In the past four decades, imperialist powers led by the US and their institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, World Trade Organization (WTO) and others, in collaboration with compliant neo colonial states, have promoted neoliberal policies around the world. Neoliberal restructuring has given imperialism tight and comprehensive control over economies, including full access to land and natural resources of many underdeveloped countries. These policies have widened opportunities for the accelerated imperialist plunder of natural resources, massive livelihood loss and degradation of the environment.
The result is extensive land grabbing, leading to farmers and small food producers being dispossessed of their lands while agro-corporations replaced traditional agriculture with monoculture plantations. Big business and imperialist countries has been converting agricultural lands into mega infrastructure project eco-tourism, conservation areas, housing projects and other supposed nature-based solutions to the climate crisis but are, in fact, massive money-making schemes. Some governments are also converting farmlands into military facilities and other non-productive uses at the expense of the people’s rights.
Despite the restrictive Covid-19 lockdowns, imperialist institutions and big corporations found themselves pushed to the wall and made accountable by the world’s peoples for their decades of plunder of the planet’s natural resources.
Monopoly corporations, imperialist institutions, and national governments insist on the same neoliberal framework and orientation as their big and “new” solutions to the planet’s deteriorating state and the current global economic crises. For example, the World Economic Forum calls for transforming the food systems by banking on so-called green technologies and innovations. But the rural people have seen the disconnect between corporate led-technologies and what the actual tillers and the rural working people truly need on the ground. They still remember and live with the ill effects of failed programs such as the Green Revolution. Imperialist institutions such as the IMF-World Bank and their corporate allies have not been made accountable for the decades of imperialist plunder and destruction of land, environment, whole ecosystems, and populations for their super profits. The failure of these imposed programs worsened hunger and landlessness and has left rural communities ever more vulnerable to the effects of climate change.
But the marginalized rural people have not been passive at the receiving end of all this oppression and exploitation. On the contrary, the landless tillers, small food producers and working people recognize that their collective strength can be the main driving force of their own development.
Our annual GLOBAL DAY OF THE LANDLESS will once again take place on March 29. This year we shall carry the theme: RURAL PEOPLES UNITE FOR FOOD, LAND, & CLIMATE JUSTICE! Defeat corporate control over agriculture! Create a future free from hunger, dispossession, and destruction!
Ways to participate
1. Take part in the March 29 Day of the Landless global action!
Organize on-ground activities such as protests, meetings, discussions, gatherings, or any such activity that highlight our land struggles and our analysis on today’s new wave of land and resource grabs. Post these activities and/or share any visual or written content (photos, videos, graphics, statements, etc.) on social media to amplify our demands and broaden the reach of our calls.
Please use the hashtag #DayoftheLandless2023 so that we can also share your posts.
2. Sign and share our unity statement!
Ultimately, we must continue building our global movements by strengthening and intensifying our local and national struggles for our rights to land, resources, food, and a healthy planet. In our communities and countries, we must develop and consolidate our alliances with all the working peoples, similarly oppressed and exploited by imperialism. Through the people’s struggles, we can steadily and decisively weaken imperialism toward building our future.
3. Join the public launch of the Global People’s Caravan on Food, Land, & Climate Justice online! Register here!
Rural people’s movements are rising to confront unprecedented global hunger, displacement, and environmental and climate destruction. Join us on March 29, Day of the Landless, as we publicly announce the Global Peoples’ Caravan for Food, Land, and Climate Justice.
The caravan aims to mobilize tens of thousands of rural communities and advocates in person for their rights and interests across all global regions and around the inter-related issues of food, land, and climate justice. It is jointly organized by the Asian Peasants Coalition (APC), People’s Coalition on Food Sovereignty (PCFS), Indigenous Peoples’ Movement for Self-Determination and Liberation (IPMSDL), International League of Peoples Struggles (ILPS), Peoples Rising for Climate Justice (PRCJ), PAN Asia Pacific (PANAP), and the Asia Pacific Research Network (APRN).