Food Sovereignty and the Recognition of New Rights for Peasants at the UN: A Critical Overview of La Via Campesina's Rights Claims over the Last 20 Years

Abstract

This article explores how human rights framing by the transnational agrarian movement La Via Campesina (LVC) has evolved over the last 20 years. It discusses how the movement has worked towards institutionalizing new categories of rights, such as the ‘right to food sovereignty’ and the ‘rights of peasants’, thereby contributing to the creation of new human rights standards at the United Nations (UN). It also critically addresses some of the challenges the movement has been confronted with when framing its demands in terms of rights. Its overall argument is that LVC has managed to tap the potential of the rhetoric of rights to find common ground, thanks to its innovative use of non-codified rights. This has enabled activists to ‘localize’ human rights and make them meaningful to their various contexts. However, it contends that further advancing the movement's goals will require serious consideration of some of the key limits of the human rights framework.

Extracto - Este artículo explora cómo los derechos humanos que enmarcan el movimiento agrario transnacional “La Vía Campesina” (en adelante LVC) ha evolucionado durante los últimos veinte (20) años. Se discute cómo el movimiento ha trabajado por la institucionalización de nuevas categorías de derechos tales como el “derecho a la soberanía alimentaria” y los “derechos de los campesinos” y, por este medio, cómo ha contribuido a la creación de nuevos estándares en derechos humanos en la Organización de Naciones Unidas (ONU). El documento también trata en forma bastante crítica algunos de los desafíos que el Movimiento ha enfrentado en la estructuración de sus demandas en términos de derechos. El argumento de fondo es que la LVC ha conseguido alcanzar el potencial de la retórica de los derechos para llegar a un lugar común gracias a su innovadora forma de utilización de derechos no codificados. No obstante, se plantea que nuevos progresos hacia el alcance de las metas del Movimiento requerirá tener en cuenta algunos de los límites clave del marco mismo de los derechos humanos.

Keywords:

• La Via Campesina
• peasant movements
• food sovereignty
• human rights
• peasants' rights

Notes

1 Various names circulate for the ‘La Via Campesina’ network. I use the term ‘La Via Campesina’ in accordance with a decision taken by the network in 2013. However, many statements issued in earlier years are listed as ‘Vía Campesina’.

2 Cited in (Kneen, 2009, p. 16).

3 A web search conducted on LVC's website on 10 January 2013 provided 17 occurrences of the ‘right to food sovereignty’ and 18 occurrences of ‘el derecho a la soberania alimentaria’. The ‘right to food sovereignty’ frame was reactivated on the occasion of the WTO Ministerial of Bali in December 2013 (Vía Campesina, Gerak Lawan, and Social Movements for an Alternative Asia (SMAA), 2013).

4 These observations are based on participant observation at the 38th, 39th, and 40th sessions of the Committee on World Food Security in 2011, 2012, and 2013, as well as on participation in the negotiations of Voluntary Guidelines on the responsible governance of the tenure of land, fisheries, and forests, and of new principles for responsible agroinvesment.

5 Interview with the author, 23 June 2009.

6 Interview with the author, 23 June 2009.

7 Interview with the author, 14 August 2009.

8 Interview with the author, 2 June 2009.

9 Interview with the author, 2 June 2009.

10 Interview with CETIM representative, 3 July 2009.

11 Email exchange with representative of FIAN International, March 2009.

12 Interview with the author, 2 June 2009.

13 Interview, 22 March 2010.

14 I owe the idea of articulating individual and collective self-determination to Camilo Perez-Bustillo who describes it as ‘Sen+’ (Pérez-Bustillo, 2011).

15 Taken from Kneen in an interview with Devlin Kuyek: ‘Food politics and the tyranny of rights: A profile of Brewster Kneen’, January 5, 2010 in Briarpatch Magazine.

Additional information

Priscilla Claeys is a post-doctoral researcher in Social and Political Sciences at the University of Louvain (UCL), Belgium. Her research interests include peasant movements, food and agriculture, human rights, and economic globalization. She worked as an Advisor to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier De Schutter, from 2008 to 2014. Prior to becoming an academic, she worked for a number of human rights organizations and development NGOs. She is grateful to Jun Borras, Annie Shattuck, Christina Schiavoni, Zoe VanGelder, and the three anonymous reviewers for their useful comments on an earlier version of this paper.