(Organized by the People’s Coalition on Food Sovereignty, PAN Asia Pacific, Asian Peasant Coalition, and ILPS Commission 6.)

As we mark this year’s World Hunger Day and the Global Month of Solidarity with Peasants , we bring the world’s attention to how a new wave of neoliberal attacks and imperialist-backed wars are further worsening the already grim state of worldwide hunger and food insecurity as global monopoly capitalism desperately props up its profit-driven development model amid worsening multiple crises.

These imperialist attempts are evident in the UN’s bid to salvage the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including through the so-called Summit of the Future (SOTF) organized last September 22-23. The SOTF released a political declaration, ironically titled “Pact for the Future,” reaffirming decades-old neoliberal policies, like the World Trade Organization (WTO)-led free trade regime, that have devastated food and agricultural systems, especially in the Global South.

Food systems transformation has been identified as a key SDG accelerator – but only through the infusion of more private finance and corporate technology. This has been the theme since the UN Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) in 2021 and its stocktaking (UNFSS +2) in 2023 and picked up again in the SOTF 2024. The formation of the UN Global Compact Collective Action on Sustainable Food Systems last September 23 during the SOTF and as implementation of the UNFSS +2 further cemented the role of corporations in transforming global food systems and fostering sustainable development. The UN Global Compact will soon launch “prioritized pathways for corporate action across key areas such as environment, social equity, nutrition, and finance” ahead of the UNFSS +4 and the COP30 climate talks in 2025.

All these recent developments paint the picture of how monopoly corporations and imperialist powers dominating the UN and other multilateral institutions, together with international financial institutions led by the IMF-World Bank, have been using the mantra of food systems transformation, sustainable development, and climate action to accelerate rates of corporate profits amidst an ongoing Great Depression triggered by the 2008 financial and economic crisis. The real agenda in pushing for more public-private partnerships, corporate investments, and development finance (mostly foreign debt) in climate action and the SDGs and advancing corporate technology in agri-food systems is to create new profit-making opportunities for surplus capital concentrated in the most industrialized economies. The impact is more debilitating debt for the Global South, more corporate grabbing of land and resources, and worse poverty and hunger for poor and landless peasants and other small food producers.

These developments are highly alarming, given the deteriorating state of global hunger and food insecurity today. As the 2024 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World noted, despite years of supposed recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, the global food crisis shows no signs of abating. Global hunger and malnutrition have generally persisted in the past year. Almost three in every ten people worldwide – around 2.33 billion – are moderately to severely food insecure. Half of them are in Asia, with 70% concentrated in South Asia. Africa remains the hungriest region, with a 58% prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity.

This hunger is also more prevalent in rural areas, especially among women. High food prices remain a bane, and almost 3 billion people – three-quarters of those living in lower and lower-middle-income countries – still cannot afford a healthy diet, which costs 3.96 USD on average worldwide in 2022. The international poverty line remains at 2.15 USD per person per day, more than half the cost of one healthy meal.

Wars of aggression are further exacerbating the global hunger situation. Eight hundred sixty-four million people have become severely food insecure, with record-breaking numbers at the brink of famine. We witnessed the whole 2.2 million people of the Gaza Strip starved one year since US-Israel’s genocidal war was launched on October 7, and the territory now accounts for 82% of the number of people at catastrophe-level of food insecurity according to the 2024 Global Report on Food Crises.

These numbers are expected to rise as the US-Israel genocidal war spreads across the region, marked by the recent strikes on Iran and Lebanon. Asia Pacific is also caught in between the brewing tensions of the US and China as the former militarily gears up under its Indo-Pacific Strategy.

We cannot ignore how the raging climate crisis contributes to global hunger. The GRFC 2024 reported that last year’s El Niño drove more countries into crisis-level hunger, affecting 72 million people in 18 countries – 12 from Africa. Not only are farmers forced to adapt their production, but worse, they suffer significant losses from the impacts of extreme weather events.

We denounce the agenda of the SOTF and its Pact for the Future, the UNFSS and its stocktaking events, the UN Global Compact on food systems, and other related imperialist schemes to promote the role of monopoly corporations and private capital in food systems transformation, sustainable development, and climate action. We condemn the rehash of the same neoliberal dictates that for decades have tormented rural people – especially the peasants, who are among the landless, hungriest, and poorest in the world despite being the largest productive force in agriculture.

We condemn imperialist-backed wars of aggression and the growing impunity among states that starve peoples as part of their wars and military operations that significantly impact rural communities amid the glaring neglect to address famine.

We demand a world where justice prevails and people’s food sovereignty is fully upheld. In the face of today’s crises, we call to defend the rights of peasants. We promote the Rural People’s Development Agenda of the Global People’s Caravan for Food, Land, and Climate Justice – a set of demands on food, land, and climate justice drawn from the struggles and experiences of the rural sector, that would bring genuinely pro-people and sustainable development.

Most importantly, we express our warmest solidarity and support to people’s movements that strengthen  their ranks and further advance their struggles for genuine agrarian reform, food sovereignty, and people’s democratic rights and fundamental freedoms despite continuing attacks and vilification that aim to undermine their struggles and discredit their legitimacy.

With renewed strength and determination, we pledge to channel the full force and vitality of our movements into the global struggle of the people against imperialism to assert the peoples’ food sovereignty and defend the rights of peasants. 

CALL TO ACTION

• Join the October 16 global action for World Hunger Day!
  • Sign the unity statement: bit.ly/WHD2024UnityStatement
  • Organize on-ground activities or protest actions to highlight the local demands and struggles especially of peasant movements. Send their photos and videos to secretariat@pcfs.global so that we could share.
  • Make noise online by joining the social media rally. Post statements, protest selfies, or video messages of solidarity with the hashtags #UpholdFoodSovereignty and #DefendPeasantsRights.

• Join the International League of Peoples’ Struggle Commission 6 study series (webinars).

• Celebrate the International Rural Women’s Day on October 15. Hold local activities, release solidarity statements, and post on social media to celebrate rural women and their leading role in our food systems and agriculture.
  • Join IPAM’s 3rd learning exchange titled The Future is Female: Women Farmers and Agroecology on October 15, 2PM CEST | 3PM Amman & Kampala | 5:30PM New Delhi | 8PM Manila: tinyurl.com/WomenAgroecology

• Commemorate the one year of the Al-Aqsa Flood in solidarity with the Palestinian resistance. 
  • Join Ground Zero’s Zero In: Palestine, Uphold the Palestinian people’s food sovereignty webinar on October 16, 12PM Amman & Kampala | 2:30PM New Delhi | 5PM Manila: bit.ly/ZeroInPalestine
  • Send photos and videos of your local solidarity actions as well as messages of solidarity to secretariat@pcfs.global so that we can include them in the program. ###