10 December 2021 (International Human Rights Day)
The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP) was adopted three years ago by the UN General Assembly. At the 2021 Land Forum, HEKS together with a coalition of Swiss NGOs called “The Friends of the Declaration” and the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights will seek ways in which the Swiss government and civil society can further engage to translate the rights enshrined in the UNDROP into reality in their international engagement. You are warmly invited to this Online-Event. It will take place via Zoom.
How to implement UNDROP in practice
UNDROP as an instrument is highly relevant: peasants are key to global food security and thus to the transformation towards sustainable food systems. In addition, it is based on the needs of the people at its centre who participated in the negotiation process.
Economic and agricultural policies have pushed developing countries to produce for export, tying them to the bottom end of global value chains and making them vulnerable to fluctuations in world prices and markets over which they often have no control. This is compounded by the creation of markets for land that make it difficult for peasants to protect their customary, often collective, land rights. Trade agreements are another hurdle for local production. They limit the policy space of developing countries to support their peasantry.
Despite the increasingly evident shortcomings of the current trade system in terms of environmental sustainability, resilience, global food security and peasants’ rights, trade agreements are repeatedly concluded without proper assessment of their impacts and without peasants’ participation. Existing agreements are also not adapted even when it is obvious that they do not respond to the needs of peasants, consumers, or the environment.
Based on the study “Switzerland’s Foreign Policy and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants” (available in English, French and German), published by a coalition of Swiss NGOs called “Friends of the Declaration” and the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, this event will come up with proposals to guide Swiss governmental and civil society activities, so that they implement the rights enshrined in UNDROP through their international engagement.
You are warmly invited to the HEKS/EPER Land Forum 2021:
Time: December 10 2021, 9.00 – 15.30
Place: Due to Covid-19, this event will take place online, via Zoom. You will get the link after registration.
Language: English
Registration: Before 9 December 2021