On this year’s International Human Rights Day, we reiterate the call to stop the bombing of rural and Indigenous communities and to uphold international humanitarian law.

As we mark the 76th year of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 20th year of the Right to Food Guidelines, a greater population is in and at risk of famine due to imperialist-backed wars of aggression, occupation and colonialism, as well as counter-insurgency operations. Rural and Indigenous people face relentless human rights violations, with bombings being among the worst of its forms. As the rising trend of bombings continues, the resulting destruction will surpass underdevelopment as the primary cause of poverty and destitution in rural areas.

Behind these bombings are state perpetrators that grossly violate international humanitarian law, which is in place to protect and uphold human rights – including the right to food and the right to land – in situations of armed conflict and wars. Governments, despite claiming adherence to these laws, commit war crimes that exacerbate global hunger, using starvation as a weapon of war and repression. They exploit all resources in their arsenal to either cover up or even legitimize these violations to quell people’s resistance and safeguard their political interests and corporate profit.

These state perpetrators must be exposed and opposed, especially amid global political tensions. In WANA, the US-backed genocidal war of Israel to occupy Palestine is already wreaking havoc in Syria, Lebanon, and the rest of the Arab region. In Asia, the US Indo-Pacific Strategy is setting the stage to provoke China militarily under the guise of ‘providing security,’ when in reality, they are just protecting their control over the whole of the Asia Pacific. Authoritarian and fascist regimes are also on the rise, with governments using the same form of terror tagging and illegal arrests against the activists in the Global South. Given these conditions, attacks on rural and Indigenous peoples, including bombings of their communities, are expected to escalate.

Rural and Indigenous communities need immediate and broad support to alleviate the militarized situation on the ground. As such, we must heighten our condemnation of these bombings and widespread violations of human rights and international humanitarian law. We must also demand the accountability of state perpetrators. Through our struggles for food, land, rights, and justice, we shall assert that people’s resistance is just and legitimate!