need to be guaranteed sufficient income to cover as a minimum our costs of production. … We reject policies which promote low prices, liberalized markets, the export of surpluses, dumping and export subsidies’ (Vía Campesina 1992). So as to understand these claims, we need to recall a context of drastic restructuring of state–society relations and the multiplication of neoliberal policies aimed at overcoming rampant inflation and declining rates of profits and growth in the 1980s. At the time, the economic and social crisis of the socalled ‘Fordist’ regime of capital accumulation led conservative governments in the North to abandon the ‘welfarism’ of social democracy (Dardot and Laval 2009, 273). A double movement of state restructuring took place: from the outside, the privatization of public enterprises – the minimal state – put an end to the producer state; from the inside, the creation of a managerial state led to the structuring of new relations between government and social subjects. This new notion of the state as evaluator and market regulator was propagated by international organizations, in particular in developing countries (Dardot and Laval 2009, 355). Rural landscapes endured deep transformations as national governments redefined agricultural policies and legislation to facilitate greater integration into the international economy. Existing agricultural and marketing structures were dismantled while new agrarian laws aimed at restructuring land tenure, land

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The right to food sovereignty 15 use and marketing systems were introduced to increase production for export, and to industrialize the agricultural sector (Desmarais 2003, 2). The early 1980s also marked a shift from the expansion of the home market to an emphasis on the promotion of an agricultural export-led strategy as ‘the principal means of enhancing rural accumulation’ (Borras 2009, 7). Peasants were directly hit by the combined effects of subsidies in the North and the dismantling of supply management schemes in the South, resulting in oversupply (Rosset 2006, 43, 30). Vía Campesina’s statement at the World Food Summit in 1996 was a direct reaction to this situation: ‘Food imports must not displace local production nor depress prices. This means that export dumping or subsidized export must cease. Peasant farmers have the right to produce essential food staples for their countries and to control the marketing of their products’ (Vía Campesina 1996c). Structural adjustment policies were denounced for exacting ‘an unacceptably high price on the poor and rural people in many of our countries’, and for reducing the capacity of governments to provide basic services (Vía Campesina 1996b). In the 1990s, peasant movements’ reactions to the impacts of the neoclassical counter-revolution of the 1980s crystallized around a new international actor: the World Trade Organization (WTO). The creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) on 1 January 1995 marked the biggest reform of international trade since the Second World War. Agricultural trade, which had long escaped liberalization because of the highly strategic relationship between food security and national security, was incorporated in the negotiations. Developing countries had to strike a difficult balance between seeking to conquer world markets in agricultural products, and protecting their own farming sectors. The aftermath of the debt crisis of the 1980s left them with little choice but to prioritize agro-export, which they hoped would bring them much needed foreign exchange. They were accused by Vía Campesina of ‘pandering to tiny but wealthy and politically powerful agro-export elites’ (Rosset 2006, 30). Peasants insisted that they lacked access to the levers of political power and were in effect excluded from decision-making (Vía Campesina 2003a). Adding to the impacts of trade liberalization, the technical transformation of farming through chemicalization and mechanization in the US and industrialized North resulted in increased concentration and in a growing labor and land productivity gap between large-scale capitalist farmers in both North and South and small-scale farmers mostly in the South (Bernstein 2010, 71). Large transnational corporations increased their power over small-scale farmers, causing further dualization of the agricultural sector (De Schutter 2009d). Korean peasant leader Kyung Hae of Vía Campesina explains: ‘Since massive importing began, we small farmers have never been paid as much as our production costs. Sometimes, prices would drop four times over, all of a sudden. What would be your emotional reaction if your salary drops suddenly to a half without knowing clearly the reason?’ (Kyung Hae 2003) The WTO became one of the predominant targets of the global justice movement (Reitan 2007), and certainly of Vía Campesina activists, in the late

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The right to food sovereignty

1990s and early 2000s. Opposition to the WTO helped federate the movement, as activists identified the WTO as a common enemy: ‘The negative impacts of globalization are acute and tragic in the countryside. The imposition of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and regional trade agreements is destroying our livelihoods, our cultures and the natural environment’ (Vía Campesina 2000). The WTO came under attack as an institution, and as a symbol. The WTO Ministerial Conferences – the topmost decision-making body of the WTO, which usually meets every two years – punctuated the life of the food sovereignty movement. Peasant organizations had not yet sufficiently organized to make their voices heard at the first WTO Ministerial in Singapore (1996), and they didn’t know much about the WTO at the time. But thousands marched in protest against the WTO in the streets of Geneva (1998), Seattle (1999), Cancun (2003) and Hong Kong (2005), although their presence in Doha (2001) was severely constrained, as was the participation of most activists. In recent years, the WTO has lost its number one ranking in peasant struggles, which now feature land grabbing, climate change, food prices volatility and financial speculation. The international environment and agenda have evolved, and so have socio-economic and political realities on the ground. The global food prices crisis (2007–8) nevertheless gave rise to hot debates on the pros and cons of trade liberalization, as the crisis reactivated fears that protectionist measures would be taken in response to the failure of world markets to provide access to low-priced food imports at all times. Much debated also was the issue of public and private investment in agriculture and that of state intervention. Smallholder farmers in the developing world were at the forefront of the food crisis. Vía Campesina seized the opportunity to reaffirm that ‘small farmers are key food producers in the world’ and that ‘peasants are part of the solution’ (Vía Campesina 2008a). The Rome HighLevel Conference Declaration (High-Level Conference on World Food Security 2008) and the UN High-Level Task Force also presented the crisis as an opportunity to promote policies and programmes that would benefit smallholder farmers. Yet there was no consensus on how to go about assisting small farmers. On the one hand, there was the view that ‘reducing trade barriers and market distorting’ policies would ‘give farmers, particularly in developing countries, new opportunities to sell their products on world markets’ (HighLevel Conference on World Food Security 2008). World food production and increased revenues for small farmers will be achieved, according to that perspective, and in particular in Africa, by launching a ‘new green revolution’, an agricultural development model which relies heavily on hybrid seeds and access to fertilizers. On the other hand, the prevalent view was that ‘more free trade will not solve the crisis’ (Vía Campesina 2008a). High food prices were unlikely to translate into new opportunities for small farmers who were, as consumers, themselves hit by price spikes (Saragih 2008). For these reasons, Vía Campesina, reiterated its ‘Agriculture out of the WTO’ or rather ‘WTO out of agriculture’ message, a slogan that had become popular in Seattle

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The right to food sovereignty 17 in 1999. In April 2009, at the G8 agricultural ministers summit, it insisted on preventing the WTO, WB and IMF from intervening in domestic food policies (Louail 2009). It emphasized the necessity to rebuild national food economies, demanded increased investments in peasant-based and farmerbased food production (Saragih 2008), and insisted on the need to transition toward diverse production systems that are labor intensive and sustainable in their resource use, such as agro-ecology (Vía Campesina 2008a). In reaction to the combined effects of neoliberalization, modernization and trade liberalization in agriculture, Vía Campesina activists have defended the ‘Vía Campesina model for development’.5 In this section (see Table 2.1) I present the relocalization project that is at the heart of the food sovereignty paradigm. Localized food systems should be protected ‘against dumping and dependency towards transnational corporations’ and supported by ‘market, trade and price policies that prioritize local and national production and consumption’ (International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC) 2009). A kind of ‘subsidiarity test’ is envisaged to determine which products should feed the local/regional level and which food products should be sold at the international level. At minimum, the food sovereignty idea translates into a do no harm principle. Javier Sánchez, from Vía Campesina member organization COAG in Spain, is adamant: ‘Food sovereignty is not autarchy or self-sufficiency. It is not protection at the borders. The condition is without dumping. We need rules to define what gets exported and what gets imported.’6 Solidarity, synergy and cooperation between regions of the world with radically different food systems are to replace competition and comparative advantage. This could take the form of regional zones that share agro-ecological characteristics, as suggested by Thierry Kesteloot, a food Table 2.1 The globalization project vs. the relocalization project Globalization (neoliberal) project

Relocalization (food sovereignty) project

Deterritorialized global food system dominated by global supply chains and transnational agribusiness corporations

Re-embedding food and agriculture in the community and territory, rebuilding short supply chains

International food trade based on competition and specialization

Relocalized food systems based on diversification, solidarity, synergy and cooperation

Entrepreneurial state, supportive of oligopolistic interests

State intervention in the agrarian economy to support national and local food markets

Neoliberal objective of sustained economic growth, achieved through trade and investment liberalization and the exploitation of natural resources

Societal objective of conserving and rehabilitating rural environments, natural resources and food traditions and of ensuring that all people can live in dignity

Import-based food security

Locally provided food security

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The right to food sovereignty

and agriculture specialist at the NGO Oxfam in Belgium: ‘The idea is to complement each other at the regional level, without excessive specialization.’7 The belief that trade should be ‘mutually beneficial’ – as in the often cited examples of barter or gift economies (Pérez-Vitoria 2010, 225) – is at the core of food sovereignty.8 Marc9 from the Confédération paysanne summarizes: ‘The richness of Vía Campesina is to say that the world market does/should not exist.’10 The fact that farmers have very unequal access to farming animals, tools and machinery, and work in very diverse climatic and soil conditions, leading to high differences in labor productivity11 (Mazoyer and Roudart 1997, 455), is often cited to explain why the world’s peasants should not be forced to compete with each other. The neoliberal objective of economic growth is replaced by that of conserving and rehabilitating ‘rural environments, fish stocks, landscapes and food traditions based on ecologically sustainable management of land, soils, water, seas, seeds, livestock and other biodiversity, the very objective that states should pursue’ (Nyéléni Food Sovereignty Forum 2007a). The old domestic approach to food security is revisited to incorporate a multiplicity of levels where ‘communities and nations should be able to define the extent and boundaries of self sufficiency, build and strengthen local-national food production and distribution systems, and regulate trade and markets through democratically formulated public policies’ (IPC 2009). Community control over localized food systems is seen as key to ensuring food sovereignty. The community level is where ‘cultural and productive diversity’ (Vía Campesina 1996c) can be best valued, recognized and respected. Food sovereignty is to be built on the basis of concrete local experiences, from the local to the national (Vía Campesina 2008e). Direct exchanges between producers and consumers of food, modelled after the Teikei system in Japan, are pursued for they respond to consumers’ need to put a human face on the food they eat, and constitute a way for producers to bypass agribusiness corporations (Pleyers 2011). Appeal to consumers and improved quality are vital to local experiments which seek to ‘re-embed agriculture and food consumption in socially and ecologically defined regions’ (Friedmann and McNair 2008, 409).

Food sovereignty as a new human right In addition to advocating for food sovereignty as an alternative paradigm (Rosset and Martínez-Torres 2010, 169–70), Vía Campesina activists have claimed food sovereignty as a new human right – the right of peoples to food sovereignty – and sought ways to ‘establish’ this right at the international, national and local levels (Vía Campesina 2001). Compared to the broader term ‘food sovereignty’, references to ‘the right to food sovereignty’ are not extremely numerous in Vía Campesina official documents, but they exist. A websearch conducted on Vía Campesina’s website on 10 January 2013 provided 17 occurences of the ‘right to food sovereignty’ between 2003 and 2011, and 18 occurences of ‘el derecho a la soberanía alimentaria’ between 2001 and 2011. Here are some of the ways

The right to food sovereignty 19 in which the right to food sovereignty is used in Vía Campesina statements, or in statements issued jointly by Vía Campesina and other civil society groups:

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Each nation must have the right to food sovereignty to achieve the level of food sufficiency and nutritional quality it considers appropriate without suffering retaliation of any kind. … All countries and peoples have the right to develop their own agriculture. (NGO Forum to the World Food Summit 1996)12 Food Sovereignty is every community’s fundamental right. Every community should have the right to produce their own food, the right to food sovereignty. This means that communities have the right to define their own agricultural and food policies, to protect and to regulate their national agricultural and livestock production, and to shield their domestic market from the dumping of agricultural surpluses from other countries. (Vía Campesina 2003b)13 During the meeting [held in 2006 with Pascal Lamy, DG of the WTO], La Via Campesina reaffirmed the proposal it has been defending since 1996: the recognition of the right to food sovereignty. It is the only credible alternative to solve this unprecedented economic and social crisis. The representatives of the peasant’s movement explained their struggle for the creation of an international system regulating agricultural markets based on co-operation, dialogue, responsibility and the respect of people and human communities. (Vía Campesina 2006b)14 We, women from more than 40 countries, from different indigenous peoples of Africa, the Americas, Europe, Asia and Oceania and from different sectors and social movements, have gathered together in Sélingué (Mali) at Nyéléni 2007 to participate in the creation of a new right: the right to food sovereignty. (Vía Campesina 2007b)15 In addition to unequivocal references to the right to food sovereignty, many definitions of food sovereignty describe it as a list of rights or as the ‘right to’:16 Food sovereignty is the right of each nation to maintain and develop its own capacity to produce its basic foods respecting cultural and productive diversity. We have the right to produce our own food in our own territory. (Vía Campesina 1996b) We define food sovereignty as the peoples’ right to define their own policies and strategies for the sustainable production, distribution and consumption of food that guarantee the right to food for the entire population, on the basis of small and medium-sized production, respecting their own cultures

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and the diversity of peasant, fishing and indigenous forms of agricultural production, marketing and management of rural areas, in which women play a fundamental role. (Forúm Mundial sobre soberanía alimentaria 2001) References to the right to food sovereignty are also numerous in the everyday discourse of food sovereignty activists, and came up a lot during my fieldwork. For this Haitian NGO activist from Action Aid, food sovereignty has to do with self-determination, development and human rights: ‘Food sovereignty is the right of a people to define an autonomous food policy, linked to an endogenous development process. It belongs to human rights. We need to repatriate this right.’17 Sidney Ribaux, from the fair trade organization Equiterre in Quebec, summarizes: ‘Food sovereignty is more autonomy at the national level, more equity at the international level.’18 To start our discussion of food sovereignty as a human right, let us explore how movement activists have defined rights-holders and duty-bearers. The right to food sovereignty is most often described as ‘the right of peoples, communities, and countries’ (NGO/CSO Forum for Food Sovereignty 2002) although several definitions include other rights-holders as well. The Declaration released at the occasion of the World Food Summit (1996), for example, lists the following categories of rights-holders: ‘peasant farmers’, ‘everyone’, ‘each nation’, ‘we’, ‘women’ and ‘we who work the land’ (Vía Campesina 1996c). In other definitions, individuals, regions, territories and nations are put forward, leading to a fair amount of confusion. Walter,19 a Belgian representative of Oxfam, asks: ‘The right to food sovereignty is the right of whom? It is not clear. Peasant organizations, who are they? Peoples, who are they?’20 At the time of its inception, the right to food sovereignty was generally associated with the right of states and governments. The focus was on policy space and alternative trade rules. Jean,21 from the European Coordination of Vía Campesina (ECVC – formerly known as the Coordination paysanne européenne, or CPE), recalls: The rights of peoples and states, we contributed a lot to that formulation. We were talking about countries or groups of countries as places where things ought to be decided. Like the ECOWAS [Economic Community Of West African States]. Populations are very different, it should imply agricultural policies that are very different. We are not going to replace a WTO framework with a Vía Campesina framework.22 Over the years, the emphasis seems to have gradually shifted from states and nations to communities and local economies. Small projects have given life to food sovereignty practices on the ground, shaping alternative ‘market relations’ (Friedmann and McNair 2008, 410). Commenting on such projects, Vía Campesina leader Paul Nicholson reflects: ‘It is food sovereignty as a citizen concept, a farmer’s concept, a local economy whose sovereignty is a right.’23

The right to food sovereignty 21

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A right of the peoples The use of the emblematic term peoples in many definitions of the right to food sovereignty can be interpreted as a way to embrace the multiplicity of levels where food sovereignty policies ought to be discussed.24 The term peoples also evokes collective rights which have attained international recognition, such as the right to self-determination and the right to development, which have lost visibility over the last two decades but can be considered historic predecessors of the right to food sovereignty. What exactly is the meaning of the rights of people? Are they individual rights with a collective dimension? Are they rights of states in disguise (Crawford 1988b, 56)? The history of peoples’ rights dates back to the 19th century and the period between the two World Wars, when certain protections were granted, mostly within the Ottoman or Austro-Hungarian empires, to groups or communities which did not constitute states (Crawford 1988c, 161).25 In the 1950s, the notion of collective rights became tied to the right to selfdetermination, which first appeared in the UN Charter of 1945 (Chapter 1, Article 1, paragraph 2), and to the right of everyone to ‘a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized’ (Article 28 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948). The era of decolonization in the 1960s and the insistence of newly independent states, particularly in the 1970s, on reclaiming not only their political, but also their economic sovereignty, led to the right to self-determination being revived in the instruments adopted during that period (De Schutter 2010b, 681). Despite the fact that the right to self-determination was ignored in the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it was asserted in Article 1 of both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) of 1966. Both read: ‘All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.’ During the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, the newly formed states attempted to transform international law through the use of UN General Assembly resolutions, the establishment of new international institutions and the introduction of new elements into the doctrinal corpus of international law (Rajagopal 2003, 73). The doctrine of permanent sovereignty over natural resources (PSNR) was asserted as an essential constituent of the right to selfdetermination (UN General Assembly 1962). The principle of PSNR means that ‘peoples and nations must have the authority to manage and control their natural resources and in doing so to enjoy the benefits of their development and conservation’. The principle was advocated in the early 1950s, to ensure that people emerging from colonial rule would benefit from the natural resources within their territories (Daes 2004, 5). Also defined as a right of the people, the right to development was first envisioned in the late 1960s, and recognized in the UN Declaration on the

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Right to Development in 1986. The right to development established a strong relationship between development, national sovereignty, popular participation and the rights of peoples (Peemans 2002, 476). The Declaration on the Right to Development insisted on the ‘fair distribution of benefits’ resulting from the development process and underlined the crucial importance of international cooperation. It stressed that ‘appropriate economic and social reforms should be carried out with a view to eradicating all social injustices’ (Sengupta 2000, 3). Peoples’ rights to self-determination, permanent sovereignty over natural resources and development were widely supported by Southern states, lawyers and political leaders in the 1970s. The 1976–81 period saw the drafting of the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Peoples (also known as the Algiers Declaration) of 197626 and of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (also known as the Banjul Charter) of 1981. Collective rights27 are usually described as having both an internal and an external dimension, a distinction which is useful to distinguish between rights of peoples and rights of states (Jones 1999, 102). Internal self-determination, for example, speaks of the right of a people to freely choose its own political, economic and social system.28 External self-determination regards the international status of a people, it equates freedom from external intervention, from colonialism and imperialism (Felice 1996, 58). The right to development similarly has an internal and an external aspect (Golay and Özden 2010, 7). Looking at the internal and external dimensions of the right to food sovereignty, it is striking that both dimensions have been constitutive of food sovereignty since its beginnings, as appears clearly in this 1993 statement: ‘The right of every country to define its own agricultural policy according to the nation’s interest [external] and in concertación [sic] with the peasant and Indigenous organizations, guaranteeing their real participation [internal]’ (Vía Campesina 1993). Internal and external food sovereignty In its internal dimension, the right of peoples to food sovereignty expresses peasant activists’ widespread perception that they have no voice in decisionmaking and that government policies fail to integrate their concerns. Internal food sovereignty makes visible the divergence of interests between a state and its people/peasants. In the opinion of Jean, European Coordination of Vía Campesina (ECVC) support staff, it clarifies whose rights should come first: ‘The rights of populations and states … the term populations indicates that it is the aspirations of peasants and populations which should be taken into account first.’29 It posits the people as a potential countervailing force to state sovereignty.30 Indeed, the people are seen as the ultimate repository of sovereign rights, over the rights of any government or nation state (Felice 1996, 19). If the definition of the right to food sovereignty more or less reiterates peoples’ right to self-determination – as a range of alternatives including the right to participate in the governance of the state as well as the right to various

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The right to food sovereignty 23 forms of autonomy and self-governance (Daes 2004, 7) – it is interesting to note that it goes beyond this by introducing the term ‘community’, a term which is not applied in international law as it is not sufficiently distinct (Morten Haugen 2009). In fact, one of the definitions of the right to food sovereignty prepared for the 2007 Nyéléni Forum in Mali included the interesting category of ‘food sovereignty-holders’ under the phrasing of ‘legitimate democratic communities’31 (Ratjen et al. 2007). In its internal, political dimension, the right to food sovereignty conveys a call for smaller political units within a world society. It is kin to the right to autonomy or self-government which has been recognized in the International Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (Golay and Özden 2010, 24). But what would legitimate democratic (peasant) communities look like? Could international human rights law accommodate such a vague subject of rights?32 What about individuals as food sovereignty rights-holders? The individual dimension of the right to food sovereignty has been little explored33 but it seems that ‘at some point there were discussions within Vía Campesina on how to individualize food sovereignty and link it to self-determination’.34 While the individual dimension of the right to selfdetermination and its implications are hard to capture (De Schutter 2010b, 434), the right to development has been conceptualized as the right of people and simultaneously the right of individuals35 (Rich 1988, 44–5). If it was conceptualized, the individual right to food sovereignty would need to extend to all citizens, beyond food producers, and its content would need to incorporate not only access to decision-making when it comes to food and agricultural policies, but also the individual ability (as a consumer) to make autonomous food choices. In its external dimension, the right of peoples to food sovereignty reactivates the ‘old’ rights to self-determination, development and sovereignty over natural resources, but applies these to a changed international context.36 Peasant activists no longer emphasize liberation from colonization but react to neoliberalism and economic imperialism. Marc, from the Confédération paysanne, explains: ‘the right to food sovereignty of states evokes the right to independence, it is anti- or post-colonial. Here we are not talking about political independence but economic independence. Today, decolonization is not about a state in relation to another, but about a state in relation to transnational corporations.’37 The right to permanent sovereignty over natural resources is not emphasized as it was in the past, but efforts have been made by civil society to show the relevance of the concept in a context of increased international land grabs (Golay and Özden 2010). The right to development is rarely mentioned, but just as newly independent states called for a New International Economic Order (NIEO) in 1974, the food sovereignty movement calls for structural changes. The alternative world order that peasant movements envision, however, is of a radically different nature. Interestingly, some of the aspects of the New International Economic Order have found their way into the right to food sovereignty. In the context

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of the Doha Development Round of negotiations, for example, Vía Campesina systematically denounced economic imperialism on the part of the EU and the US and defended the principle of special and differential treatment for developing countries. But the vision of development that dominated in the 1970s has little to do with the ‘relocalization’ project that is defended by Vía Campesina. The search for a Third World alternative to US capitalism and Soviet communism, which characterized the Bandung Conference in 1955 and continued to be reflected in the NIEO proposals in 1974, was premised on the need to accelerate the ‘modernization process’ and achieve economic growth to bridge the economic gap between developing and developed countries (UN General Assembly 1974a). This is in sharp contrast with the food sovereignty paradigm, which suggests an alternate development path for developing and developed countries alike, one which is not grounded in modernization, progress or economic growth. Indeed, discomfort with the idea that food sovereignty could be invoked to defend the right to grow or the right to export38 is widespread within Vía Campesina, marking a departure from the vision that was portrayed in the NIEO. The movement has insisted more on the negative impacts of dumping and on the necessity to shield small peasants from the threat of trade liberalization, than on the importance of increasing market access for developing countries’ products.39 The proclaimed North–South solidarity between peasants represents another departure from the ‘historical’ right to development: although the focus of the right to food sovereignty is usually on developing countries, Northern states are also entitled the right to define their agricultural policy provided their policies do not have a negative impact on the ability of Southern states to develop their agriculture. Adding to these differences is the fact that, while the Declaration on the Right to Development essentially saw development as to be undertaken by states, the food sovereignty movement no longer places the focus on the state as the main driver of social change. But who, then, is responsible for implementing the right to food sovereignty? Definitions of the right to food sovereignty leave duty-bearers most often unspecified. Contrary to what we find in liberal theory but also in social-democratic approaches to human rights, where duties for implementing social and cultural rights are essentially ascribed to the state (Stammers 1995, 495), food sovereignty claims appear to target all perceived violators of human rights. At the heart of the right to food sovereignty are what Makinson called unspecified correspondents: diffuse claims are tied to corresponding pre-obligations, where the bearer of the obligations is not specified (Makinson 1988, 78, 79). In that sense, the language used in the Nyéléni Declaration, which stipulates that food sovereignty is to be ‘implemented by communities, peoples, states and international bodies’ (Nyéléni Food Sovereignty Forum 2007a), is typical of third-generation rights, which ‘can be realized only through the concerted efforts of all actors on the social scene’ (Maggio and Lynch 1997, 53). Yet, an alternative, non-statist, conception of rights remains difficult to imagine (Crawford 1988c, 174, 175), and to think of (the content and implications of) the right to food sovereignty completely outside of

The right to food sovereignty 25 the interstate framework is no easy task. Let us now turn to the strategies the food sovereignty movement has put in place to achieve the international and national recognition of the proposed new right to food sovereignty.

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Institutionalizing the right to food sovereignty at the international level There are two entry points for law and social movements: movements may seek to change the law in the name of superior principles such as human rights or they may seek to protect themselves from repression against, with and via the law (Agrikoliansky 2010, 225). In the case of the food sovereignty movement, the ambition has clearly been ‘to construct a new legality and a new institutionality at the national and international levels’ (Vía Campesina 2008e). The objective pursued by Vía Campesina is well summarized by Walter, at Oxfam: ‘They want to create a new legal paradigm … because they don’t recognize themselves in the existing instruments.’40 By invoking the right to food sovereignty, peasant activists demand an alternative set of international trade rules: ‘We need to think about measures to put in place so that human rights are stronger than trade.’41 The need to secure local alternatives is also expressed strongly. A Portuguese farmer, member of Vía Campesina, insists: ‘We agree on the principles. How can we have policies which guarantee them?’42 Alternative laws, policies and human rights are perceived as the much needed shield to protect peasants against the threat of more trade and investment liberalization, and against the enormous powers of transnational corporations. Marc,43 from the Confédération paysanne, suggests: ‘as long as it is not written down, it is WTO law’. And he adds: ‘to write down rights is to oppose the supremacy of the market through the law’.44 In this sense, the right to food sovereignty explicitly opposes the ‘right to export’45 – that some have described as one of the pillars of the WTO Agreement on Agriculture. If peasant activists seek to establish an alternative legality that reflects peasant activists’ values and principles, if they use the language of human rights, it is precisely because they feel threatened by the ‘rights’ of corporate actors, powerful governments and international institutions. In the view of peasant activists, international agreements and institutions ‘have imposed legal changes that have destroyed basic principles used to protect human and social rights and which serve to create the conditions in which transnational companies can maximize their profits’ (Vía Campesina 2004b). As clearly put by Françoise,46 a French woman activist who used to be a member of the Confédération paysanne: ‘we called upon rights to oppose the law’.47 Talking about indigenous peoples, but making a similar case for peasants, she explains: ‘They were living in peace with their customary rights, then they were attacked by the law, by the right to exploit mines, forests, now they are coming back on stage with rights to oppose the law, they want the right to be there.’48 Claims that are presented as rights are usually presented as having a special kind of importance, urgency, universality or endorsement (Kamenka 1988,

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127). The proclamation of new rights is a proven technique to mobilize public support through the invocation of high moral principles in a given cause or struggle. In recent decades, pressure to proclaim new rights has borne fruit: the right to development, the right to popular participation, the right to a clean environment, the right of people to peace, the right to humanitarian assistance (Alston 1984, 609–11), and more recently the right to water (Nelson 2010), the rights of indigenous peoples (Charters and Stavenhagen 2009), the right to sexuality (Mertus 2010), and dalit rights (Bob 2010a), have all been advanced by various groups inside and outside the UN. Rights are usually considered ‘new’ if they do not find explicit recognition in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or in one of the two International Human Rights Covenants, which speaks to the central role played by the United Nations in the recognition of new rights49 (Alston 1984). Some authors also use the term ‘new rights’ for rights that have been codified but not ‘adopted’ by the rights movement or allotted few resources (Bob 2010c, 2). To understand the rise of agrarian movements in the creation of new rights, a process long controlled by human rights intellectuals and international ‘gatekeeper’ NGOs such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (Bob 2010c, 10), we need to recall the remarkable transformation in the scope of world affairs in the direction of a multi-actor global governance system. Over the last two decades, small farmer platforms and indigenous peoples have looked to the United Nations system as a potentially significant forum for the advancement of their objectives and have reached up to the global sphere in order to influence the substance of the discussions and to build their own networks and alliances50 (McKeon 2009, 11). The global summits of the 1990s have, in particular, enabled civil society organizations (CSOs) to bring emerging issues to the attention of the general public and to get them placed on the agenda of intergovernmental bodies. This transformation has confronted the UN system with the difficult ‘challenge of balancing various interests’, and has put pressure on the UN to constitute ‘a forum in which the voices of all stakeholders, not only member state governments, can be heard’ (McKeon and Kalafatic 2009, 1). When Vía Campesina representatives first attended the World Food Summit – NGO Forum in 1996, they had to win a place at the table. Jean from ECVC recalls: ‘In 96, at the parallel forum of development NGOs, we did not know where to go nor which status we had. We put forward food sovereignty but the NGOs refused. For them food security was enough. Food sovereignty was associated with withdrawal, while we were in a period of full openness.’51 Endorsement of the food sovereignty concept was, at the time, considerably hindered by tensions between NGOs and emerging peoples’ organizations that were questioning ‘the right of others to speak on their behalf ’ (McKeon 2009, 29). The right to food sovereignty is mentioned in the NGO Forum Statement to the World Food Summit52 – i.e. ‘the right of each nation to achieve the level of food sufficiency and nutritional quality it considers appropriate without suffering retaliation of any kind’ – but the assembly of NGOs and recently

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The right to food sovereignty 27 integrated social movements did not envisage the institutionalization of this right. Instead, participants debated two proposals: one centred on food security and the demand to establish ‘a Global Convention on Food Security to support governments in developing and implementing national food security plans and to create an international network of local, national, and regional food reserves’; the other centred on the right to food and the demand to develop a Code of Conduct (NGO Forum to the World Food Summit 1996).53 It took several years before peoples’ organizations gained sufficient strength to impose their protagonism on a largely ambivalent NGO universe, but it is generally considered that this was achieved by the time of the civil society Forum for Food Sovereignty which was organized in parallel to the World Food Summit five years later (WFS: fyl) of 2002 (McKeon 2009, 43). In the same period, the food sovereignty concept was increasingly incorporated into peasant movements’ discourse. Jean from ECVC summarizes: ‘The adhesion to food sovereignty took place between 96 and 2002. … In 2002, from that time dates the yellow flag, Vía Campesina was in the organizing committee and food sovereignty had a central place.’54 Around 2000, the idea that food sovereignty should be enshrined in an International Convention started to circulate in social movements and NGO networks55 which were building alliances and joining efforts in the run-up to the WTO ministerial meeting of Doha (2001). Desmarais describes how, only days before the Doha Conference began, the Vía Campesina’s ‘lone calls for food sovereignty and to get agriculture out of the WTO (voiced as early as the Geneva Ministerial Conference in 1998) were now being supported by numerous civil society organizations56 from around the world with the launching, on November 6, 2001, of the “Priority to Peoples’ Food Sovereignty – WTO out of Food and Agriculture” campaign’ (Desmarais 2003, 31). The campaign stressed that, to ensure peoples’ food sovereignty, governments must act immediately to remove food and agriculture from the WTO jurisdiction and to begin working on a new multilateral framework to govern sustainable agricultural production and the food trade (Our World is Not for Sale 2001). Central to the alternative multilateral framework was the demand for an International Convention on Food Sovereignty57 that would replace the current Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) and relevant clauses from other WTO agreements (Our World is Not for Sale 2001). At the World Forum on Food Sovereignty which was held in Havana, Cuba, in September 2001, a similar demand had already been formulated (Forúm Mundial sobre soberanía alimentaria 2001). Other instruments were also proposed at the time, not in the form of ‘a coherent package, but rather a list of incomplete ideas’ (Windfuhr and Jonsén 2005, 44): a World Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Food Sovereignty which would undertake a comprehensive assessment of the impacts of trade liberalization on Food Sovereignty, and develop proposals for change; a reformed and strengthened United Nations (UN), as being the appropriate forum to develop and negotiate rules for sustainable production and fair trade; an independent dispute settlement mechanism integrated within

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an International Court of Justice, especially to prevent dumping and GMOs in food aid; an international, legally binding treaty that defines the rights of smallholder farmers to the assets, resources and legal protections they need to be able to exercise their right to produce (Our World is Not for Sale 2001). A consensus emerged within the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC) that the FAO, based on its mandate to fight hunger, was the best-placed global institution to take charge of issues of food and agricultural trade. But while civil society organizations had hoped that attempts at developing an alternative framework to WTO would benefit from the support of the FAO, the FAO was under very strong pressure from some of its powerful member countries to stay out of the WTO’s space and to avoid excessive critique of the neoliberal agenda (McKeon 2009, 87–8). The Declaration of the WFS: fyl (2002) – which took place between the WTO ministerials of Doha (2001) and Cancun (2003) – reiterated WFS commitments of 1996 and urged ‘all members of the WTO to implement … commitments regarding the reform of the international agricultural trading system’ (FAO 2002). Its only significant advance was a commitment to establish an Intergovernmental Working Group, with the participation of stakeholders, ‘to elaborate a set of voluntary guidelines to support Member States’ efforts to achieve the progressive realization of the right to food’ (FAO 2002). French activist José Bové brought Vía Campesina’s call for a Convention on Food Sovereignty to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, at a 2004 meeting during which he ‘asked him to support Via Campesina organizations in their efforts to have food sovereignty recognized as a new basic human right’ (Vía Campesina 2004a). Bové explains: ‘The idea is to be able to produce and to protect ourselves from the economic logic, by putting forward the right of peasants and food self-determination. It is an entirely distinct conception of development which underlies this question. It will enable us to link the collective interests of populations with the interests of states. … We need to go to the UN for this’ (Bové 2005, 368).58 Attempts to institutionalize the right to food sovereignty – be it in international human rights law or as the basis for an alternative framework for international trade in agriculture – peaked between 2001 and 2005 then somewhat disappeared from the movement’s agenda. As Jean from ECVC put it: ‘we moved from 2003, food sovereignty as a right, to 2007, Nyéléni, food sovereignty as a concept expanded to agricultural policy. This reduced the importance of the law.’59 Although the idea of an International Convention on Food Sovereignty was discussed in Nyéléni in 2007 (Nyéléni Food Sovereignty Forum 2007b), calls for a Convention on Food Sovereignty were not reactivated by the global food prices crisis of 2007–8 (IPC and More and Better Campaign 2009) nor brought to the reformed Committee on World Food Security (CFS), where the global food crisis was extensively discussed. As I discuss in Chapter 5, trade issues have not featured on the agenda of the CFS, and the very concept of food sovereignty has proven difficult to explicitely mobilize at the CFS, despite the insistence of some Latin American states that food sovereignty be discussed

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The right to food sovereignty 29 during the 39th session of the CFS of October 2012.60 In contrast, the right to food has been used extensively by civil society, and is referred to in a number of CFS documents, such as the Global Strategic Framework. While recognizing that ‘UN recognition of food sovereignty could constitute an umbrella’ for mobilizations and that ‘social movements’ participation at the international level is important’, Paul Nicholson cautions, in a recent interview, that such an endeavour would require a lot of ‘organizational effort’ and that direct dialogue with national governments may be, strategically, more accessible (Nicholson 2012, 9). In Chapter 4, I analyse the internal debates that took place within the food sovereignty movement on the translation of the right to food sovereignty in international law, and explain the reasons why I think such a goal is no longer explicitely pursued by the movement.

Institutionalizing the right to food sovereignty at national level Over recent years, the emphasis has shifted from the international level to local, national and regional food sovereignty policies. At the national level, a series of states, in alliance or under the pressure of peasant movements, have initiated efforts to get the right to food sovereignty recognized and translated in public policies. Constitutional recognition of food sovereignty has been achieved in a number of countries, notably Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela. The right to food sovereignty was also included in the 2007 Interim Constitution of Nepal (Pokharel 2013). In other countries, such as Mali, Senegal or Nicaragua, food sovereignty laws and policies have been passed following the advocacy work of peasant organizations. Similar proposals are being discussed in the Dominican Republic, Peru and El Salvador (Godek 2013). At the local level also, municipalities have adopted food sovereignty policies. The town of Blue Hill, in Maine, passed a food sovereignty ordinance in April 2011 that exempts local food producers and processors from state licensing and inspection as long as their products are sold directly to consumers for personal consumption. Another ten towns have adopted similar legislation (Schiavoni 2013; Bellinger and Fakhri 2013). An overview of the recognition of food sovereignty in selected national constitutions and national and regional laws and policies is provided below.

Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America and selected member states Created in 2004, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) gathers eight countries from South and Central America, many of which have been at the forefront of the most recent advances in the area of food sovereignty at national level, namely, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba. As an international organization, ALBA seeks to propose state-led alternatives to neoliberal capitalism through regionalism in an era of globalization. The

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organization’s structure is made up of a number of councils: the Presidential Council at the top followed by four councils which are at the same level, namely, the Social Council, Economic Council, Political Council and the Council of Social Movements (ALBA-TCP 2010). The Council of Social Movements includes some of the largest social movements in Latin America, such as the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) and Vía Campesina. This Council has been able to put some issues on ALBA’s agenda in the area of land redistribution, healthcare, education and food security, despite some mistrust between ALBA and social movements related to ALBA being seen as too much of a state-based initiative (Serafimov 2012). As a regional trade agreement – ALBA Peoples’ Trade Treaty (ALBA-TCP) – ALBA has set food security and sovereignty as one of its main objectives (ALBA-TCP 2009). Earlier in 2008, an Agreement on the Implementation of Cooperation Programmes in the area of Food Security and Sovereignty between ALBA Member States was signed, to promote agroindustrial development for the production of cereals, leguminous crops, oilseed, meat and milk (SELA 2008). Moreover, a food trade network was established within ALBA, as well as a food security fund of $100 million to lessen the impact of the global food crisis in the region (Gürcan 2011, 493). The ALBA-Foods Initiative (formerly known as Petroalimentos) was also launched at that time. At the latest WTO talks held in Bali in December 2013, Cuba, speaking on behalf of ALBA, strongly opposed the final meeting statement and questioned the role and use of WTO which in its view is not taking sufficient concrete action on the issue of subsidies and support policies of developed countries and, in addition, continues to prevent developing countries from investing in farmers’ livelihoods and food security (Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) 2013). What follows is a selection of ALBA member states that have in recent years been particularly active in integrating food sovereignty in their laws and policies, namely, Bolivia and Ecuador. Bolivia Bolivia has in recent years adopted a number of legal texts pertaining to food security and sovereignty, among which the 2009 Constitution (Bolivia 2008) and the 2013 Law on Sustainable Family Farming and Food Sovereignty also known as Law No. 338 (Bolivia 2013). The Constitution of Bolivia embraces the concept of food sovereignty in its various dimensions and pillars to a further extent than the law and the declaration. Efforts of peasant and indigenous organizations in Bolivia, such as Vía Campesina member organization Confederación Sindical Única de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia (CSUTCB) and Confederación Nacional de Mujeres Campesinas Indígenas Originarias de Bolivia ‘Bartolina Sisa’, have influenced the inclusion of food sovereignty in the new constitution. President Evo Morales is also sympathetic to food sovereignty and Vía Campesina. The external dimension of food sovereignty is present in articles 255, 257 and 407 of the 2009 Constitution. Indeed ‘the negotiation and ratification

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The right to food sovereignty 31 of international treaties will respect the principles of … food security and sovereignty for the entire population’ (art. 255),61 and ‘international treaties which imply structural economic integration or transfer of institutional competences to international or supranational organisms in the framework of integration processes will require approval by means of a popular referendum’ (art. 257.II.3 and 4). The Constitution also sets as goals the production and consumption of food products produced in the territory of Bolivia as a means of ensuring food security and sovereignty, as well as the establishment of mechanisms to protect the Bolivian agricultural and fish production (art. 407.1 and 2). The internal dimension of food sovereignty is also found in the Constitution which states that ‘participation and social control implies … taking part in the formulation of state policies’ (art. 242.1). Law No. 338 stipulates that Economic Peasant Organizations (OECAS) and Economic Community Organizations (OECOM) ‘have the right to participate in the elaboration of public policies aimed at strengthening sustainable family farming’ (art. 31). Food sovereignty’s pillar one (Focuses on Food for People) of the 2007 Nyéléni Declaration is clearly integrated in the Constitution, which states that ‘everyone has a right to … food’ (art. 16.I). As for pillar two (Values Food Providers) the Constitution places the respect for peasant communities and the reinforcement of smallholder production and family farming at the centre of initiatives aimed at an integrated and sustainable development of the rural areas (art. 405.4 and 5). Indeed sustainable family farming is acknowledged as of public and national interest since it forms the basis of the food sovereignty of the Bolivian people and contributes to improving the living conditions of producers in rural areas according to the Food Sovereignty Law (art. 6). Pillar three (Localizes Food Systems) is present in the Constitution which protects consumers from poorquality and unhealthy food by making autonomous and municipal governments responsible for ensuring food quality and safety in the production, transport and sale of food products (art. 302.13). Food sovereignty’s pillar four (Puts Control Locally) can be found in the text of the Constitution: ‘Natural resources are the property of the Bolivian people and shall be exploited by the State’ (art. 311.II.2). The Food Sovereignty Law recognizes that OECOM are governed by their own customs and procedures for decision-making, consensus building, conflict resolution, comprehensive land management, access and conservation of natural resources (art. 16.2). With respect to pillar 5 (Builds Knowledge and Skills) the constitutional text indicates that the control of exit and entry of biological and genetic resources in the country is one of the objectives of the integral rural development policy, in cooperation with the autonomous and decentralized territorial entities (art. 407.11). The Food Sovereignty Law stresses the importance of preserving the knowledge, practices and specific technologies of OECAS, OECOM and peasants that dedicate themselves to sustainable family farming so to reinforce the cultural identity, transfer knowledge and recover good practices in the area of production (art. 7.8). Finally, pillar 6 (Works with Nature) is reflected in the Constitution which sets as one of the goals of the integrated rural development policy promoting the

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production and commercialization of agro-ecological products (art. 407.3). The Food Sovereignty Law also refers to agro-ecology, resilience and adaptation in the face of climate change: ‘The State and the autonomous territorial entities shall support diversification and innovation related to production with a focus on … expansion of natural, organic and ecological production’ (art. 21.I). If the concept of food sovereignty is relatively well integrated in Bolivia’s legal and policy framework, there is room for improvement of the constitutional text and for more advanced policies and declarations in the near future. For instance, the right of people to decide on food and agriculture policies through food policy councils, citizenship committees and similar structures could have been explicitly mentioned. Similarly, the inclusion of a specific reference to giving control of natural resources to the people could have helped to further consolidate these texts. As the state is de facto in charge of managing the resources on behalf of the people, it is the state’s interpretation of the concept of food sovereignty that prevails. Food sovereignty in practice has meant greater state control over national resources, which from the perspective of the state automatically benefits all Bolivians (Cockburn 2013, 17). In addition, laws, policies and declarations adopted by the Bolivian government do not fully reject GMOs and have allowed the expansion of the genetically modified soy agribusiness. The vision of rural development pursued by the government relies on a model that seeks to expand the role of the state, industrialize natural resources, modernize rural production and increase national production for internal market and export (Ministerio de Desarollo Rural, Agropecuario y Medio Ambiente 2008). In practice, state support appears to have benefited medium to large producers who are well connected to agro-industrial supply chains (quinoa, milk), while there has been little effort to incentivize national production based on small-scale/indigenous agriculture (Rights and Democracy 2011, 39). There are additional obstacles to the full realization of food sovereignty, ranging from problems with the agrarian reform (land ceiling, mechanization of small–medium-scale agriculture, creation of markets for products of peasant origin) to the 2008 Policy on Food Security and Sovereignty (PSSA) which has had limited impact and failed to address structural inequalities (McKay and Nehring 2013, 20–2). Despite this, peasant organizations, such as the Confederación Sindical Única de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia (CSUTCB) and the Confederación Nacional de Mujeres Campesinas Indígenas Originarias de Bolivia ‘Bartolina Sisa’, seem to be continuing to support President Evo Morales, including in the run-up to the 2014 presidential elections.62 On the other hand, peasant organizations are amongst other advocates of a new land law following the national conference on land and territory, land law and food sovereignty held in Santa Cruz de la Sierra in late April 2014 (Vía Campesina 2014a). Ecuador Food sovereignty has been enshrined in the 2008 Constitution of Ecuador, as well as in the 2009 National Organic Law on the Food Sovereignty Regime and

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The right to food sovereignty 33 2010 Amended Organic Law on the Food Sovereignty Regime.63 It is within the framework of Sumak Kawsay (Buen Vivir) that food sovereignty emerges as a right, a strategy and an obligation from the state (Peña 2013, 7). In the case of the constitutional text, the role of the coalition La Mesa Agraria (The Agrarian Roundtable), comprised of the Federación Nacional de Organizaciones Campesinas, Indígenas y Negras (FENOCIN), Federación Nacional de Trabajadores Agroindustriales, Campesinos e Indígenas Libres del Ecuador (FENACLE), and Coordinadora Campesina (CNC)-Eloy Alfaro, all three Vía Campesina members, was instrumental in advocating the inclusion of food sovereignty. The alliance worked with the Constitutional Assembly to draft food sovereignty proposals which were largely included in the Constitution (Giunta 2013; Clark 2013). External food sovereignty is recognized in the constitutional text which indicates that imports of goods which have a negative impact on the national production, population or nature will be discouraged and that tariffs will be set at levels which are environmentally sustainable and generate employment and value added (art. 306). Furthermore, the Constitution states that trade policy will focus on developing and strengthening internal markets, encouraging fair trade and reducing internal inequalities. Yet, not departing from the neoliberal dogma, trade policy will also promote ‘the strategic insertion of the country in the world economy’ and ‘the development of economies of scale’ (art. 304). Internal food sovereignty is recognized to some extent in the Constitution which acknowledges among the collective rights of communities, towns and indigenous peoples, the right to participate through their representatives in the elaboration of public policies that concern them, as well as in the definition and setting of priorities of public plans and projects in official bodies established by the law (art. 57.16). Besides, there is a constitutional provision (art. 103) known as popular initiative (iniciativa popular) which is a right to petition that gives individuals, community-based organizations and local governments the opportunity to propose, create, amend or reject laws by collecting petition signatures (Peña 2013). The text of the Amended Organic Law establishes a Food Sovereignty and Nutritional System (SISAN) which gathers all actors involved in the elaboration of public policy proposals related to food sovereignty. It is composed of the different relevant ministries and the Plurinational and Intercultural Conference on Food Sovereignty (COPISA) (art. 34b and c), which consists of nine civil society representatives. Pillar one of food sovereignty (Focuses on Food for People) of the 2007 Nyéléni Declaration is fully integrated in the text of the Constitution. The right to food is recognized as one of the so-called well-being rights, that is, the right of persons and community groups to secure and permanent access to safe, sufficient and nutritious food, preferably produced at local level and corresponding to the diverse identities and cultural traditions (art. 13). It is thus a human and constitutional right, and food sovereignty is a strategic objective and a state obligation (art. 281). It is the government’s responsibility to prevent monopolistic practices and any other sort of speculation over food products

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(art. 281.11). In the same vein, the Organic Law rejects food speculation (art. 21). Both the Constitution and the Organic Law incorporate pillar two (Values Food Providers). Indeed the constitutional text states that in order to achieve food sovereignty the state shall, among other, promote peasants’ access to land, water and other productive resources (art. 281.4). The state shall also develop specific policies to eliminate inequality and discrimination in women producers’ access to production factors (art. 334.2). The Organic Law adds a number of measures intended to increase micro, small and medium production, from the opening of a preferential line of public credit to the granting of subsidies to insure crops and livestock of micro, small and medium producers (art. 13a and b). Pillar three (Localizes Food Systems) of food sovereignty is present in art. 30 of the Organic Law which focuses on the promotion of domestic consumption and indicates that the state will encourage agreements with micro, small and medium food producers to purchase food products for vulnerable populations and enter directly into agreement with such producers. With regard to pillar four (Puts Control Locally), natural resources are described as inalienable, imprescriptible and non-seizable property of the state according to the Constitution (art. 408), but the collective right of ‘communes’ (or ‘comunas’, which are an ancestral form of territorial organization) to land ownership is also acknowledged (art. 60). In addition, communes, communities, towns and indigenous peoples have the collective right not to be displaced from their own lands (art. 57.11). Food sovereignty’s pillar five (Builds Knowledge and Skills) is completely integrated in the constitutional text: ‘It is not allowed to develop, produce, own, comercialize, import, transport, store and use … genetically modified organisms that can cause harm to human health, or threaten food sovereignty or the ecosystems’ (art. 15). It falls under the government’s duty to promote the preservation of agro-biodiversity and the recovery of ancestral knowledge related to agrobiodiversity; as well as the use, preservation and free exchange of seeds (art. 281.6). In contrast, the Organic Law opens the door for the entry of genetically modified (GM) seeds and crops in exceptional cases and in case of national interest duly justified by the President of the Republic and subject to approval by the National Assembly (art. 26).64 Pillar six (Works with Nature) is included in the Constitution: ‘The State shall promote the diversification and introduction of ecological and organic technologies in agricultural production’ (art. 281.3). The Organic Law adds that ‘the State shall stimulate agroecological, organic and sustainable production through support mechanisms, training programmes, special credit lines and mechanisms of comercialization in the internal and external markets, among other’ (art. 14). While the concept of food sovereignty is covered in its multiple dimensions, more could have been done to integrate food sovereignty in these legal texts in a more coherent way. As in the case of Bolivia, the right of people to decide on food and agriculture policies through food policy councils, citizenship committees and similar structures could be further encouraged. The constitutional text fails to explicitly identify communities and communes as essential subjects alongside the state, falling short of fully rethinking the respective roles of the state and

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The right to food sovereignty 35 social actors in co-governing the expected transition to a different development paradigm (Giunta 2013, 14). But at this stage, the biggest challenge lies in adequately translating food sovereignty into subordinate laws. COPISA, which was created as a participatory organization in charge of designing these secondary laws, has been leading a number of workshops with civil society, state institutions and other organizations in parishes and rural areas for the past few years. These workshops, which have often been co-sponsored by Red Agraria65 and facilitated by peasant and indigenous organizations, have centred on the topics of access to land, seeds and agro-biodiversity, agricultural development, agro-industry and agricultural employment, animal and plant health, public access to credit, agricultural insurance and food subsidies (Peña 2013). Concrete proposals have been put on the table but to date the draft laws have yet to be approved (Giunta 2013; Clark 2013). Beyond its translation into progressive policies, the realization of food sovereignty in Ecuador is hampered by the persistent logic of rural modernization inside some components of the government, strong pressures by the agro-industry and the pursuit of neo-extractivist policies, and reduced protagonism of the social movements that initially advanced the food sovereignty proposal (Giunta 2013, 20). The relative disarticulation of peasant movements finds its source in the incorporation of a number of its leaders in government, cuts in funding from international cooperation and the fact that many of their demands have been met while their slogans (among which food sovereignty) have been institutionalized (Clark 2013, 16–18). Peasant organizations are also struggling to maintain spaces for dialogue in the face of governmental centralism, and reinvent their strategies and political agendas visà-vis the state (Giunta 2013, 20). If the task to push food sovereignty from the outside has been taken up by consumer movements (Sherwood et al. 2013) and new organizations pushing for agro-ecology, peasant organizations continue to support President Rafael Correa while criticizing the lack of action on key issues such as redistribution of land, and the ambivalence of the policies aimed at supporting small farmers (Clark 2013, 21). It remains to be seen if they will succeed, together with other social actors, in building on the promising food sovereignty developments that are taking place at the parochial, municipal and provincial government levels, to operate a fundamental shift in the productive and agrarian structures of the country, or if Ecuador will follow Brazil’s dual trajectory of supporting smallholder farmers on one side, and agribusiness on the other (Clark 2013, 25).

Economic Community of West African States and selected member states The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) adopted in 2005 its Agricultural Policy (ECOWAP) which aims to ensure food security and food safety, within the framework of approaches that guarantee food sovereignty in the region (ECOWAS 2005). The overall orientation of ECOWAP was heavily influenced by a farmer consultation process supervised by the Network of

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Peasant and Agricultural Producers’ Organizations of West Africa (ROPPA)66 at ECOWAS’s request (McKeon 2009, 85–6). The objective of ECOWAP is to promote regional integration through the harmonization and coordination of national agricultural policies and investment programmes, and to take measures to react to significant market price fluctuations affecting vulnerable populations. Most progress at implementation level has so far been made on regional food reserves (European Centre for Development Policy Management 2014). It should be noted that, in early 2014, ECOWAS and the European Union closed negotiations on an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA). At the time of writing, both sides still need to prepare an agreement to be signed and ratified by their respective political authorities. The two countries whose food sovereignty laws and policies are analysed further below, namely, Mali and Senegal, are ECOWAS member states. Mali The adoption of Mali’s Agricultural Orientation Law (LOA)67 in 2006 represented a major step forward in advancing food sovereignty not only in the country but also within the West African region. The Coordination nationale des organisations paysannes (CNOP), a Vía Campesina member, played an essential role in drafting the LOA. CNOP benefited from the experience of farmers’ organizations in Senegal and Senegal’s 2004 Agro-Sylvo-Pastoral Development Orientation Law (LOASP). In Senegal, however, the farmers’ organization CNCR was given an existing draft law to analyse, while in Mali the CNOP was able to draft the national law from scratch. This resulted in a more favourable law for family farming. The external dimension of food sovereignty can be found in LOA’s article 187: ‘the State shall take appropriate measures to protect national markets for agricultural products where needed and in consultation with the farming sector and other private sector actors’. LOA also contains food sovereignty’s internal dimension, stating that ‘Government, local authorities, agricultural organizations, farmers, associations, cooperatives, groupings, trade unions, credit unions, unions, federations, confederations, foundations, financing institutions, inter-branch organizations and civil society organizations shall contribute to a concerted formulation, implementation and assessment of the agricultural development policy under the requirements stipulated by existing laws and regulations’ (art. 4). LOA created an Agricultural Council (Conseil Supérieur Agricole) under the President of the Republic’s leadership which comprises representatives of the public sector, local authorities, farming sector, private sector and civil society, with the view to elaborate and implement agricultural policies and related policies (art. 191). Food sovereignty’s pillar one (Focuses on Food for People) is clearly present in LOA which indicates that the national agricultural development policy establishes the right of everyone to food security with a view to achieving the overarching goal of food sovereignty (art. 7). Pillar two (Values Food Providers)

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The right to food sovereignty 37 is contained in the objectives of the LOA, namely, improving the environment and living conditions in rural areas, and raising the income of producers (art. 9). LOA’s article 145 fits under food sovereignty’s pillar five (Builds Knowledge and Skills): ‘the State, in cooperation with the local authorities and the agricultural sector, shall set a biosecurity and seeds policy in order to fully meet national seeds needs, ensure the preservation and promotion of existing plant varieties and endangered plants, as well as the reintroduction of plants that have disappeared’. Pillars three (Localizes Food Systems), four (Puts Control Locally) and six (Works with Nature) receive less emphasis in the law. A detailed analysis of the LOA indicates that, while the legal text covers most aspects of food sovereignty up to a certain extent, it could have done so in a more comprehensive manner. Some dimensions, such as the rejection of food as just another commodity, of GMOs or of the privatization of natural resources, could have been reinforced. Nevertheless, the adoption of such a law in Mali, especially at the demand of peasant organizations and considered as having taken into account most peasant proposals (Coordination nationale des organisations paysannes, CNOP 2008), is in itself a landmark. The LOA has led to the creation of a national executive committee and a national fund to support agriculture, as well as to the launch of an interbranch organization. However, such achievements are being overshadowed by LOA’s lack of ownership by its main stakeholders, insufficient funding and other obstacles.68 In the opinion of the CNOP, national projects related to the development of the agricultural sector in Mali continue to follow a centralized top–down approach which mainly benefits agro-industrial enterprises rather than family farming (CNOP 2014). Recent mobilizations have targeted land grabbing in the country (Hub Rural 2014). Senegal In 2004 the National Assembly of Senegal adopted an Agro-Sylvo-Pastoral Development Orientation Law (LOASP), specifically aimed at realizing food sovereignty.69 The Conseil national de coopération rurale (CNCR), a national peasant platform and a Vía Campesina member, played a central political role in making this advance possible. The final product is inclusive of various key aspects of food sovereignty. The LOASP recognizes food sovereignty’s external dimension in its article 36: ‘The State shall take measures, such as provision of subsidies, whenever necessary to reduce or remove international trade distortions within the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA) and ECOWAS, in line with World Trade Organization rules. Within the framework of multilateral and bilateral trade negotiations, the State shall seek to eliminate unfair trading practices.’ The country strives simultaneously to boost food exports, especially of products that are in demand in international markets, and produce foods that are much needed domestically (art. 24). Internal food sovereignty is provided for in the LOASP which establishes in each of the country’s regions

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a consultative committee of the Agro-Sylvo-Pastoral Council. Each committee is comprised of representatives of the government, professional agricultural organizations, specialized NGOs and any other organization with recognized expertise in the agro-sylvo-pastoral field (art. 70). Moreover, a Regional Committee of Agro-Sylvo-Pastoral Orientation is created within the office of each regional governor to follow up the implementation of LOASP and provide advice on regional agro-sylvo-pastoral issues (art. 76), and a farming conference is to be organized by the state on an annual basis, under the auspices of the Agro-Sylvo-Pastoral Orientation Council and the lead of the President of the Republic, with the view to assess the LOASP’s application and other pertinent issues (art. 77). Pillar one of food sovereignty (Focuses on Food for People) of the 2007 Nyéléni Declaration can be found in the legal text’s article 5: ‘the State is committed to ensure to those employed in the agriculture sector a standard of living that allows them to meet on a regular basis their needs, such as food, health, housing, clothing, education and hobbies’. Pillars two (Values Food Providers) and four (Puts Control Locally) are integrated in the law’s article 22: ‘the land policy is based on the following principles: protection of the right of rural actors to land exploitation and land rights of rural communities; regulated transfer of land to enable land reallocation and foster the creation of more economically viable farms; estate transmissibility to encourage sustainable investment in family farms; use of land as collateral for obtaining credit’. LOASP’s article 6.1 fits under pillars three (Localizes Food Systems) and six (Works with Nature): ‘the specific objectives of the agro-sylvo-pastoral development policy include: to reduce the impact of climate change risks, as well as economic, environmental and health risks, through water management, production diversification, and training of rural populations, so to improve the population’s food security, and ultimately realize food sovereignty in the country’. Food sovereignty’s pillar five (Builds Knowledge and Skills) seems to be absent from the legal text as this does not recognize peasant knowledge as wisdom to be preserved and encouraged. Agricultural research is included but mainly directed to the modernization of the agricultural sector so to increase food production for export. Furthermore, LOASP lacks a specific reference to the right to food, rejection of food as yet another commodity and of GMOs. Ten years after its adoption the LOASP is reportedly falling short on its objectives. Some of the issues pointed out include significant delays in the law’s application, insufficient political will and insufficient attention paid to family farming, a sector that still strives to cope with land insecurity, lack of funding, faulty support policies and difficulties in obtaining credit.70 An evaluation published by the International Fund for Agricultural Development in 2013 identified a number of political factors that have had a negative effect on the Senegalese agricultural sector, such as unstable political and strategic leadership at national level, lack of a clear leadership and of accountability for the results achieved, and low interministerial coordination (IFAD 2013). In order to try to tackle the problems encountered, the Federation of

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The right to food sovereignty 39 Non-Governmental Organizations of Senegal (FONGS) came up in late 2013 with a number of topics to address and proposals to present in its discussions with the government. These include but are not limited to the development of training modules on family farming to be delivered at the agricultural training centres whose creation is provided for in the law; and the launch of the activities of the concertation and dialogue body that gathers representatives of the state and professional agricultural organizations also provided for in the law (FONGS 2013). The CNCR has also stood up against the conclusion of economic partnership agreements with the European Union, which the union believes would harm the realization of food sovereignty (CNCR 2013).

Lessons learned from the institutionalization of the right to food sovereignty at national and regional level The exploration of all the challenges involved in translating the right to food sovereignty in local, national and regional legislation is beyond the scope of this chapter, yet some preliminary trends can be identified. First, the influence of Vía Campesina member organizations at both national and regional level is notable in most, if not all, the legislative developments presented above (Beuchelt and Virchow 2012; Beauregard 2009). Second, the translation of the food sovereignty paradigm in national food and agriculture policies in the countries analysed shows a general trend towards policies aiming at: • Promoting agriculture as the motor of the economy, meaning that agriculture should not only feed the national population but contribute to economic growth; • Boosting national food production for food security, often in the context of a self-sufficiency strategy, although agroexports remain seen as an opportunity for rural economic development; • Compensating the inherent weaknesses of the agricultural sector and if possible bringing rural incomes to a par with those of urban inhabitants; • Favouring alternative farming practices (less industrial, more family-based) but not necessarily moving away from industrial farming and large-scale agriculture; • Providing access to land and limiting the invasion of transgenic seeds. Overall, the various pillars of food sovereignty are relatively well integrated in the policies discussed, but the endorsement of food sovereignty as a state objective/obligation creates new contradictions (Bernstein 2014, 26) and challenges for peasant movements. In the case of Bolivia, for example, the government’s food sovereignty rhetoric is compatible with conventional agricultural schemes, export-led agribusiness and ‘state-controlled’ GMOs (Cockburn 2013, 3). Local-level institutionalization of food sovereignty may have a different purpose, however, as suggested by the example of Blue Hill in Maine. The objective of the 2011 local law was clearly to reinforce ‘local and

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community self-governance’, and to ensure that the state or federal government would not interfere with the rights recognized in the ordinance. Here the law was used as a strategy to take sovereignty away from the state, and put it in the hands of individual communities71 (Bellinger and Fakhri 2013). Third, the external dimension of the right to food sovereignty is often more emphasized than the internal one. When recognized in national constitutions, laws or policies, the right to food sovereignty tends to be equated with the right of states to determine their food and agriculture policies. In the case of Bolivia and Ecuador, food sovereignty has meant increased state control over agriculture and natural resources (Clark 2013; Cockburn 2013). In contrast, the internal dimension of the right to food sovereignty tends to be only partially translated into legislation/policies. Where it is integrated, the state often defines the modalities of public participation, which in practice may restrict meaningful and effective participation (Giunta 2013). This is highly problematic, considering the substantial legal changes still required to fundamentally alter the structures that produce hunger, poverty and suffering everywhere in our food system (Claeys and Lambek 2014). If food sovereignty ultimately resides in ‘local and community-based sovereignties’, how these sovereignties can be exercised in practice and whether they can be guaranteed by the state remains a central question (Clark 2013, 4). Fourth, changes in the national legal frameworks have brought little structural change so far, raising new strategic considerations for the organizations that had pushed for legal change. The initial enthusiasm for food sovereignty public policies within the food sovereignty movement at large has also waned considerably. On the one hand is the recognition that ‘peasant’ production models cannot thrive in the absence of state support and state protection against the vagaries of the market (Bernstein 2014, 26). On the other hand there is growing scepticism that support and protection will ever come from the state. The fact that no state that has endorsed food sovereignty has questioned, so far, its WTO membership, makes some activists particularly sceptical. Hence the renewed focus on building strong movements that can pressure the state, and the importance of constantly reassessing goals and strategies. In September 2012, Vía Campesina convened an International Seminar on Public Policy for Food Sovereignty in Mexico City, which gathered around 150 people from 30 countries. The objectives of the seminar were to deepen the analysis of the role of public policies for food sovereignty, agree on common rules and priorities, and discuss ways to support organizations whose national or local governments are open to dialogue. Central to the discussions were the impacts that these policies could have on the movements’ ability to organize and mobilize: Structural policies are those that allow the autonomy of the movements and organizations and ensure the safety of workers. The social compensation policies serve the purpose of legitimation of the State. Some of these policies are directed at individuals and have the effect of demobilizing people. Some policies could strengthen farmers’ organizations like public purchases of

The right to food sovereignty 41 food from farmers’ coops or public funds for capacity building. Movements could benefit from these policies because it allows them to accumulate strength and organization. (Vía Campesina 2012c)

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Conclusion If the food sovereignty movement no longer demands an International Convention on Food Sovereignty, it continues to pursue the institutionalization of food sovereignty at national and subnational levels. In many countries, public policies for food sovereignty have been adopted but have failed so far to make a difference, raising new challenges for the movements that initiated them. In other countries, similar laws and policies are being discussed. If peasant organizations in countries such as Bolivia or Ecuador continue to put efforts into advocating new laws, they are increasingly focusing on alternative practices, which are more within their reach. Such alternative practices are more likely to be implemented in a shorter period of time (when compared to laws and policies) thereby yielding concrete results within a more acceptable timeframe. They may also provide useful evidence for advocacy targeted at accelerating the implementation of appropriate laws and policies. Yet the articulation between global governance reform, necessary state action and local-level food sovereignty initiatives becomes more and more pressing, and a continued source of debate for food sovereignty activists. At the WTO Ministerial of Bali of December 2013 (Vía Campesina 2013a), Vía Campesina reaffirmed its long-standing demand that an end be put to the WTO, but did not put out concrete proposals for an alternative global governance framework for food and trade. The important work of elaborating on the kind of regulatory apparatus that would be needed to advance and enable food sovereignty practices and policies (Clapp 2014; Burnett and Murphy 2014; Edelman 2014) continues to be lacking.72

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The rights of peasants

Introduction While the right of peoples to food sovereignty has been mostly deployed by Vía Campesina to contest neoliberalism in agriculture, a number of other new rights – such as the right to the means of production, the right to determine which varieties of seeds to plant, the right to reject land acquisitions, which exist today in their non-institutional form – have also found their way in the movement’s vocabulary. These rights address deeper, long-term, ‘agrarian transformations’ (Borras 2009, 5) and in particular the transition of agriculture to capitalism. Over the years, these rights have found their way into a single document. A ‘Declaration of the Rights of Peasants – Women and Men’ was adopted by Vía Campesina in 2008. On 10 December 2008, date of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Vía Campesina issued a ‘call to action’. This call encouraged all members of Vía Campesina and their supporters to get mobilized in their respective countries to ‘demand the institutionalization of the rights of the peasants!’ (Vía Campesina 2008i). Following successful collaboration with human rights experts and supportive states, the movement has managed to put its Declaration on the agenda of the UN Human Rights Council. The very first draft of the Declaration of the Rights of Peasants was elaborated in Indonesia in the late 1990s. Following the end of President Suharto’s regime (1967–98), a regime marked by violent repression of rural protest, a number of movements for rural democracy emerged in the Indonesian countryside. The New Order regime saw the mass extermination of people branded as communists as an effort to clear the ground for capitalist rural development. This significantly reduced the potential of rural villagers to organize themselves, but rural protest took place nevertheless. It focused on land struggles and on the control over forests and other lands classed as belonging to the state. After 1998, this continued mobilization around land issues benefited from the support of urban-based students and activists. The important role of urban leadership in rural movements is a particularity of the Indonesian context. As early as the mid-1980s, student movements and NGOs were supporting poor people in land cases and co-organized protests with rural people (Bachriadi 2009, 6). Henri Saragih, the former General Coordinator of Vía Campesina and strong

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The rights of peasants 43 supporter of the Declaration on the Rights of Peasants, belonged to the student movements before he joined the Vía Campesina member organization Serikat Petani Indonesia (SPI), previously called the Federation of Indonesian Peasants Unions (FSPI, Federasi Serikat Petani Indonesia).1 Throughout the 1990s, these groups mostly worked underground (Peluso et al. 2008). The ‘Peasants’ Rights Charter’ was originally drafted in the framework of a research project on community integrated pest management (IPM) carried out by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). The project took place in a context marked by three decades of centralized Green Revolution programmes in Indonesia (1960s–1990s), leading to ecological and social disruptions, loss of community skills and severe pest outbreaks. When a serious Brown Plant Hopper (BPH) outbreak devastated most rice-growing areas in 1986, a presidential decree was issued leading to a ban on the use of 57 brands of pesticides on rice, and to a national IPM programme in 1989. A joint FAO/government programme on IPM was initiated to increase the capacity of farmers (through farmer field schools) to make sound field management decisions based on IPM principles. In the mid-1990s, in the ‘rice bowl provinces’ (North Sumatra, West, Central and East Java, and Yogyakarta) the emphasis shifted to community organization, and community planning and management of resources (community IPM), contributing to the emergence of an Indonesian farmers’ movement. Peasant movements emerged at the time in almost every region in the country, indirectly supported by reforms that had reduced the role of the military and by decentralization policies. The overall aim of IIED’s research project was to study how participatory natural resource management could be scaled up and institutionalized. The project involved discussions with all relevant actors, including representatives of government, NGOs, farmer organizations, academic institutions and the media (Fakih et al. 2003). Henry Saragih, who was involved in the project, recalls: ‘I don’t know exactly where and when but it came from the village meetings. Our methodology. Peasants ask: what is our right? How to fight for our right? Many people talk rights at that time. Peasants ask: “what is rights to us?”’2 The Indonesian farmers who decided to frame their claims as rights had identified three broad issues for advocacy: control over the means of production (the fact that land ownership and tenure systems hinder environmentally sound agriculture), marketing and post-harvesting activities (in particular the government’s floor pricing policy which had become inadequate) and production techniques and processes (the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides and the relationship with government extension workers). After a long process, they decided to ‘package’ these issues as the need for ‘peasants/farmers’ rights to be protected from the Green Revolution’ (Fakih et al. 2003, 23). If their initial target was ‘corporate farming’ and the ‘green revolution’, they soon decided to ‘merge and unite the issue of farmers’ rights with the question of agrarian reform into a common framework and social movement’ (Fakih et al. 2003, 72). The Peasants’ Rights Charter therefore covers a wide range of rights that can be seen as necessary to support the fight against capitalism, including ‘resource

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control rights’, ‘production rights’, ‘consumption rights’ and ‘marketing rights’, in addition to ‘livelihood rights’, ‘political and social rights’, ‘rights to free expression’ and ‘reproductive rights’ (Fakih et al. 2003, 153).

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Peasants’ rights and repeasantization: a reaction to the agrarian transition to capitalism Capitalism is a complex social logic (Beaud 1981, 18). As a mode of production, capitalism can be described as a system of production and reproduction based in a fundamental social relation between capital and labour, in which ‘capital exploits labor in its pursuit of profit and accumulation, while labor has to work for capital to obtain its means of subsistence’ (Bernstein 2010, 1). There are many complexities and challenges involved in describing the influence of capitalism on agrarian formations, in part because there are many debates about the origins and development of capitalism.3 A key concept in those debates is primitive accumulation: the process through which pre-capitalist societies undergo transitions to capitalism4 (Bernstein 2010, 27). Equally challenging is an adequate description of the range of institutions that have made, and continue to make, the development of capitalism possible, among which private property, the social organization of labour, the market and the nation state. As capitalist agriculture expands, procedures, rules and protocols tend to create non-agency. Codification and formalization rule out autonomy, responsibility and trust (Ploeg 2008, 234, 241). Two fundamental aspects of agrarian transformations (Borras 2009, 5) have been at the heart of Vía Campesina’s claims: the commoditization of labour, which has ‘created dramatic constraints on farmers throughout the world, pushing them to the brink of irredeemable extinction’; and the commoditization of nature, which has placed ‘land, wealth and power in the hands of large land owners and transnational corporations’ and ‘unjustly denies peasants and farmers the possibility of controlling their own destinies’ (Vía Campesina 1996c). The right to be a peasant, the ‘right of rural peoples to produce’, and the ‘right to continue to exist as such’ (Rosset and Martínez-Torres 2010, 150) constitute a direct response to the perceived threat and experienced reality of ‘global depeasantization’, a post-Second World War development which has been characterized by deruralization and overurbanization (Araghi 1995, 338). Although it has been described by Araghi as the ‘experience of Third World peasantries between 1945 and 1990, when an increasing number of people who were involved in agriculture with direct access to the production of their means of subsistence became rapidly and massively concentrated in urban locations’, this phenomenon has not spared the industrialized regions of the world, where it has taken alternative forms, and took place prior to 1945, although at a lower rate. The effects of depeasantization5 have been wide-ranging. As a member of the French Confédération paysanne put it to his fellow peasants during the organization’s general assembly in 2010: ‘People are dismayed. They have no neighbours anymore. The wife is gone. There is no village party.’6

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Resistance to depeasantization has been at the heart of Vía Campesina’s discourse and can be said to be the foundation of peasants’ rights. Depeasantization is depicted by Vía Campesina activists, both as an ongoing trend and as a growing threat for the future. At its fourth international conference in Brazil, the movement noted: The number of peasant families continues to decline at an alarming rate. With each minute that passes, agricultural policies and the agro-industrial model cause the disappearance of one family farm in the newly expanded European Union. The situation is equally dramatic in Canada and the United States. Massive and forced displacements of people, and overt and covert wars, are also causes of the disappearance of peasants in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America. In some regions the increase in peasants’ suicides is a growing tragedy. (Vía Campesina 2004a) The ‘depeasantization’ narrative has been reactivated by the global food prices crisis of 2007–8. The agrarian transition to capitalism has led to the transformation of farming – essentially a localized activity – into agriculture, followed by the expansion of agro-export as a strategy for rural accumulation; and to the deepening of commodity relations and the incorporation of peasantries in the capitalist economy as producers of export crops, of food staples for domestic markets and of labour power via migrant labour systems (Bernstein 2001, 33). Smallholders have been drawn into (global) supply chains by a growing range of business models – contract farming, outgrower schemes, leases and management contracts, joint ventures, etc. (Vermeulen and Cotula 2010) – which extend the power of agribusiness transnational corporations over the global food system. The transformation of smallholders into entrepreneurs through these arrangements is a central aspect of the postglobal food crisis narrative which promotes investment in small-scale farming as a way to boost national development and to achieve long-term food security (High-Level Task Force on the Global Food Crisis 2008). This smallholderbased development model was denounced by Vía Campesina and the other members of the IPC: these ‘policies are directed towards integrating smallscale food providers into “global value chains”, where they and agricultural and fisheries workers have no voice in determining prices and wages’ (IPC 2009, 28). The agrarian transition to capitalism has also been associated with the widespread conversion of land, the basis of farming, into a commodity7 that can be bought, sold, rented or leased (Bernstein 2010, 23). If Marx and Polanyi both identified the ‘enclosure’ of land and its conversion into private property as the decisive moment in primitive accumulation in England, Bernstein shows that other sequences of commodification are possible (Bernstein 2010, 102). This historical process of commodification is not complete: legally constituted and enforced private property rights in land are still not established effectively,

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and are contested and resisted in rural zones in the South (Bernstein 2010, 98– 9) and in the North (Transnational Institute 2013). The transformation of land into a transnational investment opportunity, as demonstrated by the current trend towards global ‘land grabs’ or large-scale acquisitions or leases of land, can be seen as the ultimate stage of land commoditization (Vía Campesina and GRAIN 2009; De Schutter 2009c; Borras and Franco 2010; High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE) 2011). Vía Campesina has denounced the ‘ferocious offensive of capital and of transnational corporations (TNCs) to take over land and natural assets (water, forests, minerals, biodiversity, land, etc.), that translates into a privatizing war to steal the territories and assets of peasants and indigenous peoples’ (Vía Campesina 2008b). The privatization of resources has been intimately connected to two other processes typical of capitalism: the rejection of social and environmental externalities, and the reckless exploitation of supposedly infinite natural resources, leading to growing inequalities, and to an unprecedented ecological crisis. In the mid-1990s, the ‘increasing impoverishment of farmers and rural peoples in general’ and the ‘increasing degradation of nature, land, water, plants, animals and natural resources’ led Vía Campesina to react collectively against the ‘global market oriented system’, which puts ‘vital resources under centralized systems of production, procurement and distribution’ (Vía Campesina 1996c). In reaction to the combined effects of depeasantization, incorporation and commoditization, Vía Campesina has defended ‘repeasantization’ (see Table 3.1) as an alternative project grounded in the defence of peasant farming, autonomy, control over land and territories, and, increasingly, agro-ecology. The repeasantization project rejects the elimination of peasants: We, the peasant and small-scale farming societies are not defeated. We are strong and determined and we are the majority in the world. We are proud of our work, which is to produce safe foods for our families and humankind. We cherish our diversity, both biological and cultural. The future belongs to us. (Vía Campesina 2000)

Table 3.1 The capitalist vs. the repeasantization (food sovereignty) project Capitalist project

Repeasantization (food sovereignty) project

Depeasantization and transformation of the Repeasantization and anchoring in the local into a non-place local, social, cultural and historical Incorporation of farmers into markets

Autonomy

Commoditization of nature

People’s control over land and territories

Industrialization and modernization of agriculture

Agro-ecology and peasant farming

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We reaffirm that the permanent existence of peasant agriculture is fundamental for the elimination of poverty, hunger, unemployment and marginalization. (Vía Campesina 2004a) In Mexico, peasant leader Alberto Gomez from UNORCA, a Vía Campesina member, speaking at an academic conference, celebrates the resistance of ‘those who have not disappeared’ and of ‘those who are appearing’.8 In parts of the world where the number of farmers has already dramatically dropped, such as in Europe, efforts have been undertaken by the youth to find ways to facilitate the ‘implantation’ of young farmers. A lively ‘constellation’ has taken shape within Vía Campesina, called ‘Reclaim the Fields’, which gathers ‘young peasants, landless people, prospective peasants, people who want to take back control over food production’ (Reclaim the Fields 2010a, 8), but also ‘climate guerrilleras, housebuilders, city gardeners, shepherds, seed savers, and land squatters’ (Reclaim the Fields 2010b, 7). Some authors, like McMichael, characterize this phenomenon as ‘global agrarian resistance’ (McMichael 2006, 474), emphasizing the ‘heroic’ staying in power of small-scale/peasant farming (Bernstein 2009, 67). For van der Ploeg, the current trend towards global ‘repeasantization’ is manifest, North and South alike. Repeasantization is the result of a quantitative increase in numbers through an inflow from outside and/or through a reconversion of entrepreneurial farmers into peasants, and the result of a qualitative shift, through a progressive distanciation of productive activities from the markets (Ploeg 2008, 7). Rosset and Martinez-Torres see agro-ecology as a tool in the contestation, defence, (re)configuration and transformation of ‘contested rural areas’ into ‘peasant territories’, in a process of repeasantization (Rosset and Martínez-Torres 2012, 1). Much of what constitutes Vía Campesina’s global repeasantization project has been characterized as being of ‘agrarian populist’ inspiration (Bernstein 2009, 74). Agrarian populism, Brass argues, has emerged time and again in history – in the 1890s, 1930s, 1960s and 1990s – in reaction to industrialization, urbanization and capitalist crises (Brass 1997, 204). At the core of agrarian populism is the defence of the small ‘family farmer’ or ‘peasant’ against the pressures exerted by the agents of a developing capitalism or by projects of state-led national development in all their capitalist, nationalist and socialist variants (Bernstein 2009, 68). The extent to which Vía Campesina and other contemporary rural social movements have managed to articulate a vision that expresses ‘specific, novel and strategic conceptions of modernity’ that go beyond the ‘nostalgia’ of agrarian populism – and therefore constitute a serious alternative to the global capitalist world food system – is open for debate (Bernstein 2009, 75). Two related challenges confront the food sovereignty movement in that respect. First, will the movement continue to find ways to elaborate an alternative model that responds to the experiences, beliefs and practices of its ‘socially heterogeneous membership’? Second, will the movement be able to develop ‘an

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adequate political economy’, i.e. to specify the alternative systems of production that the ‘peasant way’ may generate as the basis of a future post-capitalist, ecologically friendly social order (Bernstein 2009, 75)? If the ‘relocalization’ project that opposes neoliberal globalization has been relatively well fleshed out,9 the challenge of developing true alternatives to capitalism in agriculture – ‘articulating the value of peasant production and the creation of sustainable economic relationships that are outside of capitalist market rules’ (Nyéléni Food Sovereignty Forum 2007b) – is much more ambitious.

The rights of peasants, women and men For Baxi, the various declarations of rights offered by or drafted under the auspices of diverse peoples’ movements – such as the Ken Saro Wiwa Declaration of Human Rights of the Ogoni People or the Zapatista Declaration concerning the universal human rights of the indigenous peoples – ‘prefigure different orders of the promise and pertinence of human rights’ (Baxi 2007a, 46). The Declaration on the Rights of Peasants adopted by the movement in 2008 proclaims a number of new human rights but also refers to rights already recognized in international human rights law. • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Article I – Definition of peasants: rights holders Article II – Rights of peasants Article III – Right to life and to an adequate standard of living Article IV – Right to land and territory Article V – Right to seeds and traditional agricultural knowledge and practice Article VI – Right to means of agricultural production Article VII – Right to information and agriculture technology Article VIII – Freedom to determine price and market for agricultural production Article IX – Right to the protection of agriculture values Article X – Right to biological diversity Article XI – Right to preserve the environment Article XII – Freedoms of association, opinion and expression Article XIII – Right to access to justice

Central in this list is the proclamation of a new right to land and territory (art. IV). Resistance against the appropriation of nature, especially land, has been at the centre of Vía Campesina’s struggles since its inception in 1993. Access to land was a key theme of the parallel forum to the World Food Summit in 1996 (Vía Campesina 1996b) which saw the participation of several Vía Campesina activists. In 1999, Vía Campesina launched the Global Campaign for Agrarian Reform (GCAR), in partnership with the international human rights organization FIAN. The GCAR denounced the land titling policies of the World Bank and its market-assisted land reform programmes for privatizing land and leading to the reconcentration of the land. Human rights framing was

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The rights of peasants 49 at the core of the GCAR: Vía Campesina and FIAN jointly framed land claims in terms of rights, and tried to articulate agrarian issues and human rights law and methodologies (Borras 2008c, 265). In the following years, Vía Campesina started talking with other constituencies – nomadic pastoralists, fisher folk and indigenous peoples – on the various meanings and functions attached to the land, for example at the occasion of the ‘Land, territory and dignity’ Forum organized on the fringe of the 2006 International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD) (Rosset 2013, 724). It also tried to define its own vision of agrarian reform, integrating lessons learned from past agrarian reform processes and linking the land issue to the broader issues of food sovereignty and the environment (Borras 2008c). The issue of access to land has become even more central after the food crisis of 2007–8, in a context marked by land grabbing and climate change. Gathered at the occasion of the World Summit on Food Security organized by FAO in June 2008, Vía Campesina and other social organizations and movements demanded that an end be put to the ‘new enclosure movement’ that converts ‘arable, pastoral, and forest lands for the production of fuel’ (IPC 2008). As anticipated by Borras, the major policy battle around land policy issues today is being fought around the double issue of ‘formalization’ of land rights and ‘privatization’ of remaining public lands (Borras 2008c, 281). The terms of the global land reform debates have radically changed, forcing Vía Campesina to think beyond land reform, and the GCAR to reassess its strategy. This, in essence, was the objective of the International Workshop and Seminar ‘Agrarian Reform and Defense of Land and Territory in the 21st Century: The Challenge and the Future’ organized by the movement in Indonesia in 2012 (Vía Campesina 2012a). The concept of territory (Mançano Fernandes 2006; López Barcenas; Escobar 2008) is increasingly mobilized by food sovereignty activists. The defence of territories has long been at the heart of indigenous peoples resistance (Daes 2001, 12). What is new is the growing resonance of the concept of territory in the food sovereignty movement, both North and South (Rosset 2013; Menser 2013). As expressed by this activist member of the Confédération paysanne in France: ‘How to reclaim our territories? Occupy the space? This is what is at stake.’10 The notion of territory runs counter to the capitalist transformation of the local into a ‘non-place’ (van der Ploeg 2008, 269); it helps rethink the organization of our food system in terms of interconnected territorial units. In Guatemala, where the World Bank uses ‘territorial restructuring’ to facilitate control over land and labour and enable the development of foreign-based extractive industries, indigenous acts of ‘territorial resistance’ open spaces and places for ‘territorial sovereignty’ (Holt-Giménez 2007). In the European context, the French term ‘terroir’ describes a particular and vital relationship between a specific region, quality products, producers and consumers (Petrini 2001, 8). The territory appears as an entity representing more than the sum of the material resources it contains. It embodies a story, the relationship to a place, a commitment to a social and cultural context (Fonte 2006, 3), as exemplified by the use of the notion of territory in urban land rights struggles (Sauer 2012),

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GM-free regions/territories in Europe, Costa Rica and elsewhere, or food standards developed from below (Friedmann and McNair 2008). Drawing from these distinct but somewhat related sources of inspiration, the food sovereignty movement is in search of a conceptualization of the peasant territory that adequately captures peasant representations and practices, while enabling the necessary dialogue with other rural groups. According to Rosset, ongoing dialogue between peasants and various other rural constituencies has already generated a new conception of agrarian reform from a territorial perspective. Such a conception seeks to ensure that agrarian reform does not truncate the rights of other users of the land, and emphasizes that the ‘purpose’ of land and territory is ‘reconstructing and defending community’ (Rosset 2013). In this emerging conception, territories are seen as contested processes. Territories and their resources are constantly disputed as both agribusiness and rural social movements attempt to reconfigure them to favour their own interests (Rosset and Martínez-Torres 2012, 2). Also key in the Declaration on the Rights of Peasants is the proclamation of the right of peasants to ‘determine the varieties of the seeds they want to plant’ and the ‘right to reject varieties of the plant which they consider to be dangerous economically, ecologically, and culturally’ (art. V). Seeds are perhaps peasants’ most precious and sacred resource and Vía Campesina activists regularly engage in the ritual of exchanging seeds (Desmarais 2008a, 141). Protests against genetically modified (GM) crops were at the forefront of peasant struggles in the late 1990s (Desmarais 2008b, 163). The destruction of GMO seeds in Nérac, France, in 1998, marked the beginning of a series of mobilizations against GMO trials in the whole French territory (Bové and Dufour 2004, 325). Mobilizations against GM crops were also fierce in India, South Africa and Brazil (Scoones 2008). The claimed rights to land, territory, seeds and resources constitute a direct opposition to capitalist-driven commoditization and privatization of nature. They signify a rejection of the liberal order in which the right to private property trumps other human rights. Vía Campesina activists put forward forms of collective ownership or communal management of resources, which are often inspired by the struggles of indigenous peoples. Indigenous peoples internationally have successfully argued that their relationship with the lands or territories is of ‘special importance for the cultures and spiritual values of the peoples concerned’ (ILO 1989, 13) and have gradually managed to have the importance of such a relationship recognized in international law. The International Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, for example, states that ‘control by indigenous peoples over developments affecting them and their lands, territories and resources will enable them to maintain and strengthen their institutions, cultures and traditions’ (UN General Assembly 2007). Two dimensions of the alternative conception of rights that is defended by peasant movements are worth highlighting here. First, interdependecy between wo(men) and nature detaches itself from the ‘inherent anthropocentricity of rights’ (Taylor 1998, 346). Indeed, human rights theory developed without recognition of human vulnerability to environmental change, and without moral concern

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The rights of peasants 51 for non-human entities (Taylor 1998, 314). Peasant activists view the model of capitalist development as a threat to life because it prioritizes consumerism and the generation of profits over common well-being, denying the interconnection that exists between human life and nature. In contrast to this anthropocentric ‘model that destroys communities as well as nature’, they seek to forge a new system that recognizes ‘that human beings are part of nature, that nature does not belong to us, and that we are interdependent with nature’ (as was proposed during the Cochabamba summit on climate change in 2010). Respect for human rights and the Rights of Mother Earth must be seen as articulated, complementary, and reciprocal processes (Building the People’s World Movement for Mother Earth 2010). This emerging alternative conception of rights raises the issue of the limits that might need to be imposed on human rights in order to ensure the rights of other beings, living and non-living. Second, the conception of rights that emerges from the food sovereignty movement puts a strong emphasis on responsibility. This emphasis on responsibility is present, to some extent, in all third-generation/solidarity rights, which call upon the involvement of each citizen to realize these rights, indicating a shift away from state-centrism and towards ‘duty-based social orders’ (Steiner et al. 2008, 496–517). This shift takes a new turn with peasant movements, which insist on giving a new political role to territories and communities, as discussed in Chapter 2. Their concern is not the protection of their individual rights from infringements by the state. Nor do they demand social rights to be delivered by the social-democratic state. Their rights claims seek to resist the appropriation of land and resources by private actors. In the way they are articulated by peasants, rights come with responsibilities. For example, a Draft Convention on Food Sovereignty elaborated by an Asian peasant network ‘recognizes not only the right of the people to access and utilise resources but also the obligation to protect, conserve and renew productive resources’ (People’s Food Sovereignty Network Asia Pacific and Pesticide Action Network Asia and the Pacific 2004). When they claim that peasants can ‘feed the world’ (Vía Campesina 2008a) and ‘cool the planet’ (Vía Campesina 2009), Vía Campesina activists demand a social role, a responsibility: ‘We are men and women of the earth, we are those who produce food for the world. We have the right to continue being peasants and family farmers and to shoulder the responsibility of continuing to feed our peoples’ (Vía Campesina 2008b). Autonomy The Declaration on the Rights of Peasants goes further than simply affirming a right to land and natural resources. It also proclaims rights that seek to reinforce the autonomy of food producers as economic actors, such as the ‘right to the means of agricultural production’ (art. VI), and the ‘freedom to determine price and market for agricultural production’ (art. VIII). Building on Shanin who stated that ‘the peasantry exists only as a process’ (Shanin 1971, 16), van der Ploeg puts forward the idea that the ‘struggle for autonomy’ is central of the ‘peasant

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condition’ (Ploeg 2008, 23). Building on autonomy as a criteria, van der Ploeg shows how ‘institutionalized distanciation from markets’ (Ploeg 2008, 42) can be considered a defining feature of the peasantry. Peasants resist by reassembling strategic connections that are taken over or eliminated by corporate agriculture; they find new ways to create value; they develop co-operatives to enlarge their autonomy (Ploeg 2008, 269). They seek to ‘create opportunities for an alternative market through initiatives such as community funds and product exchanges, … bartering, seed fairs etc., which will reinforce links and solidarity among small scale food providers’ (Nyéléni Food Sovereignty Forum 2007b). Everywhere, the pursuit of autonomy reinforces the self-esteem of food producers: ‘Charity? No! Let them work again!’ a Korean peasant leader says at an international protest in Cancun (Kyung Hae 2003). These words are echoed by Brígida Chautla, an indigenous woman from the Vía Campesina member organization UNORCA in Mexico: ‘We are capable of producing’, she asserts at a public forum in Mexico.11 In areas of the world where the threat of depeasantization is felt more strongly and associated with state policy, as is often the case for indigenous groups, the quest for economic autonomy is undertaken as a means to achieve both political and cultural autonomy. The preamble to the Vía Campesina Declaration of Rights of Peasants, which lists experienced violations of peasants’ rights, echoes such a conception of autonomy: ‘As they lose their land, communities also lose their forms of self-government, sovereignty and cultural identity’ (Vía Campesina 2008c). Local or peasant autonomy does not necessarily exclude state support. Often, it demands it (Bernstein 2014). Although distrust in state apparatuses and in the regulatory schemes they impose is widespread (Ploeg 2008, 272), the claimed right of peasants to the ‘means of agricultural production’ (Vía Campesina 2008c, VI) encompasses access to a number of goods and services provided by the state: ‘the right to obtain funds from the State to develop agriculture’, ‘access to credit’, ‘the right to obtain the materials and tools for agriculture’, ‘the right to water for irrigation’ and ‘the right to transportation, drying, and storage facilities’ (Vía Campesina 2008c, VI). The conception of autonomy that is at the heart of the repeasantization project is multi-dimensional: it embraces autonomy as distanciation from markets; autonomy as control over resources and co-production with nature; autonomy as peasant knowhow; and autonomy as dignity. It is central to Vía Campesina’s human rights discourse, which focuses on social domination and on the power relations that are endured by food producers. The right not to disappear opposes trade, investment and development policies that radically negate their very existence. The right to produce is the expression of a demand to form a full part of society. The right to be a peasant expresses the belief in an alternative, less urban, less technological, less industrial and less Western modernity (Brass 1997, 218). Gender and ethnic discrimination are denounced. The term peasant, often used pejoratively, is valorized (Desmarais 2008a, 139). The affirmation of shared values constitutes a response to manufactured ‘invisibility’ – the production of food in ‘non-places’ by ‘non-persons’ (Ploeg 2008, 269). The emphasis on dignity, autonomy and the link to a place and history invites us to redefine what

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The rights of peasants 53 constitutes a good life beyond material criteria. Here too, we see an alternative conception of human rights emerging. The emphasis on autonomy as dignity is a direct challenge to human rights activists and development workers who have long ignored the non-material dimensions of economic, social and cultural rights, instead focusing on ‘basic needs’ (ILO 1976) or on minimum incomes. The centrality of (multi-dimensional) autonomy in the praxis of contemporary peasant movements contrasts with that of (material) subsistence in rights-based (and other) development approaches.12 Contrary to Vía Campesina’s view that integration into markets fuels ‘market dependency’ (Ploeg 2008, 40) and impedes autonomy, development approaches elaborated over the last 40 years, the right to food included, have often supported the conversion of peasants in agricultural entrepreneurs, while emphasizing access to social programmes, safety nets and a minimum income. According to peasant movements, this focus on subsistence has failed to address the increased commodification of subsistence and peoples’ need for dignity. Agro-ecology If the creation of ‘degrees of autonomy’ (Ploeg 2008, 261) characterizes the search for an alternative model of agriculture in economic terms, the ‘right to reject the industrial model of agriculture’ (Vía Campesina 2008c, V) translates in ecological terms into the quest for a symbiotic and respectful interaction between the peasant and the environment. Central to this quest is the ‘reappropriation of the peasant know-how and social role’ (Lambert 2003, 8). The ‘protection and preservation of biological diversity’ is at the core of the exploration of a new model of agriculture, which is backed by the ‘right to reject patents’ and the ‘right to reject intellectual property rights of goods, services, resources and knowledge that are owned, maintained, discovered, developed or produced by the local community’ (art. X). Since the global food crisis of 2007–8 and with most food and agriculture experts agreeing that food production will have to increase substantially by 2050 and thus be severely intensified (Koohafkan et al. 2011, 2), part of the challenge for Vía Campesina has consisted in convincing others that their alternative model can ‘feed the world’ (Vía Campesina 2008a). Adding to the traditional agrarian populist arguments – efficiency and equity (Bernstein 2009, 69) – formulated in favour of small family farms and redistributive agrarian reform, Vía Campesina, its intellectual champions and NGO supporters have increasingly portrayed peasant agriculture as best able to ‘manage resources, the environment and land sustainably’ and to ‘conserve natural resources and help renew the soil’ (Coordination SUD 2008). Agro-ecology is the new buzzword. As a set of agricultural practices, agroecology seeks ways to enhance agricultural systems by ‘mimicking natural processes’, thus creating beneficial biological interactions and synergies among the components of the agro-ecosystem. It provides the most favourable soil conditions for plant growth, particularly by managing organic matter and by

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raising soil biotic activity. The core principles of agro-ecology include recycling nutrients and energy on the farm, rather than introducing external inputs; integrating crops and livestock; diversifying species and genetic resources in agro-ecosystems over time and space; and focusing on interactions and productivity across the agricultural system (De Schutter 2011c, 6). The agro-ecological ‘movement’ essentially started as localized efforts in several isolated rural areas promoted by NGO personnel and community leaders, before it expanded to hundreds of peasant communities throughout many countries (Altieri et al. 2011, 8). As the case of the ‘Campesino a Campesino’ movement in Latin America (Holt-Giménez 2006) demonstrates, a key factor in the expansion of agro-ecology has been a ‘horizontal process of exchange of ideas and innovations among farmers’ (Altieri et al. 2011, 8). The fact that agro-ecology developed under the impetus of NGOs and community-based organizations, and not as a political or peasant-led movement, led Holt-Giménez to advocate a reinforced link between ‘farmers’ movements for advocacy and for practice’ (Holt-Giménez 2010). Over recent years, convergence appears to have taken place. A growing number of Vía Campesina organizations have embraced agro-ecology, politically and in practice, and Vía Campesina’s International Working Group on Sustainable Peasant Agriculture has been given a key role. This development is the result of a combination of factors. First, participation by national organizations in a global social movement has largely politicized the question of how land is farmed. Second, the grassroots membership of Vía Campesina has increasingly searched for alternatives in response to the dramatic fluctuations of prices of petroleum-based inputs, putting these inputs way beyond the means of many peasant farmers (Rosset et al. 2011, 161). From the point of view of Vía Campesina, agro-ecology presents the advantage of combining increasing productivity, restoring degraded soils, living in harmony with the Mother Earth and producing healthy food, with increased autonomy from input markets, and putting peasant families in control of their own production systems, improving the economic viability of peasant agriculture (Rosset et al. 2011, 165). In Europe, where the term sustainable or peasant agriculture is preferred, the same set of advantages is described. In Belgium, for example, efforts are made by farmers attached to the Vía Campesina member FUGEA13 to ‘reinforce feed autonomy’ by reducing the use of imported soy (often transgenic and the cause of deforestation and displacements) for animal feed. This ensures the ‘financial autonomy of the farm’ and ecological benefits (FUGEA 2011). What underlies the growing interest of the movement in the potential of agro-ecology is the possibility to ‘establish new social relations of production’ that ‘confront the capitalist division of labor’, put an end to the damage caused to our resources and somewhat control our current alienation, subjection and dependency on the – scientific and technical – means of production. Agroecology is an invitation to think, live and act in harmony with the productive process (Núñez 2008), building and asserting our ‘cognitive sovereignty’ (Lanz Ródriguez 2009).

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Institutionalizing the rights of peasants In October 2008, at the fifth International Conference in Maputo, Mozambique, Vía Campesina member organizations launched a Global Campaign on the International Convention on the Rights of the Peasants, marking their intention to work ‘on the institutionalization of the Rights of the Peasants into the international human rights system’ (Vía Campesina 2008h). How did such a demand arise? The origins of the ‘Peasants’ Rights Charter’ are indirectly tied to the end of Suharto’s dictatorship,14 and directly linked to a national consultation process carried out in 1999 in the framework of a research project on Community Integrated Pest Management conducted by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).15 This project was led within the broad tradition of Participatory Action Research (PAR), the aim of which was ‘not only to conduct research, but in the process to also bring about political change and the empowerment of those involved’ (Fakih et al. 2003, p. x). The first participatory impact studies were launched in 1998 and researchers conducted a number of workshops on what participants called farmers’ or ‘peasants’ rights’ in July-September 1999 in different regions of the country. Discussions with a wide range of actors (farmers, representatives of government, NGOs, farmer organizations, academic institutions and the media) led to a variety of campaign strategies, including a national IPM farmers’ congress that was held in June 1999 in Yogyakarta, and was attended by 500 participants. Many peasants’ rights issues surfaced during the congress, and several statements released at the congress were centred on farmers’/peasants’ rights. Following the congress, the decision was made to draft a Peasants’ Rights Charter at a meeting that was held in Bogor (West Java) and organized by staff members of the Indonesian NGO REaD (Research, Education and Dialogue) who constituted the core of the research team. The Peasants’ Rights Charter was drafted soon after in Wisma Realino, Yogyakarta. It underwent continued revisions in the course of 1999–2000, as the text was discussed in the different regions and at different events. Socialization and campaign tools such as banners and leaflets were put together (Henri Saragih was on the socialization/peasant organizing team), and thousands of copies of the draft charter were circulated. In 2001, a coalition of actors,16 in close interaction with peasant organizations, approached the National Human Rights Commission in order to organize a National Conference on Agrarian Reform to Protect and Implement the Rights of Peasants. The conference was attended by about 150 people, among them members of the Human Rights Commission, NGOs and representatives of Indonesian farmers’ organizations. The Peasants’ Rights Charter was adopted at the conference (Fakih et al. 2003). Under the leadership of SPI, which established ties with Vía Campesina in 1996,17 the text was brought to the attention of member organizations from other countries in the region during Vía Campesina’s Southeast Asia and East Asia regional conference, in April 2002 in Jakarta.18 At the end of the conference, member organizations released a new text, ‘Declaration of Vía Campesina South

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East Asia and East Asia about the Protection of the Peasant Right’ (Vía Campesina Regional South East Asia and East Asia 2002). The initiative was subsequently ‘externalized’19 to the international level: it was put on the agenda of the International Working Committee on Human Rights, and submitted for the consideration of the other members of the transnational movement. The transfer of the international secretariat of Vía Campesina to Indonesia, where it was run by SPI from 2005 to 2013, under the leadership of Henry Saragih, further prompted externalization. It gave more visibility to the claims formulated by SPI, and gave their members an enhanced access to Vía Campesina’s leaders, decision-making bodies and other member organizations. In June 2008, an International Conference on Peasant Rights was organized in Jakarta, where the 2002 draft text of the Declaration was shared with delegates from 26 countries and used as a basis for deliberation (Vía Campesina 2008d). On the occasion of the fifth International Conference, held in Maputo in October 2008, participants sought to develop ‘a multi-level strategy’ to have the Declaration ‘processed through UN mechanism’, building on preparatory work by Vía Campesina’s International Working Committee on Human Rights. Participants debated how they could work simultaneously at the national, regional20 and international level to raise awareness, mobilize support and build alliances with other constituencies, as well as seek the support of governments, parliaments and human rights institutions (Vía Campesina 2008h). They adopted the draft text of the ‘Declaration of Rights of Peasants – Women and Men’ (Vía Campesina 2008c), and decided to bring the Declaration ‘to the UN Human Rights Council’ (Vía Campesina 2008f), with the active support of selected human rights experts. Convincing support NGOs If the decision to seek the recognition of new rights by the United Nations belongs entirely to Vía Campesina, the support of allies played a key role in the identification of the UN Human Rights Council as the key entry point for the institutionalization of the rights contained in the Declaration. The human rights experts involved in advancing the peasants’ rights initiative – essentially two international NGOs (FIAN and the CETIM), Henri Thomas Simarmata from the Indonesian Human Rights Committee for Social Justice (IHCS) and the team of the previous Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, now based at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights – are all familiar with the ways of working of the Human Rights Council.21 Access to these NGOs was key for Vía Campesina, for only NGOs with consultative status with the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) can have access to the various human rights mechanisms of the UN. For FIAN, support for Vía Campesina’s Declaration on the Rights of Peasants follows from joint work conducted in the framework of the Global Campaign for Agrarian Reform since 1999. As early as 2004, FIAN helped the movement document cases of human rights abuses, mostly related to access to land. In 2004, 2005 and 2006, FIAN International produced, in partnership with Vía

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The rights of peasants 57 Campesina, reports on the violations of peasants’ human rights (Vía Campesina and FIAN International 2004; FIAN International 2005; Vía Campesina 2006a), showing that peasants suffer from violations of all human rights, and lack access to legal remedies (Ziegler 2009, 66). In these reports, key violations of civil and political, as well as economic, social and cultural rights were identified: hunger, lack of access to health and education, repression, torture, violations of women’s rights and repression of agrarian reform struggles (Saragih 2005, 357–8), but also the lack of agrarian reform and rural development policies, evictions and forced displacements, appropriation of seeds by transnational corporations, criminalization, arbitrary detention, torture and extra-judicial killings (Golay 2009, 4–7). FIAN brought these reports to the attention of the UN Commission on Human Rights (now the Council). The publication of these annual reports was later interrupted. In 2013, FIAN co-edited a manual for Latin American judges on the protection of the rights of peasants. Covering most of the rights listed in Vía Campesina’s Declaration, the document offers an analysis of different cases involving environmental pollution, land conflicts or development projects such as dams, where courts in Mexico, Columbia, Brazil or Argentina have ruled in favour of peasants (Emanuelli et al. 2013). Asked what he thinks of the peasants’ rights initiative, FIAN founder Rolf Künnemann is adamant: ‘Yes it is valid. Otherwise there won’t be any peasants left.’22 The Geneva-based Centre Europe-Tiers Monde (CETIM) has a history of logistically supporting Vía Campesina’s International Working Committee on Human Rights. CETIM helped organize the meetings of the Vía Campesina’s Committee in parallel with the relevant sessions of the UN Human Rights Commission. CETIM also helped Vía Campesina activists gain access to UN bodies. In 2001, Vía Campesina and CETIM issued a joint statement on peasants’ rights before the UN Human Rights Commission. In 2002, Vía Campesina, FIAN and CETIM used the first meeting of the Social Forum of the Human Rights Council to voice their concerns about peasant rights. CETIM was initially reluctant to support Vía Campesina’s demand for a new human rights instrument. Patrick,23 in charge of CETIM’s Human Rights Programme, describes: ‘Knowing the UN, I felt that if we could manage to have existing rights respected, it would already be something.’24 But then, despite the ‘procedural, technical and political difficulties’, despite ‘the heavy UN machine’, the ‘states, the economic interests’,25 the CETIM decided to support the idea. Although Patrick’s initial position was that efforts should go to implementing the rights recognized in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), he gradually changed his mind: ‘I was telling them ICESCR and they were saying yes but … we are committed to human rights and we see that it is not enough.’26 He adds: ‘the arguments we warmed up to were … there are protection gaps, it comes from the ground, peasants have suffered abuses during centuries and they deserve an instrument’.27 He concludes: ‘It is worth it, if only to raise the awareness of the public opinion worldwide.’28 The idea that peasants need new human rights also received the backing of the former Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, who had become a

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member of the Advisory Committee of the Human Rights Council (HRC), and his former adviser, Cristophe Golay. In the course of his eight-year mandate as UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food (2000–8), Jean Ziegler had echoed many of the demands made by national and transnational agrarian movements, and expressed support for the concept of food sovereignty put forward by Vía Campesina (Ziegler 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006). Ziegler’s presence on the Advisory Committee was instrumental to the advancement of the Declaration. In a 2009 report to the HRC, the Advisory Committee recommended that the HRC request the Advisory Committee to undertake a study on the global food crisis, the right to food and the rights of peasants, a strategy which sought to provide Vía Campesina with a ‘fast-track’ opportunity to have peasants’ rights discussed at the UN Human Rights Council. Initially faced with a negative response, the Advisory Committee successfully used the non-discrimination argument to defend the importance of new rights for peasants (Golay 2009, 20). It offered to prepare a study on ‘discrimination in the context of the right to food, including identification of good practices of anti-discriminatory policies and strategies’ (Human Rights Council 2010b). The Advisory Committee was mandated to conduct a second study, the scope of which it broadened to include other rural constituencies. In this study, the Committee suggested that the Declaration drafted by Vía Campesina be used as a basis for discussion by the HRC (Human Rights Council 2010a). The preliminary study ‘on the advancement of the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas’ was presented to the HRC in 2011, and some member states came forward in support (Luxembourg, Ecuador, Indonesia, South Africa). States and international organizations also sent written comments. The WTO, for example, commented that the proposed instrument would be problematic because the state actions required to fulfil some of the rights contained in the text (such as the ‘right to the means of production’ and the ‘freedom to determine price and market for agricultural production’) ‘might contravene’ the international obligations of states under the WTO29 (WTO 2010). The WTO also argued that the concept of food sovereignty ‘disregards the reality of the current interconnected world’ and is ‘often used to portray a constraining role of international trade rules and obligations in the freedom of countries to pursue the policies of their own choosing’ (WTO 2010). Vía Campesina, FIAN international, CETIM and the Indonesian Human Rights Committee for Social Justice (IHCS) organized several parallel events at the HRC in the early 2000s in order to promote peasants’ rights. The parallel events on Land Grabbing and the Urgent Need to Protect the Rights of Peasants, organized in 2012, saw the participation of Angélica C. Navarro Llanos, Ambassador of Bolivia to the United Nations. The Human Rights Council These concerted efforts brought results. On 24 September 2012, the UN Human Rights Coucil adopted a resolution on the ‘Promotion of the human rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas’ (2010b) which was

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The rights of peasants 59 sponsored by Bolivia, Cuba, and South Africa and was passed with 23 votes in favor, 15 abstentions and 9 votes against.30 The resolution led to the creation of an open-ended intergovernmental working group (OEWG) with the mandate of negotiating, finalizing and submitting to the HRC a draft United Nations declaration on the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas, on the basis of the draft prepared by Vía Campesina. The OEWG held its first session in July 2013, and elected Angélica C. Navarro Llanos as its Chairperson-Rapporteur. Representatives from civil society included Vía Campesina, CETIM, FIAN International, the International Federation of Rural Adult Catholic Movements (FIMARC), Villages unis pour le développement and HelpAge International. Three thematic panel discussions were organized, with 17 panellists, including Jan Douwe van der Ploeg, Marcel Mazoyer, José Esquinas, Olivier De Schutter, Marc Edelman, Jean Ziegler, Miloon Kothari, as well as rural social movements’ representatives. The panels focused on the positive contribution of peasants to food security, the fight against climate change and the conservation of biodiversity, the situation of human rights in rural areas, and the need for a new Declaration. A number of arguments were raised by various delegations against the proposed Declaration, based either on process or on content. Some delegations argued that the HRC was not the proper body for addressing food and agricultural issues, that there was no need for a new instrument, or that the Advisory Committee had worked on a draft text without being mandated to do so by the HRC. These delegations also contended that there was no broad consensus on the rights proposed; that the new rights were premised on a differential treatment of peasants as a special category; that the Declaration purported to bestow collective rights to peasants, with no basis in international human rights law; and that the declaration did not comprehensively define ‘peasants’,31 at the risk of excluding other people working in rural areas. The absence of clear state obligations deriving from the rights proposed, the lack of coherence with existing relevant standards and the danger of duplicating these standards were also highlighted (Human Rights Council 2014). Some specific new rights, such as the right to land and territory, the right to reject the industrial mode of agriculture or the right to biological diversity also raised criticism. In spite of these objections, the Bolivian delegation succeeded in securing support from a good number of HRC members through informal dialogue in the course of 2013–14. In June 2014, a new resolution co-sponsored by Bolivia, Ecuador, Cuba and South Africa was adopted by the HRC with a large majority,32 renewing the mandate of the OEWG, encouraging the Chairperson-Rapporteur to hold informal consultations with all relevant stakeholders before the second session of the working group, and entrusting her with the preparation of a new text. For Vía Campesina, this decision is the result of successful advocacy undertaken by European member organizations towards a number of European states (France, Austria, Germany, Italy and Ireland), and demonstrates growing state support for the process (Vía Campesina 2014b). Negotiations are expected to extend over the next five years.

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Conclusion Very few ‘new rights’ that emerge from the grassroots find their way onto the international human rights agenda (Bob 2010b). How did peasant organizations succeed in getting support for a process of negotiation of a Declaration on the Rights of Peasants at the UN? Three success factors are worth highlighting here. First, the global food crisis of 2007–8 put the spotlight on smallholder farmers and gave peasant activists unprecedented access to international arenas to advance their demands. In May 2008, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier De Schutter called for a special thematic session of the Human Rights Council (HRC) on the food crisis. At this session, a number of NGOs demanded that the HRC undertake research on the specific violations of human rights affecting peasants and the gaps in protection that they endure (FIAN International et al. 2008). Numerous parallel events were organized in the 2008–2012 period, where Vía Campesina delegates made oral interventions. Peasant activists and supportive NGOs combined direct advocacy at the HRC with indirect advocacy in other global arenas where the international community sought to address the global food crisis, its causes, its impacts and the most adequate response it should give to the plight of smallholder farmers. Henry Saragih, for example, demanded new rights for peasants at the 2009 UN General Assembly thematic dialogue on the food crisis and the right to food. At those events, peasant activists successfully argued that there were gaps of protection in international human rights law and that a new international instrument should be part of the international community’s response to the crisis. In other terms, implementation of existing standards would not be sufficient. In 2014, references were also made to the International Year of Family Farming, and emphasis was placed on the contribution of sustainable family farming to the fight against hunger and the preservation of the environment. Second, Vía Campesina’s demand for a new instrument was endorsed by a number of key actors who helped identify the ‘legal opportunities’ (Israël 2003) that could be seized at the HRC. The close ties, shared diagnosis and trust built between Vía Campesina activists and human rights experts over the years played a central role in enabling them to move swiftly, and strategically. Without that endorsement, peasant activists would not have been able to advance their claims at the HRC. Research on the issues adopted (or not) by international human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch has shown that, without gatekeepers’ backing, groups rarely succeed in advancing new rights. Gatekeeper NGOs may choose not to recognize some issues as human rights concerns, either because they have limited resources, or because they are afraid of the mismatch between the new rights in question and their methods, expertise and mandate (Bob 2010b). As I show in Chapter 5, efforts by Vía Campesina to get food sovereignty recognized as a new right in the mid-2000s were generally not welcomed by human rights experts. Despite their endorsement of the food sovereignty paradigm, right to food defenders insisted

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The rights of peasants 61 on distinguishing the political nature of food sovereignty from the legal nature of the right to food (Windfuhr and Jonsén 2005). This shows that gatekeeper certification is far from automatic, even if political agendas appear to be aligned. This being said, the trajectory of the Declaration on the rights of peasants confirms the general trend observed by other authors that international lawmaking processes are less exclusive than they used to be, with growing inclusion of civil society organizations as observers or consultative parties (Noortmann and Ryngaert 2010). The peasants’ rights process is however unique in that it was initiated and pushed by a transnational social movement (in partnership with human rights experts). Third, Indonesian peasant activists succeeded in framing their claims as human rights abuses, and in bringing their claims to the attention of peasant organizations in other countries, first in South-East Asia, then the world over. Most importantly, they chose not to depict their grievances as abuses of wellaccepted human rights. Research on other groups has shown that demanding ‘new rights’ is a strategic choice (and certainly not a risk-free option), which may be pursued as a tactic to reinforce a group’s collective identity and influence (Bob 2010b). Strategic considerations have certainly played a role in Vía Campesina’s case, as I show in Chapter 5, but equally important was activists’ need to frame claims in a rights discourse that resonated with their worldviews and practices, and better met their needs. Henry Saragih summarizes: We question not only the practice of the current international human rights system, but also central notions of human rights such as ‘universality’, ‘equality’, the notion of ‘individuality’, and the disavowal of collective rights. That’s why besides notions of individuality, we also propose that rights should also have a dimension related to the collectivity/ communality … now the time of challenging and improving human rights standards from the point of view of peasants, women and men, has come. (Monsalve Suárez 2012a, 41) This departure from UN human rights doctrines has been contested by a number of states, which have criticized the draft text for establishing collective rights, and for creating new rights, such as the right to land. A key challenge for peasant organizations will be to maintain this alternative conception as intact as possible, while opening up to other rural constituencies, and accepting changes in the draft text that makes it acceptable to states.

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4

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Introduction New rights claims do not emerge in virgin territory. They are formulated in an international conceptual arena in which reference to existing, codified human rights prevails. Those who demand the recognition of ‘new rights’ have to list the ‘violations’ they endure, identify ‘gaps’ in international human rights law and, in the case of group rights, demonstrate their specificity as the rights-bearers. Understanding the origins, contours and limitations of the right to food, and the positioning of right to food defenders with regard to hunger in rural areas, is therefore crucial to grasp the context of emergence of rights-based claims by peasant movements. The right to food is a human right. It protects the right of all human beings to live in dignity, free from hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition. The right to food is protected under international human rights and humanitarian law. It is also recognized in numerous national constitutions. The right to food has been defined as: ‘the right to have regular, permanent and unrestricted access, either directly or by means of financial purchases, to quantitatively and qualitatively adequate and sufficient food corresponding to the cultural traditions of the people to which the consumer belongs, and which ensures a physical and mental, individual and collective, fulfilling and dignified life free of fear’ (Ziegler 2008, 17). With almost 870 million people chronically undernourished in 2010–12, the fact that the number of hungry people in the world remains unacceptably high is the primary concern of right to food defenders, who until recently had their eyes turned almost exclusively on the global South. Indeed, the vast majority of the hungry and malnourished live in developing countries, where about 15 per cent of the population is estimated to be undernourished (FAO 2012). The right to food approach to food insecurity is based on the premise that tackling world hunger requires improving not only the availability of food, but access to food for the vulnerable and deprived. Indeed, right to food advocates would argue, lack of access to food is almost never the result of a general scarcity of food. Instead, people are deprived of food because they have no opportunity to produce it, cannot earn a sufficient income to buy the food they need or are unable to work at all (Künnemann and Ratjen 2004, 1).

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The right to food 63 If the right to food achieved international recognition in 1948, it would be a mistake, as several human rights thinkers have pointed out, to believe that human rights were only meaningfully ‘born’ in 1948 (Rajagopal 2003; Stammers 2009). In its pre-institutional existence, the right to food was often referred to as the ‘right to subsistence’ (Gauthier 1977), the ‘right not to be hungry’ (Sen 1982) or the right to ‘freedom from hunger’, a term used extensively by the FAO. It has been eloquently described as ‘everyone’s minimum reasonable demand upon the rest of humanity’ (Shue 1996, 19). The right to food belongs to the broad category of economic, social and cultural rights (ESCR). As such, it is a relatively new right, long ignored by mainstream human rights organizations and only recently ‘adopted’ by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (Chong 2010). By other accounts, the right to food is as old as humanity itself, and probably the most fundamental right of all. The origins of ESCR are diffuse. International human rights lawyers Steiner, Alston and Goodman link the origins of ESCR to philosophical analyses and political theory from authors as diverse as Thomas Paine, Karl Marx, Immanuel Kant and John Rawls (Steiner et al. 2008, 269). Other authors associate the emergence of social rights with the transition from feudalism to capitalism (Rimlinger 1983, 53).1 Social rights enjoyed increased protection from the 1880s onwards, and in the interwar years, the International Labour Organization (ILO) adopted international minimum standards in relation to a wide range of matters which now fall under the rubric of ESCR (freedom of association, forced labour, minimum working age, hours of work, sickness protection, accident insurance, old-age insurance, freedom from discrimination). Most accounts of the right to food point to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s famous 1941 ‘Four Freedoms’ speech as a starting point. The speech – which looked forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms: freedom of expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear – is known for setting out a holistic notion of human rights that was subsequently expressed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. The human right to food is recognized in article 25 of the Universal Declaration (see Box 4.1).

Box 4.1 Article 25, para (1) ‘Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control’ (UN General Assembly 1948).

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The United States was a strong supporter of the inclusion of ESCR in the drafting of articles 22–8 of the Universal Declaration, together with Egypt, several Latin American countries and the (Communist) countries of Eastern Europe (Steiner et al. 2008, 271). But soon after the adoption of the Universal Declaration, the Cold War divide made itself felt in human rights, and each bloc appropriated its own version. Western states, where faith in full economic liberalism was strong, insisted on a severely constrained role for the state in matters of welfare. This is usually said to have given rise to cultural and ideological resistance to economic and social rights (Eide et al. 1995, 23), although some authors contend that post-war Western advocacy of ESCR was strong, consistent and intended to consolidate Western welfare states (Whelan and Donnelly 2007). In addition, the United States developed opposition to the principle of international human rights treaties (Steiner et al. 2008, 271). The Soviet bloc countered that civil and political rights were a reflection of the interests of the ruling class in capitalist societies. They were meaningless to citizens without the realization of economic and social rights. But while Western states emerged as opponents to ESCR, in reality the Soviet bloc was not an unconditional supporter of economic and social rights either; it rather used them rhetorically in its opposition to civil and political rights. The concept of rights, which places entitlement and empowerment at the individual level, went against the Marxist–Leninist model (Glasius 2006, 65). After more than 20 years of wrangling, two separate human rights treaties were adopted by the United Nations: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). They finally came into force in 1976. The right to food was recognized in article 11 of the ICESCR (UN General Assembly 1966). Article 11 refers both to the ‘positive’ right to food and to the ‘negative’ right to freedom from hunger (Fairbairn 2011, 20–1). The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO)2 actively participated in the drafting of article 11 and FAO’s Director-General proposed the substance of what became paragraph 2 of that article (see Box 4.2). Underlying the division of human rights into two main categories were several assumptions, many of which have since been revised. It was argued that the two sets of rights were of a different nature and therefore needed different instruments; that civil and political rights were ‘absolute’ and ‘immediate’ whereas ESCR were ‘programmatic’, to be realized gradually; that civil and political rights were ‘justiciable’ in the sense that they could easily be applied by courts and other judicial bodies, while ESCR were of a more political nature; that civil and political rights were ‘free’ in the sense that they did not cost much, while the implementation of ESCR was costly. While cultural resistance to parts of the human rights system can be found, to this day, in both Western and nonWestern societies, the evolution has over time gone in the direction of greater integration between the different sets of rights (Eide et al. 1995, 22). Yet several arguments continue to be advanced for not treating ESCR as rights. One typical objection is that a fairer distribution of the world’s resources

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Box 4.2 Article 11

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1.

2.

The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself and his family, including adequate food, clothing and housing, and to the continuous improvement of living conditions. The States Parties will take appropriate steps to ensure the realization of this right, recognizing to this effect the essential importance of international co-operation based on free consent. The States Parties to the present Covenant, recognizing the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger, shall take, individually and through international co-operation, the measures, including specific programs, which are needed: (a) To improve methods of production, conservation and distribution of food by making full use of technical and scientific knowledge, by disseminating knowledge of the principles of nutrition and by developing or reforming agrarian systems in such a way as to achieve the most efficient development and utilization of natural resources; (b) Taking into account the problems of both food-importing and food-exporting countries, to ensure an equitable distribution of world food supplies in relation to need (UN General Assembly 1966).

should be achieved through the political process, not through the assertion of rights, because broad assertions of ESCR are unmanageable through the judicial process and would constitute an intrusion into an area where the democratic process ought to prevail.3 Another strand of critique argues that ‘welfare rights’ reflect a communitarian or collectivist perspective that is willing to sacrifice freedom, while ‘liberty rights’ reflect a political philosophy that prizes freedom.4 As a result, despite considerable institutional advances both at the international and national levels, opposition to the right to food from a number of influential states, such as the United States, remains strong to this day.

Conceptualization of the right to food in the 1970s–1980s The right to food underwent rapid conceptual and operational developments in the late 1970s and early 1980s.5 A large number of such developments took place within the United Nations. In 1979, the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) began monitoring the right to food. In 1983, the UN Subcommission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights named Asbjørn Eide Special Rapporteur on Right to Food. The same year, the ECOSOC commissioned a report on food as a human right, which began the

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process of adding clarifications and new implementing instruments. In 1985, the ECOSOC established the Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (CESCR) to receive country reports and monitor progress on implementing the ICESCR. The conceptual framework of the right to food was developed by a handful of human rights experts, NGOs and academics outside of the UN and was later adopted within the UN system.6 This section presents an introduction to the thinkers who have had a lasting influence on the conceptualization of the right to food. In Basic Rights: Subsistence, Affluence, and US Foreign Policy, published in 1980, political philosopher Henry Shue attacked the distinctions made between civil and political rights and economic and social ones and the correlated typology of respectively negative and positive duties7 that the implementation of such rights imposes on states. Instead, he argued that three basic rights underlie all others: the right to physical security, the right to subsistence, and the right to liberty. Shue proposed ‘a very simple tripartite typology of duties’: ‘(I) duties to avoid depriving, (II) duties to protect from deprivation, and (III) duties to aid the deprived’ (Shue 1996, 52). A small group of international lawyers such as Asbjørn Eide, Philip Alston and Katarina Tomaševski also began to explore the meaning and implications of economic and social rights. Two conferences on the right to food were organized in the early 1980s. The first one was held in Norway in 1981 at the initiative of the UN University.8 At the 1981 conference, Eide presented his threefold typology of state duties – respect, protect, fulfil – that, he later realized, was somewhat comparable to that of Shue (Eide 2007, 146). The ‘respect, protect, fulfil’ typology (Eide et al. 1984, 154) has had a considerable impact on the conceptualization of the right to food. It was made regular use of by the CESCR and by a broad range of academics and NGOs, and notably by the international human rights organization FIAN. It can be said to have successfully replaced/complemented the controversial ‘positive/negative’ duties dichotomy (Eide 2007, 146). The second conference took place in the Netherlands in 1984. It was organized by the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights (SIM) and the Norwegian Human Rights Project and received financial support from the Netherlands Ministry of Development Cooperation, the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Oxfam. Participants belonged to academia and NGOs mostly, coming from both North and South. At the time, economic rights such as the right to food were treated as mere ‘aspirational’ rights. The objective of the workshop was to explore the ‘implementability’ of the right to food and the obstacles to its ‘assertion as an operational legal right’, considering the absence of specific obligations for states and of effective monitoring mechanisms (Alston and Tomaševski 1984, 9, 5) . The view of participating lawyers was that many factors contribute to the vicious circle of underdevelopment, poverty and starvation, most of which ‘are sanctified by legal norms’ (Tomaševski 1987, preface). Indeed, ‘whether or not specific right to food legislation exists, the legal framework of every society

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The right to food 67 regulates, either directly or indirectly, the terms of access of individuals and groups to the resources and other means and entitlements which they may need in order to satisfy their right to food’ (Alston and Tomaševski 1984, 11). Participants shared the view that the time had come for a new development approach grounded in human rights. They identified the following advantages attached to a right to food approach: it underlines the ethical/moral dimensions of issues which are too often seen as technical; it shifts the burden of proof from those claiming assistance to those in a position to provide it; it lowers the barriers of state sovereignty and domestic jurisdiction; and it emphasizes accountability of governments and intergovernmental organizations (Alston and Tomaševski 1984, 14). Participants to the 1984 meeting adopted a structural approach to the right to food. They believed that the right to food could be guaranteed only through the adoption of measures at the national and international levels, including the establishment of a New International Economic Order (NIEO) (Alston and Tomaševski 1984). This emphasis on a new world order is not surprising, considering that conceptualization of the right to food took place in an international environment marked by developing countries’ insistence on a revised international economic system that would replace the Bretton Woods system. However, while recognizing that the establishment of a NIEO was necessary for the realization of the right to food, right to food advocates believed that a rights-based approach to development presented a number of advantages over the NIEO idea. First, it could ground itself in an already existing international human rights protection mechanism. Second, its moral weight could constitute an efficient tool to pressure governments to tackle the issue of hunger in their country (Bastid et al. 1984). To some extent, then, it can be argued that a rights-based approach was promoted and developed as an alternative to the NIEO.9 A third meeting which went beyond the right to food was organized in Maastricht in 1986 and gathered 29 experts, including four members of the newly created UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The ‘Limburg Principles on the Implementation of the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights’ were drafted and adopted by participants, which became a point of reference for interpreting the Covenant. The Principles define most of the key terms used in the Covenant, such as ‘to the maximum of its available resources’, ‘individually and through international assistance and co-operation, non-discrimination’, etc. (United Nations 1987). The Limburg Principles generated a fair level of academic enthusiasm and debate. Interestingly, there is no mention of a new international economic order in the Principles,10 which emphasize that ‘irrespective of differences in their political, economic and social systems, States shall co-operate with one another to promote international social, economic and cultural progress, in particular the economic growth of developing countries’ (United Nations 1987, 31). In 1986, the Declaration on the Right to Development was adopted. Further strong commitments were made at the World Conference on Human Rights

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in Vienna in 1993. This was followed by the creation of the position of United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and growing advocacy for rights internationally and nationally.11 At the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna, the formula first adopted in 1968, that human rights and fundamental freedoms are indivisible, was expanded to ‘all human rights are universal, indivisible and interdependent and interrelated’ (UN General Assembly 1993, 5). This acknowledgement gave great satisfaction to ESCR advocates, although it did not raise any major controversy in Vienna. At the time, the human rights debate had moved on to the challenge to the universality of human rights by so-called Asian values propagated by Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. Economic and social rights were not a major bone of contention (Glasius 2006, 69–70). In the early 1980s, a number of committed groups started working on specific ESCR. Their initially small organizations have now grown into medium-sized international NGOs.12 One of them focused on the right to food: the Foodfirst Information and Action Network (FIAN), which developed as an international network with its secretariat in Heidelberg, Germany, in 1982. FIAN’s approach from the very beginning was to ‘dialog with lawyers and researchers’ and learn from the ‘experiences of grassroots groups and NGOs working on hunger and food issues for many years’. This positioning of the organization as a bridge across the conceptual world of academia and the value-oriented world of activism was envisaged as potentially ‘valuable in the process of operationalizing the right to food in terms of international and national law’ (Künnemann 1984, 90). It has had a deep impact on the structure and ways of working of FIAN globally. If FIAN members contributed to the conceptual debates on the right to food that took place at the conferences mentioned above, the organization rapidly developed its own interpretation of the right to food. From the outset, FIAN insisted that the right to food be understood as the right to feed oneself.13 For FIAN, ‘the right to feed oneself, which ensures a sustainable livelihood for farmers without any loss of dignity or destruction of livelihood’ was increasingly put at risk by states that collude with transnational corporations (TNCs) and international financial institutions and their local allies.14 FIAN activists put a lot of emphasis on the situation of the rural poor, and on the importance of securing access to the means of producing food, such as land, water and other natural resources. In 1997, when an internal consultation was organized between FIAN and Vía Campesina, FIAN insisted that ‘the exclusion from access to productive resources is a violation of basic human rights’.15 As it was about to engage in joint work with Vía Campesina on land issues, FIAN defined its role as: ‘to plan a campaign based on the struggle for collective rights and the right to self autonomy’ and to ‘continue to develop the ideas about the relation between agrarian reform and the right to feed oneself ’.16 The attention paid by right to food activists to the threats facing Southern peasant communities was not only dictated by the reality of post-Second World War ‘global depeasantization’ (Araghi 1995) and its devastating consequences. Their solidarity with Southern communities facing evictions and/or repression

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The right to food 69 had an ‘agrarian populist’17 flavour. FIAN founder Rolf Künnemann denounced ‘the modern technological-capitalist revolution, along with the rationalist and materialist mode of thinking’ which has ‘aligned, subjugated, or even destroyed nearly all traditional forms of economy and ways of life’ (Künnemann 1984, 90). FIAN activists felt that the right to feed oneself could help ‘link different actors through the human rights approach’ and thereby reinforce ‘food security, food sovereignty, cultural security and tenurial security’. They hoped to see ESCR ‘more substantially taken into account in the framework of mass movements’.18 Yet, for a number of reasons I explain below, the right to feed oneself was ‘not picked up by the UN nor by civil society’, as acknowledged by the former Secretary General of FIAN International.19 Alongside with FIAN, a number of Christian groups started defending the right to feed oneself in the 1980s. These organizations, Protestant ones in particular, have played a major (but understudied) role in the mainstreaming of the right to food approach.20 Church organizations associated the right to feed oneself with ‘self-help’. The German Protestant organization Brot für die Welt, for example, insisted that development be seen not only as a process of economic progress but as an ‘act of liberation from dependency and immaturity’. From the 1960s onwards, the organization developed programmes designed to strengthen the will of the poor to ‘help themselves’ and to support them in changing unjust structures which obstruct the development of human potential (Brot für die Welt 2008, 5).

Institutional developments in the 1996–2004 period In 1996, the World Food Summit that had been convened in Rome reaffirmed ‘the right of everyone to have access to safe and nutritious food, consistent with the right to adequate food and the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger’ (World Food Summit 1996). Responding to pressure from civil society groups such as FIAN, governments requested that the right to food be given a more concrete and operational content (World Food Summit 1996, objective 7.4). Two documents were released in the following years to provide a better understanding of the right to food: General Comment no. 12; and the Voluntary Guidelines on the Right to Food. General Comment no. 12 on the right to food was adopted in 1999 by the CESCR. General comments aim to elucidate the Committee’s own understandings of the rights and obligations anchored in the Covenant (Riedel 2009). When drafting General Comment no. 12, the experts of the Committee took into consideration the draft international code of conduct on the human right to adequate food that had been prepared by FIAN and other international and national NGOs following the World Food Summit (Committee on ESCR 1999). General Comment no. 12 contributed to a better understanding of the obligations of states to respect, protect and fulfil the right to food (following the typology developed by Asbjørn Eide) and of the responsibilities of third parties with respect to the right to food. The obligation to respect peoples’ existing access

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to food requires states not to interfere with the means by which people acquire food. The obligation to protect the right to food requires states to adopt measures to ensure that enterprises or individuals do not deprive individuals of their access to adequate food. The obligation to fulfil the right to food has two elements: provide and facilitate. The obligation to fulfil (provide) requires that states meet the right to food directly when individuals or groups are unable to meet their food needs by their own means, for example, through food stamps, social security schemes or food aid delivery. The obligation to fulfil (facilitate) requires states to be proactive in creating activities aiming at reinforcing people’s access to and utilization of resources and means to ensure their livelihood, in the future, for example through reinvestment in small-scale farming or employment creation. The right to food is to be achieved progressively. The concept of progressive realization seeks to take into account the potentially costly implications of some state obligations, in particular for Southern countries. Yet states are required to take steps to achieve the full realization of the right to food to the maximum of available resources, and to seek international assistance if they lack the resources they need. They must also immediately prohibit discrimination in access to food and to the related resources. In addition, the right to food places a number of procedural requirements on states. States are required to ensure that people can adequately participate in government decision-making, from policy formulation to law-making down to administrative acts. The Voluntary Guidelines to Support the Progressive Realization of the Right to Adequate Food in the Context of National Food Security were adopted in 2004 by the 187 member states of the FAO. The Guidelines were celebrated for bringing an economic and social right ‘from formal recognition at the international level to full engagement by governments and international organizations’ and from principle into ‘proposals for concrete action’ (Rae et al. 2007, 457). In contrast to the elaboration of General Comment 12, the content of the Guidelines was discussed in an intergovernmental process rather than by experts alone. The history of the FAO Voluntary Guidelines is considered a success story by many observers for the importance of civil society’s contribution to the process and content, and for managing to gather the necessary impetus to make it happen. After the 1996 World Food Summit, three non-governmental organizations – FIAN, the World Alliance on Nutrition and Human Rights and the Jacques Maritain Institute – started drafting a ‘Code of Conduct’ on the human right to adequate food which went through a thorough process of NGO hearings and amendments until a final draft was issued in September 1997. The draft code was endorsed by more than 800 NGOs. Its objective was to ‘clarify the content’ of the right to adequate food (Eide 1999, 39). The negotiation process, which was inclusive of civil society organizations, paved the way for increased involvement of CSOs in the policy elaboration work of the FAO and has had a lasting influence on the way FAO interacts with civil society21 (Rae et al. 2007, 457). I attended the negotiations in the years leading to the adoption of the Guidelines in 2004, and recall, however, that social movement participation was very limited, if not absent.

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The right to food 71 Following the adoption of the guidelines, a Right to Food Unit (now the Right to Food Team) was set up within the FAO with the aim to support the implementation of the right to food. The Team develops methods and instruments to assist stakeholders in the implementation of the right to food and information and training materials on the right to food. It is also supposed to work towards integrating the right to food into FAO’s work. The negotiation of the Voluntary Guidelines also saw the participation of a new actor. In 2000, a new institution had been established: the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food. Appointed by the Commission on Human Rights, the Special Rapporteur belongs to the UN Special Procedures system, created between the years 1979 and 1991 (Nifosi 2005). The mandate of the Special Rapporteur is to establish cooperation with governments, intergovernmental organizations and NGOs, and to make appropriate recommendations on the realization of the right to food, as well as to identify emerging issues related to the right to food worldwide. The Special Rapporteur on the right to food22 has substantially contributed to the conceptual and operational aspects of the right to food.

Monitoring and implementation challenges Following the adoption of the Voluntary Guidelines, significant progress has been made in the implementation of the right to food at the country level. Advances are patent in five areas: the integration of the right to food in constitutions; the adoption of legal frameworks; the development of national strategies based on the right to food; the use of the right to food by courts; and the design of institutions charged with ensuring progress towards the realization of the right to food (De Schutter 2010a, 2012a, 2012b). A growing number of states now explicitly protect the right to food in their constitutions. South Africa included the right to food in article 27 of its 1994 post-apartheid Constitution, and Kenya included it in its 2010 Constitution, approved by a popular referendum. A 2011 study identified 24 states in which the right to food was explicitly recognized, although in about half of them it was recognized for the benefit of a particular segment of the population only, such as children, and sometimes through another human right, such as the right to life (Knuth and Vidar 2011, 13). Since that study was completed, a number of additional states have constitutionalized the right to food. For example, articles 4 and 27 of the Constitution of Mexico were amended in order to insert the right to food, and in El Salvador, Nigeria and Zambia, processes of constitutional revision are under way that may lead to insertion of the right to food in the respective constitutions (De Schutter 2013). In addition, states have been encouraged – and often supported in their efforts by the FAO Right to Food Team – to adopt a framework legislation ensuring that the right to food is justiciable before national courts (De Schutter 2011c, 3). Such framework laws have been adopted in rapid succession in Argentina (2003), Guatemala (2005), Ecuador (2006 and 2009), Brazil (2006), Venezuela (2008), Colombia (2009),

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Nicaragua (2009), Honduras (2011) and Mexico (2013). Progress is being made on this front in other regions as well (De Schutter 2013). Several national right to food strategies and action plans have been elaborated in Latin America in recent years, including in Paraguay, Nicaragua, Honduras, Colombia, Guatemala, El Salvador and Brazil. Advances have been noted also in Africa (Rae 2014). The recognition of the right to food as a justiciable right at the national and the international level has also gained ground. Justiciability can be defined as the ability of courts to provide a remedy for aggrieved individuals claiming a violation of those rights. For many observers, the justiciability benchmark constitutes the true test of a ‘real’ human right.23 The recognition of the right to food in domestic legal orders has allowed, in a number of cases, constitutional courts to strike down laws that lead to violations of the right to food, as in Colombia and Guatemala, or to sanction such violations that may result from administrative practice, as we have seen in India in the famous People’s Union for Civil Liberties v. Union of India and Others case (Writ petition (Civil) No. 196 of 2001 (Supreme Court of India)) (Courtis 2007; Golay 2011). In addition, many countries have established independent national human rights institutions, which monitor the compliance of the state with its obligations in the area of human rights, and which in some cases can receive complaints from aggrieved individuals. In parallel, developments have taken place in the area of monitoring efforts undertaken by states to meet their human rights obligations. The CESCR has developed indicators to address the problems of how to measure effectively the degree of rights realization. Three kinds of indicators were elaborated with the support of academics and specialized NGOs: ‘structural indicators’ (measure whether or not appropriate legal, regulatory and institutional structures are in place), ‘process indicators’ (assess whether laws, policies and programmes are in place to implement specific rights) and ‘outcome indicators’ (evaluate the results achieved) (Riedel 2009). In addition, country assessments conducted either by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food (called official missions), or by organizations such as Rights and Democracy and FIAN, have done a lot to demonstrate that the right to food requires attention to be paid to multiple policy areas in order to be fulfilled.24 Finally, in December 2008, the network of international civil society organizations25 that had been campaigning for an Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (OP-ICESCR) finally celebrated a hard-won victory. The Optional Protocol was adopted, and was opened for signature on 24 September 2009. The OP-ICESCR allows victims of violations of ESCR to present complaints before a United Nations body, against a state that violates the obligations established in the ICESCR, if the state has ratified the OP-ICESCR. In spite of this progress, however, the ICESCR remains, for many observers, a ‘blunt instrument’ that is unlikely, alone, to bring about a rapid drop in deaths caused by hunger and malnutrition (MacMillan and Vivero 2009, 8).

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The right to food 73 The right to food nevertheless enjoys growing international recognition. During the global food prices crisis of 2007–8, a number of actors – such as the FAO Right to Food Unit, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the CESCR and the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, as well as certain international human rights NGOs like FIAN or development NGOs like Action Aid – demanded that the right to food be placed at the core of the international response to the crisis. The case was made by the Special Rapporteur that: ‘the right to food can serve as a guide for rebuilding global governance’.26 Throughout the crisis, the right to food was presented as an effective and comprehensive alternative to the dominant discourse of food security. The Special Rapporteur called on the international community to address structural issues, such as: the role of the agribusiness sector; the role of trade liberalization; the role of intellectual property rights; the political powerlessness of the smallholders in many developing states; and the failure to build an institutional framework which ensures that the right to food is effectively complied with (De Schutter 2008a, 2008b, 2009b, 2009e). A special session on the food crisis was held by the Human Rights Council, at the request of the Special Rapporteur on 22–23 May 2008. This session was the first ever to be dedicated to a thematic issue, making it clear that human rights abuses required international cooperation. It was also the first time an economic, social and cultural right was debated at the Human Rights Council. The final Declaration of the Madrid High-Level Meeting on Food Security for All (2009) made reference to the right to food and, in his final statement, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon (unexpectedly) declared that ‘We should be ready to add a third track – the right to food – as a basis for analysis, action and accountability’ (Ki-Moon 2009). In his view, this third track should be added to the twin track approach of providing food and nutrition aid along with boosting food production. Attempts by the Special Rapporteur to get the UN to embrace such a ‘third track’ (De Schutter 2009e), however, have brought little results, and the international implications of the right to food approach remain underexplored, despite timid advances at the reformed Committee of World Food Security (CFS) in recent years (De Schutter 2014).

The right to food at the confluence of multiple influences Conceptualization of the right to food took place in an international context marked by various theories of development that considerably influenced policy debates during those decades. Three approaches to development – the basic needs approach, the entitlement approach and the rights-based approach to development – can be said to have had a considerable influence on the right to food. The basic needs approach dominated the approach of development agencies in the 1970s (Nelson and Dorsey 2008, 96). Introduced by the ILO in 1976,27 the approach focused on the need to ensure that everyone had access to enough basic goods and services to maintain a level of living above a basic minimum, as a prime objective of economic development (Stewart 1989, 348). The basic needs approach

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attempted to define the absolute minimum resources necessary for long-term physical well-being, usually in terms of consumption goods. The poverty line was then defined as the amount of income required to satisfy those needs (Rimmer 1981, 216). Some advocates of the basic needs approach stressed self-reliance and participation by target groups in making the decisions which affect them (ODI 1978, 2). Enthusiasm for a basic needs approach came mostly from developed countries and donor agencies, while developing countries perceived it as an attempt to interfere in their domestic politics, and to divert attention away from other issues, such as reform of commodity markets, international debt and volumes and conditions of aid (ODI 1978, 2). The idea of basic needs has had a lasting impact on development thinking. It initiated a – liberal – methodological turn towards a focus on concrete life conditions and manifestations of underdevelopment in concrete populations, and away from distribution, employment, growth (i.e. away from a holistic, collective, social perspective of development); towards the symptoms and away from the causes, the mechanisms; towards the situation of people28 and away from global aspects (Ramírez Cendredo 2008, 68). The entitlement approach was introduced by economist Amartya Sen. In Poverty and Famines, published in 1981, Sen analysed a number of famines with a view to abolishing the then-existing paradigm among developmental economists, which held that famines were caused by a general decline in the availability of food. Instead, he asked: ‘what determines distribution of food between different sections of the community?’ (Sen and Drèze 2010, 7). Sen argued that a person’s ability to command food depends on the ‘entitlement relations’ that govern possession and use in that society, such as ‘the use of production possibilities, trade opportunities, entitlements vis-à-vis the state, and the other methods of acquiring food’ (Sen and Drèze 2010, 45). Sen also showed the limits of market mechanisms to relieve famines since markets respond to entitlements, not to people’s needs. Markets are unsuccessful in meeting a need that has not been translated into effective demand because of shortage of purchasing power (Sen and Drèze 2010, 161). Although Sen did not defend the idea of a human right to food as such, his approach made the case for public policies that alter legal and socio-political structures. In his 1982 article ‘The right not to be hungry’, Sen regarded the right to food as a meta-right, i.e. ‘the right to policies that would rapidly lead to freedom from hunger’ (Sen 1982, 346). In a book written jointly with Jean Drèze titled Hunger and Public Action, Sen defended the idea that it was relatively easy to exterminate famines if public support was well planned on a regular basis to protect the entitlements of vulnerable groups (Drèze and Sen 1989, 258). The authors advocated for ‘strategies of entitlement protection’ based on employment creation, particularly in the form of public works programmes (Drèze and Sen 1989, 264). The authors recognized that, if famine prevention was essentially concerned with the protection of entitlements, this objective in the short term should be contrasted with the general promotion of entitlements in the long term. This tension, as I show below, has haunted developments of the right to food to this day. As Sen and Drèze rightly identified, the task of entitlement protection is ‘largely conservative’ – it consists in making sure

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The right to food 75 that vulnerable groups do not face a collapse of their ability to command food and related necessities – whereas the task of entitlement promotion is ‘in many respects, more radical’ (Drèze and Sen 1989, 260). The rights-based approach to development emerged as part of the ‘new’ development agenda of the 1990s put forward by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The rights-based approach placed the emphasis on sustainable growth, good governance (which figured prominently in two World Bank reports in 1992 and 1994), adjustment with a human face (which first appeared in a UNICEF report in 1987: Ramírez Cendredo 2008, 87), participation and human development. Dr Mahbub ul Haq, who conceived and launched UNDP’s annual Human Development Reports in 1990, introduced and promoted a people-centred development paradigm (UNDP 1993). In the early 2000s, the UNDP attempted to conceptually bridge the gap between human development and human rights, drawing essentially on the works of Amartya Sen, Martha Nussbaum and Thomas Pogge (Nelson and Dorsey 2008, 98). The UNDP’s ‘Human Development Report 2000’ conveyed the central message that poverty is a limit on freedom, and that the elimination of poverty should be addressed as a basic entitlement and a human right – not merely as an act of charity. The report, however, did not question the focus on economic growth as the dominant policy objective: ‘A growing economy is thus important for human rights, especially for poor countries. But that growth must be propoor, pro-rights and sustainable’29 (UNDP 2000, 7). While the development community was, under the influence of Sen, fundamentally redefining development as ‘the removal of various types of unfreedoms’ (Sen 1999, p. xi), the human rights community was attempting ‘to apply human rights standards and obligations to activities in specific sectoral areas such as development, environment, trade, debt, migration, labor and conflict prevention’ (Steiner et al. 2008, 1433). Both disciplines converged30 in the promotion of a rights-based approach to development,31 an approach which seeks to transform development beneficiaries and aid recipients into actors claiming their rights, and which is based on the premise that ‘human rights norms and methodologies should be of central importance at all stages of the development process’ (Steiner et al. 2008, 1434). The United Nations took gradual steps to incorporate human rights in development.32 In 1997, the then Secretary-General requested all UN agencies and bodies to mainstream human rights into their activities and programmes. Many UN agencies moved to adopt a human rights-based approach to their development cooperation work and, by 2004, the ‘UN Statement of Common Understanding on Human Rights-Based Approach to Development Cooperation and Programming’ had drawn them together in a relatively consistent approach. While UN agencies and development organizations have struggled, over the last two decades, to identify the practical implications of human rights principles for decision-making and project implementation, some authors, such as Uvin, have criticized the rights-based approach for not bringing anything new to development thinking. ‘The need for the engagement and

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participation of the poor in the processes that affect their lives’, Uvin contends, is ‘presented as a major breakthrough that we all ought to feel truly pleased about, as if development practitioners had not been proposing exactly the same thing for decades now, with very little to show for it’ (2002, 4). Other authors have criticized the approach’s emphasis on legal enforceability or, in general, on working with the state and formal organizations, whereas people use a wide diversity of strategies, tactics and institutions to claim their rights, often outside institutions and legal formal instruments (Nyamu-Masembi and Cornwall 2004, 4). Probably the strongest argument against a rights-based approach to development has been made by those who stress that such approaches intend to realize human rights in the existing macro-structural framework (Uvin 2002, 9), without questioning unfair trade rules, an unjust world economic order or the responsibilities of corporate actors and international organizations. The weak integration of issues of ‘power and structural change’ (Veltmeyer and Parpart 2003) in the rights-based approach to development has been pointed out as one of the ‘limits of Sen’s major contribution to development’33 (Uvin 2002, 8). Advocates of a rights-based approach, to the contrary, argue that the identification of human rights violations as a systematic tool for analysis presents the advantage of focusing on power relations between actors and on the structural causes of poverty (Nyamu-Masembi and Cornwall 2004, 32). Finally, the approach has been criticized for not bringing real institutional change. Sceptics have argued that the rush to adopt rights-based approaches is an expression of donors’ continuing effort to win greater legitimacy for the development enterprise, although some contend that the rights-based approach has pushed development NGOs to take on an advocacy role they had been reluctant to take (Nelson and Dorsey 2008, 94). The right to food as individual entitlement As a development project, the right to food has been fundamentally influenced by the entitlement approach. In practical/operational terms, the right to food ‘requires what Amartya Sen calls entitlements, that is, enforceable claims on the delivery of goods, services, or protection by specific others’ (Eide et al. 1995, 94). Very early on, Asbjørn Eide, one of the conceptual fathers of the right to food, came to the conclusion that the entitlement approach could be made to fit with human rights thinking,34 and could also provide a bridge between legal and ‘development’ thinking, making it possible to avoid simplistic assumptions such as that the fulfilment of the right to food can be achieved by simply distributing available food resources (Eide et al. 1984, 95). The right to food thus became tied to entitlements: the right to property35 (ownership of land and productive assets), the right to work with an adequate income and/or the right to social security all ‘serve as basis for entitlements’ (Eide et al. 1995, 95). The need to focus on and target vulnerable groups,36 which is at the core of a right to food approach, was confirmed by Sen’s analysis of famines (Drèze and Sen 1989, 104). At the same time, Sen’s insistence on ‘the freedom to

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participate in economic interchange’ and the ‘freedom to transact’, and his conceptualization of exclusion as exclusion ‘from the benefits of the marketoriented society’ (Sen 1999, 27, 7), left right to food advocates ill-equipped to fight the transition of agriculture to capitalism and its resulting pressure on smallholders to be incorporated on unfair terms in global food supply chains. It was also at odds, as I showed in Chapter 3, with the conception proposed by peasant organizations which envisage autonomy as the basis of their integration in society. The right to food as structural change The conceptualization of the right to food as an individual entitlement requiring a combination of state/public action and well-functioning markets, contrasts with the structural and collective approaches to human rights which prevailed in the 1970s when the content of the right to food was first theorized. As we saw in Chapter 3, the 1970s were marked by intense and progressive conceptual developments in the area of human rights. In this time, collective or people’s rights, enjoyed a great deal of recognition (Universal Declaration of the Rights of Peoples 1976; Crawford 1988a). It appears from discussions that took place in the 1970s37 and early 1980s that the right to food was originally envisaged as a collective right forming part of the category of third-generation rights. Third-generation rights, popularized by Karel Vasak (1977), constituted a response to increasing global interdependence. Also called solidarity rights, they marked the beginning of a growing acceptance of a structural approach38 to human rights (Rich 1988). Such an approach sought to identify and remove structural obstacles to the enjoyment of human rights. This emphasis was to gradually disappear with codification. The collective rights dimension gave way to a focus on individual entitlement, and the structural approach to human rights was replaced by a more narrow approach, centred on national accountability and social assistance to the poor, as efforts were made to translate what was perceived as a collective international responsibility into tangible and operational human rights obligations. However, some advocates of the right to food, such as FIAN and the two previous Special Rapporteurs on the right to food, have continued to emphasize and denounce the structural factors that impede the realization of the right to food globally. Efforts by right to food actors to address structural issues have been manifest in at least two areas: the application of the right to food approach to policy debates on food and agriculture, and the elaboration of principles with regard to the ‘extraterritorial obligations’ of states. In recent years, the structural implications of the right to food have been emphasized in a number of key (and much debated) issues in the area of food and agriculture: the development of agrofuels (De Schutter 2008b, 2009b), the push for a new green revolution and for the production of transgenic crops (De Schutter and Vanloqueren 2011), alternative modes of production such as agro-ecology (De Schutter 2011b), large-scale acquisitions and leases of land (De Schutter 2009c), climate

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change (Caesens and Padilla Rodríguez 2009), the regulation of agribusiness transnational corporations (De Schutter 2009a), the regulation of international trade in agriculture (De Schutter 2009d) and so forth. The structural dimensions of the right to food approach have also been highlighted in debates over access to natural resources, such as land, and in particular with regard to the need for agrarian reforms. In such discussions, the right to food is often interpreted as the right to feed oneself – meaning that its realization requires access to and control over land, seeds and natural resources. As I show in Chapter 6, such an interpretation of the right to food coexists with a growing emphasis on the ‘urban’ and nutritional dimensions of the right to food and its conceptualization as a right to social protection. The term Extra-Territorial Obligations (ETOs) defines the human rights obligations of states outside of their jurisdiction, but the term may include the human rights responsibilities of intergovernmental organizations and transnational corporations. In 2007, at the initiative of FIAN, an ETO Consortium39 was formed, which gathers about 40 individuals from academia and from development, human rights and environmental NGOs working on the issue. The objective of the Consortium is to build ‘rights-based policy regimes that respond to the challenges of globalization’ (Künnemann 2010, 12). In 2011, the Consortium adopted the Maastricht Principles on Extraterritorial Obligations of States in the Area of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ETO Consortium 2011). The Principles aim to bring about a new ‘world order based on human rights’, that is, based on the primacy of human rights over trade,40 the regulation of transnational corporations and the accountability of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) (Künnemann 2010, 1–16). The right to food as compatibility test Under the growing influence of rights-based approaches to development, the right to food has also come to be defined as a ‘set of standards and principles against which all development policies are to be tested and assessed’ (Nelson and Dorsey 2008, 176). What are the criteria against which development, trade, financial and agricultural policies are to be tested? Essentially, these criteria focus on process: adopting a rights perspective means that decision-making processes should be guided by the principles of participation, accountability, non-discrimination, transparency, human dignity, empowerment and rule of law (FAO Right to Food Unit 2006). Participation is generally understood as requiring that everyone should have the right to subscribe to decisions that affect them. Accountability requires that politicians and government officials be held accountable for their actions through elections, judicial procedures or other mechanisms. Non-discrimination prohibits arbitrary differences of treatment in decision-making. Transparency requires that people be able to know processes, decisions and outcomes. Human dignity requires that people be treated in a dignified way, while empowerment requires that they are in a position to exert control over decisions affecting their lives (Diokno 2011). Finally, rule of law

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The right to food 79 requires that every member of society, including decision-makers, must comply with the law (Cotula et al. 2008, 17). The emphasis on meeting human rights criteria is increasingly felt in the positions adopted by right to food actors in trade, investment and agricultural policy debates, where they insist on the implementation of human rights impact assessments. The idea of conducting human rights impact assessments (HRIA) was originally proposed by FIAN, which imagined, as early as 1984, a system of ‘a priori evidence’ of compliance with the right to food for any major activity of international organizations, governments and transnational corporations affecting the right to food. Such a system was envisaged for states’ economic or development projects, IMF’s conditional loans and transnational corporations’ planned economic activity in a hunger region (Künnemann 1984, 93–4). Fifteen years later, the idea has developed into a fully-fledged proposal,41 pushed by a network of development and human rights NGOs,42 and for which the Special Rapporteur has put forward a number of Guiding Principles (De Schutter 2011c). While demanding that states undertake ex-ante and ex-post HRIAs of the trade agreements43 they are negotiating, development and human rights actors have also insisted that policy coherence be guaranteed, i.e. that coherence not be limited between countries’ trade, finance and economic policies, but extend to their social, environmental and human rights policies (3DThree and IATP 2005). This procedural approach is consistent with the view that states have a ‘margin of discretion’ (United Nations 1987, 71) when it comes to identifying and implementing the public policies aimed at realizing ESCR. It presents a rights-based approach to development as a neutral approach that transcends economic paradigms: the focus is on standards of attainment, irrespective of the characteristics of the economic system (Nelson and Dorsey 2008, 83). The right to food as a state-centric approach State accountability is a central pillar of the right to food approach, which puts a strong emphasis on the role of the state as a regulator. In recent years, practical tools have been developed in order to facilitate the implementation of the right to food by states and its monitoring by state institutions, civil society and communities.44 While most of these instruments are directed at states, human rights impact assessments are increasingly undertaken by the private sector45 or conducted by affected communities.46 Faced with the new challenges that the ‘age of the market’ imposes on the implementation of ESCR (De Feyter 2005), human rights experts and NGOs have also devoted growing attention to the international dimension of the right to food, and to the human rights responsibilities of transnational corporations.47 These developments tend to indicate that the right to food project is gradually freeing itself from a predominantly statist approach to allocating duties (Stammers 1995, 494) and from placing the state ‘at the centre of the emancipatory promise’ (Kennedy 2002, 113). ESCR activists ‘enter into more complex relationships with poor-country governments, sometimes adversarial

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and sometimes supportive’ (Nelson and Dorsey 2008, 172–4). At times, they oppose and condemn the violating state, at other times they attempt to shift responsibility for violations to the international level and onto economic actors. This tension, between invoking the legitimacy of recognized state obligations and the need (implicitly dictated by the ESCR agenda) to ‘broaden accountability’, shifting from a sole focus on the ‘violating state’ and assigning responsibility to the actors that may create obstacles to the fulfilment of human rights in a global economy, is at the core of right to food work. Despite this shift towards a less statist approach, the right to food remains grounded in a social-democratic approach to human rights,48 an approach that is associated with the reformist socialist current which led to the formation of European social-democratic parties. Linked to political traditions of the 19th and 20th centuries, this current accepts the gross inequalities generated by a capitalist market economy and recommends that these inequalities be curbed through the intervention of a liberal democratic state (Stammers 1995, 488). The focus on vulnerable groups that is at the heart of the right to food approach is in line with this view: human rights are required to protect vulnerable people against potential violations arising from social processes. The ‘highly state centric’ nature of the social-democratic approach to human rights has led Stammers to question the extent to which it actually challenges or rather sustains particular forms of power relations (is it or not ‘subversive’?). Indeed, the approach poses a potential challenge to state and economic power but may propel a passive acceptance of state power since human rights problems are only met with statist solutions (Stammers 1995, 507). Marks notes that the preoccupation with state-oriented remedies tends to domesticate potentially radical demands on the social structure and bring with it the demobilization of oppositional activity (Marks 2011, 77). Adding to the emphasis on state actions, the focus on technical problems and the concentration on causes that can be translated into remedial proposals run the risk of taking the right to food further away from the root causes of poverty and inequality (Marks 2011, 71–2).

Conclusion Following decades of conceptual developments by experts inside and outside the UN, the right to food is now a fully fledged human right, with clear implications for implementation, and attached state obligations (Lambek 2014). Its institutional incorporation into constitutional texts, framework laws, strategies and policies has been tremendous in recent years, which partly reflects the human rights community’s attachment to legal formalization and to the establishment of legal machinery as an end in itself (Kennedy 2002, 110). The right to food as a development approach enjoys increased policy relevance and international visibility, and has been placed at the core of the reform of the Committee on World Food Security (De Schutter 2011a). In spite of these developments, realization of the right to food remains a daunting challenge. Lack of progress has been attributed to the fragmentation of international law, failing

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global governance, notably in the areas of trade and investment, and regulation of agribusiness and persistent inequalities in the distribution of resources at the national and subnational levels (Gonzalez 2014). Yet, another central challenge facing the right to food is the absence of sufficient social pressure geared towards demanding its implementation, in part because the right to food ‘never really caught on as a social movement’ (Cohen and Messer 2009, 2–3).

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5

The challenges of using rights

Introduction Collective action frames1 are constructed in part as movement adherents negotiate a shared understanding of a problematic situation they define as in need of change, make attributions regarding who or what is to blame, articulate an alternative set of arrangements and urge others to act in concert to effect change (Benford and Snow 2000, 616–17). Part of the framing exercise is to ‘undermine the legitimacy of the system’ (McAdam et al. 1996, 8). Diagnostic work is crucial because it enables ‘system attributions’ (McAdam et al. 1996, 9): it allows (potential) movement constituents to attribute everyday problems to global and structural mechanisms, and to overcome the ‘fundamental attribution error’, the tendency of people to explain their situation as a function of individual deficiencies rather than features of the system (Ross 1977). In the case of Vía Campesina, diagnostic work has involved identifying injustices (appropriation of natural resources, forced rural migration, broken families and traditions, hunger, poverty and despair), victims (people of the land) and culprits (large financial institutions, neoliberal states, agribusiness and other transnational corporations). Prognostic work includes elaborating visions for a different world and specific tactics (Benford and Snow 2000, 617). It involves the refutation of arguments and solutions advanced by others, as was done very explicitly by Vía Campesina and the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC) during the global food crisis of 2007–8 (no to food aid, no to becoming agricultural entrepreneurs). The prognostic dimension is the primary way in which social movements differ from each other, including when they share the same diagnosis (Benford and Snow 2000, 617). Food sovereignty, relocalization, repeasantization, autonomy, control over land and territories, and rights have all formed part of Vía Campesina’s alternative vision. While most collective action frames are movement-specific or ‘organizational’ – in the sense that they are limited to the interests of a particular group or to a set of related problems – some are more generic than others, and are referred to as ‘master frames’ (Benford and Snow 2000, 619). The ‘rights master frame’ is a good example of a collective action frame which has been identified as sufficiently broad in interpretive scope, inclusivity, flexibility and

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The challenges of using rights 83 cultural resonance to function as master frame (Benford and Snow 2000, 619). It was mobilized by the civil rights movement (McAdam 1990) and later adopted by gay and lesbian rights groups (Hull 2001; Plummer 2006). It is prominent in pro-life vs. pro-choice debates and in struggles over water (Nelson 2010; Mehta 2006), workers’ rights, mothers’ rights and welfare rights (Reese and Newcombe 2003) as well as women’s and migrants’ rights (Elias 2010). It has been successfully deployed by indigenous peoples (Charters and Stavenhagen 2009), and to a lesser extent, by dalits (Bob 2010a; Waghmore 2012). As we explored in the first two chapters, Vía Campesina has abundantly deployed the rights master frame: right to land, right to seeds, right to produce, right to be a peasant, have been at the heart of the movement’s struggles over the last two decades. Framing claims as rights brings many advantages. Human rights turn claims into universal and legitimate demands, and allow social movements to frame claims in a way that does not emphasize particular or sectorial interests (Valocchi 1996). Rights can be used by activists to redefine the boundaries between what is just and unjust (Agrikoliansky 2010). Rights facilitate the integration of multiple ideologies and help export claims to movements with divergent ideological, political or cultural references and which belong to different geographical contexts (Fillieule et al. 2010). Rights appear to be compatible with a variety of ideologies (Valocchi 1996), and with moral systems – including duty-based systems – that are centred on concepts other than rights (Renteln 1988, 360). These advantages help us understand why rights are so prevalent in the discourse of peasant movements, especially transnational ones such as Vía Campesina that need to articulate shared claims across different political, cultural, religious, ideological and economic contexts. Rights rhetoric has proven key to overcoming divisions between organizations and people. Rights also enabled Vía Campesina to insert itself into an international discourse, rights and democracy being the cornerstone of liberal governance (Patel 2009). If human rights framing can be extremely powerful, it does not come without challenges. First, contemporary conceptions of human rights are rooted in the ‘enlightenment era’ (Kolben 2008, 453) and liberal streams of thought (Rajagopal 2003). The rights framework has ‘individualizing’ (Nussbaum 1997, 17) and ‘Western’ implications (Donnelly 1982, 311) and may alienate activists from their ‘own local cultural understandings’ (Engle Merry 1997, 32). For some authors, such as Douzinas (2007) and Rancière (2004), human rights discourse is imperialistic and reduces its subjects to victims (Landy 2013). Second, the fundamentally liberal2 character of human rights has often resulted in human rights regimes placing a lot of emphasis on economic liberty – understood as individual appropriation of, access to and control over economic resources – at the expense of equality of outcome/welfare (Charvet and Kaczynska-Nay 2008, 11–12). The discourse of human rights has even been qualified by some, such as Ziauddin Sardar, as ‘an instrument for the pathological expansion of modern and postmodern liberalism and what accompanies it: free market capitalism’ (Sardar 1998).3 This may complicate

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things for movements using rights in their struggles against capitalism and neoliberalism. Third, rights-based social change has been conceptualized as a top-down process which insists on stronger laws, responsive legal institutions and accountability mechanisms (Kolben 2008, 477). This ‘statist framework’ has been challenged by numerous thinkers (Falk 1988; Baxi 2007b) but continues to dominate all major strands of the intellectual debate on human rights (Stammers 1995). This is seen as highly problematic by some in view of the agency and legitimacy it attributes to the state: ‘the claim of a right is framed as a demand, usually against the state, but its fulfilment remains an ephemeral goal since it remains up to the state (or dominant power) to give the right substantive meaning and content’ (Kneen 2009, 6). State-centrism tends to obliterate transnational issues (Elias 2010, 44), and fails to adequately address the responsibilities of (increasingly threatening) private actors such as transnational corporations. Fourth, the language of rights may reduce social solidarity, appreciation of the public good and communal identity. The replacement of responsibilities by rights may obscure the lack of concrete action to address the subject of the rights claim, and leaves intact the structures of power (Kneen 2009, 3). Fifth, the level of expertise required in order to deploy human rights arguments is such that human rights have more often than not been defended by human rights lawyers (Riles 2006), not by average citizens. The prominent role of human rights experts and the associated tendency to solve conflicts in specialized arenas run the risk of undermining social movements’ efforts to mobilize. Sixth, rights talk has been criticized for impoverishing political discourse. The absoluteness of human rights may promote unrealistic expectations, heighten social conflict and inhibit dialogue that might otherwise lead towards consensus, accommodation or at least discovery of common ground. Occasions for conflict among rights multiply as catalogues of rights grow longer, because rights are not tempered by limits or obligations (Glendon 1991). Finally, human rights are incapable of helping us imagine a different future, according to Gauchet, because the ideology of human rights is, in essence, ‘presentist’ (Gauchet 2000, 272). For social movements, human rights present yet another challenge. Rights claims tend to be constructed in ways that demand their institutional instantiation, but this institutionalization may considerably hinder their subversive potential (Stammers 2009, 106). The transformative potential of rights is considerably thwarted by the fact that rights are typically formulated, interpreted and enforced by institutions that are embedded in the political, social and economic status quo (Pieterse 2007, 798). In this chapter, I examine how Vía Campesina has dealt with these constraints, in an attempt to keep intact (and reinforce) the subversive potential of human rights. The overarching question that runs through this chapter can thus be summarized as: ‘is rights-talk useful? Does it open space for emancipatory activism?’ (Elias 2010, 45). In the period of relevance to this research, mostly 1996–2012, a number of contentious processes took place that help explain the making of and constant transformation of food sovereingty as a collective action frame. These processes

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The challenges of using rights 85 unfolded both within the movement and in interactions with the outside world. Overall, I analyse the interactions between five frames. Three of these frames have been generated and are deployed by Vía Campesina but not exclusively: the right to food sovereignty frame, the peasants’ rights frame and the reclaiming control frame. Two additional frames are used by actors outside the transnational agrarian movement and are in tension with Vía Campesina’s main frames: the right to food frame and the food security frame (these frames are deployed by food sovereignty activists as well, but less frequently and less strategically). Table 5.1 presents the main characteristics of these five frames and some of the ideologies4 that are attached to each. Frames are built using available cultural toolkits (Benford and Snow 2000, 629). They are not disconnected from the social, cultural and political environments in which they emerge. Looking at the right to food sovereignty as Vía Campesina’s central organizational frame, we can identify a first period of ‘frame formulation’ from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s. The right to food sovereignty frame initially tapped into dormant Marxist, anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist frames. It reactivated – or amplified5 – the ‘self-determination’ master frame (Stanbridge 2002). As noted by Edelman, the food sovereignty rhetoric was initially used by the Mexican government in its 1983 National Food Program (Programa Nacional de Alimentación, PRONAL) (Edelman 2014, 4–5). This indicates that peasant movements operated a strategic ‘frame transformation’: they managed to transform the then prevailing meaning of food sovereignty and to gradually impose their own meaning. At the core of this transformation was a double move, away from the initial emphasis on ‘national food security’ and towards a growing assertion of the ‘right to continue being producers’ (Edelman 1999, 102–3). Sometime in the mid1990s, following its international ‘diffusion’ – a process which appears to have taken place quite organically and rapidly within Vía Campesina members – (the right to) food sovereignty became the reference frame of Vía Campesina. From then on, it underwent a process of further ‘elaboration/articulation’; it was continuously reconstituted during movement interactions (Benford and Snow 2000, 623), essentially through exchanges and interactions between movement activists. The right to food sovereignty frame mobilizes the rights master frame but also a number of other master frames, such as the ‘cultural pluralist’6 and ‘environmental’7 master frames which have great contemporary resonance (Benford and Snow 2000, 619) and the ‘producer’8 and ‘agrarian’9 master frames that run through agrarian mobilizations (Mooney and Hunt 1996, 182–3). As a master frame, it hosts a number of ideologies – Marxist, agrarian populist, anarchist, environmentalist. It also manages to articulate claims made by activists across North and South, which is a recognized challenge for movements involved in transnational framing efforts (Benford 2011, 83). The ‘extension’10 of the right to food sovereignty frame has been largely successful. Food sovereignty has been strategically promoted by Vía Campesina as a societal project that does not defend the interests of peasants only. The frame has been endorsed by a large number of development and

From below master frame Vía Campesina (and food sovereignty movement)

Rights master frame

Reclaiming control

Right to food

Food security

Rights master frame

Peasants’ rights

Development NGOs, UN and international organizations

Transnational right to food network

Vía Campesina

Vía Campesina (and food sovereignty movement)

Rights master frame

Right to food sovereignty

Actor

Master frame

Frame

Table 5.1 Characteristics of the main global food movement’s frames

Capitalism, reformism

Liberalism, social liberalism, social democracy

Feminism, environmentalism, cultural pluralism (postmodernism), anarchism

Anti-capitalism, agrarian populism

Marxism, antiimperialism, anticolonialism, antineoliberalism

Ideology

(1) Lack of production and global trade; (2) Need to increase productivity and liberalize exchanges in food products

(1) Injustice, suffering, hunger; (2) Public action; (3) Indignation, solidarity with victims of violations

(1) Appropriation of resources; (2) Control over land and territories, defensive strategies; (3) Alternative local food sovereignty practices

(1) Critique of capitalism; (2) Repeasantization, autonomy, dignity; (3) Recognition and collective identity building

(1) Critique of neoliberalism; (2) Relocalization, North–South solidarity, policies that value food producers; (3) Anti-WTO

(1) Diagnosis; (2) Prognosis; (3) Motivational

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The challenges of using rights 87 environmental NGOs, but also state actors. Over recent years, two additional frames have gained in importance. On the one hand, the peasants’ rights frame has come to occupy an important segment of the rights master frame. Although the peasants’ rights frame is still relatively weak and appears to face ‘diffusion’ and ‘resonance’ challenges, its insistence on the ‘recognition’ dimension of peasant claims makes it a potentially powerful vector for mobilizing and collective identity building. On the other hand, the right to food sovereignty appears to have come in conflict with an increasingly potent competing frame, which I term the reclaiming control frame. This ‘localist’ frame is grounded in the resistance to the capitalist appropriation of resources and the incorporation of peasants into markets, and emphasizes the anchoring of food production and consumption in the local, social, cultural and historical; the autonomy of production patterns (and consumption choices); and the control over land and territories and natural productive resources. The reclaiming control frame is developing within a from below master frame, that I describe in greater detail below.

Frames as contested processes All actors who engage in framing are embroiled in the ‘politics of signification’.11 This means that activists are not able to construct and impose on their intended targets any version of reality they would like. Rather, there are a variety of challenges confronting all those who engage in movement framing activities: counter-framing by movement opponents, bystanders and the media; frame disputes within movements; and the dialectics between frames and events. Frame ‘contests’ take place between a movement and any kind of actor that is external to the movement: other social movements, NGOs, international organizations, states or the private sector. Frame ‘disputes’ take place within a social movement. They can occur between various competing master frames or within the same master frame (Benford and Snow 2000, 625). In the case of Vía Campesina, two major frame contests can be identified. The first contest opposed the right to food sovereignty frame to the food security frame.12 The latter has been deployed, with some internal variations, by a wide range of mainstream NGOs, international organizations, states and to some extent, the corporate sector. The second contest opposed the right to food sovereignty frame to the right to food frame, this time taking place within the rights master frame and within the global food movement. This contest opposed social movements to human rights organizations and emerging rights-based development NGOs. In addition, Vía Campesina has faced two (at times latent) internal frame disputes: one opposing the right to food sovereignty frame to the peasants’ rights frame (within the rights master frame); and one opposing the right to food sovereignty frame to the reclaiming control frame, or in other terms, the rights master frame to the from below master frame. Table 5.2 identifies the main challenges that Vía Campesina has been confronted with in its framing activities.

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Table 5.2 Vía Campesina’s frame contests and frame disputes Within the rights master frame

Between the rights master frame and other master frames

Between Vía Campesina and other actors (frame contests)

Right to food sovereignty vs. right to food

Right to food sovereignty vs. food security

Within Vía Campesina (frame disputes)

Right to food sovereignty vs. peasants’ rights

Right to food sovereignty vs. reclaiming control

Right to food sovereignty vs. food security Since the mid-1990s, Vía Campesina has been actively engaged in what Benford and Snow have termed ‘counter-framing’ (Benford and Snow 2000, 626): it has actively deployed the right to food sovereignty frame in opposition to the dominant food security frame.13 In this battle against the food security frame, Vía Campesina had to counteract the distorted use of the food sovereignty frame by dominant actors. France’s president Jacques Chirac, for example, toured a number of African countries in February 2005 and called for a reorientation of agricultural development along the lines of food sovereignty. The use of the term food sovereignty implied special treatment for agriculture in trade debates, respect for local traditions and the need to take into account the development levels of each country. However, the French President came out in defence of the EU’s farm policies (despite their impacts on smallholder agriculture in the EU and elsewhere), which prompted an immediate reaction from the food sovereignty movement (GRAIN 2005). This ‘protectionist’ recuperation of the food sovereignty frame, of which there have been quite a number of examples, led Vía Campesina activists to insist that they were not against trade. This is certainly the point made by Fabienne,14 a peasant woman who grows vegetables in the Saône-et-Loire department and is responsible for the international commission of the Confédération paysanne: ‘Food sovereignty can open the door to conservative forces, to autarchy. But we are not against exchanges. We are for exchanges, exchanges that respect us.’15 Many activists in the food sovereignty movement felt that, to keep the concept from being coopted, it was essential to better define it. African peasant leader Ibrahim Coulibaly from ROPPA argues: ‘Instead of talking about food sovereignty, we should concretely say what it means, which instruments it requires. A minister can say that he is for food sovereignty and be for agribusiness.’16 The counter-example of sustainable development was mentioned in several interviews, as pointed out by Choplin: ‘food sovereignty, in order to keep its mobilizing potential, should not get diluted like happened for sustainable development’ (Choplin 2008). The considerable resonance of the food sovereignty frame brought an additional challenge for Vía Campesina, as more and more actors in the global food movement abandoned food security to embrace food sovereignty instead. This adoption of food sovereignty by a wide range of development NGOs,

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The challenges of using rights 89 environmental groups and academics resulted in a myriad of interpretations, some more reformist than transformational.17 In the North in particular, a growing number of groups, Vía Campesina leader Paul Nicholson complains, came to understand food sovereignty as meaning nothing more than ‘eating well and local’.18 The successful extension of the food sovereignty frame brought a mix of opportunities and threats or at very least frustrations, when it comes to content. Jean19 from the European Coordination of Vía Campesina (ECVC) explains: ‘From 2002 onwards, food sovereignty became fashionable and hence a source of funding for development NGOs. We were more and more involved as partners, as some kind of guarantee for development. This was positive for us because it brought us funding. And negative because they were always coming to us quite late in the process.’20 In reaction, Vía Campesina activists attempted to come up with a steady definition of the right to food sovereignty, but were constantly struggling with the fact that the concept had developed a life of its own. To some extent, the success of the food sovereignty frame had a disappropriating effect, as expressed by this Austrian farmer member of the ECVC: ‘Food sovereignty, it works better with NGOs and environmentalists than with our own farmers.’21 Activists felt the need to elaborate some kind of repatriation strategy. A French peasant from the Confédération paysanne raised the issue at the 2010 general assembly in Montreuil: ‘How can we connect the small peasants who don’t hear us to the non-peasants who hear us?’22 Interestingly, the food security vs. right to food sovereignty frame contest did not lead to a fixed definition of food sovereignty. To the contrary, Vía Campesina activists constantly integrated new dimensions into the food sovereignty frame in what appears to have been, so far, a successful way to avoid both its cooptation by dominant actors and its dilution by less radical fractions of the global food movement. The arrival of new issues on the international agenda23 further reinforced this ‘expansion’ of the right to food sovereignty frame. The global food crisis of 2007–8 was seized by the institutions gathered in the UN High Level Task Force as an opportunity to transform the food security frame and make it more integrative of the concerns of ‘smallholder farmers’ (McMichael 2009b; Wise and Murphy 2013). In response to this new emphasis on the figure of the agricultural entrepreneur, Vía Campesina has reinforced a specific aspect of the prognosis associated with the food sovereignty frame, i.e. the reference to agro-ecology as a mode of production able to feed the planet. In response to international debates on how to deal with climate change, it has also put renewed emphasis on the ability of small producers to cool the planet (Vía Campesina 2007a). Right to food sovereignty vs. right to food Less documented but, I would argue, of considerable importance is the frame contest that raged, mostly in the 1996–2004 period, between the right to food sovereignty frame and the right to food frame. This contest was particularly intense and difficult because it took place between actors who were engaged together in the global food movement and roughly sharing the same goals. It should

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be highlighted here that this contest took place in the same years as the food sovereignty vs. food security frame contest and that both right to food defenders and food sovereignty activists were simultaneously engaged in counter-framing vis-à-vis food security. The fact that contestants were sharing the rights master frame and were, in fact, fighting over the very definition, use and interpretation of this master frame made this contest quite painful for all parties. To some extent, the right to food sovereignty vs. right to food frame contest can be interpreted as a struggle between peoples’ organizations and NGOs over legitimacy and representation, as we will see in the next chapter. This interpretation is certainly valid for the initial period of the contest, during which the right to food (and for the most part the food security) frames were deployed by NGOs, whilst the right to food sovereignty frame was deployed exclusively by rising peasant movements. Later on, as a good number of environmental and development NGOs shifted to food sovereignty, it became impossible to associate one frame with NGOs and the other with peoples’ movements.24 Past that initial stage, the right to food vs. right to food sovereignty contest really was about which conditions best enable a subversive use of rights talk and of rights-based strategies. I develop this argument in the next chapter, where I show that the right to food vs. right to food sovereignty contest is intimately linked to the creation of new rights by Vía Campesina.25 As Gustavo,26 a Mexican indigenous leader member of the Union of Indigenous Communities in the Northern Zone of the Isthmus (UCIZONI, which is not a Vía Campesina member organization) eloquently put it: ‘We converted the right to food into food sovereignty.’27 Both the right to food and the right to food sovereignty frames came out reinforced, profoundly transformed and somewhat broadened from this contest. The confrontation between these two frames was, for the most part, about radically distinct approaches to the state, to institutions and to social change, and about different conceptions of human rights. The right to food vs. food sovereignty is worth exploring because it sheds light on the reasons why the right to food frame failed to be picked up by peasant movements, and why peasant movements insisted so much that food sovereignty was a right. It also provides useful hints to understand why the right to food network has, since the early 2000s, supported the recognition of new rights for peasants whilst it denied its support to the right to food sovereignty. Right to food sovereignty vs. reclaiming control Vía Campesina’s decision not to pursue the institutionalization of the right to food sovereignty on an international level is the outcome of intense internal debates over the pros and cons of institutionalization, and over where, how and when institutionalization should be pursued. A movement’s range of possible strategic choices is highly constrained by framing in the sense that strategic orientations need to align with the movement’s most resonant and motivational frames. In this section, I describe the tension that is palpable within Vía Campesina between the right to food sovereignty frame and what I have called the reclaiming control frame. In broad terms, this tension can be analysed as a dispute between

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The challenges of using rights 91 the rights master frame (from above) and the increasingly resonant from below master frame. The contours of what I call the from below master frame are hard to trace. This master frame manifests itself in conjunction with a number of different ideological currents, such as subaltern cosmopolitanism, postmodernism and third-world feminism. It emphasizes the collective agency of subaltern social groups (Nilsen and Cox 2013) struggling against exploitation and oppression. It focuses on resistance and on grassroots processes (Appadurai 2000). This master frame emphasizes ‘the way of subjectivity’ and the importance of ‘experience’ (Pleyers 2010, 35). The from below master frame has been powerfully deployed by indigenous groups such as the Zapatistas in Mexico, in order to insist that their struggle was not about seizing power. It has been outlined by Marxist thinker Holloway as the belief that capitalism should be fought in the cracks, not by alternatives that mimic the system: ‘The cracks are always questions, not answers’ (Holloway 2010, 20). The from below master frame seeks to give voice to the ‘subaltern’ (Santos and Rodríguez-Garavito 2005, 14, 39), a term which is derived from the work of Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci. Applied to international law, this master frame emphasizes the ‘lived experience of ordinary people’ rather than the role of the elites (Rajagopal 2003, p. xiii). At the heart of the reclaiming control frame is reliance on grassroots organizing and mistrust in the capacity of the state and of institutional frameworks to bring social change. The reclaiming control frame highlights alternative ‘practices’ at the local level and building another world from the bottom-up (Vía Campesina 2008b). A growing number of initiatives that take place within the Vía Campesina network resonate with this reclaiming control frame, be it agro-ecological practices, direct marketing or indigenous control over land and territories: We will fight against the corporate control of the food chain by reclaiming control over our territories, production, markets and the ways we use food. … We will promote ecological production (agroecology, pastoralism, artisanal fisheries etc.) as a direct strategy against transnational corporations. (Nyéléni Food Sovereignty Forum 2007b)28 Agro-ecology, which has a strong appeal for many peasant groups, is increasingly described as food sovereignty in practice. Rather than wasting time debating institutionally focused strategies for structural changes, many activists, such as Steven,29 a Vía Campesina support worker based in Latin America, insist that ‘there is a ruthless war going on’30 and that this battle is being fought on the ground. Steven describes agro-ecology as a ‘tool for the collective transformation of reality’.31 For John,32 from the peasant organization SPI in Indonesia, agro-ecology is ‘a way to escape the economic system in which everything is captured by private actors’.33 Describing the agroecological movement, Paul,34 a FIAN activist based at the international secretariat in Germany, argues: ‘this movement has a mentality of pioneers, they don’t work on political change, they only want change from below. They are anarchists in a way …’35 In the North, the reclaiming control frame finds expressions in the growing number of

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initiatives seeking to develop producer–consumer connections (Pleyers 2011). In Mexico, claims formulated within the reclaiming control frame crystallize around the ‘right to resist’ and the right to land and territory, in a context marked by an increase in land occupations, in environmental struggles (mining, dams, transgenic crops) and in the number of ‘autonomous municipalities’.36 For Gustavo,37 a Mexican indigenous leader, food sovereignty understood as local autonomy and self-sufficiency is what enables resistance. In a world that appears increasingly apocalyptic, what Gustavo describes as the ‘Noah’s Ark’ strategy has a strong appeal: ‘when all the seeds, the waters, the soils will be contaminated, we will turn to little islands of local solutions’.38 Groups engaged in agro-ecological practices in the South and alternative farming networks in the North share a level of mistrust in government support and institutions, and a preference for ‘subpolitical’ action.39 The same goes for ‘neo-rural farmers’ in France, whose political culture is at odds with that of activists from the Confédération paysanne. Different views on how to mobilize make it difficult for French Vía Campesina members to relate to those they refer to as ‘atypical’, or nonconforming, as many of them expressed during their 2010 general assembly: ‘They are in their little world and don’t really need to militate’;40 ‘But are they not meant to organize?’;41 ‘Is small, organic, localized agriculture going to manage on its own just because it is localized?’42 Mistrust of government is also very strong among numerous indigenous groups in the South. Francisco,43 an indigenous Vía Campesina leader from CUC in Guatemala, explains: ‘We have chosen another strategy, the defense of the territory … We need to pressure the state so that it respects the peace agreements. But the state has become a seller of natural resources. … We don’t want more roundtables.’44 If it is clearly anti-institutional, the ‘from below’ master frame is also, in some places, about rejecting the human rights rhetoric. Questions over the very value of deploying a rights master frame to support local struggles have been raised by activists such as Brewster Kneen (2009), and groups such as GRAIN, and appear to have had increased resonance in the global food movement over the past years. Rights are criticized for being not only ineffective, but damaging. Rights have ‘ended up causing confusion and divisions, and even harming the very interests and welfare of those claiming the rights’. Rights have contributed to the ‘increased inequity and the loss of sovereignty and dignity’. Moreover, ‘the very concept of rights is being used to impose and expand neoliberalism’ and ‘actions that were previously considered natural and taken for granted – such as keeping, reproducing and sharing seeds and animals, accessing water – are no longer permitted but are becoming criminalized, all in the name of property rights’ (GRAIN 2007). How is the right to food sovereignty frame evolving as a result of its dispute with the reclaiming control frame? Is food sovereignty from below gradually taking over food sovereignty from above? Various factors tend to support this interpretation. It has been well documented that changes in public policy – be they objective changes or changes in the interpretation of reality by movement activists – can induce framing changes (Gotham 1999, 342). In the case of

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The challenges of using rights 93 Vía Campesina, changes in political opportunities (Kitschelt 1986; Tarrow 1998) appear to have induced a shift from international to local issues. First, the WTO is no longer a powerful target. For slightly over a decade, from its entry into force on 1 January 1994 until the 6th Ministerial of Hong Kong in 2005, the WTO was sufficiently active and at the centre of global media attention to get peasant activists to engage in global anti-WTO protests. Since the mid-2000s, however, with its successive failing rounds of negotiations, the WTO no longer fuels the outrage needed to catalyse collective action. Is the growing emphasis on change from the bottom to be interpreted as an expression of disappointment with transnational engagement and global protest fatigue? Or does it reflect the victory against the WTO that many food sovereignty activists feel they won in Cancún? Opinions are divided. What is certain is that, since 2003, when Vía Campesina called on ‘the agencies of the UN such as the FAO, the UNCTAD and the ILO to take initiatives to develop an alternative framework to the WTO’ (Vía Campesina 2003a), calls for an alternative governance framework for trade in agriculture have receded. In contrast, direct opposition to transnational corporations is growing. At Vía Campesina, as Steven explains, ‘the decision that was made in Maputo was to develop, for TNCs, the same anti-policy as for the WTO. The objective is for Monsanto and others to leave each individual country, to build a counter-power. The focus evolved from WTO to TNCs because TNCs are behind the WTO and the neoliberal government.’45 Second, Vía Campesina activists have faced stark economic challenges and the increasingly aggressive appropriation of their resource base by the private sector, making organizing and international work more difficult. As Marc,46 a peasant activist from the Confédération paysanne put it: ‘Today’s context is different than in 1993. There are a lot less peasants today.’47 In particular since the global food crisis of 2007–8, many peasant organizations have had to defend their members from immediate threats. In France, this has meant a shift towards defensive strategies. As a result, Marc argues, ‘internationalization is declining, there is a withdrawal to save one’s peasants’.48 Knowing that activist friends are struggling to make a living makes it difficult to devote time and energy to remote and often purely symbolic battles in institutional settings. Françoise, a French woman activist who used to be a member of the Confédération paysanne and whom I interviewed during negotiations at the Committee on World Food Security, explains: ‘I am going to fight at the FAO, we managed to establish the voluntary guidelines [on the responsible governance of tenure of land, fisheries and forests] against the RAI [World Bank principles for responsible agroinvestment] but them, they are under the steamroller.’49 Adding to these challenges, the arrival of new issues on the global agenda, such as climate change, land grabbing, financial speculation or public reinvestment in agriculture, has diverted the attention of peasant activists away from trade and the WTO. ‘Mobilizations are inconstant’,50 says Gaëtan of the Collectif Stratégies Alimentaires in Belgium. Land ‘is becoming a nexus, the common denominator’,51 argues Gerald52 from the Habitat International Coalition (HIC). The world over, the global food prices crisis has propelled the resurgence of local/localist strategies, which tend to be anchored in the defence

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of lands and territories. For Sofía,53 an Oxfam International representative based in Latin America, the ecological challenge demonstrates the inadequacy of the food sovereignty idea: ‘The idea of food sovereignty is getting old and not necessarily adequate for this new situation. Climate change, for example, has no borders. I want to be able to say to the US that they can’t produce as they wish. No more borders. This questioning comes from the environmental movement; sovereignty is not ok when it comes to global responsibility. But food sovereignty has been important politically.’54 Overall, the right to food sovereignty frame has considerably expanded in an attempt to incorporate struggles around localization and grassroots resistance. It has evolved under the pressure of the increasingly resonant reclaiming control frame and as a result of what Valocchi has called ‘internal dissent’ (Valocchi 1996, 122). New interpretations of food sovereignty appear to be emerging, which put more emphasis on the local and on alternative food sovereignty practices. Efforts by Vía Campesina to reach out to and apply the achievements of the agroecology movement (Rosset and Martínez-Torres 2012; Rosset and MartínezTorres 2013) will likely push food sovereignty further in that direction. This new trend is resisted by a number of activists. A representative of MIJARC, a network of Catholic rural youth movements asks: ‘Is food sovereignty only about relocalizing production?’55 Fabienne, a peasant woman of the Confédération paysanne, argues: ‘To win the battle requires articulating all the levels, the local, national, international. Up to now, we have done localization mostly, and analysis, but we have not made the link between all these struggles.’56 Frustrations with the perceived abandonment of the international dimension are also perceptible. Fabienne adds: ‘We have been saying this for ten years but we are not making progress. What works is community-supported agriculture.’57 Right to food sovereignty vs. peasants’ rights Over recent years, another rights-based organizational frame, the peasants’ rights frame, has emerged in the movement’s discourse. The peasants’ rights frame was elaborated during village-level consultations with peasant communities in Indonesia, in 1999–2000. It was further articulated, and to some extent broadened, by the inclusion of new concerns expressed by various organizations within the Vía Campesina network, in the period ranging from 2002 (the first time the ‘rights of peasants’ were discussed at a regional Vía Campesina conference) to 2008 (when the Declaration on the Rights of Peasants was adopted by Vía Campesina). The peasants’ rights frame has not yet acquired mobilizing qualities: it does not constitute a uniting and mobilizing frame and is barely used as a ‘slogan’. The biggest challenge confronting the peasants’ rights frame today is one of ‘frame diffusion’ (Benford and Snow 2000, 627). An internal Vía Campesina document recognized in 2008 that there was a ‘different level of comprehension of the Declaration on the rights of the peasants in different countries and regions’ and that internal debates were ‘still not dynamic’ (Vía Campesina 2008h). Since then, things have changed somewhat. Initial discussions on a new

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The challenges of using rights 95 legal instrument at the UN Human Rights Council have forced some regions to familiarize themselves with the issue. This is particularly true for European peasant organizations, which have started to develop arguments in defence of such an instrument, and to lobby their governments. In contrast to the right to food sovereignty frame, which has proven to be highly motivational and adaptable, and has spread far beyond Central America where it emerged, the peasants’ rights frame remains disconnected from grassroots activists. Valeria,58 a long-time FIAN member and activist based at the international secretariat in Germany, explains: ‘Peasants’ rights, it comes from the leaders and the intellectuals, we will need to see if peasants follow … I think there are a lot of problems and critiques.’59 The lack of appropriation of the peasants’ rights frame by other regions, in particular Latin America – where references to food sovereignty dominate – and by movement activists who are not involved in transnational arenas and debates, remains a considerable obstacle to the diffusion of the peasants’ rights frame. Valeria explains: ‘The Indonesians have put a lot of political capital and now they need to convince the others. In Africa, there is no aversion. In Latin America, it is different. A different colonialism? A different Marxism? I don’t know.’60 Will the right to food sovereignty and peasants’ rights frames reinforce each other in the future? When asked about potential conflicts between the right to food sovereignty and peasants’ rights, most Vía Campesina activists tend to dismiss the possibility that conflicts might surface between the two rights frames. For some, such as Jean from ECVC, the issue has been little explored: ‘There has been no debate between the right to food sovereignty and peasants’ rights. Normally it should have been discussed in Maputo.’61 Others argue that both frames are compatible and mutually supportive,62 or that they simply emerged in different contexts.63 So far, the International Declaration on the Rights of Peasants has been generally well received within the movement. But peasants’ rights have raised criticism for not dealing with (and taking the attention away from) what some activists perceive as more relevant or pressing issues. Jean regrets: ‘But peasants’ rights are not an agricultural policy issue.’64 A particular source of concern for him is whether the work on food sovereignty as a right will be abandoned. These critiques are well received by Henri Saragih, the former Secretary General of Vía Campesina, who has been leading the peasants’ rights initiative: ‘We don’t pressure other regions. We know it is difficult for national organizations to add new issues. Latin America is about land and indigenous peoples … Different regions have different issues.’65 As Vía Campesina invests more political capital into getting the rights of peasants codified at the UN, it is likely that internal disputes between the right to food sovereignty and peasants’ rights frames will surface. As ethnographic research shows, human rights ideas and practices developed in one locality are being adopted or imposed transnationally in a variety of ways (Engle Merry 2006, 38). If discursive processes (rights talk during movement interactions) play a major role in this transmission, battles within movements over which frames prevail may not be primarily about ideas. As suggested by Valocchi in his analysis of the civil rights movement, these battles can be about who controls important sources

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of financing, which organizations are able to court favour with political elites and which organizations are actively repressed by those political elites (Valocchi 1996). If we compare the relatively weak political, symbolic and organizational resources of the Asian region (and possibly African regions) with the strong and vibrant political capital, influence and capacity of the European, Northern American and in particular Southern American regions (Desmarais 2008a, 142), there is no doubt that the peasants’ rights frame has little chances of becoming Vía Campesina’s key organizational frame. Adding to these differences, regions differ in the political opportunities they are dealing with and in their ability to create and seize such opportunities (McAdam et al. 1996, 12). Over recent years, for example, changes in governments in a number of Latin American countries have offered Vía Campesina member organizations a number of favorable opportunities to push for national, regional and local food sovereignty public policies, as we explored in Chapter 2. These opportunities are likely to increase the resonance of the right to food sovereignty frame, although the opposite is quite possible too, as activists get frustrated with the lack of implementation of these policies. At the same time, the peasants’ rights frame is potentially powerful because of its focus on what Stammers has called expressive (oriented towards identies, values, lifestyles) and not only instrumental dimensions (Stammers 1999). Alberto Gomez, a Mexican peasant leader, argues: ‘The Declaration on the rights of peasants has a strong symbolic value, it gives strength to our struggle.’66 By embracing a term traditionally used in pejorative ways, the peasants’ rights frame attempts to induce a radical ‘frame transformation’: a strategic process which refers to ‘changing old understandings and meanings and/or generating new ones’ (Benford and Snow 2000, 625). The peasants’ rights frame may facilitate the construction of a collective identity for a movement confronted with a highly diverse membership and always in search of new ways to build symbolic links, now that identification with the WTO as the shared enemy – which helped build the unity of the movement at the global level in the 1995–2005 period – no longer plays a determining role. Yet it is uncertain at this stage if mobilizing in defence of peasants’ rights will generate more public sympathy and support, or if it will make alliances more difficult, and induce rejection or criticism. What does the right to food sovereignty frame look like today? The right to food sovereignty frame has undergone some considerable changes in the last 20 years, largely as the result of the various frame disputes and contests discussed above. Is the right to food sovereignty gradually transforming into ‘food sovereignty right now’, under the pressure of the growing reclaiming control frame? Is the rights master frame currently de-amplifying (Mooney and Hunt 1996, 193)? Or will the rights master frame be reinvigorated by the emerging peasants’ rights frame? The right to food sovereignty has successfully avoided cooptation and dilution. It has expanded as the result of compromise (Siméant 2010, 133), although its ability to absorb the peasants’ rights frame remains unclear. It has moved away from external and international dimensions to emphasize local

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The challenges of using rights 97 change. It has moved away from opposing the global capitalist food system to propose concrete alternative practices. It has moved away from institutional change from the top to valorize grassroots organizing and change from below. It looks less like a right, more like a fight for local control. This evolution appears to reflect the growing perception within the movement that defensive strategies are the only feasible options in the face of a capitalist system that uses institutions to lock the power of capital; and that local initiatives are the most efficient way to encourage the participation of everyone in social change (rather than counting on the concerted efforts of some experts or representatives who move in international arenas). Yet a good number of Vía Campesina activists are concerned that relocalized agriculture will become a niche market,67 in the hands of a small number of rich and well-informed consumers, while the rest of society is sustained by low-quality and heavily processed foods. They ask: how do we change the agricultural development model for the benefit of all? Initial framing happens in an intuitive way, before frames take a more elaborate shape through contested, discursive and strategic processes. Later on, frames become the ‘property’ of a particular movement and more formal efforts need to be put into reaffirming and extending the existing consensus. These efforts are heavily constrained by the ideas, collective identity and worldviews adopted previously (Zald 1996, 16). When frames get older, movement activists may get locked into promoting and repeating a dominant frame and lose the flexibility to adapt their framing strategies to a changing context (Hull 2001, 226). Is it time to get rid of food sovereignty, as this French lawyer, member of the Confédération paysanne, suggests? ‘Food sovereignty is a suitcase word, we put everything in it. It becomes cumbersome; we don’t know what to do with it.’68 Vía Campesina, which just celebrated its 20th anniversary, appears to be more internally oriented than before. Whether what is at stake is a regression in international advocacy or is in fact a waning internationalism – how much energy, time and effort local and national movements devote to building and participating in an international movement – is unclear. What is certain is that the internal work of strengthening member organizations has become a critical priority for the movement and is seen as a precondition for achieving further structural and policy changes (Rosset et al. 2011, 187). This could also indicate that the movement is facing a tension between sustaining collective actions against an identified enemy, and engaging in mobilizations seeking to establish a new life order through alternatives, a tension that has been well documented in social movements studies (Neveu 1996, 10–11).

The challenges of institutionalizing new rights In the last part of this chapter, I explore the various debates that have taken place, within Vía Campesina, on whether or not to pursue the institutionalization of new rights at the international level. After discussing separately the right to food sovereignty and the rights of peasants, I compare the institutional trajectory of both categories of new rights.

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Internal debates on the virtues and dangers of the institutionalization of new rights are probably best grasped in terms of strategies and political opportunities. Indeed, the process of creating new human rights is long and complex, and involves at least three successive steps: framing claims in human rights terms, placing the issue on the international agenda (usually by convincing gatekeeper NGOs) and pressuring states and international bodies to accept new norms (Bob 2010b). This requires elaborating a strategy of institutional dialogue (from above), in partnership with human rights experts and support NGOs, and creating/ seizing legal opportunities69 (Israël 2003, 62). Once established, the institutional strategy needs to be aligned with the movement’s organizational frames and its collective identity construction processes, in order to be successfully deployed. This means it needs to be constantly reassessed and adjusted if needed. The interactions between strategies, framing and political opportunities are extremely complex and not yet fully explored in the social movements studies literature (Benford and Snow 2000). Looking at the right to food sovereignty, for example, it appears that frame disputes have limited the range of strategies available, while strategic decisions have influenced the outcome of frame disputes. On the one hand, the growing resonance of the reclaiming control frame has generated widespread support for anti- or extra-institutional (from below) strategies, making it difficult to discuss and elaborate an institutional strategy. On the other hand, strategic decisions to undermine the legitimacy of the WTO and avoid cooptation, firmly implemented by Vía Campesina’s leadership, have reinforced the appeal of the from below master frame, and of food sovereignty practices. In other terms, the movement’s various frames appear to have evolved in sync with its strategies. Changes in political opportunities (which are themselves created, seized, captured, shaped by movements) also have a deep impact on social movements and can create shifts in fortunes (McAdam et al. 1996, 12). This is apparent, for example, in the declining emphasis on the WTO as a mobilizing target and in the parallel creation and shaping of new political opportunities in countries or regions where food sovereignty can be translated into law or public policies (these opportunities, it should be noted, vary across regions, creating cross-national differences within the transnational movement itself). The right to food sovereignty We saw in the second chapter that the institutionalization of the right to food sovereignty at the international level is no longer an objective of the movement. Has failure to reach a consensual and fixed definition of food sovereignty impeded the institutionalization of this new right? A young Belgian neo-farmer from the MAP, a Vía Campesina member organization, argues: ‘the concept is still being defined. We are not ready yet to establish it as a right.’70 Analysing how new rights have been proclaimed at the UN in the past, Alston comments that many new rights are characterized by ‘inordinate vagueness’. To a large extent, this absence of a precise normative formulation – what he calls their ‘chameleon-like quality’ – has facilitated the degree of consensus that these new

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The challenges of using rights 99 rights have received (Alston 1984, 613). Why, then, did efforts to institutionalize the right to food sovereignty stall in the mid-2000s? The answer lies in the strategies, framing tactics and political opportunities that have shaped divisions71 between whether food sovereignty should be implemented from above or from below. Opponents to the institutionalization of the right to food sovereignty tend to prioritize the objective of delegitimizing the WTO and Bretton Woods institutions. They believe that the conditions are not met to engage with enemy institutions. Spanish peasant leader Javier Sanchez from the COAG asserts: ‘The Agreement on Agriculture [of the WTO] is not compatible with food sovereignty. No agreement can ever be.’72 These activists are wary of the danger of ‘being co-opted to serve watered-down intergovernmental agendas rather than advancing their own visions and objectives’ (McKeon 2009, 11). Other peasant activists, such as Marta73 from the Confédération paysanne, refuse to see food sovereignty restricted to local practices: ‘Let us not limit food sovereignty to agricultural practices.’74 They want more than limiting food sovereignty to a relocalization strategy, as spelled out by Fabienne, another peasant woman activist: ‘Localizing is valorizing, it explains with the facts, it makes a link with the consumer. But I don’t believe in food sovereignty islets in an neoliberal ocean’.75 These activists are scared that the dominant model will prevent their alternative practices from developing: ‘We need to struggle in our practices but also fight in the streets against governments, otherwise the dominant market model will more and more impede these alternatives.’76 They are also eager to participate in world debates, as this African farmer expressed at a 2009 seminar on market regulation: ‘There can’t be world debates and us absent. We need to be where people talk about us and against us.’77 They want to believe in the possibility of reorganizing international institutions and in giving them a new meaning. They put their hopes in the UN as the only legitimate institution, although some activists, such as Jacqueline78 from the Confédération paysanne, also question the movement’s absolute rejection of any engagement with the WTO.79 Trained as an agronomist, Jacqueline raises poultry in the Alpes de Haute-Provence department, and sells them on the local market, while her partner produces cereals, feed and lavender. She represents the Confédération paysanne at the European Coordination of Vía Campesina. She regrets: ‘One limit of Vía Campesina is that we don’t recognize the WTO.’80 For these activists, and many other proponents of the institutionalization of the new right to food sovereignty, identifying the right forum to bring their claim remains a daunting obstacle. Jean asks: ‘If we write off the WTO, then where?’81 Another activist, a French researcher who has worked extensively with both the Confédération paysanne and ATTAC, complains: ‘The WTO is seen as the common enemy, not as an agreement among states. The slogan should be agriculture out of neoliberalism, or neoliberalism out of agriculture. This would allow for a much needed discussion.’82 If we consider the two components – internal and external – of the right to food sovereignty, it appears clear that there is a division in the movement along these

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(internal/external) lines. One fraction prioritizes the external (international) dimension because it appears easier to institutionalize. To make the right to food sovereignty operational, they contend, requires turning it into the right of states. The other fraction sees the internal (local, political) dimension as central to the struggle, and resists institutionalization: local democracy and local autonomy have to be won and experienced. For this second group, more influential within Vía Campesina, ‘the dominant policy scheme is one of imposition from the international level on the national and local. This flow should be reversed … so that the global level provides support for local and national initiatives’ (McKeon and Kalafatic 2009, 15). The conviction is shared, of course, that the local and national/international levels are inevitably intertwined, as expressed by Paul Nicholson: ‘Food sovereignty will be gained locally, but, at the end of the day, the policies are determined by governments.’83 But disagreements are persistent on the appropriate timing, nature and conditions for advocacy and dialogue with policy-makers. In this debate over the pros and cons of institutionalizing the right to food sovereignty, the fear that a legal strategy would have a demobilizing effect certainly played a significant role. Talking about one of Vía Campesina’s leaders, Jean from ECVC explains: ‘Over the last two years, he has been scared to see us move from social mobilization to legal work.’84 Indeed, the legalization of social struggles carries a number of potentially negative impacts that the movement is well aware of: the transformation of the movement’s struggle in technical debates to be solved in specialized arenas, the demobilization of the movement’s activists and the loss of autonomy (Newell and Lekhi 2006, 191–7). The example of indigenous peoples comes to mind. David,85 who coordinates the IPC argues: ‘Indigenous peoples have pushed the rights approach the furthest they could. They are confined to a commission on the rights of indigenous peoples. You stay inside and you make the list of violations. They need to become social actors, producers.’86 One of the challenges, therefore, consists in keeping alive repertoires of action that are somewhat in conflict: mobilization and protest, but also advocacy, political dialogue and legal struggles. In addition, faced with complex issues requiring important levels of expertise, Vía Campesina has suffered from a number of limiting factors that are quite foreign to the NGO world, such as the lack of research capacity and the time needed to reach consensus across a wide array of organizations with different cultural backgrounds and ideological convictions. As a result, the movement has experienced difficulties coming up with concrete positions or proposals on controversial issues such as contract farming, the development of agrofuels, orderly marketing and alternative trade rules. The movement could rely on support from NGOs for research activities but this would threaten the movement’s autonomy and ownership. In the opinion of Jean: ‘there is a big fear that NGOs will take control over legal work’.87 Stammers argues that social movement struggles construct human rights claims in ways that demand their institutional instantiation (Stammers 2009, 106). So far, the experience of Vía Campesina appears to indicate a different

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The challenges of using rights 101 trend.88 Will the right to food sovereignty ever achieve international recognition as a new human right? Will it ever be translated into alternative trade rules? Or are we witnessing a ‘retreat to a nebulous populism that instantiates a logic of communitarianism’89 (Patel 2006, 87)? Recent developments tend to suggest that the movement is increasingly determined to maintain food sovereignty as a vision, as a platform for action, and as a vehicle for forming alliances with other groups, without excluding the possibility of building a ‘new institutionality’ in the territories that it controls. Steven argues: ‘We can implement good policies in the territories and spaces under the control of popular movements’, such as indigenous territories or land occupied and managed by the MST in Brazil.90 The movement may also, in the future, make more use of the new institutional spaces provided by the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) to advance food sovereignty. Since its reform in 2009, the CFS has emerged as a central policy platform at the United Nations to address issues of food security, agriculture and nutrition. The CFS is an interesting arena due to the alternative governance model it offers (McKeon 2011; Duncan and Barling 2012). It includes as members not only states, but also international financial institutions, relevant international organizations, the private sector, foundations and civil society. At the CFS, Vía Campesina actively participates, through the Civil Society Mechanism (CSM),91 in a number of civil society working groups, where the various issues at the agenda of the CFS – such as land, agricultural investment, gender, food prices volatility, biofuels, climate change or nutrition – are debated. Such involvement has brought advances in the area of land governance, with the adoption of Voluntary Guidelines on Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (VGGT) in May 2012. Vía Campesina actively participated in the negotiations that took place in 2011–12, together with FIAN and other members of the CSM. The outcome has been widely celebrated by civil society, for the rights-based character of the final document (Monsalve Suárez 2012b, 39), and for the legitimate and inclusive way in which it was negotiated (Paoloni and Onorati 2014), despite the fact that participants I talked to during the negotiations often perceived the debates as too technical and disconnected from on-the-ground realities. Food sovereignty activists (from both Vía Campesina and the CSM at large) have also used CFS discussions on responsible agricultural investment to promote the food sovereignty paradigm. At the 36th session of the CFS in 2010, members of the CSM succeeded in convincing African states and other CFS member states that the CFS should not adopt the Principles for Responsible Agricultural Investment (PRAI) developed by the World Bank, IFAD, UNCTAD and FAO in response to the phenomenon of land grabbing. Instead, the CFS decided to formulate its own principles on responsible agricultural investment (rai) following an inclusive consultation and negotiation process to be held over 2012–14. The outcome of this process is still uncertain at the time of writing, but it is clear that CSM members have managed to at least change the terms of the debate, through their emphasis on the need to support smallholder farmers themselves who are the primary investors (Nyéléni Newsletter 2013).

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Unfortunately, CFS discussions on biofuels or ways to tackle price volatility have not made similar breakthroughs. The CSM walked out of the plenary to express its disapproval of the decision adopted on price volatility at the 39th session of the CFS in 2012, and walked out again in rejection of the decision made by the CFS on biofuels in 2013. Moreover, trade issues have not featured on the agenda of the CFS and their inclusion has been fiercely opposed by member states, on the grounds that trade is a WTO matter. Vía Campesina’s decision to sign a collaboration agreement with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), on 4 October 2013, can be understood as an attempt to support FAO in its efforts to become more inclusive and hence legitimate, and to further democratize the arena of global food policy (Vía Campesina 2013b).92 This being said, the movement ‘remains realistic about the amount of energy that should be put into the UN, maintaining its greatest strength on the ground mobilizing farmers and building alternatives’ (Vía Campesina 2013b). This is particularly true for topics such as land grabbing and agrofuels, on which the movement has adopted a strategy of strong denunciation rather than demanding compliance with international standards (Claeys and Vanloqueren 2013). The rights of peasants Over recent years, Vía Campesina has turned to the UN Human Rights Council to achieve the recognition of new human rights for peasants. A Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and other people working in rural areas is currently under negotiation. What does the movement hope to achieve with such a new international instrument? Indonesian activists from SPI whom I spoke with are well aware of the existence of many other human rights conventions and declarations that have failed to make a difference. They know that the proposed new Declaration ‘also will not be enforced’, and recognize that the recently adopted UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples has probably not ‘made a difference here in Indonesia’.93 They also realize that the process ‘will take a lot of energy and time’.94 Why then do they defend it? Processes led by peasant movements to achieve the recognition of new human rights at the international level are relevant insofar as they allow for ‘new interpretations and reconfigurations of meanings’ to emerge (Idrus 2010, 91) and provide an arena where contestation can take place. They are also tied to what local and national peasant movements experience as their inability to bring social/legal change in national settings. Indeed, failure to achieve the enforcement of state laws is often what drives activists to go global (Nash 2012, 806). Conversely, peasant activists may decide to enter international processes because they expect that these will help achieve goals set at the national level. This is clearly the case of agrarian reform in Indonesia (Konsorsium Pembaruan Agraria 2013). Yet the relevance of Vía Campesina’s Declaration on the Rights of Peasants can also be grasped in terms of collective identity work. The broad and complex concept of ‘identity’ has at least two distinct analytic levels. First, the process of formation of a shared collective identity (Agrikoliansky

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The challenges of using rights 103 2010) is necessary for mobilization of any social movement.95 This assertion is valid for movements oriented towards the defence of a particular identity, but also for old-style social movements like the labour movement.96 In the case of Vía Campesina, the unity of ‘people of the land’ has to be constructed from heterogeneous local, regional and national farmers’ movements, each coming from different rural classes and from specific histories, experiences and cultures of struggle (Bernstein 2010, 120). Second, identity can be a goal of social movement activism, either gaining acceptance for a hitherto stigmatized identity or deconstructing categories of identities97 such as ‘man’, ‘woman’, ‘gay’, ‘straight’, ‘black’ or ‘white’ (Bernstein 1997, 535). From that perspective, it is striking that, in an effort to achieve the recognition of a stigmatized identity, Vía Campesina activists have called themselves ‘peasants’ despite the pejorative connotation of the term (Desmarais 2008a, 139). A third dimension of collective identity work is relevant to our discussion. Expressions of identity can be deployed at the collective level as a political strategy, which can be aimed at cultural or instrumental goals (Bernstein 1997, 535). Although the strategic deployment of identity98 is a relatively new topic of social movements research (Agrikoliansky 2010), existing studies tend to show that differences from the majority are either celebrated or suppressed and that this evolves over time. Bernstein argues that movements tend to start by emphasizing ‘difference’ rather than ‘commonality’. Only later, once they have strong organizational structures, access to the polity or in reaction to attacks, may movements start emphasizing commonalities (Bernstein 1997, 532). Such an assessment is difficult to make in the case of Vía Campesina. On the one hand, Vía Campesina appears to be giving more voice to identity-related claims today than it was 10 years ago. This may be because the movement is reacting to the appropriation of the food sovereignty frame by a large number of activists outside the Vía Campesina network, or because it no longer needs to struggle to acquire sufficient autonomy from NGOs and other important actors in the food movement. At the same time, food sovereignty continues to be a large platform for transformative action, and Vía Campesina activists increasingly emphasize the importance of building alliances to advance food sovereignty (Nicholson 2012). Paul Nicholson, for example, insists that: ‘food sovereignty will be gained with social movements, not from an agrarian or sectoral perspective’.99 Javier Sanchez, another Vía Campesina leader, argues: ‘Food sovereignty is not a tool only for peasants, it is one for the whole of society. Food sovereignty is the reappropriation of food production by the population.’100 Will Vía Campesina manage to build alliances and gain the support of other rural constituencies for its proposed Declaration while maintaining an emphasis on the ‘peasantness’ of its membership? Vía Campesina’s Declaration on the Rights of Peasants highlights the importance of maintaining ‘traditional food cultures’ (art. 3.5) and the right of peasants to ‘the recognition and protection of their culture and local agriculture values’ (art. 9.1). It emphasizes the existence of values and of a way of life that are based on household and community (art. 8.9; art. 10.4; art. 10.5). It celebrates harmony with nature and defines peasants

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as those who have ‘a direct and special relationship with the land and nature’ (art. 1). It also alludes to the specificity of peasant behaviour and to relations of subordination and exploitation with other social groups. This emphasis on what all the ‘people of the land’ have in common has helped activists from distinct socio-political and economic environments find common ground, but there is a risk that ‘peasant essentialism’ (Bernstein and Byres 2001, 6) might lead to exclusions once identities become fixed in law. Looking at the way human rights have been institutionalized historically, Stammers concludes that the codification of new human rights often leads to the ‘institutionalization of particularity’101 (Stammers 2009, 102). The essentialization of culture102 and social categories has been denounced as inherent in the making of claims for cultural rights (Cowan et al. 2001, 3). It has also been noted as a common feature of many indigenous peoples’ rights campaigns, with potentially serious political consequences, such as a ‘drift to racism’ when the so-called cultural identity becomes the basis for ‘privileged’ or ‘exclusive’ rights, for example to resources (Kuper 2003, 390–2). Furthermore, many ‘identity movements’ have been criticized for overemphasizing difference and thus limiting the chances of a ‘politics of commonality’ between oppressed peoples that could have the potential for radical social change.103 Experience with human rights standard setting shows that, to be successful in the longer term, those involved in standard setting need to build a broad and inclusive base. In the long run, alliances need to include all key stakeholders – including governments, civil society organizations, experts, victims and beneficiaries, and UN agencies (International Council on Human Rights Policy 2006, 66). Vía Campesina’s leadership is well aware of the need to build alliances and, in the framework of the peasants’rights process, efforts have been made to reach out to other rural constituencies. A seminar was held in Geneva in April 2014 to start a dialogue with representatives of pastoralist organizations, nomadic people, fishers and agricultural workers, whose concerns have as yet not been adequately reflected in the Declaration. So far, food sovereignty has proven to be a good vehicle for alliance building and a lot of dialogue with other constituencies has already taken place over the years through the IPC. Yet, despite its inclusiveness, the struggle for food sovereignty has been hampered by identity-related concerns. The struggle for peasants’ rights may make things even more complicated. ‘We risk being accused of defending our own interests if we focus on food sovereignty. We need common objectives, allies’, says one Norwegian farmer from Vía Campesina. ‘Food sovereignty is part of the solution but if I say it is the right to be a farmer, I am dead in my environment’, he adds.104 The institutionalization of new rights raises a number of other risks that social movements need to consider. As disputes become technical (Agrikoliansky 2010, 233), the need for expert work increases, and mobilization work tends to decrease105 (Neveu 1996, 95, 110). So far, the risk of demobilization appears limited in the case of the peasants’ rights process, because the movement is still heavily mobilized on other issues. On the contrary, it appears that the lack of

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The challenges of using rights 105 mobilization on peasants’ rights and the lack of collective support for the ongoing process at the UN is more of a concern at present, although mobilization has increased in Europe in the last years. Paul, a FIAN activist, argues: ‘There is a danger that peasants’ rights remain a legal battle so the idea [proposed by someone from FIAN] to promote them through peoples’ tribunals is a good one.’106 Another concern is that only a few individuals107 are directly involved in lobbying work at the UN, as highlighted by Frank,108 one of the human rights experts who has supported Vía Campesina in its attempts to institutionalize peasants’ rights. This could prove problematic in the future, if it leads to the creation of a small group of specialized individuals within the movement who are somewhat disconnected from the rest. Quite a few observers have pointed out that Vía Campesina’s ‘international group’ is very small,109 and that the group in charge of advancing peasants’ rights is even smaller. At the same time, as negotiations make progress, it is likely that the movement will make sure to send representatives from different regions, and train activists along the way. Experience with participation in other global arenas such as the CFS should prove useful. A final challenge facing the movement when working with human rights experts is ensuring that nothing gets lost in translation. A number of individual experts have provided their support to Vía Campesina to advance peasants’ rights at the UN. Based in Indonesia, the Indonesian Human Rights Committee for Social Justice (IHCS) has helped elaborate the vision and strategy. In Geneva, interactions with the Advisory Committee of the Human Rights Council have been facilitated by two international NGOs, FIAN and the CETIM, as well as by Cristophe Golay who used to be a member of the team of the previous Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, and is now attached to the Geneva Academy of international humanitarian law and human rights. Reliance on expert advice has been necessary, both to make sure that the proposed text of the Declaration is presented in a format adequate for consideration by the Advisory Committee, and to elaborate the most appropriate strategy. The movement has carefully selected the small team of human rights experts in charge of supporting the process, in order to retain control over the overall process and to maintain its autonomy. But adding human rights NGOs to the mix has meant sharing ownership over the Declaration to some extent. Indeed, ‘human rights translators’ (Engle Merry 2006, 42) are likely to have a deep influence on how the institutionalization process takes place. They may bring legitimacy and expertise, but they risk professionalizing the campaign (Lord 2010). Several Indonesian Vía Campesina activists I interviewed expressed concern that ‘the spirit of the document will be lost’.110 How can the ‘emancipatory thrust’ of human rights be sustained through processes of institutionalization (Stammers 2009, 106)? How can we understand the role of ‘human rights intermediaries’ (Engle Merry 2006, 42) in this process? Valentine,111 a human rights expert from FIAN, explains: ‘We listen to their demands, give feedback and a strategic insight. I myself am and feel like a technical person, I am not a stakeholder.’112 Despite the perception some might

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have that human rights work is technical and neutral, this is hardly the case. Most of the human rights experts that the movement has chosen to work with have a long-standing commitment to defending the right to food, which means that they are attached to a progressive approach to human rights, but one that is deeply anchored in a social-democratic approach (as discussed in Chapter 4). It is likely that their conception of human rights will, sooner or later, influence the outcome of the institutionalization process. Will it limit the subversive potential of the Declaration? Will it help make sure the process opens up to non-peasant groups? Will it help ensure coherence with existing human rights norms? At this early stage of the process, we can already identify a number of areas in which the influence of human rights experts is tangible. First, experts engaged in a compilation of existing human rights,113 to assess ‘protection gaps’. Valentine recalls: ‘What always came up in our contacts with them was the right to land, the right to produce, the right to remunerative prices. What we did was to look at what was already covered, and what strategically belonged to other arenas, such as the WTO.’114 The objective of this exercise was to find a way to justify the need for a ‘specific entitlement’, ‘like women, children, peoples with disabilities, indigenous peoples’.115 In parallel, experts directed institutionalization efforts towards the UN Human Rights Council. If this appears to be a reasonable choice, it may limit the scope of future discussions on peasants’ rights to issues of symbolic recognition (making it less about development, distribution or trade justice). This appears clearly in the position of Frank, a human rights lawyer who has supported Vía Campesina in its efforts to bring the rights of peasants to the UN: ‘It is good to stay in human rights arenas, it is here that this should be discussed because it is a human rights instrument, then if it is not consistent with the WTO or other agreements, it is another story, on our end what is important is to reinforce tools for the protection of human rights.’116 Second, experts insisted on having a draft text finalized and approved, thereby putting an end to consultations both within the movement and with allies, and stopping the likely expansion of the text that would have resulted from longer debates. Frank says: ‘I pushed them to agree on a text, because otherwise we could not make progress at the UN, we needed a text.’117 This push to bring the Declaration to the UN as promptly as possible may have run counter to using consultations on the text as a mobilizing tool and to ensuring that the text reflects the aspirations of all members. Despite the fact that the Declaration was officially adopted by Vía Campesina in 2008, and soon after presented at the UN, it appears clearly that, a year later, opinions on the text were still pouring in from other regions and consulted groups. A member of SPI in Indonesia commented in 2010: ‘we are still receiving a lot of input from indigenous peoples and fisherfolk. They want to add territory, etc.’118 This tends to indicate that the draft could have evolved further and benefited from more support globally. At the same time, it appears clearly that the window of opportunity at the HRC was extremely small, and that without expert advice, Vía Campesina would not have succeeded in putting peasant rights on the Council’s agenda. Third, human rights ‘translators’ transformed the text to make it fit ‘UN language’ (Vía Campesina 2008g), as the changes made between the second (2002)

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The challenges of using rights 107 and third (2009) versions of the Declaration illustrate. In order to convince states, they strategically framed the issue as one of discrimination, and used the right to food as an entry point, as highlighted by Frank: ‘We did not win at the Council on peasants’ rights. So we chose a different angle, we proposed a study on the right to food and non-discrimination.’119 Human rights experts also insisted on having a definition of the term ‘peasants’ included in the text and on extending the list of beneficiaries to ‘other people living in rural areas, including from traditional fishing, hunting and herding activities’ (Human Rights Council 2010b, 22). Patrick,120 an expert from the CETIM, recalls: ‘They revised the first version which had some aspects that were, let’s say, a bit selfish compared to other groups of society. Now they have come to maturity. For example, they have initiated contacts with other groups, such as Habitat International. … They have accepted the support of human rights experts and they have accepted to revise chapters based on the interests of other groups. They have opened up to fishermen, nomadic peoples, pastoralists.’121 Human rights experts were particularly adamant on issues pertaining to alliance building. CETIM told Vía Campesina that: ‘they will need to make alliances with other peasant organizations and with fishermen etc., and with non-producers’.122 FIAN told them that ‘the process was dangerous’ and that ‘they needed to resolve key questions such as what about the other groups? What about the other peasant organizations such as IFAP and ROPPA, the NGOs, the big international organizations like Amnesty?’123 As negotiations enter into the next stage, where a new draft Declaration will be discussed, human rights experts will need to suggest new and more profound changes in the text. If these changes are necessary to translate peasants’ demands into claims that are more acceptable to states, they are likely to considerably reduce the emancipatory potential of the Declaration. Collective rights, for example, are likely to be redefined as individual rights with a collective dimension (or to be exercised collectively). References to the ‘right to reject’ (industrial agriculture, development projects, land grabs or intellectual property rights) are also likely to disappear in favour of the ‘right to choose’. These changes may be necessary to ensure coherence with international human rights standards but may take the rights of peasants away from the (multicultural, cosmopolitan, anti-capitalist) conception of rights that circulates within the movement.

Conclusion The right to food sovereignty was claimed against the WTO, and its international recognition was only briefly envisaged. It is now being institutionalized at the national and subnational levels, and may be a topic for future discussion at the Committee on World Food Security (CFS). In contrast, the Declaration on the rights of peasants was successfully put on the agenda of the UN Human Rights Council, where its future is still uncertain but where it has managed to gain the support of some states. At this stage, it can be said that the movement has managed to preserve the subversive potential of the right to food sovereignty, essentially by rejecting its institutionalization, and that the emancipatory potential of the

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rights of peasants is at risk (and will depend on the positions taken by states, on the role played by human rights translators, and on the movements’ ability to use the process as a mobilizing tool). Research in social movements studies has shown that the perception that actors have of their chances of success determines their behaviour and eagerness in struggle, which in turn influence how they seize and create political opportunities (McAdam 1982). The right to food sovereignty and peasants’ rights are radically different from that perspective. First, the recognition of new rights for peasants appears like an achievable objective, while recognizing the right to food sovereignty as a guiding principle for global governance in food and agriculture would in fact require completely reinventing both the conception of development which is at the core of the international system and the system itself. It proved to be too ambitious and failed to garner enough support within the movement (Nicholson 2012). Second, the movement managed, with the support of human rights experts, to create a window of opportunity at the HRC to push for peasants’rights. It has remained opposed to engaging with the WTO and has not resolved the issue of where to bring its demand that food sovereignty be recognized in international law, although it has advanced some dimensions of the food sovereignty paradigm at the CFS. Third, the two categories of new rights are distinct in the alliances and support they were able to generate. Tensions between civil society actors who were pushing for the right to food instead of for food sovereignty were so vivid, especially during the WFS: fyl (2002), that they prevented the possibility of any alliance between the two networks in order to push for the recognition of the right to food sovereignty.124 In sharp contrast, human rights groups such as FIAN have provided strong support for peasants’ rights. This tends to suggest that endorsement of new rights claims by human rights NGOs remains key, even if peasant movements speak in their own name, and that small human rights NGOs also act as ‘gatekeepers’ (Bob 2010b). At present, the food sovereignty movement appears to have chosen to pursue a multiple-goal strategy. While working on the recognition of new rights for peasants at the Human Rights Council, it continues to work on institutionalizing the right to food sovereignty at the regional, national and municipal levels, while advancing food sovereignty practices (from below). This inevitably leads to some tensions as to which initiatives to prioritize. Asked for his opinion on the peasants’ rights initiative, Steven, a Vía Campesina support worker based in Latin America, responds: ‘It is too long and complex. The most important now is to transfer food sovereignty into public policies at the local, regional and national levels. At different levels of government.’125 Whether this multiple-goal strategy is the result of a conscious strategic choice or the reflection of a large movement allowing its various regions and organizations to function relatively autonomously is unclear. In the history of documented social movements, multiple-goal strategies have not necessarily proven less effective than singlegoal ones: they may induce divisions among movements and struggles for scarce resources but they may also attract new members and have a more motivational potential (McAdam et al. 1996, 15).

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6

Transforming the right to food

Introduction When the food sovereignty movement emerged, the right to food already had its own network and advocates and its own dynamics. This network, led by a relatively small number of human rights experts and specialized NGOs, focused heavily on interactions with governments and UN bodies, using advocacy, campaigns and awareness raising. Its main objective was to make the right to food more operational. Like other economic, social and cultural rights (ESCR) advocates, right to food defenders were struggling to identify a ‘constituency’ for ESCR (Nelson and Dorsey 2008, 83): they were confronted with the challenge of generating sufficient public pressure to impact governments, donor country policies and international regimes (Nelson and Dorsey 2008, 180). The emergence of transnational agrarian movements in the 1990s raised new challenges for right to food defenders. First, these agrarian movements questioned the legitimacy of the NGOs who had been talking on behalf of peasants (McKeon 2009, 12). They insisted on remaining autonomous from NGOs. Lorna, a Vía Campesina support worker, recalls: ‘Objection to the right to food was strong because it felt like it was imposed from the outside … The objective of the movement was its independence from NGOs, to consolidate itself.’ Member organizations wanted ‘their project, their human rights’.1 Second, these movements recognized and made use of the right to food, but did not take it up as a collective action frame.2 The right to food did not provide them with the narrative and vision they needed. As a frame, the right to food failed to resonate. Agrarian movements rejected different aspects of the right to food. The main elements of this critique are summarized in Table 6.1. First, peasant activists rejected the emphasis on the right to food as an individual right. As discussed in Chapter 4, the right to food has been primarily conceptualized as a universal right, the implementation of which requires specific efforts to ensure that vulnerable groups (re)gain command over food (Drèze and Sen 1989, 260). Because everyone is entitled to access to enough basic goods and services to maintain a decent level of living (Stewart 1989, 348), the right to food requires, at minimum, access to social programmes, safety nets or a minimum income.3 This focus on the right to food as an individual

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Table 6.1 A peasant movement critique of the right to food Right to food

Peasant movement critique

Individual and universal right, entitlement, focus on meeting basic needs, anthropocentric model

Peoples’ right, autonomy, dignity and independence from markets, interdependency with nature, rights with responsibility

State-centric approach

Multiple-level governance, control over land and territory

Social-democratic approach, focus on vulnerable groups, compatibility test

Anti-capitalism, anti-neoliberalism and anti-imperialism

Top-down social change, objective is institutionalization and implementation of rights

Grassroots mobilization, objective is preserving the subversive potential of rights

entitlement – that should be protected by public support and promoted through public policies (Drèze and Sen 1989, 258) – was criticized by peasant movements who emphasized the rights of peoples, communities and countries/states (while recognizing the importance of individual rights within the community). The right to food was perceived as unsatisfactory for it failed to stress the importance of involving all categories of food sovereignty holders in the definition of food and agriculture policies (political/internal dimension). It also failed to emphasize the importance of preserving and reinforcing collective units for managing natural resources and for organizing economic production (economic/external dimension). Moreover, peasant activists insisted on the importance of autonomy and of being able to reject the incorporation into (globalized) supply chains in which farmers are reduced to price takers or contractors. The right to food, they argued, with its emphasis on market-based empowerment, failed to take into account the importance of dignity, and of cultural and historical grounding in a territory or place. The right to food as right to food aid, which places beneficiaries in the role of passive recipients, was seen as particularly inadequate. Finally, peasant activists emphasized the interdependency of human beings and nature, and the importance of balancing rights with responsibilities. These dimensions are almost entirely absent from the right to food approach. Second, peasant activists rejected the emphasis on state-oriented remedies and on the state as the ‘primary agent of change’ (Marks 2011, 71). The right to food approach insists on the obligations of states to respect, protect and fulfil the right to food, and on the role of the state as a regulator. It can be described as statecentric (Stammers 1995, 507). In contrast, peasant activists targeted all identified perpetrators of human rights abuses, and insisted on (re)defining food and agriculture policies at four distinct levels: the international, national, and local levels, as well as the internal organizational level (the movement’s own policies) (Vía Campesina 2008b). Many food sovereignty activists were (and continue to be) suspicious of the right to food because they see any kind of reformism as insignificant or dubious.4

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Transforming the right to food 111 Third, peasant activists perceived the right to food as insufficiently radical. Based on a social-democratic approach to human rights, the right to food has been conceptualized as being compatible with a capitalist market economy, provided that the inequalities generated by such a system are curbed through the intervention of a liberal democratic state (Stammers 1995, 488). According to international human rights law, states have a certain level of discretion to design their own fulfilment systems and to elaborate the right to food policies they deem appropriate to establish these systems as quickly as possible. What the right to food provides, thus, are criteria to monitor such policies (FIAN 2007, 6), not indications as to which model of economic or agricultural development should be pursued. For peasant movements fighting against capitalism, neoliberalism and imperialism in food and agriculture, this was hardly satisfactory. Francisco,5 an indigenous leader from the CUC, Vía Campesina in Guatemala, explains: ‘For us, the right to food is [should be] about the means of production.’6 The Secretary General of FIAN confirms: ‘The limit of human rights is that we can’t condemn capitalism. Capitalism is not a violation of human rights.’7 The fact that the right to food is often understood as nothing more than access to compensatory policies such as safety nets or social programmes8 (Künnemann 1984, 95) plays a big part in the ambivalence that peasant movements express towards the right to food. Saragih, for example, insists that ‘the implementation of rights such as the right to food is often limited to acts of charity, by which institutions seek to provide the poor with cheap food through diverse programs. These programs can only solve the most urgent cases, not the problem in itself.’9 For Indian landless movement leader Rajagopal, the right to food leads to a ‘giver–taker relationship’. The right to food can only be a ‘temporary solution’ because the real issue is ‘to redistribute resources and power, while these are being transferred to transnational corporations’. In contrast, Rajagopal argues that we should ‘avoid dependency toward the state’.10 In Haiti, the coordinator of the National Food Security Platform whom I interviewed before the earthquake, argued against social assistance policies for they ‘divert from processes of social demands’.11 In Guatemala, the ‘comedores’ (where food is distributed) are criticized by Francisco for being ‘paternalistic’ and nothing more than ‘emergency measures’ rather than the result of a well-thought-out policy.12 In Mexico, the social assistance programme Oportunidades that targets poor women is criticized for supporting consumption rather than production, and for creating an assistantialist mentality.13 Gaëtan, a member of the Belgium-based expert NGO Collectif Stratégies Alimentaires, who has long served as representative of the European Confederation for relief and development (CONCORD), summarizes: The food sovereignty concept was opposed to the right to food. Food sovereignty is the strong idea of a right to national public policies, and in this regard, the right to food was discredited. The right to food was closer to food security, it was perceived as the right to be fed … The right to food is the right not to die of hunger; food sovereignty is more dynamic. It is the right to manage one’s food and agriculture.14

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For contemporary peasant movements, the focus on accessing food failed to address the increased commodification of subsistence and peoples’ need for dignity, autonomy and to feel attached to a particular place, territory or history. These dimensions tend to be obliterated by the right to food approach, which places the emphasis on ensuring that material needs are covered and on securing a basic income.15 Finally, peasant activists generally had a different conception of social change than that of right to food defenders. Under the growing influence of rightsbased approaches to development, the right to food has become increasingly associated with a number of criteria against which development, trade, financial and agricultural policies (from the elaboration, to the implementation and monitoring phase) are to be tested. For the most part, these criteria focus on process, but substantial criteria have been defined as well.16 This emphasis on principles derived from human rights (or to ensure compatibility with human rights) was at odds with the oppositional approach adopted by peasant movements. For the Secretary General of FIAN: ‘The dividing line between the right to food and food sovereignty is between condemning, not legitimizing, and trying to impose principles, criteria. The tension appears clearly in the case of the WTO, land grabbing, agrofuels … We find a similar kind of division in the Round Table on Sustainable Soy.’17 For Lorna,18 a Vía Campesina support worker I interviewed in Jakarta, the divergence is indeed mostly of a strategic nature: ‘The analysis of Olivier [the former Special Rapporteur on the right to food] is very good, very useful, but with the recommendations, we don’t agree. For example, we don’t believe in multistakeholder dialogue.’19 Steven, another Vía Campesina support worker, adds: ‘Vía Campesina is against it [multistakeholder dialogue]. There is no middle point on moral grounds.’20 For David, IPC coordinator, peasant movements do not exclude institutional dialogue but the issue is one of legitimacy: ‘It is a question of power relations. We choose who we listen to, who we talk with, who we negotiate with. There needs to be respect and dignity.’21 While such strategic divergences can be analysed as the result of different institutional roles, they also reflect distinct beliefs in how social change happens. ‘Social movement activists are much more prone to contesting the possibility that the state or global institutions could be vectors of change, while right to food activists maintain a generally more optimistic discourse on the possibility of change through institutions’, comments Walter, from Oxfam.22 Peasant movements have also been reluctant to adopt the right to food frame because of its specialized and legal nature. Jean, a Vía Campesina support worker based in Brussels, explains: ‘The right to food, we don’t know, it is a UN thing. I don’t have an opinion. At the European level, it is not relevant … Food sovereignty, it came from the organizations themselves, and they are appropriating it.’23 Recalling efforts by FIAN and other civil society groups24 in the late 1990s to get states to adopt a Code of Conduct on the right to food, Lorna recalls: ‘The code of conduct on the right to food, they did not feel it was theirs. They will keep proposing new things until it is theirs.’25 Assessing the situation 15 years later, she adds: ‘now Vía Campesina is strong enough and

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Transforming the right to food 113 there are no more worries. There is more openness to the right to food now. Also because the work of Olivier [the former Special Rapporteur] illustrates our issues well, for example that hunger is rural.’26 In the mid-1990s and throughout the 2000s, interactions between human rights defenders and food sovereignty activists were often a source of tension, because they triggered a contest between the right to food and right to food sovereignty frames. Although tensions are less palpable, it is striking how much the right to food sovereignty vs. right to food frame contest is, to this day, about which frame is most comprehensive (or all-encompassing) and hence should be the reference frame. Dany,27 an NGO representative of the More and Better Campaign, in charge of coordinating the elaboration of a civil society-led alternative policy response to the global food crisis, explains: ‘There was a political fight between the right to food and food sovereignty, the issue really is about hierarchy. They want the right to food as part of food sovereignty. I feel that it should be the right to food as an objective, and food sovereignty as a way to get there. There are many dimensions that are not in food sovereignty, such as decent work, social security, agricultural workers, etc.’28 Referring to several hot discussions that took place about the ‘issue of hierarchy and what to use as framework’, Stan,29 a UK-based NGO representative who is a food sovereignty advocate, complains: ‘it is not boring but rather exhausting having this debate. NGOs want the right to food everywhere, FIAN less so.’ Interviewed during the parallel summit to the World Summit on Food Security in 2009, Stan adds that, when they discovered the one-page summary of the ‘Policies and actions to eradicate hunger and malnutrition working document’ (IPC 2009), NGOs complained that ‘they did not see their blessed term in the letter, it just says that the right to food is part of food sovereignty at the bottom’.30 Indeed, when I talked to right to food advocates on that day, many complained that the document gave no prominence to the right to food, and did not present the relationship between the right to food and food sovereignty in a coherent way. Many of them seemed disappointed and upset. How have human rights advocates dealt with the right to food sovereignty vs. right to food frame contest throughout the years?

Right to food sovereignty vs. right to food The emergence of transnational peasant movements in the 1990s has had a tremendous impact on how right to food defenders frame their claims and relate to the affected communities whose rights they seek to defend. To grasp these impacts, it is important to recall that the normative content of the right to food is the result of various intellectual and ideological influences. If the right to food is often presented as a coherent and stable framework, which finds its sources in a number of international instruments and interpretative documents, it is interesting, for the sake of the analysis proposed in this chapter, to see it as composed of three distinct – and at times competing – frames: the entitlement frame, the right to feed oneself frame and the rights-based development frame (see Table 6.2).

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Table 6.2 The right to food network’s various frames Entitlement frame

Right to feed oneself frame

Rights-based development frame

Key elements

The right to property, the right to work, the right to social security

The right to access land and other natural resources

The right to participate

Human rights approach

Social-democratic

Structural

Procedural

Diagnosis

Hunger is the result of lack of political will

Hunger is the result of inequalities in access to resources and of inadequate global governance structures

Hunger is the result of insufficient participation of marginal groups in political processes

Prognosis

Public action and changes in legal and sociopolitical structures; economic and social empowerment

Redistribution of resources and power

Political empowerment, citizenship and rights education

Actors

Committee on ESCR, RTF Unit of the FAO, previous and current Special Rapporteur on the right to food, FIAN

FIAN, previous and current Special Rapporteur on the right to food

Rights-based development NGOs, current Special Rapporteur on the right to food

The coexistence of these three frames has led to sustained tensions within the transnational right to food network, but, as I show below, has also enabled the network to adjust to a changing work environment by stressing one frame over the others. The most prominent frame dispute has occurred between the entitlement frame and the right to feed oneself frame, mostly within FIAN International but also within the right to food network more generally. As we saw in Chapter 4, the right to feed oneself frame was originally elaborated by FIAN in the early 1980s. As Paul, a FIAN activist who has long been attached to the international secretariat of FIAN International in Heidelberg, puts it: ‘the original philosophy of FIAN was the right to feed oneself ’.31 The perspective advanced by FIAN at the time was surprisingly close to what we know today as food sovereignty: ‘Any deviation from the people’s basic food autonomy must be limited: the people’s means of subsistence are not to be alienated and a return to food autarchy in a reasonable period is to remain possible. Any policies undermining that possibility are contrary to human rights’ (Künnemann 1984, 95). FIAN International deployed the right to feed oneself frame in its work on cases of violations of the right to food, to draw the attention of the international community to the link

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Transforming the right to food 115 between exclusion from/loss of access to natural resources and right to food violations. FIAN activists felt that it was crucial for the right to food not to be ‘confused with the right to be fed’,32 recalls the former Secretary General of FIAN. As a result, they put the emphasis on concrete situations (most often of evictions and displacement) and ‘country experiences’ as a way to ‘make it more about resources and not only about assistance’,33 according to the current Secretary General Flavio Valente. Yet, the right to feed oneself frame, with its emphasis on structural issues and agrarian dimensions, entered in conflict very early on with the entitlement frame, also deployed by FIAN activists but anchored in a social-democratic approach to human rights. In their efforts to defend the right to food of peasant communities, FIAN activists had to identify ‘violations’ of international human rights law and failures of the state to meet its human rights obligations. In practice, this meant that the right of peoples to feed themselves could only be defended to a limited extent in FIAN’s view: ‘Individuals and groups may be deprived of their traditional ways of securing the right to food for themselves only if their right to food is secured in another way. The obligation for such a long-term assurance rests with the entity which deprives those individuals and groups of their traditional way of realizing the right to food’ (Künnemann 1984, 95). In other words, if the state had any kind of social programme or safety net in place, there was no human rights argument34 that could be advanced to defend peasant communities faced with imminent displacement, as a result of mining, dams or other development projects, or on the edge of bankruptcy following trade liberalization. Today, with growing recognition of the justiciability of the right to food across the world, and successful court cases in countries like India (Mander 2012), the right to food is increasingly interpreted as implying that the state has the obligation to deliver food in kind or implement school meal or social security programmes, giving more weight to the entitlement frame. In parallel, the arrival of new actors in the right to food field, in particular development NGOs using a right-based approach, has led to a renewed emphasis on empowerment and participation (at the core of the rights-based development frame). Some FIAN activists see this as a welcome development, for it leads to a more comprehensive understanding of the right to food. The former Secretary General of FIAN suggests: ‘We have advocated for this interpretation of the right to food [as the right to feed oneself] so much that it has been difficult to get cash transfers in. Now we are moving back to right to food language [instead of right to feed oneself]’.35 A stronger focus on the right to social protection as a key component of the right to food also allows human rights defenders to work on the realization of the right to food in the North, where hunger and malnutrition are less immediately connected to the rural world. Other human rights defenders, in particular those who wish to deploy the right to food frame to defend ‘land rights’, are concerned that emphasizing the access- and consumer-related dimensions of the right to food will considerably reduce its subversive potential, for it gives less importance to the structural implications of this right.36

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A legitimacy and representation crisis The emergence of transnational peasant movements in the 1990s profoundly transformed the relationship between right to food defenders and the ‘victims’ of violations they were defending and supporting. The formerly ‘bilateral’ relationship between human rights defenders and ‘affected communities’ turned into an – at least symbolically – ‘triangular’ one, as peasants developed strong organizations across the planet to defend their interests and advance their worldviews. The eruption of peasant social movements and the rapid success of their right to food sovereignty frame confronted right to food advocates with representation and legitimacy challenges. Talking with right to food advocates about the right to food sovereignty vs. right to food (here understood as the combination of all the various right to food frames explored above) frame contest is no easy task. Discussions tend to be passionate and intellectually stimulating, but a lot of frustrations are expressed. Many right to food defenders are disappointed that their frame never resonated with peasant movements. The former Secretary General of FIAN, for example, regrets: ‘We put efforts into trying to get Vía Campesina to work on the right to food and the right to feed oneself and with the UN. But they went into the direction of food sovereignty.’37 Considering the many similarities between the right to feed oneself and the right to food sovereignty frames (beyond the obvious difference that the former is much more focused on the individual rights-holder while the latter includes a variety of collective rights-holders), it is not hard to imagine the perplexity that the lack of resonance of the right to feed oneself frame generated. Right to food defenders have different perceptions as to why the right to food failed to appeal to peasant organizations. For the current Secretary General of FIAN: ‘They [peasant movements] don’t like the right to food, there is a bourgeois perception of rights. … It [the right to food] is not their own. And they don’t understand that food sovereignty does not guarantee rights. They feel that it will solve it all.’38 For the former Secretary General of FIAN: ‘Peasant groups have several problems with the right to food. The individual is the starting point. … They are suspicious of the UN. “HR is not in good hands in the UN” is the perception of Vía Campesina. They want their own definition of rights. They identify human rights with human rights law which is in the hands of government. Why should rights be defined by governments or the UN?’39 For Paul, a FIAN activist who has worked extensively in Central America: ‘Food sovereignty achieved an important success because it highlights the right to produce. It talks about the self-determination of peoples over any food system. It belongs to, and proposes an alternative model. … The right to food has no such ideological dimension. It has no vision for an alternative society. It is a strength and a weakness. It is not a source of inspiration.’40 Frank, one of the former advisers to the former UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, says he understands the perspective of peasant movements: Why would they use the right to food? It is too vague. The only thing we bring is the protection mechanisms: the Special Rapporteur, the Human

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Rights Council, the parallel reports to the Committee on ESCR. … If I look at country missions, and our recommendations, we have had an impact on the distribution of food programs, for example in India, but not on structural problems. For example, I have found no law on food security that includes the land dimension. The right to food instrument has not proved its efficacy; it is hard to convince them.41 The right to food sovereignty vs. right to food frame contest did not only confront right to food advocates with an alternative conception of rights. It also led some of them to question the right to food emphasis on state-focused strategies and institutional dialogue. Paul, who has been involved in trade and human rights discussions at the EU level through CIFCA, a network created in 1991 to assess and influence EU policies in Central America, explains: ‘The human rights movement has not achieved anything. On association agreements, we gained access to political spaces but we were not seriously taken into account. We achieved them giving us the impression that they were listening to us.’42 If expressions of scepticism emerge from time to time, most right to food defenders remain firm believers in the virtues of institutional dialogue. For example, addressing peasant movements in the framework of the upcoming negotiations of Voluntary Guidelines on the governance of tenure of land, fisheries and forests at the CFS, the former Special Rapporteur insisted: ‘It is your duty to participate, otherwise the process [of drafting and negotiating VG on land tenure] will develop without you and your perspective and will be ill-informed.’43 While most right to food defenders see value in a division of labour between NGOs and social movements, each deploying distinct strategies and repertoires of action (mainly advocacy/research for NGOs and protest/direct action for social movements), a growing number of them insist that it is crucial that the voice of peasant groups be heard in institutional settings. They would also share Paul’s conviction that their responsibility is to ‘open spaces for social and peasant movements’. For Paul, this opening up of institutional spaces is: ‘a fundamental part of the strategic alliance between the two. … We have access to more spaces and they appreciate the access we give them and for us it is important.’44 According to him, the fact that the former Special Rapporteur on the right to food ‘uses his mandate to open spaces for social movements’ and ‘confronts structures but with his own words … even if he does not use the anti-capitalist discourse’, helps explain why the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC) has ‘supported Olivier’s [the former Special Rapporteur’s] positions, despite the diversity of groups and positions’.45 Legitimacy from above, legitimacy from below Not all right to food defenders reacted the same way to the lack of resonance of their reference frame, and to the attacks on their legitimacy. Some felt that their legitimacy was tied to their ability to refer to existing texts, and codified international norms. They saw themselves as guardians of the organization’s tradition, very much in the same way as some Amnesty International (AI)

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activists rejected economic, social and cultural rights (ESCR), on the grounds that ESCR were too controversial, would dilute AI’s public image and overstretch the organization’s resources, capacities and expertise (Chong 2010). Others, in turn, felt that their legitimacy derived from their ability to include peasant voices, and support peasant struggles.46 As a result, attitudes towards the right to food sovereignty ranged from attacking and identifying gaps in the ‘adversary’s frame’ to trying to absorb, dismiss or influence it. One of the tactics that I would characterize as inspired by textualist considerations consisted in highlighting the advantages of the right to food and the weaknesses of food sovereignty. Valeria, a FIAN activist, argues: ‘The right to food applies to all. Food sovereignty has a globalizing aspiration but there is a focus on producers, [although] Paul Nicholson always insists that it is not a sectarian demand.’47 Another method consisted in insisting on a coherent use of the human rights framework and on having the right to food figure prominently, for example when drafting a joint civil society statement. Recalling her participation to the 2007 Nyéléni Food Sovereignty Forum, Valentine from FIAN explains the challenge of finding herself in a minority position: ‘Not easy to influence the Nyéléni Declaration!’48 Right to food defenders attached to textualist frames usually shared the fear that the proliferation of new rights claimed by peasant movements would compromise the strength of the human rights framework. For the Secretary General of FIAN: ‘They try to say that everything is food sovereignty. It dilutes the right to food when they put it under the banner of food sovereignty.’49 Others expressed that they could not understand the ‘obsession’ with working with peasant organizations. Rather, they argued, alliances should be built with other groups, in particular other human rights organizations. Says Fiona,50 from Rights and Democracy: ‘Right to food people are stuck in Rome [at the FAO] and trying to get approved by the food sovereignty movement. While at the ESCR-net conference, there were no right to food people. There were many rights represented, and a big rights movement but the right to food is not in the gang.’51 Right to food defenders more inclined towards inclusive frames, in contrast, felt disposed to reinforce their collaboration with food sovereignty groups because of the added legitimacy it could bring them. Flavio Valente argues: ‘When we issue joint messages [with Vía Campesina], when we speak with them, it legitimizes us. It is a very strong combination.’52 Paul, in turn, explains: ‘we felt very honored when Vía Campesina decided to work with us’.53 An Indian FIAN activist adds a more pragmatic explanation: ‘Enforcement [of human rights] is always a problem. We need people’s movements to make things move.’54 In the midst of the global food crisis, when taking part in the parallel forum to the WSFS in Rome in November 2009, I was able to witness a recent example of how right to food defenders with divergent reference frames approach the right to food sovereignty vs. right to food frame contest in different ways. On the night of 15 November 2009, right to food defenders held a ‘right to food crisis management meeting’ to deal with the fact that the civil society alternative document to the Comprehensive Framework for Action did not adequately integrate the right to

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Transforming the right to food 119 food. While some activists (whom I would identify as textualist) said they would only be satisfied with an entire restructuring of the document, a number of (inclusive) activists showed signs of fatigue and expressed that they wanted to put their efforts into a different kind of interaction with peasant organizations. Valeria said she was ‘depressed’ to see that the right to food group was ‘angry with the policy document’. In contrast, she said, she was happy that peasant organizations had ‘invited new constituencies and realized that they can’t solve everything’. ‘Why do we always have to force them to include the right to food?’55 she added. Fiona, from Rights and Democracy, echoed: ‘I am tired of trying to get them [the food sovereignty group] to include the right to food in their documents.’56 If the peak of the right to food sovereignty vs. right to food frame contest can be situated between 1997 (when right to food defenders drafted the Code of Conduct on the right to food and sought endorsements for it) and 2002 (WFS: fyl, when food sovereignty became the dominant frame at the parallel civil society summit), this recent incident shows that tensions between right to food and food sovereignty activists persisted for many years afterwards. Over recent years, however, a compromise language57 appears to have been found and both groups appear to favour a respectful and non-aggressive approach. The former Secretary General of FIAN explains: ‘The consensus here is to deal with food sovereignty as a strange cousin, in a constructive way. … It is not fundamentally different.’58 The current Secretary General of FIAN summarizes: ‘We don’t oppose food sovereignty. We try to promote the complementarity of both. We mention it but it has no bearing on institutions. Food sovereignty is the struggle of the people.’59 He adds: ‘But they use it [the right to food] in an opportunistic way. They understand they should not oppose the right to food. I understand their perspective, they have a much broader struggle.’60 Paul explains: ‘the point of view of FIAN, in order to convince, is to say that there is no contradiction.’61 According to him, the publication of Food Sovereignty: Towards Democracy in Localized Food Systems by two right to food defenders (Windfuhr and Jonsén 2005) contributed significantly to the establishment of more peaceful relations. ‘The document … is a document of reconciliation. It sent a message to the outside world that it is compatible.’62 Addressing social movements at the parallel forum to the World Summit on Food Security in Rome in November 2009, the Special Rapporteur on the right to food endorsed the idea that the two frames are compatible and mutually supportive: ‘We should explore the link between the right to food and food sovereignty, they present many similarities. … The right to food brings democratization. The effect of human rights impact assessments and right to food strategies will be food sovereignty.’63

Adjusting to an alternative conception of rights and social change: the evolving content of the right to food Right to food defenders have different perceptions of the extent to which the right to food has been influenced (or should be influenced) by the emergence of

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transnational agrarian movements and their formulation of rights-based claims. For textualist activists, the strength of the right to food resides first and foremost in the internationally agreed and relatively rigid human rights framework. This framework should be respected and preserved, as the former Secretary General of FIAN argues, while showing signs of impatience and frustration: ‘I don’t agree that the right to food has been influenced by food sovereignty, the right to feed oneself was there long before … I would interpret food sovereignty in a way that is consistent with the right to food. I guess that, yes, it would change the right to food? … But I feel that Vía Campesina should be based on human rights. It would be a mistake if they don’t. I would tell them that.’64 For this right to food thinker, it is important to ‘deal with food sovereignty in the context of the Covenant [the ICESCR]’. A number of ways could be explored to ‘include the right to food sovereignty in the right to food’, such as reinforcing the ‘right to political participation’, reinforcing emphasis on article 1 on the right to selfdetermination, and better exploit reference in article 11 to land and productive resources, in order to make the right to an adequate standard of living ‘not about income but about assets, at the level of communities’.65 For inclusive activists, the right to food framework would be reinforced if it managed to better reflect peasant movement demands. These activists, such as Paul, interpret the emergence of peasant movements as a useful reminder: ‘food sovereignty exerts a pressure on us, so that we don’t lose sight of the reality of the struggles. The right to food stresses el suffrimiento [the suffering].’66 Such activists appear more inclined to recognize the influence of food sovereignty on the right to food. Paul, for example, shares his perception that ‘the right to food is evolving towards a leftist concept’.67 Valeria explains: ‘On trade, food sovereignty has had a lot of influence on us. No one in the right to food community has said “agriculture out of the WTO”. We talk human rights impact assessments, which is very different. But we are silent on certain things, such as we need trade, on which everyone would however agree. And we heard no criticism [from peasant movements] that impact assessments legitimize [free trade agreements].’68 Even the most inclusive right to food advocates, however, feel somewhat constrained by the right to food framework (they are, in part, textualist) and it is fair to say that most of them would concur on the need to ensure that their discourse remains within the limits set by the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). This confronts them with tensions that are sometimes difficult to solve, as Valentine, a French lawyer who has worked for many years at the international secretariat of FIAN, expresses very well, when I ask her if she thinks that food sovereignty has influenced the right to food: ‘Yes and no. No because I continue to work with the normative content provided by General Comment 12, which derives from FIAN’s Code of Conduct, which had involved a lot of consulted actors. It is not advisable to change this definition. Moreover, it is wide enough. And then we have applications to concrete cases, we are going to have cases in relation to the Optional Protocol, and national legislations. Yes because we are going to reach a right to land. There was a lot of resistance before about a right to land. Now it

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Transforming the right to food 121 has changed, thanks to the reports of Miloon [Kothari, the former UN Special Rapporteur on the right to housing].’69 Frank, a Swiss lawyer who worked for many years with Jean Ziegler, the former UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, also spells out the constraints of the right to food framework very clearly: ‘What can the right to food take from food sovereignty? We could compare with the right to water. The right to water does not prohibit privatizations. The right to food is the same. There is no political dimension. It is hard to say that states have to produce organic. You can say that the right to food is against GMOs or free trade but you must prove it. It is ok if people reject them. It is ok if there are intellectual property rights and indebted peasants [talking about GMOs].’70 The content of the right to food evolved considerably as a result of the food sovereignty vs. right to food frame contest. To a large extent, it was the flexibility and multi-dimensionality of the right to food framework that made it possible for human rights experts to respond to and incorporate the critique that had been formulated by peasant movements. Inclusive right to food advocates have played the strongest role in the recent evolution of the right to food. Because they felt that the legitimacy of their work derived from its potential contribution to the global struggle led by peasants, these human rights defenders have tried to be more responsive to peasant claims, in their conceptualization of the right to food but also in their strategies. They have initiated a shift from (often paternalistic) expressions of solidarity towards affected communities to granting more direct support to peasant organizations so as to facilitate their access to international arenas or UN bodies. They have also reinforced a number of dimensions of the right to food, such as: the importance of moving towards sustainable and prosmallholder agricultural development models; the contribution of relocalized food systems to the realization of the right to food; and the importance of formally recognizing the right to land as a new human right. In addition, they have lent their support to Vía Campesina in its efforts to achieve the recognition of new rights for peasants at the UN. Pro-smallholder development models The emphasis on reinforcing everyone’s ability to produce their own food – associated with the right to feed oneself frame – did not originally come with explicitly recommending a particular type of production system. Yet, over recent years, right to food defenders have been more vocal in rejecting industrial agriculture and in demanding alternative food systems that respect and protect nature, and respond to the particular needs of smallholder farmers. During the global food crisis, for example, FIAN recommended to High Level Task Force members that they ‘support the transition from an agriculture that heavily depends on fossil energy and chemical inputs, to an agriculture based on agro-ecology and improved local knowledge’ (FIAN International 2008, 5).71 Valentine explains: ‘We use IAASTD [International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development] a lot. We are not partisans but empirically we see that some models are more conducive

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to right to food violations than others.’72 FIAN went as far as to conclude that ‘the right to adequate food conceptual framework should be revised’, in order to ‘incorporate the dimension of sustainable agroecological food systems’ (Bellows et al. 2011, 88). Similar kinds of policy recommendations were made by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, who expressed his belief in the potential of agro-ecological (De Schutter 2011b) and/or peasant farming73 practices, and called for ‘affirmative action to support small-scale farming’.74 Relocalized food systems When it comes to advocating for relocalized food systems, the evolution of the right to food is also clearly perceptible. The former Special Rapporteur has defended the idea that international trade in agriculture should have only a ‘subsidiary role’, pointing to the fact that international trade creates vulnerabilities, has detrimental social and environmental impacts, and accentuates the dualization of the agricultural sector.75 ‘The mistake was to include agriculture in the WTO’,76 he adds.77 FIAN has recently considered ‘the inclusion of the concept of food sovereignty’ in the right to food, for it ‘could create conditions for the local populations to participate in the political discussions’ that affect them (Bellows et al. 2011, 90). The influence of peasant movements on this issue is clear. For Valeria: ‘We need to have a real debate on the industrial mode of development. Do we want all societies to follow the Western model of industrialization? All this comes from the dialogue with them.’78 If the idea of including food sovereignty as a ‘prerequisite and enabling condition for and integral part of the promotion and protection of the right to adequate food and nutrition at local, national and international level’ (Bellows et al. 2011, 88) is an attractive idea for most right to food defenders, their attachment to the entitlement frame represents a considerable obstacle to them openly advocating for relocalized food systems. Many point to the need to find a logical and defendable justification. Valentine, for example, explains: ‘We make, I make, the link between the quality of food and localization [to build on the adequacy dimension of the right to food]. From the point of view of the conservation of vitamins. … Certain things require a societal debate. For example, localization. Other things could become part of the right to food.’79 Generally, right to food advocates feel more comfortable defending the ‘primacy’ of human rights obligations over trade obligations (Ziegler 2002) or ‘the right [of countries] to structure their agricultural policies in such a way that the human right to food is not violated’ (Windfuhr 2003), than relocalization itself. Even when they do advocate openly for relocalized food systems, most right to food defenders still feel that they cannot reasonably exclude other approaches/business models that can potentially improve the economic well-being of producers, such as contract farming or supplying international markets. Should they encourage the integration of small peasants in global supply chains so as to allow developing countries to benefit from foreign investments and in so doing help farmers get a higher income? Should large-scale plantations coexist with small peasant farms

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Transforming the right to food 123 or should they be dismantled and all land redistributed? Should the conversion of agricultural workers into smallholder farmers be encouraged? Which sector will fuel development at the local, national or regional level, industry or agriculture? While these questions are debated by food sovereignty activists as well, Vía Campesina’s oppositional stance (against trade liberalization) and strategy (against the WTO and against TNCs) probably make it easier for food sovereignty activists to adopt less complex public messages (against contract farming, against the diversion of land for agrofuels, against corporate investment in agriculture). Right to food defenders, in contrast, feel that they have to assess, based on compliance with human rights criteria, whether policies or programmes will increase the material welfare of the most vulnerable, an evaluation they usually conduct without integrating non-material aspects such as dignity or autonomy (as we saw earlier). The right to land Over recent years, a growing number of right to food defenders have argued that ‘land rights should be placed at the center of the right to food’.80 Following intense internal discussions, FIAN International has called for the formal recognition of a right to land (FIAN 2009), which the organization defends as a necessary response to land grabbing.81 For FIAN, the explicit recognition of a right to land would enable questioning the legal doctrines inherited from the colonial era (which grant states the almost absolute power to dispose of the soil and do not effectively protect informal or customary land rights), and questioning political reforms to promote the privatization and commodification of the land such as titling programmes. The new right to land is not framed as a right to property and it does not refer to rights to buy or sell land, nor it is a right to make profit with land; it is limited to its use for communities and individuals feeding themselves and nurturing their cultures; it does not provide a right to far away land, because the lands meant under the right to land are local. The organization has defined the new right to land as the ‘right of every human being to access – individually or in community – local natural resources in order to feed themselves sustainably, to house themselves and to live their culture’ (Künnemann and Monsalve Suárez 2013, 132). In their attempts to better conceptualize the link between land rights and the right to food, right to food defenders have had to carefully position themselves in an increasingly polarized debate on ways to protect land users. Pointing to a ‘fundamental opposition between two concepts of security of tenure’ – ‘one oriented toward promoting land marketability through titling, and the other oriented toward broadening the entitlements of the relevant groups’ – the former Special Rapporteur on the right to food has encouraged the formal legal recognition of existing customary rights, including collective rights, as an alternative to individual titling, while highlighting the risk that traditional, patriarchal forms of land distribution would be further legitimized through the recognition of customary forms of tenure, in violation of women’s rights (De

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Schutter 2010c, 11). How strong has the influence of peasant movements been on these discussions? For Paul, ‘to say that agrarian reform is a state obligation is not consensual, for example the Committee on ESCR does not defend that interpretation, but it is the point of view of FIAN and this trend is growing. It is important for peasant organizations.’82 For Valeria: ‘the Right to Food Unit of the FAO83 says the right to food does not require a particular production model. For FIAN, that is impossible. For reasons we can justify but also because of the influence of peasant movements, one needs land. So we interpret “reforming agrarian systems”84 in the International Covenant as meaning agrarian reform whilst god knows what it meant originally.’85 Valeria even argues that: ‘the right to land itself could be the result of the interaction and mutual influence between the right to food network and the food sovereignty movement’.86 Over recent years, the idea of a new ‘human right to land’ has indeed made notable progress. In its report to the Human Rights Council in 2007, the former Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, Miloon Kothari, recommended that the Council recognize the right to land in international human rights law.87 The former Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter, in his report presented to the General Assembly in October 2010, recommended that international human rights bodies consolidate the right to land (De Schutter 2010c, para. 43(d)). He also called on states to implement land redistribution programmes wherever there is a high degree of land ownership concentration (De Schutter 2010c, para. 42(c)). If the struggle for agrarian reform has provided an opportunity for joint campaign work for FIAN and Vía Campesina activists since 1997, it is interesting to note that the formal recognition of a right to land in international human rights law has not been a priority objective for peasants’ movements. In order to defend access to land and control over territories, Vía Campesina has mostly sought to mobilize collective action repertoires that strengthen its ability to act as a social movement (Rosset and Martinez 2005, 22) rather than use institutional repertoires.88 The Global Campaign for Agrarian Reform, for example, has not engaged with many institutions beyond some individuals and departments within the FAO and IFAD (Borras 2008c). Peasants’ rights are human rights Although right to food defenders were originally reluctant to refer to food sovereignty and were certainly opposed to promoting this new right at the international level, they have been strong supporters of the proposed Declaration on the Rights of Peasants. FIAN and the two former UN Special Rapporteurs on the right to food have been key allies of Vía Campesina in its efforts to get new rights for peasants institutionalized at the UN. The peasants’ rights frame has provided an opportunity for joint work by right to food defenders and food sovereignty activists at the UN. For some right to food defenders, peasants’ rights represent some kind of compromise with the human rights community. Their institutionalization is certainly the result of a dialogue between peasant

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Transforming the right to food 125 organizations and human rights groups. The Secretary General of FIAN explains: ‘I think the way to operationalize food sovereignty is peasants’ rights. It is a correct perspective. And it does link to the right to food.’89 The same idea is expressed by Fiona, a human rights defender whose organization has long funded Vía Campesina’s human rights work: ‘Peasants’ rights is food sovereignty applied to human rights, or a leftist version of human rights.’90 Asked about this, the Secretary General of Vía Campesina recognizes that the decision was made, jointly with human rights allies, to strategically use the right to food as an entry point for peasants’ rights: The right to food, it became clear to me in 2003. I was pushing for peasants’ rights and Michael Windfuhr [from FIAN] tells me why not use the right to food, why not a new instrument. At the time FIAN was campaigning for right to food in FAO. I tell him ‘we need rights for people in the village’. Michael makes the link between right to food and right to produce, in a press release in 2003, we wrote it together. Jean Ziegler [the former UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food] talked with us and integrated our issues in their strategy. Many talks with FIAN also. We try not to be antagonistic and to make a link. We decide with Malik [from CETIM] and Golay [from Ziegler’s team] to use the right to food as a door for peasants’ rights.91 In his book on the international struggle for new human rights, Bob notes the important role played by small human rights organizations in the creation of new rights, in collaboration with aggrieved groups. Indeed, he contends, big human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch often block the adoption of new rights claims (Bob 2010b). In my view, the trajectory of peasants’ rights shows that small human rights organizations can also act as gatekeepers. The strong emphasis on access to resources (a key aspect of the right to feed oneself) in the proposed Declaration probably explains support from right to food defenders. At the same time, their lack of endorsement of the ‘right to food sovereignty’ is a useful reminder that support is in no way automatic. From solidarity to universality Reactions by textualist right to food defenders to the emergence of transnational peasant movements have also shaped the content of the right to food in recent years. Convinced that the legitimacy of human rights derives primarily from their codification, some right to food defenders have insisted on using ‘already agreed’ language and on referring to commitments made by states under international human rights law, in order to defend the solidity and rigidity of the right to food framework. To downplay the resonance of the right to food sovereignty frame, they have highlighted the added value of the ‘legal’ (right to food) over the ‘political’ (food sovereignty) (Windfuhr and Jonsén 2005,

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13, 15). They have sought to reinforce the relevance of the right to food frame, primarily by insisting on and reinforcing its universality. Interestingly, this has led FIAN to formally abandon the right to feed oneself as its slogan, in favour of the (more universal) right to food. The former Secretary General of FIAN explains: ‘You cannot replace the right to food by the right to feed oneself … Vía Campesina uses the point of view of producers … but they do not see themselves as having to solve this … the right to feed oneself was dropped from FIAN’s vision and documents’.92 Originally structured to function in the same way as Amnesty International, FIAN International had initially prevented its members from looking at the realization of the right to food in their own countries. This early FIAN member recalls: ‘I was involved in setting up a FIAN US group at the beginning. I was very frustrated because of the German hegemony and control over the rest of the organization and because we were prohibited to work on hunger in the US. FIAN was inspired from Amnesty and for security reasons they had a ban on working in one’s own country.’93 This institutional set-up was combined with a paternalist vision of the organization’s work, which focused on providing Southern communities with international and legal support and Northern support groups (or members) with channels through which they could express their solidarity. Over recent years, FIAN has encouraged its Northern sections to take up right to food cases in their own countries too, and to open up to the nonagrarian dimensions of food insecurity. It has also turned to ‘new’ constituencies in the South such as the urban poor and to ‘new’ issues such as nutrition, in an effort to better address obesity and food-related health problems.94 This shift in positioning has meant moving away from a strong focus on evictions. It has also meant endorsing a different type of strategy, as the current Secretary General explains: ‘Now we push for a broader understanding of the right to food, through public policies, through the inclusion of the situation of the urban poor. We have been working a lot with evictions. It has influenced the focus on food production and on resources. But access to resources is not a guarantee. We have to enter public policies, markets, urban sector, nutrition, because movements are not working on this. We need to link evictions to other issues and work on other issues even if we have to go after cases. This will require capacity building so that people can by themselves bring us cases.’95 Participation, in and out The emergence of transnational agrarian movements in the 1990s has also led to a profound shift in the methods of work of right to food defenders. It has contributed to the adoption of more participatory approaches, both in the way human rights and development networks are organized (the internal aspect), and in their advocacy and policy positions (the external aspect). Human rights groups and development organizations increasingly see participation as key to ‘making rights real’ (Veneklasen et al. 2004, 16). Internally, participation has been explored as a way to gain buy-in and achieve

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Transforming the right to food 127 more efficient programmes, to increase the organization’s legitimacy and to strengthen it by reinforcing grassroots leadership (Veneklasen et al. 2004, 13– 14). FIAN, the international network for the right to food, is a case in point. Under the leadership of its Secretary General from Brazil, Flavio Valente, it has sought ways, over recent years, to develop more horizontal decision-making structures, and, to revise its statutes to give more control and autonomy to each of its sections. A considerable part of this work has consisted in decentralizing the documentation and follow-up of cases of violations, as a way to reinforce follow-up and accountability to victims, but also internal participation. Until recently, FIAN’s predominant strategy for gathering information about human rights violations relied on short-term fact-finding missions, a strategy deployed by most traditional international human rights groups.96 Efforts to actively include Southern partners and community members in the documentation of cases are likely to require focusing more on ways to help people analyse local problems and develop solutions, and less on disseminating information about laws and legal procedures. Yet better linking rights and participation represents a considerable challenge,97 and is likely to require a methodological shift. Paul, a FIAN activist, explains: One of the weaknesses of the right to food is that our work depends on the self-organization of people, and 95 per cent of the people are not organized. It is a total dilemma. For example our work in Latin America and Asia is far more important than in Africa. What happens to those who are not organized? It is a real question. The response is to reinforce capacities. For example non-organized women fighting for the land don’t appear in our work. There is a gap in the defence of human rights. Food sovereignty does not reach those people either.98 Actively supporting communities in identifying the violations of human rights that are affecting them and in looking for solutions, takes human rights organizations away from their core business (to respond to and denounce human rights abuses) and brings them closer to the territory of development work (to inform people about their rights and help them claim them), for which they are at present ill-equipped. Externally, participation of marginalized groups has been encouraged as a way to ensure policies and programmes meet people’s needs, and to foster more inclusive and democratic decision-making (Veneklasen et al. 2004, 13–14). Over the last decade, right to food experts have increasingly insisted on the importance of the various dimensions of participation in their work. This is manifest in the growing focus on the procedural aspects of the right to food, as recent proposals to conduct human rights impact assessments of trade and investment agreements (De Schutter 2011c) or of specific investment projects, such as acquisitions and leases of land (De Schutter 2009c) illustrate. The objective of such assessments is to increase ‘democratic control’ and reinforce the ‘accountability of government’ to the people.99 How is participation envisaged in such processes? Participation is

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generally conceptualized by right to food advocates as to be channelled through existing political or institutional processes, such as parliamentary debates or consultations organized by the government. For one human rights expert at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), for example, impact assessments are about ‘channeling controversy’.100 However, if most right to food defenders believe in the importance of what McAdam et al. (1996, 13) have called the ‘proper channels’, they also express scepticism, at times, about the effectiveness of such an approach in addressing issues of power. Comments made by participants of the consultation convened by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food on Human Rights Impact Assessments of Trade and Investment Agreements are interesting in that regard: ‘Should we not put our energy in resisting and putting out alternative options?’101 ‘Is pressure from outside more effective than pressure from inside and how to combine both?’102 The former UN Special Rapporteur on the right to housing responds: ‘We have this assumption that states are sincere. We are politically naïve!’ And, clearly illustrating the internal tensions many human rights defenders are confronted with, he concludes: ‘As an activist, I think this will not result in anything positive. As a technical person, I want it to work’.103 These exchanges show that, if right to food defenders increasingly emphasize participation, their views on institutional engagement remain at odds with those of food sovereignty activists.104 While peasant movements have taken a ‘no to participation’ stance on issues such as trade agreements and agribusiness corporations, choosing subversion over participation, human rights defenders have maintained a firm conviction in the virtues of participation, often at the expense, as one of them highlighted, of adequately accounting for the dangers of and obstacles to participation.105

Conclusion The right to food has gained in legitimacy and visibility in the last decade. It is increasingly implemented at national level, where framework laws are passed and where successful court cases have long-term tangible impacts, such as in India. It is also a growing reference in global governance debates, as policy discussions at the reformed Committee on Food Sovereignty indicate (CFS 2012). The right to food sovereignty vs. right to food frame contest has reactivated a number of framing disputes internal to the right to food network. As I explored above, this contest has led to an expansion of the right to food frame in two main directions: down, in an effort to include rights-based claims made by peasant organizations and increase legitimacy from below; and up, to reinforce the universality of the right to food, revive its legal foundations and increase its legitimacy from above. With its emphasis on the right to land, peasants’ rights and sustainable, relocalized, agro-ecological rights-based food systems on one hand, and its emphasis on urban constituencies and nutrition on the other, the right to food frame today is caught between a structural approach and a social-democratic approach

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Transforming the right to food 129 to human rights. While the former insists on making sure that producers receive a fair price for their crops and agricultural workers a decent wage, the latter places the emphasis on ensuring that all consumers have access to decently priced nutritious foods.106 While the former insists on redistribution and social struggles, the latter insists on poverty reduction and public action. While the former is more emancipatory and more egalitarian, the latter is more assistantialist but also more universal. At the heart of this tension is the following question: should the final goal of rights-based development be poverty reduction – including through growth – or the reduction of inequalities? If some human rights thinkers argue that ‘approaches to development or trade which cause, ignore or tolerate inequality’ do not meet human rights (Moon 2008, 9), equality has not been a strong focus of the right to food frame, which has emphasized access to food for all (and vulnerable groups in particular) as a matter of priority. The violations approach, the use of which is widespread in the right to food network, has rendered this issue even more difficult to tackle. Olivier De Schutter wonders: ‘If inequality increases but the welfare of all increases, is it a human rights violation?’107 This issue is fundamental because it touches on the delicate question of whether human rights should, or not, dictate a particular model of economic development and of political organization. While a number of policy recommendations have been made in the name of the right to food which link it to a certain type of economic model, these attempts to explore the policy implications of the right to food represent a serious threat to the legitimacy of the human rights framework, which opponents are quick to point out. The Secretary General of the WTO, Pascal Lamy, for example, has contested the value of a rights-based approach to trade issues: ‘the real question is which agricultural market system we want. Localized? Regionalized? Globalized? But where there is a legal problem, I don’t see.’108 To prevent such attacks, right to food advocates have to continually reassert that ‘a human rights approach does not favor liberalization or protectionism’ and that the only thing that ‘human rights do require is accountability of governments’, in the form of ‘more transparency through the use of impact assessments, indicators to evaluate commitments, and flexibilities allowing countries to react to situations that may affect human rights as they occur’ (3DThree 2008). Such an approach runs the risk of eliminating potential tensions between trade, development and the realization of human rights.109 Indeed, it allows reducing a rights-based approach to meaning that ‘whatever the policy choice, measures must be taken to ensure that those who lose out have access to reliable, alternative sources of support’ (Cotula et al. 2008). How to ensure that marketbased empowerment110 is indeed empowering is a central issue that the right to food frame will need to address in the coming years. In other terms, one of the main challenges facing the right to food network is one that is inherent to the liberal project itself: to find the appropriate balance between ‘freedom’ and ‘equality’ (Charvet andt Kaczynska-Nay 2008, 355). It is thus no coincidence if, to use Valeria’s words, the ‘need to conceptualize the articulation between

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individual and collective rights’111 appears as one legacy of the emergence of transnational peasant movements in the 1990s. For, more than anything, what the creative tension between the right to food and the right to food sovereignty indicates is the powerful and ongoing search for another balance point on the spectrum between ‘individuality affirming freedom’ (as embodied by the right to food) and ‘community affirming equality’ (as embodied by the right to food sovereignty), where neither can be abandoned or wholly subordinated to the other.

Appendix I

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Interviews

Akram Lodhi, Haroon, Trent University (Canada), Zacatecas, Mexico, 17 August 2009 Anderson, Fergal, European Coordination Vía Campesina (ECVC) staff, Brussels, Belgium, 2 June 2009 Anunciación, Roy, People’s Coalition for Food Sovereignty, Rome, Italy, 18 October 2011 Balcazar, Norma, Diálogo y Asesoría en Agricultura Sostenible y Soberanía Alimentaria (PIDAASSA), Mexico City, Mexico, 9 September 2008 Barrientos, Carlos, CUC, Vía Campesina, Guatemala City, Guatemala, 2 September 2009 Beas Torres, Carlos, Unión de Comunidades Indígenas de la Zona Norte del Istmo (UCIZONI), Oaxaca, Mexico, 19 September 2008 Beghin, Nathalie, Oxfam International (Brazil), telephone interview, 16 December 2009; Rome, Italy, 15 November 2009 Bonhommeau, Paul, Confédération paysanne, Vía Campesina, Paris, France, 6 January 2009 Buisson, Michel, Agro-economist, Brussels, Belgium, 24 April 2009; Paris, France, 18 December 2008 Cabaret, Jean, Confédération paysanne, Vía Campesina, Montreuil, France, 5 May 2010; 4 May 2010 Cannie, Elena, Centro de derechos humanos de la montaña Tlachinollan (Guerrero, Mexico), telephone interview, 8 September 2008 Cariño, Bety, CACTUS (Oaxaca), Mexico City, Mexico, 11 September 2008 Carriquiriborde, Alicia, FIAN Mexico, Mexico City, Mexico, 8 September 2008 Checa Rubio, Raquel, Oxfam International, Guatemala City, Guatemala, 2 September 2009 Choplin, Gérard, European Coordination Vía Campesina (ECVC) staff, Brussels, Belgium, 2 June 2009 Courtis, Christian, International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), Geneva, Switzerland, 24 June 2008 Covantes, Liza, Centro de Estudios para el Desarrollo Rural Sustentable y la Soberanía Alimentaria (CEDRSSA), Mexico City, Mexico, 9 September 2008 Danau, Alex, Collectif Sratégies Alimentaires (CSA), Brussels, Belgium, 4 May 2009 de Ita, Ana, CECCAM/LRAN, Mexico City, Mexico, 21 August 2009 Delforge, Isabelle, International Secretariat of Vía Campesina, Jakarta, Indonesia, 21 March 2010 De Schutter, Olivier, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Brussels, Belgium, 22 April 2009

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Appendix I

Desmarais, Annette Aurélie, University of Regina (Canada), ex-NFU, Zacatecas, Mexico, 15 August 2009 Esparza, Omar, CACTUS (Oaxaca), Mexico City, Mexico, 11 September 2008 Estevez, Ariadna, Centro de Investigaciones sobre América del Norte (CISAN), UNAM, Mexico City, Mexico, 26 September 2008 Fall, Ndiakathe, CNCR (Senegal), Vía Campesina, Kinshasa, DRC, 8 September 2010 Ferrante, Andrea, Italian Association for Organic Agriculture (AIAB), Vía Campesina, Rome, Italy, 25 July 2012 Gauster, Susana, CONGECOOP/IDEAR, Guatemala City, Guatemala, 2 September 2009 George, Susan, Transnational Institute (TNI), Zacatecas, Mexico, 14 August 2009 Girod, Claude, Confédération paysanne, Vía Campesina, Brussels, Belgium, 4 May 2009; Paris, France, 7 January 2009; Geneva, Switzerland, 24 November 2008 Golay, Cristophe, Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, Geneva, Switzerland, 3 July 2009 Gomez, Alberto, UNORCA, Vía Campesina, Mexico City, Mexico, 21 August 2009; Zacatecas, Mexico, 14 August 2009 Gonzales, Alfredo, UNDP, Regional Human Development Report, Mexico City, Mexico, 26 September 2008 Gutiérrez Rivas, Rodrigo, Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas, UNAM, Mexico City, Mexico, 02 September 2008 Guttal, Shalmali, Focus on the Global South, Rome, Italy, 13 October 2010 Halim, Ujjaini, FIAN India, Berlin, Germany, 11 December 2008 Hernández Navarro, Luis, CECCAM, La Jornada, Mexico City, Mexico, 21 August 2009; Zacatecas, Mexico, 15 August 2009 Hernández Ortíz, Pánfilo, Proyecto de Desarrollo Rural Integral Vicente Guerrero AC, Mexico City, Mexico, 9 September 2008 Holt-Giménez, Eric, FoodFirst, Mexico City, Mexico, 11 September 2008 Hurtado, Adolfo, FAO, Managua, Nicaragua, 14 September 2009 Jacovetti, Chantal, ex-Confédération paysanne, Vía Campesina, Rome, Italy, 15 October 2010 Jala Flores, Julian, CSUTCB (Bolivia), Vía Campesina, La Paz, Bolivia, 10 February 2011 Kesteloot, Thierry, Oxfam Solidarité, Brussels, Belgium, 27 April 2009 Künnemann, Rolf, FIAN International, Heidelberg, Germany, 23 June 2009 Lamba, Davinder, Mazingra Institute, HIC, Rome, Italy, 14 November 2009 Machaca Yupanqui, Rodolfo, CSUTCB (Bolivia), Vía Campesina, La Paz, Bolivia, 10 February 2011 Maluf, Renato, CONSEA (Brazil), Rome, Italy, 15 November 2009 Marks, Stephen, Harvard University, Department of Global Health and Population, Geneva, Switzerland, 24 June 2011 Martinez, Diana, Centro de Derechos Humanos ‘Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez’ AC, Mexico City, Mexico, 1 September 2008 Miguel Diez, Juan, United Nations, Information Officer, Mexico City, Mexico, 10 September 2008 Monsalve, Sofía, FIAN International, Rome, Italy, 11 October 2010; 15 November 2009; Heidelberg, Germany, 22 June 2009; Berlin, Germany, 10 December 2008 Montero Pedraza, Ricardo, Coordinadora de Integración de Organizaciones Económicas Campesinas Indígenas y Originarias de Bolivia (CIOEC) (Bolivia), La Paz, Bolivia, 5 February 2011

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Appendix I 133 Mulvany, Patrick, UK Food Group, Brussels, Belgium, 19 April 2012; Rome, Italy, 15 November 2009 Muralles, Myra, Oxfam UK, Guatemala City, Guatemala, 2 September 2009 Naerstad, Aksel, Development Fund, More and Better Campaign, Rome, Italy, 15 November 2009 Nicholson, Paul, EHNE, Vía Campesina, Paris, France, 6 January 2009 Onorati, Antonio, Crocevia, IPC, Rome, Italy, 24 July 2012; 18 October 2011; 16 November 2009 Oviedo, Cecilia, Diálogo y Asesoría en Agricultura Sostenible y Soberanía Alimentaria (PIDAASSA), Mexico City, Mexico, 9 September 2008 Ozden, Malik, CETIM, Geneva, Switzerland, 3 July 2009 Paasch, Armin, FIAN Germany, Brussels, Belgium, 13 July 2009 Penman, Madeleine, Centro de Derechos Humanos ‘Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez’ AC, Mexico City, Mexico, 1 September 2008 Pérez Casas, Luis Guillermo, FIDH/CIFCA, Brussels, Belgium, 22 April 2009 Pérez Rocha, Manuel, Red Mexicana de Acción frente al Libre Comercio (RMALC), Mexico City, Mexico, 25 September 2008 Polanco, Ivan, ANEC, Vía Campesina, Mexico City, Mexico, 6 August 2009; 9 September 2008 Posnanski, Marek, Collectif Sratégies Alimentaires (CSA), Brussels, Belgium, 5 May 2009 Prudencio Böhrt, Julio, Researcher, La Paz, Bolivia, 14 February 2011 Ratjen, Sandra, FIAN International, Heidelberg, Germany, 25 June 2009 Rengam, Sarojeni, PAN-AP, Rome, Italy, 18 October 2011 Rengam, Sarojeni, PAN-AP, Rome, Italy, 13 October 2010 Riffaud, Josie, Confédération paysanne, Vía Campesina, Montreuil, France, 4 May 2010 Rosset, Peter, Support staff, Vía Campesina, San Cristóbal, Mexico, 25 August 2009 Ruppanner, Violette, 3D-Three, telephone interview, 13 October 2009 Saleh, Ridha, National Human Rights Commission of Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia, 19 March 2010 Samdup, Carole, Rights and Democracy, Rome, Italy, 14 October 2010; Jakarta, Indonesia, 20 March 2010; Rome, Italy, 15 November 2009 Sánchez Díaz de Rivera, María Eugenia, Universidad Ibero Puebla, Puebla, Mexico, 3 September 2008 Sandoval, Areli, DECA Equipo Pueblo A.C., Mexico City, Mexico, 4 September 2008 Saragih, Henri, SPI, Vía Campesina, Jakarta, Indonesia, 22 March 2010 Schorpion, Annelies, European Coordination Vía Campesina (ECVC) staff, Rome, Italy, 13 October 2010 Singh, Ramesh, Action Aid, Luxembourg, Luxembourg, 15 December 2008 Soto, Dolores, FIAN Mexico, Mexico City, Mexico, 9 September 2008 Strapazzón, Ángel, Movimiento Campesino Indígena (Argentina), Vía Campesina, Rome, Italy, 17 June 2011 Suárez, Víctor, ANEC, Vía Campesina, Mexico City, Mexico, 9 September 2008 Suarez Franco, Ana María, FIAN International, Berlin, Germany, 10 December 2008 Tiney, Juan, CONIC, Vía Campesina, Guatemala City, Guatemala, 5 September 2009 Toruño, Gustavo, UNAG, ex-Vía Campesina, Managua, Nicaragua, 14 September 2009 Valente, Flavio, FIAN International, Rome, Italy, 14 October 2010; 16 November 2009; Heidelberg, Germany, 25 June 2009

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Appendix I

Van Der Steen, Dany, Collectif Stratégies Alimentaires (CSA), CONCORD/IPC, Brussels, Belgium, 13 May 2009 Velásquez, Marco, Red Mexicana de Acción frente al Libre Comercio (RMALC), Mexico City, Mexico, 25 September 2008 Verhaegen, Nico, Support staff, Vía Campesina, telephone interview, 3 June 2009 Villamar, Alejandro, Red Mexicana de Acción frente al Libre Comercio (RMALC), Mexico City, Mexico, 25 September 2008 Windfhür, Michael, German Institute for Human Rights (ex-FIAN International), Rome, Italy, 15 November 2009 Winter, Lea, FIAN International, Rome, Italy, 11 October 2010 Wolpold, Martin, FIAN International, Heidelberg, Germany, 24 June 2009; Brussels, Belgium, 22 April 2009 Yanni, Irma, SPI, Vía Campesina, Jakarta, Indonesia, 18 March 2010

Appendix II

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Participant observation sites

Expert Seminar on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas organized by the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, Geneva, 8–9 April 2014 Expert Consultation on a New Multilateral Framework for Trade and Investment in Agriculture organized by Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO), Geneva, 22–23 January 2014 Session 40 of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), FAO, Rome, 7–11 October 2013 Strategy Meeting of the Board of FIAN Belgium, Grez-Doiceau, 28–29 September 2013 ECVC/Allies European meeting on the follow-up of the Intergovernmental Working Group on a United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and other people working in rural areas, Cooperative ‘Tierra y Libertad’ (SOC), Cádiz, Andalusia, 8–11 September 2013 Session 39 of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), FAO, Rome, 15–19 October 2012 Open-Ended Working Group on responsible agriculture investment, Committee on World Food Security (CFS), negotiations of terms of reference for the consultation process to be initiated on principles for responsible agro-investment, Rome, 25 July 2012 Official Mission of the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food to Canada, 5–16 May 2012. • Meeting with anti-poverty groups, community kitchens, and farmers from Quebec (Union paysanne and UPA), Montreal, 6 May 2012 • Meeting with Canadian Human Rights organizations, Ottawa, 7 May 2012 • Meeting with Canadian Development NGOs, Ottawa, 8 May 2012 • Meeting with the Toronto Food Policy Council, Toronto, 10 May 2012 • Meeting with Migrant Workers’ organizations, Toronto, 9 May 2012 • Meeting with The Stop Community Centre and FoodShare, Toronto, 9 May 2012 • Meeting with the National Farmers Union (NFU, Vía Campesina) and MAFRA, Winnipeg, 10 May 2012 • Meetings with Aboriginal groups in Alberta and Manitoba, 11–13 May 2012 • Meeting on human rights impacts assessments of trade agreements organized by CCIC, Ottawa, 14 May 2012 Open-Ended Working Group on Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests, Committee on World Food Security (CFS), Rome, 5–8 March 2012

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International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC) meeting, Rome, 4 March 2012 Consultation convened by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food on Agrofuels and the Right to Food, Brussels, 24–25 November 2011 Session 37 of the Committee on World Food Security, FAO, Rome, 17–22 October 2011 Meeting between the Civil Society Mechanism (CSM) of the CFS and the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Rome, 17 October 2011 Open-Ended Working Group on Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests, Committee on World Food Security (CFS), Rome, 17–18 June 2011 Conference on human rights extra-territorial obligations, organized by the ETOConsortium, University of Antwerp, 17–18 May 2011, with the participation of, among others, Amnesty International, TNI, Brot für die Welt, FIAN, Equal in Rights, Housing Rights International-HIC, ESCR-NET, Greenpeace, CIEL, ICJ, Rights and Democracy, FIDH, Oxfam UK Fact-Finding Mission on the right to food in Boliva, organized by Rights and Democracy, 5–15 February 2011 • Meetings with the Minister of Health, Minister of Education, Minister of Planning, La Paz, Bolivia, 11 February 2011 • Meeting with representatives of the Fundo Indigena, chaired by Olvida Barra, Confederación Nacional de Mujeres Campesinas Indígenas Originarias de Bolivia ‘Bartolina Sisa’ (Vía Campesina), La Paz, Bolivia, 10 February 2011 • Meeting with representatives of the CSUTCB (Vía Campesina), La Paz, Bolivia, 10 February 2011 • Meeting with representatives of the National Council for Food and Nutrition Security (CONAN), with the participation of, among others, Ana María Aguilar, Ciro Kopp, Luís Rico, Olga Soto, La Paz, Bolivia, 10 February 2011 Meeting of the International Council of FIAN International, La Foresta, Belgium, 22 October 2010 Session 36 of the Committee on World Food Security, FAO, Rome, 11–16 October 2010 • Side-event on land issues organized by the Transnational Institute (TNI) and the International Planning Committee for food sovereignty (IPC), Rome, 16 October 2010, with presentations by W. Wolford, I. Scoones, P. McMichael, B. White, P. Mathieu, R. Hall and comments by Olivier De Schutter • Meeting on land issues between the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food and representatives from TNI, ICCO, FIAN, Vía Campesina, and Focus on the Global South, Rome, 13 October 2010 • Meeting between the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food and Barbara Ekwall of the FAO Right to Food Team, Rome, 13 October 2010 • Vía Campesina side-event on land grabbing, CFS, Rome 12 October 2010 Marx International Congress VI, Université de Paris-Ouest-Nanterre-La Défense, Paris, 22–25 September 2010 Fact-Finding Mission on the right to food in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, coorganized by FIAN and Vía Campesina and hosted by the Confédération paysanne du Congo (COPACO), DRC, 30 August–15 September 2010 • Meeting with the Minister for Rural Development of the DRC, Kinshasa, 14 September 2010 Consultation convened by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food on Human Rights Impact Assessments of Trade and Investment Agreements, Geneva, 23–24

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Appendix II 137 June 2010, with the participation of academics and representatives of, among others, the South Centre, Focus on the Global South, CESR and CIEL Consultation convened by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food on Agroecology, Brussels, 21–22 June 2010, with the participation of, among others, H. Herren, M. Altieri, M. Pimbert, P. Rosset, J. Wright, U. Hoffmann, P. Stassart International Seminar on Food Reserves organized by IATP, Oxfam Solidarité and the Collectif Stratégies Alimentaires (CSA), Brussels, 1 June 2010, with the participation of, among others, Ndiagou Fall (ROPPA) and Philip Kiriro (EAFF) General Assembly of the Confédération paysanne (Vía Campesina), Montreuil, France, 4 and 5 May 2010 Field visits organized by FIAN Tamil Nadu for the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food around Chennai, India, 1 April 2010 Expert meeting on the Right to Food, Access to Resources and Gender, organized by PWESCR for the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Chennai, 30 March 2010 Consultation convened by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food on land rights, with civil society from South Asia, coordinated by the Tamil Nadu Women’s Forum, Chennai, 28–29 March 2010 Field visits organized by Tanaganita for the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food in indigenous territories affected by palm oil plantations and the construction of the Bakun dam, Sarawak, Malaysia, 25–27 March 2010 Regional consultation with civil society organized by FIAN in the context of future negotiations of FAO Voluntary Guidelines on the governance of land, fisheries, and forests, Kuala Lumpur, 24 March 2010 Consultation convened by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food on land rights, with civil society from South-East Asia, coordinated by PAN-AP, Kuala Lumpur, 23 and 24 March 2010 Visit to the Warung Kiara community, Sukabumi, and to Bogor, Indonesia, 20 March 2010, with members of the peasant organization SPI, Vía Campesina Discussion with different staff members from SPI, Vía Campesina, Jakarta, 18 March 2010 Participation in the World Summit on Food Security, and in the parallel Forum organized by social movements, NGOs and civil society, Rome, 13–18 November 2009 • Discussion between the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food and civil society, Rome, 13 November 2009 • Meeting between the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food and representatives from the International Land Coalition, Rome, 18 November 2009 Roundtable on the Right to Food and Food Sovereignty organized by the Coalition belge contre la faim (BOF), Brussels, 12 November 2009, with the participation of Mady Sissoko (Concertation Nationale des Organizations Paysannes du Mali) and Francisco Menezes (IBASE, Brazil) Meeting on the role and actions of FIAN Belgium with members of the board and with the participation of Flavio Valente, Secretary General of FIAN, Brussels, 7 November 2009 Dinner with representatives from Vía Campesina (Paul Nicholson, Nico Verhaegen), Friends of the Earth, Our World is Not For Sale, Corporate Observatory Europe, World Development Movement, and the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Brussels, 5 November 2009

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Meeting of the European Coordination of Vía Campesina (ECVC) on the milk crisis, Brussels, 14 October 2009 Meetings with civil society in Mexico in order to prepare for the official visit of the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, 5 August and 15 September 2009 (with the Special Rapporteur) • Public Forum Sin maíz no hay paíz, Mexico City, 15 September 2009 Official Mission of the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food to Nicaragua, 6–15 September 2009 Summer University for young peasants from Central America organized by ATC, Vía Campesina, Managua, Nicaragua, 9 September 2009 Official Follow-up Mission of the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food to Guatemala, 2–6 September 2009 Conference on the Global Food Crisis organized by the Critical Development Studies network, Zacatecas, Mexico, 13–15 August 2009 Meeting of the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food with representatives from the European Commission (DG Relex, Trade, ECHO, Envi, and AGRI), Brussels, 13 July 2009 Expert Meeting on the impact of ESC Rights Special Procedures on Human Rights Protection, organized by the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, Geneva, 4 July 2009, with the participation of, among others, Mara Bustelo (OHCHR), Miloon Kothari (former UN Special Rapporteur on the right to housing), and members of the former team of Paul Hunt (former UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health) Presentation by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food of his Report on the WTO and the right to food to the WTO Committee on Agriculture, Geneva, 2 July 2009 Consultation convened by UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food on the role of the agribusiness sector in the realization of the right to food, Berlin, 19–20 June 2009, with the participation of, among others, Tim Lang, Harriet Friedmann, Sophia Murphy (IATP), René Louail and Gérard Choplin (Vía Campesina), Peter Rossman (IUF) Consultation convened by UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food on market regulation, Brussels, 19–20 May 2009, with the participation of, among others, Raj Patel (University of California at Berkeley), Sanjay Reddy (Columbia University), Jo Swinnen (KUL), Aileen Kwa (South Center) Meeting between the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food and Rajagopal P. V., leader of the landless movement Ekta Parishad (India), Louvain-la-Neuve, 7 May 2009 Meeting between the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food and Paul Mathieu (FAO, Land Tenure and Management Unit) on Land Rights, Louvain-la-Neuve, 7 May 2009 Seminar organized by the Collectif Stratégies Alimentaires (CSA) on the need to regulate agricultural markets, Brussels, 4–5 May 2009, with the participation of, among others, Olivier De Schutter, Marek Posnanski (CSA), Charles Akande (UPA/SM5), Claude Girod (Confédération paysanne, Vía Campesina) and many representatives from peasant organizations in Africa (Vía Campesina, ROPPA, FIPA) Presentation of the book Dieu n’est pas paysan by Mamadou Cissokho (ROPPA), introduction by Yves Sommeville (FWA), Brussels, 27 April 2009 Expert meeting Towards a new balance of trade in agriculture organized by the World Trade Institute (WTI), Bern, 27 March 2009 Conference Ecofair Trade Dialogue at the European Parliament, Brussels, 17 March 2009

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Appendix II 139 Debate on Food Sovereignty organized by Campus Plein Sud, Louvain-la-Neuve, 26 February 2009, with the participation of Olivier De Schutter, John Cornet d’Elzius (Ministry of Development Cooperation, Belgium), Amadou Waigalo (Faranfasi-so, Mali, peasant), A.-M. Tasiaux (Union des agricultrices wallonnes, FWA), Thierry Kesteloot (Oxfam Solidarité) Civil Society Dialogue in the context of the negotiations of a free trade agreement between the European Commission and Central America, European Parliament, Brussels, 28 January 2009 Workshop on the Right to Food Sovereignty and Trade organized by the Confédération paysanne for European organizations of Vía Campesina, Paris, 7 and 8 January 2009, with the participation of, among others, Paul Nicholson (EHNE, Spain), Gérard Choplin (ECVC staff), Paul Bonhommeau (Confédération paysanne, France), Claude Girod (Confédération paysanne), Josie Riffaud (Confédération paysanne), Geneviève Savigny (Confédération paysanne), René Louail (Confédération paysanne), Stéphane Parmentier (FUGEA, Belgium), Javier Sanchez (COAG, Spain), and members of the SOCSOC-SAT (Sindicato de Obreros del Campo – Sindicato Andaluz de Trabajadores, Spain), MAP (Mouvement d’Action Paysanne, Belgium), and other farmers’ organizations from Turkey, Austria, Norway, UK, etc. Meeting between European organizations of Vía Campesina and allied NGOs to discuss the organization of the Nyeleni Europe Forum, Paris, 8 January 2009, with the participation of, among others, Thomas Lines (Vredeseilanden), Gert Engelen (Vredeseilanden), Gilles Lemaire (ATTAC France), Dany Van Der Steen (Collectif Stratégies Alimentaires), Patrick Mulvany (UK Food Group), Helen Holder (Friends of the Earth Europe), Alexandra Strickner (IATP/ATTAC Austria) Consultation convened by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food on the African green revolution, Luxembourg, 15–16 December 2008 Public Policies Against Hunger Conference, Berlin, 10–12 December 2008 IATP Conference, The Global Food Challenge: Towards a Human Rights Approach to Trade and Investment Policies, Geneva, 24–26 November 2008 Meeting between the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food and members of the Coalition Souveraineté Alimentaire, Montreal, 8 November 2008 Consultation convened by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food on food aid, Ottawa, 6 November 2008 Conference on the global food crisis, Crise alimentaire, droit à l’alimentation et droits humains, organized by the Ligue des droits et libertés, Montreal, 5 November 2008 First National Forum on Alternative Rural Education (Educación Rural Alternativa) organized by CEDRSSA and UNICAM-Sur, Mexico City, 11 September 2008 Conference, Who will feed the world?, at the European Parliament, Brussels, 3 July 2008 Mission of the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food to the WTO, Geneva, 25 June 2008 (meetings with Director General Pascal Lamy, advisers and experts) Consultation convened by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food on the WTO, Univ. de Paris I-Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris, 19–20 June 2008 Fact-finding mission on the right to food in Haiti, organized by Rights and Democracy, 26–30 May 2008 • Meeting with Doudou Pierre, coordinator, Réseau national de souveraineté et sécurité alimentaire (RENHASSA), and representatives from the national farmers’ organizations MPP and MPNKP (Vía Campesina) • Meeting with representatives from the Coordination nationale pour la sécurité alimentaire (CNSA)

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• Meeting with the Association nationale des agro-professionnels d’Haïti (ANDAH) • Meeting with Maggy Mathurin, coordinator, Plate-Forme Nationale de sécurité alimentaire (PFNSA) • Meeting with Action Aid Haiti • Meeting with the Minister of Planning • Meeting with the IMF and World Bank • Meeting with the Human Rights branch of the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) Special Session of the UN Human Rights Council on the Global Food Crisis, Geneva, 22 May 2008

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Notes

Chapter 1 1 Although the decision was made by the movement in 2013 to generalize the use of the name ‘La Via Campesina’, I use the older name ‘Vía Campesina’ in this book. 2 Stammers argues that rights claims can be characterized as subversive if they ‘do not imply or require the replacement of one form of power with another’ (Stammers 1999, 1005). 3 Because of my focus on transnational and institutional processes I pay considerable attention to the views and perspectives of movement leaders, whose role tends to be minimized in the literature (Edelman 1999). The role of leaders is particularly important in the case of Vía Campesina, which is a highly structured organization, despite its regional and horizontal structure. The movement has put great efforts into achieving gender parity, but most well-known Vía Campesina leaders are male, although in some regions women leaders do have a strong influence too. 4 The global justice movement, also termed the movement for a globalization from below, the movement for a globalization of rights, or the no global movement (better described in French by the adjective altermondialiste), has its roots in anti-imperialist thinking and specific struggles in the South, such as the Zapatista uprising (on 1 Jan. 1994) and the Ogoni movement, as well as environmental and labor rights movements in the North (Glasius 2006, 80). One of the first protests linked to the global justice movement is the march undertaken by half a million Indian farmers in Bangalore in India, on 2 Oct. 1993, against provisions included in the negotiations of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The protest organized on 1 Dec. 1999 in Seattle, on the occasion of the World Trade Organization summit, in which Vía Campesina took part, is considered a landmark event of the global justice movement. Since 2001, the movement has gathered in annual World Social Forums in different parts of the world. Many of these meetings were well attended by representatives of farmers’ organizations (Pleyers 2010, 3–5). 5 While the mix of groups and intellectual traditions within the global justice movement is rich, human rights activism has been conspicuously absent from it, a phenomenon which Glasius has attributed to a combination of suspicion and moving in parallel circuits (Glasius 2006, 80). 6 Just as for the global justice movement, the existence of a truly global food movement is highly debatable and it might be more plausible to talk about a constellation of local and transnational food movements. 7 The food sovereignty movement constitutes what Sidney Tarrow calls a transnational social movement (Tarrow 2001, 11). It is a social movement because it is an ‘informal network based on common beliefs and solidarity’, which mobilizes on ‘conflictual issues by frequent recurrence to various forms of protest’ (Della Porta et al. 2006, 18). It is transnational because it is made of ‘socially mobilized groups with constituents in

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10

11

12

13 14

Notes at least two states, engaged in sustained contentious interactions with power-holders in at least one state other than their own, or against an international institution, or a multinational economic actor’ (Tarrow 2001, 11). The existence of a single, somewhat articulated food sovereignty or global agrarian movement is highly contested by some researchers, such as T. Brass or H. Bernstein. This issue was discussed at the Critical Agrarian Studies Colloquium organized by the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague on 21 Jan. 2011, which I attended. Other agrarian movements include regional movements such as the Réseau des organizations paysannes et de producteurs de l’Afrique de l’Ouest (ROPPA) in West Africa, and the Coordinadora Latinoamericana de Organizaciones del Campo (CLOC) in Latin America, and movements grounded in religious convictions, such as the International Movement of Catholic Agricultural and Rural Youth (MIJARC) and the International Federation of Adult Catholic Farmers’ Movements (FIMARC) both of them close to Vía Campesina. Also worth mentioning is the transnational agrarian coalition called the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC), a global network of NGOs/CSOs which has focused on institutional dialogue with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and, in recent years, with the reformed Committee on World Food Security. Some agrarian-oriented, progressive, transnational NGOs play a key role in the food sovereignty movement, some of which have developed alliances with Vía Campesina: the Erosion, Technology and Concentration Group (ETC Group), the Genetic Resources Action International (GRAIN), the Land Research and Action Network (LRAN), Friends of the Earth, FoodFirst and Focus on the Global South. Vía Campesina and Friends of the Earth have had a partnership since 1999 around genetically modified organisms (GMOs), trade, transnational corporations, climate change and repression. FoodFirst, ETC Group, Focus on the Global South and GRAIN are also allies of Vía Campesina. Some of these actors are jointly engaged in coalitions such as the Our World is Not For Sale coalition of which Vía Campesina was a crucial member (Reitan 2007, 148) until December 2013, when it announced its withdrawal from the network. In recent years, a small group of academics have analysed the origins, demands and actions of Vía Campesina (and other transnational agrarian movements) at the international, national and subnational levels. The best known include Jun Borras (Borras et al. 2008a; Borras and Franco 2009; Borras 2008a, 2004, 2008b), Annette Aurélie Desmarais (2003, 2008b), Marc Edelman (1999), Eric Holt-Giménez (2009), Nora McKeon (McKeon et al. 2004; McKeon 2009), Philip McMichael (2009a, 2008, 2009c), Raj Patel (2007, 2009, 2006), Peter Rosset (2006, 2008, 2009) and Wendy Wolford (2010). The birth of Vía Campesina was foreshadowed in Latin America by the founding of one of its direct forebears, the Coordinadora Latinoamericana de Organizaciones del Campo (Latin American Coordination of Rural Organizations, or CLOC) in the early 1990s. Latin America is the region of the world with the most unequal distribution of land and income, and the region that experienced an especially sharp decline in living standards during the 1980s (Rosset and Martínez-Torres 2010, 154). Source: http://www.viacampesina.org/main_en/index.php?option=com_wrapper& Itemid=71. In this research, I give considerable attention to a number of peasant organizations which are members of the Vía Campesina network: ANEC (Asociación Nacional de Empresas Comercializadoras de Productores del Campo) and UNORCA (Unión Nacional de Organizaciones Regionales Campesinas Autonomas) in Mexico, the NFU (National Farmers Union) and Union paysanne in Canada, the CNOC (Coordinadora Nacional de Organizaciones Campesinas), CUC (Comité de unidad campesina), and CONIC (Coordinadora Nacional Indígena

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Notes

143

y Campesina) in Guatemala, the ATC (Asociación de Trabajadores del Campo) and the MAF (Mesa Agropecuaria y Forestal) in Nicaragua, the CSUTCB (Confederación Sindical Unica de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia) and the Sisa (Confederación Nacional de Mujeres Campesinas Indígenas Originarias de Bolivia ‘Bartolina Sisa’) in Bolivia, the MPP (Mouvement Paysan de Papaye) and MPNKP (Mouvman Peyizan Nasyonal Kongre Papay) in Haiti, the ANPFA (All Nepal Peasants’ Federation) in Nepal, the SPI (Indonesia Peasant Union) in Indonesia, the COPACO (Confédération paysanne du Congo) in the DRC, the COAG (Coordinadora de Organizaciones de Agricultores y Ganaderos), EHNE (Euskal Herriko nekazarien Elkartasuna) and SOC (Sindicato de Obreros del Campo de Andalucía) in Spain, the FUGEA (Fédération Unie de Groupements d’Eleveurs et d’Agriculteurs) and MAP (Mouvement d’Action Paysanne) in Belgium, Uniterre in Switzerland and the Confédération paysanne in France. 15 Decision-making is based on the decentralization of power between nine regions. The coordination among the regions is taken up by the International Coordinating Committee (ICC), which is composed of one woman and one man for every region, elected by the member organizations in the respective regions. The ICC meets twice a year to engage in collective analysis of global agricultural issues, define joint action and advocacy at the international level and assess compliance with the International Conference agreements. The International Conference is Vía Campesina’s highest decision-making entity, where representatives of the member organizations engage in collective analysis and policy development, as well as negotiation and consensus-building processes (Rosset and Martínez-Torres 2010, 164). International Conferences take place every four years approximately and are an opportunity for member organizations to discuss the movement’s strategic orientations and priorities as well as the internal functioning of the movement. The international secretariat rotates according to the collective decision made every four years by the International Conference. It was first in Belgium (1993–6), then in Honduras (1997–2004), later in Indonesia (2005–13) and recently moved to Zimbabwe. The international secretariat team is assisted by a number of support staff, located in the various regions of the Vía Campesina network. In addition, the work of Vía Campesina is carried out and coordinated through a series of issue-based International Working Commissions, which are devoted to specific issues such as agrarian reform, food sovereignty and trade, biodiversity and genetic resources, climate change and peasant agriculture, and human rights. Vía Campesina also has campaigns that address some of these issues: (i) the Global Campaign for Agrarian Reform, (ii) Seeds: Heritage of Rural Peoples in the Service of Humanity, (iii) the Campaign to End All Forms of Violence Against Women, and (iv) The Campaign for an International Charter of Peasant Rights (Rosset and Martínez-Torres 2010, 165). The movement is funded by the contributions of its members, by private donations and by the financial support of some NGOs, foundations and local and national authorities. 16 Differences between social movements and NGO-based advocacy networks may not always be clear cut, but are nevertheless important to identify, for they constitute an important source of tension and division for the actors themselves. Various criteria are identified in the literature to differentiate social movements from NGOs, none of which are completely satisfactory. For Tarrow, the distinction lies in the repertoires of action that are mobilized. Social movements, he argues, must be identified ‘not by their goals, which they share with many non-social movements, but by the kind of actions in which they routinely engage’, namely ‘contentious politics’ (Tarrow 2001, 11). Other authors point to the fact that social movements, overall, consist of people who work to improve their own social, political and economic conditions as a community, while NGOs are formed by individuals who work towards the promotion of a model governed by certain ideals. While social movements are

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19 20

21 22

23

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25

Notes concerned with their interests and a reaffirmation of their specific group identity, NGOs tend to be more concerned with values (Estevez 2008, 101–3). The full name of FIAN is inspired by the US-based organization FoodFirst/Institute for Food and Development Policy (www.foodfirst.org), with which it had close ties at the time the FIAN network was set up. Created in the 1970s, FoodFirst leaders initially used a ‘right to food’ framing to link to international advocacy networks for human rights and sustainable food systems (Cohen and Messer 2009, 11–12), but FoodFirst has now evolved into a food sovereignty organization. The network comprises national and regional sections, which are legal entities in their own right and have their own membership and elected decision-making bodies. Total membership of FIAN currently stands at around 3,600 in more than 50 countries. In some national and regional contexts, however, FIAN’s presence remains marginal. http://www.fian.org. In 1999, FIAN and Vía Campesina launched a Global Campaign for Agrarian Reform, which has served, since then, as a platform for promoting effective agrarian reform in countries with highly unequal patterns of land ownership. Over recent years, the two organizations have initiated joint work on advancing new rights for peasants at the UN Human Rights Council. Action Aid launched a five-year right to food campaign in 2006 and has issued a number of publications on the right to food (Action Aid International 2005, 2011) but maintains a series of non-rights-based programmes. In 2001, Oxfam decided to base its programmes on five ‘broad rights-based aims’: the right to a sustainable livelihood, the right to basic social services, the right to life and security, the right to be heard, and the right to an identity. This commitment was reiterated in the last strategic plan ‘Demanding Justice’ (Oxfam International 2007). The organization has been very active on food issues over recent years, in particular through the GROW campaign, but has been reluctant to use the right to food as its slogan, adopting instead the slogan of food justice (Oxfam International 2011). Amongst the most prominent ones are Brot für die Welt (Bread for the World) in Germany, Interchurch Organization for Development Cooperation (ICCO) in the Netherlands, the Canadian Foodgrains Bank, DanChurchAid (DCA), the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance (EAA), the Lutheran World Federation, Franciscans International, the International Alliance of Catholic Development Agencies (CIDSE) and the World Council of Churches. These organizations often combine direct right to food advocacy with funding of local and international right to food work by local or international NGOs. In 2008, FIAN International, Brot für die Welt and ICCO decided to launch a joint annual publication titled the Right to Food and Nutrition Watch. Normative interpretation work has also been conducted by the independent experts who sit on the UN Committee on ESCR (with a view to monitor implementation of the International Covenant on ESCR), the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food appointed by the UN Human Rights Council, members of the right to food team of the FAO, and staff of the Rights and Development unit of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) was probably at the forefront of economic and social rights issues, while Amnesty International finally incorporated economic, social and cultural rights into its mandate in 2001. Human Rights Watch gradually did more research work on economic and social rights as well, and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) developed an important line of work on ESCR and globalization, but none of these organizations has done substantial work on the right to food specifically. Aside from FIAN, the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development (Rights and Democracy) is probably the human rights organization that has worked most on the right to food. Rights and

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Notes

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Democracy was established as a non-partisan, independent Canadian institution by an Act of the Canadian Parliament in 1988 to encourage and support the universal values of human rights abroad, and was funded by the Canadian government until it was shut down in March 2012. In addition, the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR) carries out research and advocacy projects on economic, social and cultural rights (with a strong focus on the right to food) in countries around the globe, in collaboration with local human rights advocates and activists. In recent years, the newly formed International Network for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ESCR-Net) network has served as a facilitating platform for economic and social rights activists around the world. Commissions have not always functioned optimally due to language and organizational problems. Some commissions only meet erratically. One difficulty is the lack of continuity and insufficient preparation of new participants. Although these problems could be solved by involving technical support staff, this option has not been pursued because of the perceived risk of becoming bureaucratic and losing the collectiveness (Rosset and Martinez 2005, 34). Issues of funding are also paramount. Commissions are now called international working groups. The full list of interviews I conducted is provided in Appendix 1. The list of the sites where I engaged in participant observation is provided in Appendix 2. Meetings of the Civil Society Mechanism of the CFS and of the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC), in Rome, proved to be valuable sites for exploring tensions between activists within the food movement. At the national level, food sovereignty coalitions, which include rural and urban activists, and, at the global level, summits like the World Summit on Food Security of 2008, proved equally important. Participation in meetings convened at the national level to bring claims to the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food during his official visits also provided me with interesting insights. The protests, campaigns and statements issued by the movement to react to international events helped me complete the picture. Good examples of key moments where food sovereignty was discussed and elaborated upon are: the Nyéléni Food Sovereignty Forum which took place in Mali in 2007; the People’s Caravan for Food Sovereignty that travelled through 13 countries across Asia in 2004; the First Peasants’ World Assembly of Porto Alegre which was organized just before the World Social Forum of 2003; and the World Forum on Food Sovereignty which was celebrated in Cuba in 2001. The international conferences organized every four years by Vía Campesina also constitute landmark moments where strategic orientations were adopted. The first one took place in Mons, Belgium, in 1993. The term food sovereignty officially emerged out of the second international conference of Tlaxcala, Mexico, in 1996, from where it was introduced to the NGO Forum to the World Food Summit later the same year. The third conference took place in Bangalore in 2000, the fourth in Sao Paolo in 2004, the fifth in Maputo, Mozambique, in 2008, and the most recent one in Jakarta, Indonesia, in 2013. World Social Forums and their regional equivalents have also played an important role, allowing peasant groups to reach out to other constituencies such as youth and women groups, pastoralists, fisher folks, the urban poor, etc. The international events that have received the most attention are: WTO ministerial meetings such as that of Seattle in 1999, Doha in 2001, Cancún in 2003, Hong Kong in 2005 and Geneva in 2009; the FAO World Food Summit of 1996, the FAO World Food Summit in 2002, and the FAO World Summit of Food Security of 2009; the World Summit on Sustainable Development (Rio+10) in 2002; as well as a large number of other events ranging from G7 or G8 meetings to meetings of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), FAO regional ministerial conferences, and meetings of the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund. The global food prices crisis of 2007–8 also provided the food sovereignty movement with an

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opportunity to present a different analysis of the causes of the crisis and promote alternative solutions. 31 An internal Vía Campesina glossary put together for interpreters and translators indicates: ‘In English, the use of peasants is not correct to describe small farmers in the US and the UK. It is prefered to use small-scale farmers. However, in Asia, our member organizations prefer to use peasants to avoid confusion with big farmers. Therefore we can alternate and use those terms: small-scale (family) farmers, communitybased farmers, peasant/family farmers … We avoid campesinos in our English texts as most Asians will not get it. In French, we do not use fermier but paysan/paysanne, petits producteurs, agriculteurs/agricultrices (Agriculture paysanne, vivrière et locale). In Spanish, hablamos de campesinos y campesinas, pequeños productores … (no de granjeros)’ (Personal communication with the International Secretariat of Vía Campesina, 30 Jan. 2012). Chapter 2 1 Paul Nicholson, EHNE, Vía Campesina, at workshop on the Right to Food Sovereignty and Trade organized by the Confédération paysanne for European organizations of Vía Campesina, Paris, 7 and 8 Jan. 2009. 2 Name changed. 3 Interview, 4 May 2010. 4 Peasant from the Confédération paysanne, Vía Campesina, at workshop on the Right to Food Sovereignty and Trade organized by the Confédération paysanne for European organizations of Vía Campesina, Paris, 7 and 8 Jan. 2009. 5 Interview with Diamantino Nhampossa of the União Nacional de Camponeses, Vía Campesina. ‘Organizing Food Sovereignty in Mozambique’. Matola, Mozambique. The interview was conducted (and later edited) by Nic Paget-Clarke for In Motion Magazine during the 5th International Conference of La Vía Campesina. Published in In Motion Magazine, 16 Jan. 2009. 6 Javier Sánchez, COAG, Vía Campesina, at seminar organized by the Collectif Stratégies Alimentaires (CSA) on ‘The Need to Regulate Agricultural Markets’, Brussels, 4–5 May 2009. 7 Thierry Kesteloot, Oxfam Solidarité, at debate on Food Sovereignty organized by Campus Plein Sud, Louvain-la-Neuve, 26 Feb. 2009. 8 Interview with woman member of Indonesian organization SPI, Vía Campesina, 18 March 2010. 9 Name changed. 10 Interview, 4 May 2010. 11 The productivity ratio (per worker) between the most productive and the least productive agricultural system in the world was of 1:10 at the beginning of the 20th century, and of 1:500 at the end of the century (Mazoyer and Roudart 1997, 455). 12 Emphasis by the author. 13 Emphasis by the author. 14 Emphasis by the author. 15 Emphasis by the author. 16 It is interesting to note here that, although it does not contain an explicit reference to the right to food sovereignty, the language used as early as 1993, in the Mons Declaration, nevertheless evokes it in the way it is framed: ‘The right of every country to define its own agricultural policy according to the nation’s interest and in concertación with the peasant and Indigenous organizations, guaranteeing their real participation’ (Vía Campesina 1993). 17 Action Aid staff responsible for the right to food and food sovereignty campaign in Haiti and in the Dominican Republic, at a meeting in Port au Prince, 26 May 2008.

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18 Sidney Ribaux, Equiterre, at meeting between the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food and members of the Coalition Souveraineté Alimentaire, Montreal, 8 Nov. 2008. 19 Name changed. 20 Interview, 27 April 2009. 21 Name changed. 22 Interview, 2 June 2009. 23 Interview with Paul Nicholson, EHNE, Vía Campesina. ‘Food sovereignty and a new way of internal democracy’. Matola, Mozambique. The interview was conducted (and later edited) by Nic Paget-Clarke, on 17 Oct. 2008 during the 5th International Conference of La Vía Campesina. Published in In Motion Magazine, 23 Feb. 2009. 24 For Patel, ‘to ascribe rights to different scales of collectivity is to invite a series of conflicts’ because ‘within each of these levels of analysis, power is multiply contested’ (Patel 2006, 83). 25 Minority rights, as applying to ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities and indigenous peoples, form an integral part of international human rights law (Crawford 1988c, 161). 26 The Declaration was drafted by a gathering of distinguished jurists, political leaders and figures of high moral authority brought together largely at the initiative of the Italian legislator Lelio Basso. (http://www.socialjusticejournal.org/SJEdits/35Edit. html). 27 Conflicting interpretations of collective rights have been debated over the last three decades. At the core of these debates is the issue of whether a right borne by a group can be a human right at all. While some scholars have argued that the full enjoyment of individual human rights requires certain human rights to devolve upon groups (such as the right to peace, the right to a clean environment, the right to popular participation or the right to development (Alston 1988, 612–13)), other scholars have opposed group rights on the ground that they constitute potential threats to individual rights (Jones 1999, 81–2). International human rights law recognizes certain rights of groups – where and when group recognition is seen as essential for the effective protection of individuals – but human rights instruments usually provide protection to individuals belonging to groups, and not to groups directly. 28 As emphasized in General Comment no. 21, para. 4, on the right to selfdetermination, ‘the right to self-determination of peoples has an internal aspect, that is to say, the rights of all peoples to pursue freely their economic, social and cultural development without outside interference’ (Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination 1996). 29 Interview, 2 June 2009. 30 Authors who oppose the statist human rights framework argue that there is a conflict between self-determination (which includes the rights of ethnic minorities within states and the rights of groups beyond ethnicity), and state sovereignty, which objective is to preserve the structure of the international order and has been essential to the UN since its inception (Baxi 2007b). Because of the primacy of state sovereignty, they contend, it is impossible to protect human rights and realize selfdetermination (Felice 1996, 27). 31 Input from Frie Boender, Denmark, via the Nordic farmers and smallholders coordination, Nyéléni Forum, 22–28 Feb. 2007, Mali, cited in Ratjen et al. 2007. 32 The work of Yishai Blank on the growing role of local governments in the global legal order would be useful to explore in this regard (Blank 2006). 33 Discussions between the food sovereignty movement and human rights activists have often revolved around clarifying the relationship between the rights claimed by the movement and internationally recognized rights. When trying to interpret peasants’ claims – often with the purpose of lending them legitimacy by connecting

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Notes them to existing rights or in order to try to get peasant activists to use codified human rights – human rights activists have tended to focus on the two extremes of the continuum, the individual and the nation state: ‘The first key element of food sovereignty is to restore national and individual sovereignty over food security policy’ (Ziegler et al. 2005, 344). Interview with FIAN representative, 23 June 2009. But, in fact, not as a right of communities, a dimension that is striking in the proposed new right to food sovereignty. It is interesting to note that the individual right to development has been recognized by the US but not that of states, in part because a recognition of states’ right to development would imply that states, and not the individual people themselves, are responsible for defining the kind of development to pursue (Maggio and Lynch 1997, 14). For example, the right to food sovereignty brings to mind ‘the right of every country to adopt the economic and social system that it deems the most appropriate for its own development’ (UN General Assembly 1974b), a right that was proclaimed in the 1974 Declaration on a New International Economic Order (art. 4d). Interview, 4 May 2010. Both terms were evoked by food sovereignty activists during my fieldwork. The controversy that sparked in 2002 within the global justice movement following the release of Oxfam’s Rigged Rules and Double Standards report (Watkins and Fowler 2004) which demanded increased market access for developing countries is illustrative of this. For a critique of the Oxfam campaign, see Bello 2002. Interview, 27 April 2009. Peasant woman, member of the Confédération paysanne, Vía Campesina, at workshop on the Right to Food Sovereignty and Trade organized by the Confédération paysanne for European organizations of Vía Campesina, Paris, 7 and 8 Jan. 2009. Portuguese farmer, at workshop on the Right to Food Sovereignty and Trade organized by the Confédération paysanne for European organizations of Vía Campesina, Paris, 7 and 8 Jan. 2009. Name changed. Interview, 4 May 2010. Einarsson 2000, cited in Desmarais 2003, 40. Name changed. Interview, 15 Oct. 2010. Interview, 15 Oct. 2010. The UN General Assembly (UNGA) is an established ‘arbiter’: it has been granted the authority to determine which claims should be deemed rights and which should not (Alston 1984, 607–8). Several other bodies within the UN, however, have proclaimed new rights without going through the UNGA. While civil society groups usually turn to the UN in their efforts to get new rights universally recognized, recognition can also take place at the regional or national levels. In their assessment of the perceived potential benefits of engaging with the UN system as experienced by small farmers’ platforms, McKeon and Kalafatic list the following: opportunity to gain credibility with governments and public opinion; access to financial resources; access to technical information to help build advocacy positions/influence UN experts; access to global policy space; and facilitating participation in policy dialog at country or regional level. According to the Vía Campesina and ROPPA peasant networks, the overall verdict is low. Civil society views are now voiced, at least in some UN forums, but their impact on outcomes is open to question (McKeon and Kalafatic 2009, 12). Interview, 2 June 2009. Vía Campesina refrained from underwriting the final declaration of the NGO Forum on the grounds that the text failed ‘to express a clear position in favor of

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oppressed groups and peoples of today’s global agricultural systems’, but stated their appreciation that their representatives had been ‘fully accepted and involved throughout the work of the NGO Forum’ (McKeon 2009, 36). The Global Convention on Food Security, which was intended to ‘build a framework at the international level that would allow governments to define and implement the specific packages of policies required to ensure that food security be given highest priority in the national context’ – through actions such as supply management, exemption of staple foods from WTO rules when the latter undermine national food security, international commodity agreements, an international network of food reserves, etc. (McKeon 2009, 40) – failed to ever materialize. The idea of a Code of Conduct on the right to food, to the contrary, turned into ‘Voluntary Guidelines to support the progressive realization of the right to adequate food in the context of national food security’, which were negotiated by FAO member states and finally adopted by the FAO Council in Nov. 2004. Interview, 2 June 2009. Demands for such a convention can be found in the 2001 ‘Priority to Peoples’ Food Sovereignty – WTO out of Food and Agriculture’ statement of the Our World is Not For Sale coalition; and in the Final Declaration of the World Forum on Food Sovereignty which was held in Havana, Cuba, 7 Sept. 2001. An actual draft People’s Convention of Food Sovereignty was elaborated by the member organizations of the People’s Food Sovereignty Network Asia Pacific network in 2004 (People’s Food Sovereignty Network Asia Pacific and Pesticide Action Network Asia and the Pacific 2004). The People’s Food Sovereignty Network, however, made the conscious decision not to pursue the institutionalization of this Convention. The campaign was launched by the Vía Campesina; COASAD; Collectif Statégies Alimentaires; the ETC Group (formerly RAFI); Focus on the Global South; FoodFirst/Institute for Food and Development Policy; Friends of the Earth Latin America and Caribbean; Friends of the Earth England, Wales and Northern Ireland; GRAIN; the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP); the IBON Foundation Inc.; and the Public Citizen’s Energy and Environment Program (Desmarais 2003, 41). The 2002 NGO Forum for Food Sovereignty adopted two documents: a statement (‘Food Sovereignty: A Right for All’) and an Action Agenda. The statement called for ‘a Convention on Food Sovereignty in order to enshrine the principles of Food Sovereignty in international law and institute food sovereignty as the principal policy framework for addressing food and agriculture’ (NGO/CSO Forum for Food Sovereignty 2002). Translation by the author. Interview, 2 June 2009. These observations are based on participant observation at the 38th, 39th and 40th sessions of the Committee on World Food Security in 2011, 2012 and 2013, as well as on the author’s participation in the negotiations of the Voluntary Guidelines on the responsible governance of the tenure of land, fisheries and forests, and of new principles for responsible agro-invesment (rai). Translation of all the legal texts discussed in this chapter was done by the author. ‘CSUTCB anuncia apoyo a reelección de Evo’, Oxígeno-Agencia. 29 June 2013. http://www.lostiempos.com/diario/actualidad/nacional/20130629/csutcb-anunciaapoyo-a-reeleccion-de-evo_218706_471073.html. See Ecuador 2008, 2010a, 2010b. When assessing the draft version of this law President Rafael Correa vetoed part of it, especially aspects that were largely related to GMOs, land ownership, and biofuels, and made observations regarding these issues. Transgenic inputs were one point of contention, with the veto allowing for import of raw materials containing transgenic inputs. Both the legislature and the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities

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Notes of Ecuador (CONAIE) questioned the influence of agribusiness in these vetoes (Beauregard 2009, 51). The Red Agraria, composed of a number of social organisations, has been playing an influential role not only in mobilising public support to put forward petitions (as it was the case with the Law on Lands and Territories which was drafted following the collection of 44,000 signatures in 2012), but also and quite importantly in negotiating the law provisions directly with the National Assembly (Peña 2013, 11). The Réseau des organizations paysannes et de producteurs de l’Afrique de l’Ouest (ROPPA) was formally established in 2000 and gathers organizations and peasant platforms from 10 West African countries (Bénin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Gambie, Guinée, Guinée-Bissau, Mali, Niger, Sénégal, Togo). At the initiative of ROPPA, a dialogue concerning the food sovereignty of the subregion took place in Niamey from 7 to 10 Nov. 2006, among farmer organization leaders, members of parliament, officials of the ministries of agriculture and trade, and researchers from 13 countries of West Africa, together with the authorities of ECOWAS, UEMOA and CILSS, technical and financial partners, farmers’ organizations from the North and NGOs. See Mali 2006. See Fofana 2014. See Senegal 2004. See La Gazette 2103. It should be noted here that the ordinance failed to protect a dairy farmer who was selling his products directly to consumers and was brought to court for not respecting state inspection requirements. This may prompt efforts by the food sovereignty movement to get state legislation passed in the future (Bellinger and Fakhri 2013). In a letter announcing its withdrawal from the Our World is Not For Sale coalition (OWINFS), LVC stressed that it wanted ‘deeper systemic change and not a mere reform or turnaround of the WTO’. The letter explains: ‘With this free market ideology, no amount of special and differential treatment, defensive measures, exemptions or preferential access, will deliver our right to food sovereignty’ (Vía Campesina 2013b). This strategic distancing, justified by the need to avoid granting any legitimacy to the WTO, is not promising in that regard.

Chapter 3 1 FSPI was formed in 1998 following the establishment of a local autonomous peasant organization in West Java in 1991 and the consequent creation of three other autonomous peasant organizations in Java and Sumatra two years later. 2 Interview, 22 March 2010. 3 There is a wide variety of explanations for the origins of capitalism but two main ‘schools’ can be distinguished: one identifies paths of agrarian transition (the English, Prussian and American, and East Asian paths respectively), the other defends the idea that commercial capitalism developed through cycles of financial accumulation and state formation at world historical level or, in other terms, that capitalism was world historical in its very origins (Bernstein 2010, 34). 4 One much debated issue associated with primitive accumulation is the extent to which colonialism allowed for the emergence of capitalism (Bernstein 2010, 56). A related matter is the impact of colonial conditions on agrarian questions. A wide diversity of such impacts have been documented, such as: the forcible integration of Southern economies in international markets, global divisions of labour dominated by centers of developed industrial capital, the development/underdevelopment of capitalist agriculture in the periphery (Bernstein and Byres 2001, 17, 21) and the use of colonial law to create a wage labour force available to the plantation, mine and factory out of peasant and subsistence producers, and to convert communal land into

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individual property ownership, thereby facilitating the commodification of land and its extraction from precolonial users (Engle Merry 1992, 363). The issue of depeasantization has been much debated historically. It is central to the agrarian question and has long been at the heart of the ‘transition debate’ (Brass 2005, 160). At the core of these debates was theoretical disagreement on the impact of the transition to capitalist agriculture on peasant ‘differentiation’ (Borras 2009, 14). Lenin, writing in 1899 on the ‘Development of Capitalism in Russia’, anticipated that the agrarian transition to capitalism would lead to the concentration and the centralization of production in larger units (Harriss 1982, 120–9). He believed that class differentiation of the peasantry into agrarian capital and labour respectively would be a central dynamic of that transition, thereby making a significant contribution to Marx’s model of agrarian transition which was based on the British experience and the enclosure model of primitive accumulation (Bernstein 2009, 58, 61). By contrast, Chayanov defended the idea that the ‘peasant economy’ was specific in its aim or ‘motivation’ and therefore needed to be distinguished from the conventional capitalist enterprise (Bernstein 2009, 59). The imperatives of family survival recurrently led peasants to what he called ‘self-exploitation’ (Bernstein 2009, 59). Differentiation, as predicted by Lenin, did not happen, but commodity relations indeed deepened and widened in agrarian societies as he anticipated. At the same time, a wide variety of farms survived the transformation of agriculture by capitalism. These farms have not been squeezed out by capitalist farming but are subject to exploitation, attesting that there was some truth to Chayanov’s theory. Yet many do not have the positive characteristics of family farms (Harriss 1982, 120–9). Peasant, Confédération paysanne, General Assembly, Montreuil, 4 May 2010. Commodification or commoditization designates the process through which the elements of production and reproduction are produced for, and obtained from, market exchange (Bernstein 2010, 102). Alberto Gomez, UNORCA, Vía Campesina, at Conference on the Global Food Crisis organized by the Critical Development Studies network, Zacatecas, Mexico, 13–15 Aug. 2009. The role of international trade in the food sovereignty paradigm and the international governance mechanism that should be elaborated to ensure that alternative food networks can flourish at the local and regional levels certainly require further elaboration (Burnett and Murphy 2014). Peasant woman, Confédération paysanne, General Assembly, Montreuil, 4 May 2010. Brígida Chautla, UNORCA, Vía Campesina, at Public Forum ‘Sin maíz no hay paíz’, Mexico City, 15 Sept. 2009. The various approaches to development which have circulated since the 1970s have all revolved around the necessity to cover basic human needs (Nelson and Dorsey 2008, 96). The ‘basic needs approach’ was introduced by the ILO in the mid-1970s (ILO 1976) as an alternative to the objective of economic growth. Under the influence of Sen, the emphasis shifted from meeting basic needs to increasing ‘the capability of people to undertake valuable and valued “doings and beings”’ (Drèze and Sen 1989, 12). In the 1990s, the UNDP defined ‘human development’ as the expansion of ‘valuable human capabilities’. In the early 2000s, a modified version of this approach was generalized by the UN, in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Both human needs and human capabilities were conceptualized as meaning much more than material security or subsistence. The categories of basic needs developed by Galtung included both material needs (‘security needs’ and ‘welfare needs’) and nonmaterial human needs (‘identity needs’ and ‘freedom needs’) (Galtung 1978, 14). Yet, the non-material dimensions of human needs were left out, likely because these dimensions were difficult to quantify or convert in measurable targets.

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13 Fédération Unie de Groupements d’Eleveurs et d’Agriculteurs (FUGEA), http:// www.fugea.be. 14 At the end of Suharto’s dictatorship, in 1998, freedom of expression increased and peasant groups started to voice their concerns more openly (Monsalve Suárez 2012). Peasant activists increasingly interacted with NGOs and student organizations, and land rights struggles became tied to calls for democratization and regional autonomy. In the process, peasant organizations made more and more references to human rights, and ‘incorporated many of the issues associated with the global NGO movement into their platforms’ (Lucas and Warren 2003, 99). The late 1990s was also when the Indonesian agrarian movements entered transnational networks. 15 I am grateful to Michel Pimbert, who was involved in this participatory action research project, for sharing this information with me. Heri Purwanto identifies a distinct but possibly related (and earlier) source. He argues that peasant organization SPSU (one of SPI’s founding organizations) had already been discussing peasants’ rights with its members since 1996. According to Harris Putra (ex-General Secretary of SPSU) whom he interviewed, SPSU had already discussed seven fundamental rights of peasants back in 1996, and those seven points were often published in SPSU’s leaflets (Purwanto 2013). 16 In the framework of the participatory action research project led by IEED, local learning groups (LLG) were established in each study area, made up of local community organizers and farmers. The LLG was the centre and subject of the whole research and policy process activity. Its main role was to enable farmers (the primary stakeholders) to conduct participatory research for identifying, defining and redefining their key issues. The network of local learning groups’ findings informed the work of the ‘secondary stakeholders’ who largely formed the National Learning Group (Fakih et al. 2003). 17 The North Sumatra Peasant Union (Serikat Petani Sumatera Utara, SPSU), which was involved in setting up SPI, established ties with Vía Campesina in 1996. When Federasi Serikat Petani Indonesia (the predecessor of SPI) was created in 1998, the Vía Campesina membership of SPSU passed over to SPI (Purwanto 2013). 18 According to Henri Saragih, the decision to launch a campaign on a convention on the rights of peasants was made by SPI in Medan (North Sumatra) in 2000 (Saragih 2005). 19 Externalization designates the process by which local/national campaigns are externalized onto the international level, in contrast to the global framing of an issue ‘from above’ which is then diffused nationally and locally. Tarrow argues that externalization is key to building coherent and durable transnational networks (Tarrow 2005). 20 Advocacy work on the International Convention on the Rights of Peasants is conducted separately at the national/regional level and at the international/UN level. Although this research focuses on the UN level, it should be noted that member organizations in Indonesia, Nepal and the Philippines are particularly active in building alliances with NGOs or, in the Indonesian case, with the National Human Rights Commission, to advance the rights of peasants at the national level. 21 Previously known as the Commission on Human Rights of the United Nations, which was dissolved in 2006, the Council includes 47 member states, elected for three years, and is accountable to the UN General Assembly (while previously the Commission was accountable to the ECOSOC). 22 Interview, 23 June 2009. 23 Name changed. 24 Interview, 3 July 2009. 25 Interview, 3 July 2009. 26 Interview, 3 July 2009. 27 Interview, 3 July 2009.

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28 Interview, 3 July 2009. 29 Interestingly, the WTO document argues that the proposals contained in the draft Declaration would be ‘in complete conflict with the adopted “Voluntary Guidelines” to realize the Right to Food, which, inter alia, require member States to adopt measures concerning market systems in conformity with WTO agreements’ (emphasis in the original text) (WTO 2010). 30 Votes in favour (23): Angola, Bangladesh, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chile, China, Congo, Costa Rica, Cuba, Djibouti, Ecuador, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Kyrgyzstan, Malaysia, Peru, Philippines, Russian Federation, Thailand, Uganda, Uruguay. Abstentions (15): Botswana, Jordania, Kuwait, Libya, Maldives, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Nigeria, Norway, Qatar, Republic of Moldova, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Switzerland. Votes against (9): Austria, Belgium, Hungary, Italy, Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, Spain, United States (Vía Campesina 2012d). 31 One challenge facing the institutionalization of new rights for peasants indeed relates to the central issue of ‘who are the peasants’ and ‘how to define peasants’ (Harriss 1982, 24). The extent to which the peasantry constitutes a specific single and singular social entity (Bernstein and Byres 2001, 5) has been much debated in agrarian and development studies. The existence of such a category defined in economic terms is difficult to defend. The majority of ‘peasants’/‘small farmers’ in a globalizing South is ‘neither dispossessed of all means of reproducing itself nor in possession of sufficient means to reproduce itself ’ and thus includes growing numbers ‘who depend on the sale of their labour power for their own daily reproduction’. In effect, the labouring poor combine rural and urban, agricultural and non-agricultural wage employment and self-employment in ways that defy inherited assumptions of fixed, let alone uniform, notions of ‘worker’, ‘peasant’, ‘trader’, ‘urban’, ‘rural’, ‘employed’ and ‘self-employed’ (Bernstein 2009, 73). Landless labourers often see their interests ignored in rural development policies (Harriss 1982, 291–9) and it could be argued that they are underrepresented both in Vía Campesina’s membership and in the movement’s claims. Steps have been taken to remedy this gap, notably through dialogue with the International Union of Food Workers (IUF) in the framework of the peasants’rights process. 32 The HRC resolution was adopted on 27 June 2014, with 29 votes in favour, 13 abstentions (including Germany, France, Italy, Ireland) and 5 against (USA, UK, Romania, Korea, Czech Republic). Chapter 4 1 Rimlinger interprets the emergence of social rights as a strategic response by a number of governments in the West to the rise of insecurity related to industrialization (and not so much as a response to workers’ movements’ claims). This insecurity was perceived as a threat to the good development of capitalism because capitalism required a healthy and well-fed workforce (Rimlinger 1983, 53). 2 In parallel, in 1965, the Preamble of the FAO Constitution was amended, to incorporate as one of its main purposes ‘ensuring humanity’s freedom from hunger’, echoing the wording of Article 11, paragraph 2 of the ICESCR. 3 Aryeh Neier, ‘Social and economic rights: A critique’, Human Rights Brief, 13/2 (2006), 1–3, cited in Steiner et al. 2008, 283. 4 Kelley, David. 1998. A Life of One’s Own: Individual Rights and the Welfare State. Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute. 5 The international context was very favourable. The 1980s brought a strong renewal of international interest and action, propelled by the women’s movement, the children’s movement and a surge of activity by civil society. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) was agreed

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Notes to in 1979, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child 10 years later (UNDP 2000, 3). Alston attributes the reluctance of most human rights NGOs to become involved in right to food discussions to a variety of historical, ideological and pragmatic reasons (Alston 1987, 372). The basic idea behind the general suggestion that there are positive rights and negative rights seems to have been that one kind of rights (positive ones) require other people to act positively (do something) whereas another kind of rights (negative) require other people merely to refrain from acting in certain ways (to do nothing that violates the rights) (Shue 1996, 36). The UN University, which began its operations in 1975, identified world hunger, human and social development, and the use and management of natural resources as its three priority areas (Hester 1978). More research is needed on how right to food defenders positioned themselves with regard to the right to development, the right to self-determination, and the right to permanent sovereignty over natural resources. This is only alluded to in Alston and Tomaševski 1984, 23, 191. The formulation used instead is actually taken from art. 28 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: ‘International co-operation and assistance must be directed towards the establishment of a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in the Covenant can be fully realized (cf. art. 28)’ (United Nations 1987, 30). The late 1990s brought other developments, such as the 1998 Rome statute to establish the International Criminal Court, the establishment of international tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, and the optional protocol to CEDAW, opening the way for individuals to appeal to an international body. In 1990, 10% of the world’s countries had ratified all six major human rights instruments, but by Feb. 2000 this had increased spectacularly to nearly half of all countries (UNDP 2000, 3). In the NGO field, the foundation of FIAN was followed in 1987 by Habitat International Coalition. It was followed in 1992 by the establishment of the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) and in 1993 by the establishment of the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR), founded by recent Harvard graduates in New York (Glasius 2006, 69). ‘Both UN human rights covenants postulate that “in no case may a people be deprived of its own means of subsistence”, thus implying that the right to food is first of all “peoples’ right to feed themselves”’ (Künnemann 1984, 95). Summary of plenary discussions by Ranjit Nayak, internal consultation between by FIAN and Vía Campesina, Paris, 8–11 May 1997. Summary of plenary discussions by Ranjit Nayak, internal consultation between by FIAN and Vía Campesina, Paris, 8–11 May 1997. Minutes from working group 2, internal consultation between by FIAN and Vía Campesina, Paris, 8–11 May 1997. Agrarian populism is considered a form of ruralism with roots in romantic and conservative notions of an organic society, and a reaction to industrialization, urbanization and capitalism (Brass 1997, 204). Summary of plenary discussions by Ranjit Nayak, internal consultation between by FIAN and Vía Campesina, Paris, 8–11 May 1997. Interview, 23 June 2009. These organizations have a joint platform for their political work called the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance (EAA). Although the EAA appears to be using Millennium Development Goals as a reference nowadays, it has historically promoted the right to food. For more on this interesting history, see the research conducted by Nora McKeon (2009, 2011; McKeon and Kalafatic 2009).

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22 The first mandate holder (2000–8) was the Swiss sociologist Jean Ziegler. He was succeded in 2008 by the Belgian International Law Professor Olivier De Schutter (for the 2008–14 period). The mandate of the Special Rapporteur is supported by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). 23 The point has been made by others that the need for remedies and accountability need not be automatically equated with judicial remedies, and that the greater flexibility and responsiveness of other techniques such as administrative remedies and legislative responsiveness can be better suited than litigation to achieving the goals of economic, social and cultural rights (Steiner et al. 2008, 313). 24 I am grateful to Carole Samdup for pointing this out. 25 Members of the steering committee of the coalition for an optional protocol included, among others: Amnesty International, COHRE, FIAN, International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), and the International Network for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ESCRNet). 26 Olivier De Schutter, talking at the ‘Policies against Hunger’ conference, Berlin, 9 Dec. 2008. 27 The cornerstone of the ILO basic need strategy was the idea that a greater increase in employment and a more equitable distribution of income should entail a greater increase in the demand for essential consumer goods. One essential aspect of the ILO approach was that it was a labour-intensive or employment-oriented approach to economic development (Lapeyre 2008, 6). 28 As we will see, it returned to the world scene in the 1990s in the form of the Human Development reports and approach, by then incorporating the main aspects of Sen’s capabilities approach. In a way, the idea of basic needs lived on, but without the redistribution strategy and the macro-economic framework. In the early 2000s, this approach was generalized by the UN in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). 29 The report emphasized the importance of building ‘an enabling environment that empowers people’. At the national level, this entailed an efficient division of labour between the public sector (which was to focus on the direct provision of economic and social rights) and the private sector. At the international level, relatively weak measures were envisaged such as the strengthening of the international system for promoting human rights and commitments from global corporations (UNDP 2000, 118–19). 30 The growing convergence between human rights and development was not only conceptual. It was made possible by locally based battles over large-scale development projects in the 1980s and 1990s and by the series of global conferences and negotiations in the 1990s, which brought together practitioners and activists in the local and international arenas, from the development, human rights, labour and environment sectors, and from the global women’s movement and indigenous peoples’ movement (Nelson and Dorsey 2008, 29). 31 Much has been written on the projected advantages, limitations, implementation and mainstreaming of a rights-based approach to development (Overseas Development Institute 1999; UNDP 2000; Uvin 2002, 2007; United Nations 2003; NyamuMasembi and Cornwall 2004; OHCHR 2004; Veneklasen et al. 2004; Piron and O’Neil 2005; Anderson 2008; Arts 2009; Chilton 2009; Miller 2010; Diokno 2011). 32 If it appeared in 2001 that the UN system was moving toward a systematic embrace of human rights as the framework for social and economic work, by 2007 the profile of human rights in the public materials and websites of leading agencies such as UNICEF and UNDP had receded in favour of a united push for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) (Nelson and Dorsey 2008, 119). The MDGs, first agreed upon by heads of state and government at the UN Millennium Summit in 2000, include no accountability mechanisms for the rich countries and essentially

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Notes ignore access to land, employment and credit. They focus on the worst symptoms of poverty, rather than on the causes of deprivations. They replace obligations with generosity. They follow a practice well entrenched in development: global goalsetting and pledging by donors (Nelson and Dorsey 2008, 116). Efforts by the OHCHR and human rights experts such as Philip Alston to push for synergies between human rights and MDGs have largely failed (Alston 2002). In September 2011, the United Nations Secretary-General established the UN System Task Team to support UN system-wide preparations for the post-2015 UN development agenda (Nayyar 2012). Whether the new goals set by the international community post-2015 better integrate human rights remains to be seen. A similar point has been made by Baxi who argues that Sen, with his ‘Development as Freedom’, contributed to reinforcing the idea that economic growth is central to human and social development (Baxi 2007c, 116–17). Although it remains unclear if Sen’s approach is or not a human-rights centred one, since Sen does not specifically embrace the discourse of international human rights law (Steiner et al. 2008, 1442). Property, however, is often unevenly distributed and can serve to exclude many from assets necessary for their basic needs (Eide et al. 1995, 95). Especially vulnerable or disadvantaged groups include, according to the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: ‘landless peasants, marginalized peasants, rural workers, rural unemployed, urban unemployed, urban poor, migrant workers, indigenous peoples, children, elderly people, and other especially affected groups’ (these are groups referred to in the guidelines for States when reporting to the UN CESCR: UN doc. E/1991/23). To this list, Eide adds: ‘people who are temporarily in very difficult positions, such as internally displaced persons, refugees, and persons in detention or in psychiatric institutions’ (Eide et al. 1995, 93). Christensen e.g. in her 1978 essay on the right to food, adopted a structural approach to the right to food, while anchoring it in a ‘wider basic-needs development strategy’. The structural roots of hunger go so deep, she argued, that fundamental changes in both national and international patterns will be required if a sustainable end to hunger is to be achieved in any reasonable period of time (Christensen 1978, 3). Such a structural approach to human rights has been defended and conceptualized by thinkers such as Alston, Galtung, Kothari, M’baye, Rich, Shepherd and Van boven. The ETO Consortium was formed in 2007. The Consortium is led by a steering group of persons from Abo Akademi University, Amnesty International, FIAN International, Human Rights Watch, the International Commission of Jurists and the Universities of Lancaster, Maastricht and North Carolina (Künnemann 2010, 12). This view is in sharp contrast with that adopted by the Director General of the WTO Pascal Lamy who stated that: ‘trade is human rights in practice’ (Lamy 2010). For more information on human rights impact assessments, see Walker 2009. Notably: 3D-Three, Bern Declaration, Brot fur die Welt, CCIC, FIAN, Misereor, South Centre, Heinrich Boll Stiftung, and the paragovernmental organization Rights and Democracy. It is interesting to note that right to food activists did not actively participate in the WTO and trade liberalization debate which was raging in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and have, since then, struggled to lay out the normative implications of the right to food for the international economic order, making it difficult to efficiently invoke the right to food in trade debates. Faced with the challenges of establishing causality between specific international norms and human rights violations, activists and experts have mostly favoured a procedural approach. In contrast, the Special Rapporteur’s report on his mission to the WTO takes a more structural approach (De Schutter 2009d).

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44 A ‘guide to conducting a right to food assessment’ has been developed by the FAO which proposes methods to assess the causes underlying food and nutritional insecurity; frameworks to evaluate the legal, policy, and institutional environments for the right to food; and techniques for vulnerable group profiling (FAO Right to Food Unit 2009). A monitoring framework has also been developed by the FAO (FAO Right to Food Unit 2008). 45 See e.g. the Guide to Human Rights Impact Assessment and Management (HRIA) which was developed in 2007 by the International Business Leaders Forum (IBLF) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC), in collaboration with the United Nations Global Compact (http://www.guidetohria.org/guide). 46 See e.g. Getting it Right: A Step by Step Guide to Assess the Impact of Foreign Investments on Human Rights developed by Rights and Democracy in Nov. 2008 (Rights & Democracy 2011). 47 On this issue, see Ruggie 2011; De Schutter 2009a, 2009c. 48 For Stammers, such an approach has been conceptualized by thinkers such as Henry Shue (1996), Jack Donnelly (2003) and R. J. Vincent (1986) in the 1980s. Chapter 5 1 McAdam et al. (1996, 8) developed the idea that the emergence of a movement essentially depends on three sets of interrelated factors: political opportunities, mobilizing structures and framing processes. If their model has considerably evolved since its elaboration (Contamin 2010), it remains central to apprehending key aspects of social movements research. Political opportunities and movement organizations do not produce sustained social movements. A movement’s ability to develop and mobilize depends on ‘meaning work’: the production of meaning for constituents, antagonists and bystanders (Benford and Snow 2000, 612). The term ‘frames’ has been used to designate such mobilizing ideas and meanings (Snow et al. 1986). ‘Framing’ refers to the collective effort of groups of people to fashion shared understandings of the world and of themselves (McAdam et al. 1996, 6). Since the early 1990s, an abundant scientific production has explored how frames are ‘generated and diffused’ (Benford and Snow 2000, 612). While initially emphasizing the role of movement entrepreneurs or leaders in framing processes, this literature has come to acknowledge that all social movement participants are actively engaged in framing. This is certainly the approach taken in this chapter. 2 Liberalism can be defined as a project that ‘promote social outcomes that are, as far as possible, the result of free individual choices, provided that such choices respect equal freedom and the rights of others’ (Charvet and Kaczynska-Nay 2008, 2). 3 Cited in Kneen 2009, 16. 4 While an in-depth discussion on frames and ideologies is beyond the scope of this work, it is important to note that frames must resonate with the movement ideology(ies); that ideologies are the basis for chosing frames; and that frames are derived from ideologies (Valocchi 1996). Master frames (as developed in Snow and Benford 1992) seek to capture both ideology and frame. 5 ‘Frame amplification’ designates attempts by activists to invigorate existing values or beliefs (Benford and Snow 2000, 624). 6 This master frame builds on the idea of tolerance and acceptance of different others, combined with the idea that one can maintain a pride in and love for one’s particular ethnic or racial heritage (Berbier 1998, 434). 7 This master frame has been used by the environmental justice movement (Benford 2005). 8 According to this master frame, conceptualized by Theodore Mitchell in 1987, all rewards of agricultural production should accrue to the direct producers (Mooney and Hunt 1996, 182).

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9 The ideology of agrarianism claims that, when organized around independent ownership, the sphere of agricultural production is the source and preserve of equality, freedom, democracy and strong family (Mooney and Hunt 1996, 183). A number of various agrarian master frames derive from this ideology. 10 The process of ‘frame extension’ designates efforts by movement activists to depict social movement interests and frames as extending beyond its primary interests (Benford and Snow 2000, 625). 11 Frames are made through discursive processes, strategic processes and contested processes. Discursive processes refer to the talk and conversations and written communications of movement members that occur primarily in the context of movement activities. Strategic processes refer to the development and deployment of frames to achieve a specific purpose: to recruit new members, to mobilize adherents, to acquire resources and so forth. In this section, we will mostly look at frames as contested processes (Benford and Snow 2000, 624–5). 12 Following Eric Holt-Giménez, we could argue that this contest took place between food sovereignty and both food security (understood as a reformist concept in its politics, and as applying to development/aid in its orientation) and food enterprise (understood as a neoliberal concept in its politics, and as applying to corporate/global market in its orientation) (Holt-Giménez 2011, 117). For the sake of simplicity, I limit my analysis of the frame contest to food security. 13 Most of the academic literature on Vía Campesina acknowledges the existence of a frame contest between food sovereignty and food security (Fairbairn 2011), although not necessarily grounding such a contest in frame analysis. Some observers describe a struggle between two models of economic, social and cultural development for the rural world (Rosset and Martínez-Torres 2010, 168). Others ‘contrast’ food sovereignty with its more widely known counterpart – food security (Patel 2007, 89). 14 Name changed. 15 Interview, 7 Jan. 2009. 16 Ibrahim Coulibaly, ROPPA, at seminar organized by the Collectif Stratégies Alimentaires (CSA) on ‘The Need to Regulate Agricultural Markets’, Brussels, 4–5 May 2009. 17 For more on this distinction, see Holt-Giménez 2010. 18 Interview, 6 Jan. 2009. 19 Name changed. 20 Interview, 2 June 2009. 21 Farmer from Austria, at workshop on the Right to Food Sovereignty and Trade organized by the Confédération paysanne for European organizations of Vía Campesina, Paris, 7 and 8 Jan. 2009. 22 Peasant, Confédération paysanne, General Assembly, Montreuil, 4 May 2010. 23 International institutions and their discourse shape the critique that is produced by social movements (Agrikoliansky 2010). It is therefore not surprising that the contours of the food security vs. food sovereignty frame contest evolved over time, as the food security frame itself adjusted to new international events. 24 It is interesting to note that one of the effects of the food sovereignty vs. food security and food sovereignty vs. right to food contests was that global food movement actors had little choice but to adopt one of the three available frames – right to food sovereignty, right to food or food security – as their reference or organizational frame. In many cases, this strategic choice led to intense internal debates, although most organizations and movements in practice combined or used a mix of the different frames. Only a limited number of actors refrained from adopting either of these three frames as their organizational frame. An excellent counter-example is provided by Oxfam International which, despite deploying a rights master frame, nevertheless elaborated a brand new ‘food justice’ frame because internal disagreement did not provide the

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conditions for the organization to adopt either the right to food or the right to food sovereignty frames. In a later stage of its diffusion and appropriation by movement activists, somewhere in the mid-1990s, the right to food sovereignty came in contact (and soon entered in conflict) with the – codified and recognized – human right to food, a concept that was mostly pushed by human rights experts and NGOs at the time. Hence the right to food sovereignty did not only develop in reaction to ‘its more widely known counterpart – food security’ (Patel 2007, 89). It also developed, to some extent, as an alternative and in opposition to the human right to food, which the food sovereignty movement regarded with some ambivalence: both as fundamental and insufficient. Name changed. Interview, 19 Sept. 2008. Emphasis added. Name changed. Member of Vía Campesina, at consultation convened by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food on Agro-ecology, Brussels, 21–22 June 2010. Member of Vía Campesina, at consultation convened by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food on Agro-ecology, Brussels, 21–22 June 2010. Name changed. Member of Vía Campesina, at consultation convened by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food on Agro-ecology, Brussels, 21–22 June 2010. Name changed. Interview, 24 June 2009. I am grateful to Luis Hernández Navarro for pointing this out. Name changed. Interview, 19 Sept. 2008. In the sense suggested by Beck (1997), cited in De Munck 2011, 304–5. Peasant, Confédération paysanne, General Assembly, Montreuil, 4 May 2010. Peasant, Confédération paysanne, General Assembly, Montreuil, 4 May 2010. Peasant, Confédération paysanne, General Assembly, Montreuil, 4 May 2010. Name changed. Interview, 2 Sept. 2009. Interview, 25 Aug. 2009. Name changed. Interview, 4 May 2010. Interview, 5 May 2010. Interview, 15 Oct. 2010. Interview, 13 May 2009. Interview, 14 Nov. 2009. Name changed. Name changed. Interview, 15 Nov. 2009. Representative of MIJARC, Germany, at workshop on the Right to Food Sovereignty and Trade organized by the Confédération paysanne for European organizations of Vía Campesina, Paris, 7 and 8 Jan. 2009. Interview, 7 Jan. 2009. Interview, 24 Nov. 2008. Name changed. Interview, 23 June 2009. Interview, 23 June 2009. Interview, 2 June 2009. Interview with CETIM representative, 3 July 2009. Email Exchange with representative of FIAN International, March 2009. Interview, 2 June 2009.

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Notes Interview, 22 March 2010. Interview, 14 Aug. 2009. Peasant, Confédération paysanne, General Assembly, Montreuil, 4 May 2010. Member of the Confédération paysanne, at workshop on the Right to Food Sovereignty and Trade organized by the Confédération paysanne for European organizations of Vía Campesina, Paris, 7 and 8 Jan. 2009. The concept of legal opportunity structures – taken from Israël who paraphrased Tarrow’s ‘political opportunity structures’ (Tarrow 1998) – is particularly appropriate to describe the opening of institutional spaces allowing for legal changes (Israël 2003, 62). Member from the MAP, Belgium, at workshop on the Right to Food Sovereignty and Trade organized by the Confédération paysanne for European organizations of Vía Campesina, Paris, 7 and 8 Jan. 2009. This division has been largely discussed, although in other terms, by other authors. Bové and Dufour comment that two different sets of attitudes towards the WTO came to coexist within the movement: ‘the anti–WTO and those who believe that we need a new regulatory framework for international trade, on different bases, as well as an international trade tribunal’ (2004, 262). Desmarais has analysed this divergence of opinions as a reformist vs. radical debate (2003, 22–3). For Bonhommeau, the division reflects the fact that Vía Campesina member organizations are very different in their composition and, as a result, diverge in what they identify as their primary concerns, either access to land or trade liberalization (Bonhommeau 2008). Javier Sánchez, COAG, Vía Campesina, at seminar organized by the Collectif Stratégies Alimentaires (CSA) on ‘The Need to Regulate Agricultural Markets’, Brussels, 4–5 May 2009. Name changed. Member of the Confédération paysanne, at workshop on the Right to Food Sovereignty and Trade organized by the Confédération paysanne for European organizations of Vía Campesina, Paris, 7 and 8 Jan. 2009. Member of the Confédération paysanne, at workshop on the Right to Food Sovereignty and Trade organized by the Confédération paysanne for European organizations of Vía Campesina, Paris, 7 and 8 Jan. 2009. Representative from the SOC, Spain, at workshop on the Right to Food Sovereignty and Trade organized by the Confédération paysanne for European organizations of Vía Campesina, Paris, 7 and 8 Jan. 2009. African farmer at seminar organized by the Collectif Stratégies Alimentaires (CSA) on ‘The Need to Regulate Agricultural Markets’, Brussels, 4–5 May 2009. Name changed. Interview, 2 June 2009. Member of the Confédération paysanne, at workshop on the Right to Food Sovereignty and Trade organized by the Confédération paysanne for European organizations of Vía Campesina, Paris, 7 and 8 Jan. 2009. Interview, 2 June 2009. Interview, 18 Dec. 2008. Interview with Paul Nicholson, EHNE, Vía Campesina. ‘Food Sovereignty and a New Way of Internal Democracy’. Matola, Mozambique, conducted (and later edited) by Nic Paget-Clarke, 17 Oct. 2008, during the 5th International Conference of La Vía Campesina. Published in In Motion Magazine, 23 Feb. 2009. Interview, 2 June 2009. Name changed. Interview, 16 Nov. 2009. Interview, 2 June 2009. Considering that a certain period of time is necessary for new rights to be debated and to mature before they can achieve universal recognition, Alston notes that the

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‘incubation’ phase of new rights is now taking place within the UN at a much earlier stage than was the case for rights that found their way in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Rights recognized in the UDHR, he argues, had time to reasonably mature in terms of their transformation into laws, mostly through debates at the national level (Alston 1984, 614). Will the recognition of the right to food sovereignty at national level help promote the universal recognition of the right to food sovereignty in the long term? It should be noted that Patel does not support such an interpretation of the invocation of peoples’ right to food sovereignty. He writes: ‘The text of the declaration can support such a reading, but only if one leaves the ill-defined subjects of food sovereignty unproblematized. If, however, one accepts the multiple levels at which sovereignty is expressed as contradictory, the question of the exercise of sovereignty becomes one that cannot be addressed outside of a radically localized context’ (2006, 87). Member of Vía Campesina, at consultation convened by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food on Agro-ecology, Brussels, 21–22 June 2010. The civil society mechanism operates in an autonomous and self-organized fashion, and ensures the participation of 11 constituencies (small farmers, fisherfolk, landless, urban poor, agricultural workers, women, youth, indigenous peoples, consumers and NGOs) from 17 different subregions, according to specific procedures. I disagree with Schanbacher (2010) who suggests that food sovereignty could be realized without deep structural changes. Discussion with different members of SPI, Vía Campesina, Jakarta, 18 March 2010. Discussion with different members of SPI, Vía Campesina, Jakarta, 18 March 2010. Morris, ‘Political consciousness and collective action’, cited in Bernstein, Mary. 1997. ‘Celebration and supression: the strategic uses of identity by the lesbian and gay movement.’ American Journal of Sociology 103 (3): 531–65. Calhoun, ‘New social movements of the early nineteenth century’, cited in Bernstein, Mary. 1997. ‘Celebration and supression: the strategic uses of identity by the lesbian and gay movement.’ American Journal of Sociology 103 (3): 531–65. Gamson, J. ‘Must identity movements self destruct? A queer dilemma’, Social Problems, 42/3 (1995): 390–407. The term strategic essentialism was originally coined by Gayatri Spivak (1987). Paul Nicholson, EHNE, at workshop on the Right to Food Sovereignty and Trade organized by the Confédération paysanne for European organizations of Vía Campesina, Paris, 7 and 8 Jan. 2009. Javier Sánchez, COAG, Spain, at seminar organized by the Collectif Stratégies Alimentaires (CSA) on ‘The Need to Regulate Agricultural Markets’, Brussels, 4–5 May 2009. The problematic issue of identities being ‘essentialized and fixed in law’ has been raised from a wide range of perspectives (Stammers 2009, 175). Historically, the institutionalization in constitutional provision and law of supposedly universal natural rights into ‘citizenship rights’ formalized the exclusion of all those not regarded as citizens – slaves, Native Americans, women, jews, homosexuals, indigenous peoples, the plight of whom was nevertheless debated during the American and French revolutions and the Spanish conquest (Stammers 2009, 111). Recent human rights scholarship by anthropologists and others has pointed to the growing deployment and reification of culture as an argument for group or collective rights (Edelman and James 2011, 95). Gitlin, T. The Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America is Wracked by Culture Wars, New York: Metropolitan Books, 1995. Member of a Norwegian peasant organization, at workshop on the Right to Food Sovereignty and Trade organized by the Confédération paysanne for European organizations of Vía Campesina, Paris, 7 and 8 Jan. 2009.

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105 This challenge has been well documented in the case of the environmental justice movement in the United States, which has used ‘cause lawyering’ as a key movement strategy (Newell and Lekhi 2006, 191–7). 106 Interview, 24 June 2009. 107 Interview, 3 July 2009. 108 Name changed. 109 Interview with FIAN representative, 24 June 2009. 110 Discussion with different members of SPI, Vía Campesina, Jakarta, 18 March 2010. 111 Name changed. 112 Interview, 23 June 2009. 113 Interview, 23 June 2009. 114 Interview, 23 June 2009. 115 Interview, 23 June 2009. 116 Interview, 3 July 2009. 117 Interview, 3 July 2009. 118 Discussion with different members of SPI, Vía Campesina, Jakarta, 18 March 2010. 119 Interview, 3 July 2009. 120 Name changed. 121 Interview, 3 July 2009. 122 Interview, 3 July 2009. 123 Interview, 23 June 2009. 124 Alliances were nevertheless possible on other issues such as access to land and agrarian reform. 125 Interview, 25 Aug. 2009. Chapter 6 1 Interview, 21 March 2010. 2 Mooney and Hunt (2009) place the right to food and its deployment by FIAN within what they call the ‘hunger frame’ in its sharp key. I treat the right to food as distinct from the food security frame. 3 In addition, the right to food is connected to the right to privately own land and productive assets (Eide et al. 1995, 95). The right to food approach proposes limits to the rights to property – to the extent that property claims are not valid until at least all subsistence needs can be met (Stammers 1995, 493) – but this requirement has not been operationalized in a way that would put a limit to the right of human beings to appropriate nature, and has also proven difficult to implement. 4 Hanne argues that many activists from what he calls the left have been strongly influenced by a number of ideas central to Marxism, which have imprinted an anti-juridical (or anti-legalist) bias onto the left. These activists may be wary of progressive lawyers because these may help the system adjust. In his overview of how (what he calls) the left perceives legal struggles, Hanne argues that they implicitly consider the law as imposed and tainted with conservatism (it bears the trace of domination, it petrifies the initial balance of power and it maintains it) rather than possibly negotiated, pluralist or transformative; and that the left implicitly identifies the law with the state, because the individual who is forced to obey is a subject of the state, and because the law was born with the state (Hanne 2005). 5 Name changed. 6 Interview, 2 Sept. 2009. 7 Interview, 16 Nov. 2009. 8 Despite the fact that, for numerous right to food activists, it is clear that the right to food is not a demand to be provided with grants and commodities but a demand to be provided the opportunity to support oneself. This was spelled out clearly by

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Shue: ‘The request is not to be supported but to be allowed to be self-supporting on the basis of one’s own hard work’ (1996, 40). ‘Mais la mise en œuvre de ces droits se limite souvent à des actes de charité. Concernant la réalisation du droit à l’alimentation, par exemple, beaucoup d’institutions s’efforcent de fournir aux pauvres de la nourriture à bon marché au moyen de divers programmes. Or de tels programmes ne peuvent résoudre que les cas les plus criants, pas le problème en tant que tel. Cela ne mérite pas le terme de réalisation du droit à l’alimentation’ (Saragih 2005, 359–60). Translation from the original by the author. Meeting between Rajagopal and the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Louvain-La-Neuve, 7 May 2009. Coordinator of the Plate-forme Nationale de Sécurité Alimentaire, PFNSA, Haiti, 27 May 2008. Interview, 2 Sept. 2009. The term ‘assistentialism’ (assistencialismo in Spanish) is often used in Latin America to describe aid programs that give assistance to people without transforming the structures that created necessity for assistance. Blanca Rubio, at public forum ‘Sin maíz no hay paíz’, Mexico City, 15 Sept. 2009. Interview, 13 May 2009. This is obvious in some of the positions adopted by the former Special Rapporteur on the right to food on issues such as contract farming. Unlike peasant movements which, overall, resist the conversion of peasants into agricultural entrepreneurs, the Special Rapporteur has insisted on the importance of ‘expanding the choices of smallholders to sell their products on local or global markets at a decent price’ (De Schutter 2009a, para. 52 (c)), while listing a number of criteria that need to be met to ensure that such incorporation into (globalized) markets does not result in the exploitation of farmers (De Schutter 2011d, para. 10). In his report on large-scale land acquisitions and leases of land e.g. the Special Rapporteur lists a number of procedural requirements – such as, ‘any shifts in land use can only take place with the free, prior and informed consent of the local communities concerned’ (De Schutter 2009c, principle 2) – but also indicates that ‘investment agreements with net food-importing countries should include a clause providing that a certain minimum percentage of the crops produced shall be sold on local markets’ (principle 8) or that the ‘local population should benefit from the revenues generated by the investment agreement’ (principle 4). The same goes for trade agreements, in relation to which human rights impact assessments are demanded. Interview, 16 Nov. 2009. Name changed. Interview, 21 March 2010. Interview, 25 Aug. 2009. Interview, 16 Nov. 2009. Interview, 27 April 2009. Interview, 2 June 2009. The other organizations involved were World Alliance for Nutrition and Human Rights and Institute Jacques Maritain International. The objective of such a code was to clarify the content of the right to adequate food and the responsibilities of all actors involved in ensuring its full realization. A first draft was elaborated in 1997. This civil society demand led to the adoption of Voluntary Guidelines on the right to food by the FAO in 2004. Interview, 21 March 2010. Interview, 21 March 2010. Name changed.

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47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57

58 59 60 61 62

Notes Interview, 14 Nov. 2009. Name changed. Interview, 15 Nov. 2009. Interview, 24 June 2009. Interview, 23 June 2009. Interview, 25 June 2009. One line of argument which was nevertheless developed is the following: ‘Systems of social security in the modern welfare states are an initial attempt to curb violations of economic and social rights through national measures. No matter how necessary a national social welfare system may be, the human right to food can never be fulfilled by governmental allocation of food, even if no one remains hungry. Like every other human right, the right to food must be interpreted in the light of the entire range of human rights. Solving the hunger problem from a human rights standpoint means that the right to participate in the production of food and in the related decisionmaking must be guaranteed’ (Künnemann 1984, 92). Interview, 23 June 2009. The structural approach to human rights is defined in Chapter 4. Interview, 23 June 2009. Interview, 25 June 2009. Interview, 23 June 2009. Interview, 24 June 2009. Interview, 3 July 2009. Interview, 24 June 2009. The Special Rapporteur on the right to food, at regional consultation with civil society organized by FIAN in the context of future negotiations of FAO Voluntary Guidelines on the governance of land, fisheries, and forests, Kuala Lumpur, 24 March 2010. Interview, 24 June 2009. Interview, 24 June 2009. Chong has shown that Amnesty International activists who were in favour of expanding the organization’s mandate to include economic, social and cultural rights felt that it was important to connect to anti-globalization struggles to be legitimate, to adapt to changing times and that such a move would attract the youth and new regions, helping the organization reach out beyond its white middle-class base (Chong 2010, 119). Interview, 23 June 2009. Interview, 25 June 2009. Interview, 25 June 2009. Name changed. Interview, 20 March 2010. Interview, 25 June 2009. Interview, 24 June 2009. Interview, 10 Dec. 2008. Interview, 15 Nov. 2009. Interview, 15 Nov. 2009. Many joint statements now combine both frames: e.g. ‘States should promote policies and actions that actively support the measures outlined above that will realize food sovereignty and the progressive realization of the human right to adequate food’ (International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC) 2009). Interview, 23 June 2009. Interview, 25 June 2009. Interview, 25 June 2009. Interview, 24 June 2009. Interview, 24 June 2009.

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63 Discussion between the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food and civil society, during the parallel Forum to the World Summit on Food Security, Rome, 13 Nov. 2009. 64 Interview, 23 June 2009. 65 Interview, 23 June 2009. 66 Interview, 24 June 2009. 67 Interview, 24 June 2009. 68 Interview, 23 June 2009. 69 Interview, 25 June 2009. 70 Interview, 3 July 2009. 71 These positions have contrasted with those of other right to food actors, notably with those who deploy the entitlement frame. For the FAO Right to Food Unit e.g. the ‘right to food is realized when people have access to food that meets specified adequacy standards – irrespective of whether that food is imported or produced domestically, or whether it is produced by family farmers or by agribusiness’ (Cotula et al. 2008, 20). 72 Interview, 25 June 2009. 73 Debate on food sovereignty organized by Campus Plein Sud, Louvain-la-Neuve, 26 Feb. 2009. 74 UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, at the ‘Policies against Hunger’ conference, Berlin, 10 Dec. 2008. 75 UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, at conference on the global food crisis, ‘Crise alimentaire, droit à l’alimentation et droits humains’, organized by the Ligue des droits et libertés, Montreal, 5 Nov. 2008. 76 UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, at debate on food sovereignty organized by Campus Plein Sud, Louvain-la-Neuve, 26 Feb. 2009. 77 The Special Rapporteur on the right to food develops a number of arguments in favour of relocalizing food systems in his report of his mission to the WTO (De Schutter 2009d). 78 Interview, 23 June 2009. 79 Interview, 25 June 2009. 80 Interview, 23 June 2009. 81 The pursuit of this objective explains the active participation of FIAN in the process of developing Voluntary Guidelines on the tenure of land, both in the organization of consultations with civil society and in the negotiations themselves. It is also consistent with FIAN’s decision to support La Via Campesina in the negotiation of a draft Declaration of the rights of peasants at the Human Rights Council. 82 Interview, 24 June 2009. 83 She is alluding to Cotula et al. (2008). 84 She is alluding to para. 11.2(a) of the ICESCR which reads ‘by developing or reforming agrarian systems in such a way as to achieve the most efficient development and utilization of natural resources’. 85 Interview, 23 June 2009. 86 Interview, 23 June 2009. 87 See A/HRC/4/18, para. 33(e). 88 Their concern, rather, has been to expand the scope of the global campaign for agrarian reform to better take into account the issue of access to land in the North, the specific challenges faced by indigenous peoples in the defence of their territories, and counter-agrarian reforms. They have also insisted that the campaign not be ‘limited to the ‘letter writing’ and ‘investigative mission’ style of FIAN, and be reinforced in its ability to act more as a social movement (Rosset and Martinez 2005, 22). 89 Interview, 25 June 2009. 90 Interview, 18 March 2010. 91 Interview, 22 March 2010.

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92 Interview, 23 June 2009. 93 Interview, 25 Aug. 2009. 94 Anderson, in her attempt to link food security, health, decent livelihoods, gender equity, safe working conditions, cultural identity and participation in cultural life, has developed the interesting concept of ‘rights-based food systems’ (RBFS), which she uses to look at the implications of fulfilling human rights throughout our food systems. She argues that six criteria would need to be met for food systems to be rights-based: the absence of human exploitation; democratic decision-making on food system choices that have impacts on people in more than one sector of the system; fair, transparent access by producers to all necessary resources for food production, including knowledge; multiple independent buyers; the absence of resource exploitation; and no impingement on the ability of people in other locales to meet these criteria (instead of trade relationships that undermine decent wages, fair prices, or environmental quality, she suggests encouraging trade between RBFS) (Anderson 2008). 95 Interview, 25 June 2009. 96 Investigative missions are ‘extractive’ in nature: staff or human rights experts carry out short visits to countries in order to document abuses, put together a report and later denounce violations internationally through the media and other public forums. In this approach, participation is limited to using people providing data as informants. While this approach was justified in the past by the closed political environments in which violations occurred, and the dangers that denouncement would provoke, it has become largely obsolete by the opening of many political systems (Veneklasen et al. 2004, 16). It has also shown its limits because of the complex nature of most cases of violations of the right to food and the difficulties faced in documenting them (such as accessing land registries, collecting information about corporate behaviour, interviewing the authorities, etc.), requiring longer research missions and more meticulous data gathering and cross-checking. In addition, the format of such missions makes it difficult to assess how local situations evolve over time, raising problems of follow-up and pointing to the importance of building local capacities to ensure that information about the ‘case’ can be gathered over extended periods of time (although some contact is usually maintained because the consent of communities is traditionally sought before launching an international action such as a letter campaign). While often providing opportunities for demonstrations of solidarity and for building stronger ties between Northern and Southern human rights defenders, fact-finding missions can be experienced as ‘paternalistic’ or ‘colonizing’. 97 Human rights work tends to be ‘too narrowly focused’ on ‘the technical aspects of trying to influence UN conventions’, ‘train local organizations in documentation techniques and elite-level advocacy strategies’, and on ‘delivering technical outputs in short time-frames (such as strengthened legislatures, law and constitutional reform, legal rights pamphlets and workshops)’. Because of this focus, human rights groups are at risk of losing sight of ‘how change takes place or how power operates’. To take participation and social change seriously inevitably raises the issue of how to develop strategies that strengthen disenfranchised populations and their organizations as powerful protagonists (Veneklasen et al. 2004, 19–20). 98 Interview, 24 June 2009. 99 UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, at a consultation he convened on Human Rights Impacts Assessments of Trade and Investment Agreements, Geneva, 23–24 June 2010. 100 Representative of CIEL, at consultation convened by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food on Human Rights Impacts Assessments of Trade and Investment Agreements, Geneva, 23–24 June 2010.

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101 Representative of IATP, at consultation convened by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food on Human Rights Impacts Assessments of Trade and Investment Agreements, Geneva, 23–24 June 2010. 102 Representative of Focus on the Global South, at consultation convened by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food on Human Rights Impacts Assessments of Trade and Investment Agreements, Geneva, 23–24 June 2010. 103 Former UN Special Rapporteur on the right to housing, at consultation convened by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food on Human Rights Impacts Assessments of Trade and Investment Agreements, Geneva, 23–24 June 2010. 104 It should be noted here that FIAN’s thinking on the issue is evolving. In a recent joint publication, FIAN indicated that to take gender, nutrition and community seriously would require going ‘beyond Sen to place participation at the core of the right to food’. The core of the right to food should lie ‘in the social, collective and participatory process of identifying and defining what is adequate food (culturally, nutritionally, safety-wise, environmentally, socially, etc.) for a specific social group, community or people; what is the adequate way of producing it to guarantee social, environmental and economic sustainability; who should produce it; how should it be distributed, how people could have adequate options to choose from to satisfy their personal food habits, nutritional and other needs, in an informed way (Bellows et al. 2011, 88–9). 105 Former UN Special Rapporteur on the right to housing, at consultation convened by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food on Human Rights Impacts Assessments of Trade and Investment Agreements, Geneva, 23–24 June 2010. 106 The right to food approach in fact advocates for a compromise or balance to be found between the two (UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, at debate on Food Sovereignty organized by Campus Plein Sud, Louvain-la-Neuve, 26 Feb. 2009). 107 UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, at a consultation he convened on Human Rights Impacts Assessments of Trade and Investment Agreements, Geneva, 23–24 June 2010. 108 Pascal Lamy, during the Special Rapporteur’s official mission to the WTO, Geneva, 25 June 2008. 109 This ‘weakness’ or ambiguity of the human rights framework has allowed Pascal Lamy to claim that ‘trade is human rights in practice’ since the ‘opening of markets creates efficiency, stimulates growth and helps spur development, thereby contributing to the implementation of the fundamental human rights that are social and economic rights’ (Lamy 2010), while completely downplaying the potentially negative impacts of trade liberalization on the right to food. 110 Some authors, such as O’Connell, argue that economic, social and cultural rights (ESCR) cannot be truly protected if they are reduced to formal, procedural guarantees, rather than substantive material entitlements. O’Connell, moreover, contends that ESCR are increasingly recasted into market-friendly consumerist norms, indicating a shift to a neoliberal conception of rights (O’Connell 2011, 533). 111 Interview, 11 Oct. 2010.

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Index

accountability 38, 67, 73, 77–80, 84, 127, 129 ActionAid 7, 20, 73 agrarian populism 47, 53, 69, 85, 86 agrarian question 4, 150–1 agrarian reform 13, 32, 43, 49, 50, 53, 55, 57, 68, 78, 102, 124; Global Campaign on Agrarian Reform (GCAR) 48, 56, 124 agrarian transformations 42, 44 agrarian transition to capitalism 10, 44–5, 150–1 agreement on agriculture 25, 27, 99; see also World Trade Organization agribusiness 17–18, 32, 35, 39, 45, 50, 73, 78, 81–2, 88, 128 agricultural entrepreneur 45, 47, 53, 82, 89 agricultural workers 4, 6, 104, 113, 123, 129 Agrikolianski, E. 1, 25, 83, 102–4 agroecology 17, 32, 35, 46–7, 53–4, 77, 89, 91, 121 Amnesty International 6, 7, 26, 60, 63, 107, 117, 125–6 appropriation of resources 48, 51, 57, 82, 86–7, 93 Asia 5, 9, 51, 55, 61, 68, 96, 127 autonomy 10, 20, 23, 40, 44, 46, 51–4, 68, 77, 82, 86–7, 92, 100, 103, 105, 110, 112, 114, 123 basic needs 53, 73–4, 110, 151 Benford, R. 82, 83, 85–6, 88, 94, 96, 98 below (from): food standards 50; legitimacy 117, 128; master frame 86, 87, 91–2, 98; social change 91, 97–8, 108

biofuels (or agrofuels) 77, 100–2, 112, 123 Bob, C. 3, 26, 60–1, 98, 108, 125 Bolivia 8, 29–32, 34, 39–41, 58–9 Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas (ALBA) 29, 30 Borras, J. 2, 4–6, 8, 15, 44, 49, 124 Bové, J. 28, 50 capitalism 1, 3–4, 11, 24, 29, 42, 44–8, 63, 77, 91, 111 ; anti-capitalism 43, 86, 107, 110, 117 Centre Europe-Tiers Monde (CETIM) 56–9, 105, 107, 125 civil rights movement 83, 95 civil society mechanism (CSM) 101, 161 climate change 16, 32, 38, 49, 51, 59, 89, 93, 94, 101 codification (of human rights) 77, 104, 125; codified human rights 11, 26, 62, 95, 117 collective action: frames 82, 84, 109; repertoires 124 collective identity 61, 86, 87, 96–8, 102–3; strategic deployment of identity 103 collective rights 21, 22, 33, 34, 59, 61, 68, 77, 107, 116, 123, 130; see also peoples’ rights colonization (decolonization) 21, 23 commodification 10, 45, 123; of subsistence 53, 112 community 17–9, 23, 40, 43, 50, 53, 103, 110, 123, 130 ; community control 18; community-supported agriculture 94 customary rights 25, 123

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194

Index

Declaration on the Rights of Peasants; see United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants democracy: democratic control 127; local democracy 100, 119; rural democracy 42; social democracy 14, 86; see also human rights depeasantization 44–6, 52, 68, 151 De Schutter, O. 7, 15, 21, 23, 54, 60, 71–3, 77–80, 122–4, 129 Desmarais, A. 5, 12, 15, 27, 50, 52, 103 development: model 5, 16, 45, 97; rights-based 113–15, 129; rightsbased development NGOs 2, 87; rural development 31, 32, 42, 57; theories 73; see also right to Dominican Republic 29 Douzinas, C. 1, 3, 83 dumping 2, 13–15, 17, 19, 24, 28 economic, social and cultural rights 4, 53, 57, 63, 66–7, 73, 78, 109, 118; see also International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Ecuador 29–30, 32, 35, 40–1, 58–9, 71 Edelman, M. 2, 9, 12, 41, 59, 85 El Salvador 29, 71–2 emancipation 1, 2, 79, 84, 105, 107, 129 empowerment 55, 64, 78, 114–15; market-based empowerment 78, 110 entitlement 64, 73–7, 110–15 Europe 5, 12, 14, 47, 50, 54, 105 export-oriented agricultural production 14–15, 25, 32, 38, 45 extra-territorial obligations 78 Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) 7–8, 28, 43, 49, 63–4, 70–3, 93, 101, 114, 124; FAO Right to Food Team 7, 71, 73, 78, 124 FoodFirst Information and Action Network (FIAN) 6, 7, 48–9, 56–60, 68, 73, 77–9, 101, 105, 108, 114–16, 118, 121–4, 126–7 food prices 14–16, 45, 54, 101, 106; see also Global food crisis food security 7, 15, 17–18, 26, 30–1, 35, 39, 45, 49, 59, 73, 85, 101, 111, 117; food security frame 85–90; see also United Nations Committee on World Food Security (CFS)

food self-sufficiency 17–19, 26, 39, 92 food sovereignty: concept of 9–12, 20, 26–8, 30, 32, 34, 58, 88, 98, 111, 122; constitutional provisions on 29–34; dimensions of 3, 13, 30, 34, 37, 89, 108, 113; internal and external 22, 96, 99–100; international convention on 27–8, 41; laws and public policies on 29, 41, 96, 98, 108, 111 food system 4, 17, 40, 45, 47, 49, 97, 116 framing: food security frame 85–6, 88, 89, 90; food sovereignty frame 85–6, 88–9, 90, 92, 94, 96, 103, 116, 125; organizational frame 85, 94, 96, 158; peasants’ rights frame 85–6, 94–6, 124; reclaiming control frame 90–4, 96, 98; right to food frame 89–90, 112–15, 117–19, 121, 126, 128, 129; rights master frame 82–92, 96 free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) 163; see also indigenous peoples Gauchet, M. 1, 84 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 14, 141; see also World Trade Organization General Comment no. 12 on the right to food 69–70, 120 genetically modified organisms (GMOs) 50 Glendon, M.A. 1, 3, 84 Golay, C. 3, 22, 23, 57–8, 72, 105, 125 global food crisis 3, 28, 30, 45, 53, 58, 60, 82, 89, 93, 113, 118, 121 global food movement 4, 5, 87, 88, 89, 92 global food system; see food system global governance 3, 26, 41, 73, 81, 108, 114, 128 globalization 4, 9, 16, 17, 29, 48, 78 global justice movement 4, 15, 141 Global Strategic Framework for food security and nutrition (GSF) 29 grassroots mobilization and perspectives 3, 40, 60, 68, 91, 94, 97, 110, 127 green revolution 16, 43, 77 High-Level Conference on World Food Security 16

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Index 195 Holt-Giménez, E. 4, 49, 54 human rights: advantages of 2, 11, 83; alternative conception of 2, 10, 50–1, 53, 61, 117, 119; constraints of 2, 11, 84, 121; framing 48, 83; impact assessments 79, 119, 120, 127, 128; intermediaries/ translators 105–6, 108; new human rights (creation of) 48, 57, 98, 102, 104, 125; principles 75, 78, 112; social-democratic approach to 80, 106, 110–11, 115, 128; structural approach to 67, 77, 128; see also violations Human Rights Watch 7, 26, 60, 63, 125 ideologies 1, 83, 85 imperialism 22–4, 110–11 incorporation of farmers into markets 10, 45–6, 87, 110 indigenous peoples 3, 8, 19, 25–6, 48–50, 95, 106; indigenous peoples’ rights 26, 33–4, 83, 100, 104; see also United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples individualism 1, 2; individual entitlement 76–7; individual vs. collective rights 21, 51, 107, 116, 147 Indonesia 7, 8, 10, 42–3, 49, 55–6, 61, 91, 94–5, 102, 105, 106 industrial agriculture 107, 121 institutionalization of new rights 8, 10–1, 27–9, 39, 42, 55–6, 90, 97–100, 104, 107–8, 124; extra-institutional processes and strategies 2, 3, 98; paradox of institutionalization 2, 11, 84, 105 intellectual property 53, 73, 107, 121 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) 21, 64 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) 21, 57, 64, 67, 72, 120, 124 international financial institutions 68, 82, 101; International Monetary Fund (IMF) 17, 79 International Planning Committee on food sovereignty (IPC) 6, 28, 45, 82, 104, 112, 117 international trade 15, 25, 28, 37, 58, 78, 122

investment in agriculture 16, 17, 25, 36, 38, 45–6, 52, 70, 79, 81,93, 101, 123, 127, 128 justiciability of the right to food 64, 71–2, 115 land grabs and large-scale land acquisitions 23, 46, 77, 107; see also right to land Latin America 6, 28, 30, 45, 54, 57, 64, 72, 91, 94–6, 127 La Via Campesina; see Vía Campesina legal experts 4, 6 legal frameworks 3, 40, 66, 71 legal opportunities 60, 98; see also political opportunities legitimacy 5, 11, 82, 84, 90, 98, 109, 112, 116–18, 125, 127–9 liberalism 1, 64, 83, 86; see also neoliberalism localism 87, 93; localization 94, 122; see also relocalization Maine 29, 39 Mali 6, 19, 23, 29, 36, 37 markets 10, 14–20, 25, 32–7, 40, 43–8, 51–4, 58, 74, 77, 79, 83, 87, 91, 97, 99, 110, 122, 129; market dependency 53 Marx, K. 3, 45, 63; Marxism 3, 64, 85, 86, 91, 95 McKeon, N. 26–8, 36, 99–101, 109 McMichael, P. 6, 47, 89 means of production; see right to Merry, S. E. 1, 8, 83, 95, 105 Mexico 7, 8, 13, 40, 52, 57, 71–2, 91–2, 111 mobilization 3, 4, 29, 37, 42, 50, 85, 93, 97, 100, 103, 105, 110; demobilization 80, 100, 104 Monsalve Suárez, S. 61, 101, 123 mother earth 8, 51, 54 multicultural conception of human rights 107 neoliberalism 4, 11, 14, 17, 18, 23, 28, 29, 33, 42, 48, 82, 84, 86, 92, 93, 99, 110, 111 Nepal 6, 8, 29 New International Economic Order (NIEO) 23, 24, 67 Nicaragua 6, 14, 29, 72

196

Index

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non-governmental organizations (NGOs) 5, 7, 8–9, 26, 73, 76, 86–90, 114–15; gatekeeper NGOs 26, 60, 98 Nyéléni Food Sovereignty Forum 13–14, 18–19, 23–4, 28, 31, 33, 38, 48, 52, 91, 101, 118 obligation to fulfill 70 obligation to protect 51, 70 obligation to respect 69 Oxfam 6–7, 18, 20, 25, 66, 94, 112 participation 16, 22, 28, 29, 31, 40, 48, 54, 70, 74–8, 97, 114–15; internal and external participation 126–8; see also right to Patel, R. 2, 6, 83, 101 peasant: definition of 48, 107; peasantness and peasant essentialism 103–4; peasant farming/agriculture 46–7, 53, 122; peasant identity (see collective identity); see also smallholder farmers peoples (right of) 18–23, 42, 104, 110; see also collective rights permanent sovereignty over natural resources (PNSR) 21–3 Peru 29, 153 Pleyers, G. 19, 91–2, 141 policy coherence 79 political opportunities 93, 96, 98–9, 108 power 2–3, 15, 44–7, 52, 76, 80, 84, 91, 93, 97, 111–14, 123, 128 privatization of resources 14, 37, 46, 48–50, 123 procedural rights 70, 79, 114, 127 protest 5, 9, 16, 42, 50, 52, 93, 100, 117 public good 1, 84 Rajagopal, B. 1, 21, 63, 83, 91 reformism 60, 80, 86, 89, 110, 158 relocalization 14, 17, 24, 48, 82, 86, 94, 99, 122; relocalized food systems 17, 97, 121–2, 128 repeasantization 10, 44, 46–7, 52, 82, 86 resistance 45, 47–9, 87, 91–2, 94 respect, protect and fulfill (obligation to) 66 responsibilities (of private actors) 69, 76–80, 84; balancing rights and responsibilities 44, 51, 84, 110 rights discourse 2, 9, 20, 52, 61, 83, 94 rights holders 20, 23, 48, 116

rights of peasants; see United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants right to autonomy 23; see also autonomy right to determine prices (right to remunerative prices) 45, 48, 51–3, 106 right to development 19, 21–4, 26, 67 right to feed oneself 68–9, 78, 113–16, 120, 121, 125, 126 right to food; code of conduct on 27, 69, 70, 112, 119, 120 (see also Voluntary Guidelines on the right to food); defenders 4–8, 60, 62, 90, 109, 112–28; progressive realization of 28, 70; see also framing; justiciability; right to feed oneself right to food sovereignty 7, 18–24; see also food sovereignty; framing right to land 2, 28, 57, 59, 61, 83, 92, 106, 120–1, 123, 128; see also right to resources right to means of production 42–3, 54, 58, 111 right to participation 26, 120 right to produce 2, 13, 15, 19, 28, 52, 83, 106, 116, 125 right to resources 28, 31, 50–1, 53, 78, 104, 114–15, 120, 123; see also permanent sovereignty over natural resources right to seeds 48, 83 right to self-determination 21–3 Rosset, P. 12, 15, 18, 44, 47, 49–50, 54, 94, 97, 124 Santos, Boaventura de Sousa 1, 91 seeds 16, 34, 37, 39, 48, 50, 57, 92; see also right to self-determination Sen, A. 7, 63, 74–7, 109, 110 Senegal 29, 26, 37, 39 Shue, H. 7, 63, 66 smallholder farmers 16, 28, 31, 35, 45, 60, 73, 88–9, 101,123; prosmallholder farmers development models 3, 121; see also peasant; incorporation of peasants into markets; investment in agriculture Snow, D. 82, 83, 85–6, 88, 94, 96, 98 social movements: leaders 4–5, 8, 35, 56, 95, 100; strategies of 2, 9, 25, 35, 40, 55, 91, 93, 97–9, 108;

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Index 197 transnational 3–8, 12–14, 61, 83, 85, 93, 95, 109, 113, 126; see also collective identity; framing; political opportunities; Vía Campesina Stammers, N. 2, 24, 63, 79–80, 84, 96, 100, 104–5, 110, 111 State: social-democratic 51; state obligations 59, 70, 80; state sovereignty 22, 67; statist framework 2, 24, 79–80, 84 structural adjustment 12, 15 structural changes 1, 3, 12, 23, 40, 76, 77, 91 subversive use of human rights 2, 11, 80, 84, 90, 106–7, 110, 115 sustainable agriculture 27, 122; see also agroecology Tarrow, S. 93 territory 17, 31, 48–50, 59, 92, 106, 110, 112; see also right to land trade liberalization 4, 10, 13–17, 24, 27, 73, 115, 123; international trade 15, 25, 28, 37, 58, 78, 122; trade agreements 16, 30, 79, 120, 128; see also World Trade Organization transition (ecological) 17, 35, 121 transnational corporations (TNCs) 46, 68, 93, 123 United Nations Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (CESCR) 66, 69, 72–3 United Nations Committee on World Food Security (CFS) 8, 28–9, 73, 101–2, 105, 107–8, 117, 128 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples 35, 102 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants 43, 48, 50–1, 56, 59, 60–1, 94–6, 102–3, 107, 124 United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) 8, 28, 43, 49, 63, 70, 71, 73, 93, 101–2, 114

United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) 2–3, 8, 10, 42, 56–60, 73, 95, 102, 105–8 United Nations Secretary General 28, 73 United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food 7, 56–8, 60, 71–3, 77, 79, 105, 114, 119, 122–5, 128 universal right 11, 25, 61, 68, 110, 125, 126, 128, 129 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) 21, 26, 42, 63–4 Venezuela 29, 71 Vía Campesina: origins, structure and organizations 4–10; see also food sovereignty victims of human rights abuses 1, 6, 72, 83, 86, 104, 116, 127 violations (of human rights) 6, 52, 57, 60, 62, 72, 76, 80, 86, 100, 114–6, 122, 127, 129 Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests 93, 101, 117 Voluntary Guidelines on the Right to Food 28, 69–71 West Africa 20, 35–7 Western conception of human rights 1, 52, 83, 122; Western states 64 World Bank 48–9, 75, 93, 101 World Food Summit (WFS) 13, 27, 28, 108, 119 World Summit on Food Security (WSFS) 49, 113, 119 World Trade Organization (WTO) 5, 13, 15–20, 25, 27–8, 30, 40, 41, 58, 86, 93, 96, 98–9, 106–8, 112, 120, 122–3, 129; see also international trade Ziegler, J. 7, 56–9, 105, 121–2, 125

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