RISE UP FOR FOOD, LAND, AND CLIMATE JUSTICE
Join Global Days of Solidarity with Peasants of the Global South on October 9-20, 2023
Peasants and indigenous peoples across the Global South are under attack on all fronts.
From the worsening hunger pandemic and roiling climate catastrophe to “new” waves of landgrabs and intensifying fascist attacks, peasants are at the center of today’s worsening TNC-led plunder, increasingly volatile imperialist rivalry, and rising dictatorships.
But peasant and indigenous movements around the world are valiantly fighting back. They are #Hungry4Change that will end their oppression and exploitation.
We call on the peoples of the world to #StandWithPeasants, reinforce and amplify their demands for the right to food, land, and justice. Together, let us #ForwardtheFuture that is just, equitable, healthy, and sustainable for peasants, for all, and the planet.
Rationale
Today’s unabating hunger, the worst since World War II, is a direct result of decades of imperialist plunder, colonial trade deals, and neoliberal policies aimed at maximizing profits at the expense of our rights.
Like wildfire, hunger has swiftly spread in the most vulnerable communities in Asia, Africa, West Asia and North Africa, and Latin America. In just two years, food — on average — costs 38% more globally, almost doubling in poor countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh, Lebanon, Argentina, and Turkey, among others. Even in the Global North more and more people are struggling to access adequate food. In the UK, for example, the sixth richest country in the world, 6% of the population now lives in food poverty.
Meanwhile, the combined net profit of the top four grain TNCs (US and EU) soared to a whopping US$14 billion in the last two years, as the poorest households shelled out an extra US$9 billion for food alone.
Peasant hunger and destitution
Ironically, peasants, indigenous communities, Dalits, landless farmers, rural women, and youth, as well as fishers and agricultural workers in the Global South—those who feed the world—are the most hungry.
Shackled in colonial-era landlessness, abject rural poverty, and the strategic withdrawal of State support, peasants and rural working people are steeped in hunger, buried in usurious debt, and vulnerable to health, climate, and disaster-related catastrophes.
So-called “investments” in food and agriculture in the last 50 years have only benefited imperialist countries like the US, EU, China, and Japan, their TNCs, and local elites of the Global South.
The current global food system is not built around human needs or environmental sustainability. It’s built atop the toiling backs of peasants to serve the imperialists’ drive for profits, realized through their TNCs, international finance institutions, unequal trade agreements, and colonialist structures that indulge the local elites.
Violent landgrabs, ‘green’ evictions
While governments and institutions pay lip service to peasants of the Global South being the most vulnerable to the ongoing climate catastrophe, many of the proposed climate solutions are set to evict them from their lands and uproot communities.
At least 1.2 billion hectares of land globally are earmarked by ‘nature-based solutions’ of States to supposedly mitigate and adapt to climate change by 2050. Unsurprisingly, many of these duplicitous plans target lands in the hands of peasants and indigenous peoples of the Global South. The push for renewable energy and conservation often comes at the expense of these communities, exacerbating the already dire hunger crisis. Expansion of plantations for biofuels and afforestation projects encroach on indigenous peoples’ lands and transform peasants into agricultural workers who receive slave-like wages. Additionally, corporate-driven conservation and “green” and “blue” eco-tourism projects are driving away indigenous communities from their ancestral lands.
Moreover, technology-driven solutions require more extraction for rare earth metals — unleashing a new wave of mining in countries at the frontlines, including Indonesia, the DRC, Chile, and Burma, to name a few.
That is why institutions like the World Bank Group are ramping up investments in opening up land markets — including land parcelization projects in the Philippines — to facilitate this “new” wave of green landgrabs.
Meanwhile, the desire for greater corporate profits continues to drive massive reclamation projects that displace coastal communities and small fishers.
Rural bombings, peasant killings
The last few years also saw a rise in rural bombings and peasant killings as a means to suppress resistance against landgrabs and forced evictions. There is an alarming increase in aerial bombings and ground shellings in rural communities, especially in Palestine, Burma, the Philippines, India, and Pakistan. Often predicated on landgrabs and targeting peasant unrest, these bombings result in loss of property, deaths and injuries, forced evacuations, and long-term impacts on communities.
In the Karen people’s lands alone, the Myanmar junta dropped over 200 bombs from 2021 to 2022, resulting in at least 162 injuries and 47 deaths. The Indonesian government meanwhile, denied bombings directed at West Papuans in Nduga. At least 1,254 peasants were affected by aerial bombing assaults, with 900 of them displaced this year alone in the Philippines.
In rural communities in Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, and the Philippines, peasant and IP killings continue to ramp up, with at least 177 murdered this year. Fascist governments in the Global South continue to harass, incarcerate, and malign peasant activists and allies, militarize farming communities, and weaponize counter-terrorism laws and policies for landgrabs.
Rise Up for Food, Land, and Justice!
Ramping up to this year’s World Hunger Day on October 16, peasant movements and allies across the world are demanding an end to hunger, landgrabs, and injustice.
The Rise Up for Food, Land, and Justice is a Global Days of Solidarity to #StandWithPeasants.
It is an eleven-day international initiative aimed at mobilizing support for Indigenous Peoples and Peasants of the Global South. Focused on the urgent issues of worsening hunger, violent landgrabs, climate catastrophe, and rising fascist attacks, the week serves as a focal point for collective action and solidarity.
It aims to bring together individuals, organizations, and institutions, including those from the Global North, to stand in solidarity with marginalized communities facing these crises. Moreover, it aims to serve as a platform for cross-movement learning among and with peasant organizations in the Global South.
Now, more than ever, we need to galvanize our resolve to stand with peasants and collectively stand for our right to a just, equitable, healthy, and sustainable future.
Objectives
- To mobilize global solidarity for Indigenous Peoples and Peasants of the Global South facing worsening hunger, landgrabs, climate catastrophe, and rising fascist attacks.
- To amplify the IP and peasants’ demand for food, land, and justice, exposing injustices and systemic oppression that cause and hinder them.
- To raise awareness and catalyze radical transformations that address the immediate needs and systemic issues affecting IP and peasants in the Global South.
Activities
October 9: Reclaim our Future: Resist IMF-WB
The IMF-WB has been instrumental in denationalizing the economies of the Global South, facilitating the destruction of social protection and subsidies for peasants, and promoting the dominance of agrochemical TNCs of the imperialist US, EU, and, more recently, China.
This global protest coincides with the end of the World Bank Group’s annual meeting in Morocco, where it is set to once again facilitate neoliberal policies under the guise of financing recovery among Global South nations.
PCFS, the Arab Network for Food Sovereignty (ANFS), Ibon International, and allies will be holding a hybrid discussion on the IMF-WBG’s role in the current food, land, human rights, and climate crises.
October 10: #StandWithPeasants Social Media Rally
The #StandWithPeasants Social Media Rally is a targeted digital campaign set to run alongside Global Solidarity Days.
Focused on urgent issues like hunger and landgrabs affecting Indigenous Peoples and Peasants in the Global South, the rally leverages platforms like Twitter and Facebook to amplify voices and catalyze action. Participants, including key influencers and organizations, are encouraged to use the hashtag to share stories, show solidarity, and drive awareness about peasant rights.
October 12: The Anti-imperialist Peasant Movement
Today’s interlocking crises and the swelling peasant unrest at their heels are a historic result of decades of tightening the interplay of imperialist dominance and vestiges of feudal landlordism in most of the Global South.
ILPS Commissions 6 and 10 will be hosting a webinar on the hard-won lessons of peasant and working people’s movements in the fight against imperialism, feudalism, and fascist states, more relevant than ever today, as exemplified by the life and work of the late ILPS Chair Emeritus Jose Maria Sison.
October 15: International Rural Women’s Day
This year’s International Rural Women’s Day Celebration (October 15) is a global event to celebrate and highlight the invaluable contribution of rural women to the struggle for food, land, and justice.
Rural women’s organizations across the world are set to create national and local activities to highlight the plight of rural women, their leadership, and their place in the struggle for a pro-people and pro-planet future.
The Asian Rural Women’s Coalition (ARWC) will lead a webinar to bring together peasant movements and allies to highlight the crucial role that rural and indigenous women play in the fight for the right to food, land, and climate justice.
October 16: World Hunger Day
Zero Hope for Zero Hunger with Imperialism at the Helm!
The last UN Summit to “accelerate” the Sustainable Development Goals, especially eradicating hunger globally (Goal 2), was unsurprisingly a letdown. Governments continue to insist on the same neoliberal policies that have led us to the worst food crisis since World War II. This year’s World Food Day celebration should continue to be commemorated as World Hunger Day as imperialists and their TNCs drive policies of famine, climate catastrophe, peasant ruin, violent landgrabs, and plunder.
World Hunger Day (October 16) is a global platform of unity to expose the causes and drive solutions to the persistent and worsening hunger, especially in the Global South. It highlights the plight and the role of indigenous peoples and peasants in the radical change needed to guarantee the eradication of hunger and malnutrition plaguing the poorest communities globally.
A Global Day of Action will be organized to mark World Hunger Day and highlight the demands of rural peoples for food, land, and justice.
The Global People’s Caravan will kick off its two-year coordinated protests for food, land, and climate justice in Manila, India, and Pakistan in time for World Hunger Day. These protests will advance the call for radical transformations of our food systems towards a just, equitable, healthy, and sustainable future.
October 17: Save our Rice! RESIST Agrochemical TNCs!
On October 16–19, agrochemical transnational corporations will be holding the International Rice Congress in Manila to fast-track the gene drive on rice varieties, iterate plunderous global value chains, and promote greenwashing of highly toxic chemicals through digitalization and ‘nature-based solutions’. Led by Bill Gates’ funded research institutes and imperialist TNCs, the rice congress is a threat to people’s right to healthy and affordable food and peasants right to seed.
Resistance and Solidarity Against Agrochemical TNCs, or RESIST AgroChem TNCs Network, will be hosting a counter-conference to assert people’s rights and welfare and seed sovereignty.
October 20: International Day of Solidarity against Peasant Killings
Peasants and indigenous peoples are being murdered and massacred in their hundreds, bombed and evicted in their thousands, and suppressed in their millions in the Global South.
At least 177 peasant and IP activists were killed last year in 10 countries, including Mexico, the Philippines, Colombia, and Brazil, where rural movements are asserting the people’s right to food, land, and justice. Increasingly fascist governments are assaulting agrarian unrest, weaponizing “new” and colonial laws to criminalize dissent, and outright attacking rural food producers and activists.
How you can support
Rise Up and #StandWithPeasants
- Mobilize support by hosting a forum, organizing a protest, and conducting supportive activities, participants can raise awareness, drive policy change, and offer tangible support.
- Publicly demonstrate solidarity and demand immediate action to address the crises affecting farmers and Indigenous communities in the Global South
- Hold a panel discussion featuring experts, activists, and community leaders, followed by a Q&A session.
You can include your organizations’ events for the Global Days of Solidarity by emailing us at secretariat@pcfs.global
Reinforce and Amplify
- Participate in the social media rallies and use #StandWithPeasants (October 10 – Stop Rural Bombings; October 15- International Rural Women’s Day; October 16- World Hunger Day)
- Share peasant demands online and offline. Retweet, share, and repost #StandWithPeasants content. Engage and learn.
- Post a selfie, fansign, or video of your #StandWithFarmers story.
- Write to your local representatives about the specific issues affecting your farmers and rural peoples.
If you have any questions or suggestions, you can contact us at secretariat@pcfs.global
Additional Resources