Human rights and the food sovereignty movement reclaiming control

As such it is a singularly consequential contribution.’ – Philip McMichael, Cornell University, USA ‘This intriguing study of the creation of food sovereignty as a human right provides v

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Human Rights and the

Food Sovereignty Movement

Our global food system is undergoing rapid change Since the global food crisis

of 2007–2008, a range of new issues have come to public attention, such as land grabbing, food-price volatility, agrofuels and climate change Peasant social movements are trying to respond to these challenges by organizing from the local to the global to demand food sovereignty As the transnational agrarian movement La Via Campesina celebrates its twentieth anniversary, this book takes stock of the movement’s achievements and reflects on challenges for the future It provides an in-depth analysis of the movement’s vision and strategies, and shows how it has contributed not only to the emergence of an alternative development paradigm but also of an alternative conception of human rights.The book assesses efforts to achieve the international recognition of new human rights for peasants at the international level, namely the ‘right to food sovereignty’ and ‘peasants’ rights’ It explores why La Via Campesina was successful in mobilizing a human rights discourse in its struggle against neoliberalism, and also the limitations and potential pitfalls of using the human rights framework The book shows that, to inject subversive potential in their rights-based claims rural social activists developed an alternative conception of rights, one that is more plural, less statist, less individualistic and more multi-cultural than dominant conceptions of human rights Further, they deployed a combination of institutional (from above) and extra-institutional (from below) strategies to demand new rights and reinforce grassroots mobilization through rights

Priscilla Claeys received her PhD in Political and Social Sciences from the

University of Louvain (UCL) in 2013 and is now a postdoctoral researcher Priscilla worked as an adviser to the UN Special Rapporteur on the right

to food from 2008 to 2014 She previously worked for a number of human rights organizations and development NGOs Her research interests include transnational agrarian movements, human rights, alternative food economies and the ecological transition

Routledge Studies in Food, Society and Environment

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Savoring Alternative Food

School gardens, healthy eating and visceral difference

Reimagining citizenship, ethics and community

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Food Sovereignty in International Context

Discourse, politics and practice of place

Edited by Amy Trauger

For further details please visit the series page on the Routledge website: http://www.routledge.com/books/series/RSFSE/

Human Rights and the

Food Sovereignty Movement

Reclaiming control

Priscilla Claeys

First published 2015

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© 2015 Priscilla Claeys

The right of Priscilla Claeys to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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‘This is the first and most systematic theoretical and empirical study of (trans) national agrarian movements from the perspective of human rights Brilliant It changes the boundary of how we understand and study (trans) national agrarian movements.’

– Jun Borras, International Institute of Social Studies, Netherlands

‘This is a uniquely well informed and lucid discussion of how one of the most innovative social movements of this century has been gradually transforming our understanding of human rights in general, and of the right to food in particular Priscilla Claeys provides a contribution both to the sociology of social movements and to the history of ideas, and she offers a rich discussion of how peasants’ rights are emerging in human rights law This book is three books at once: a significant achievement.’

– Olivier De Schutter, University of Louvain (UCL), Belgium, and former UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food (2008-2014)

‘The book is groundbreaking, interesting, impressive, original and solid academic work It is a significant contribution to our understanding of the politically relevant human rights dimensions of current agrarian movement struggles It will, no doubt, prompt some lively debate particularly around the concept of the

“right to food sovereignty” and La Via Campesina’s broader social and political transformational framework of “food sovereignty”.’

– Annette Aurélie Desmarais, Canada Research Chair in Human Rights, Social Justice and Food Sovereignty, University of Manitoba, Canada

‘Claeys brings a unique experience and legal eye to the food sovereignty movement’s development of a politics of human rights for the food question of our times In recounting the movement’s philosophical and political trajectory, she critically evaluates how a small-producer based movement can make its presence and claims felt in raising the possibility of alternative, sustainable paths

to the future As such it is a singularly consequential contribution.’

– Philip McMichael, Cornell University, USA

‘This intriguing study of the creation of food sovereignty as a human right provides valuable insight into how social movements are translated into human rights terms and the complicated social and cultural interactions between local and global understandings inherent in the translation process.’

– Sally Engle Merry, New York University, USA

‘On a methodological level, Priscilla Claeys’ book shows that conducting a global, multi-site and multi-scale research is not only possible but indispensable

to understand actors, claims, debates and tensions that articulate global, national and local dimensions On an analytical level, it shows how the use of global rights may contribute to new paths of emancipation that are emerging in less statist, less individualist and more plural ways.’

– Geoffrey Pleyers, University of Louvain/EHESS, Belgium and Research Committee 47 ‘Social movements’ of the International Sociological Association

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2 The right to food sovereignty 12

3 The rights of peasants 42

4 The right to food 62

5 The challenges of using rights 82

6 Transforming the right to food 109

I thank all the food sovereignty activists and right to food defenders who have shared their ideas and convictions with me over the last ten years Many of them have become great friends and will no doubt recognize themselves in this book It was an immense pleasure to exchange views and impressions I am indebted to Olivier De Schutter who gave me the opportunity to undertake the research necessary for this book His academic work, colossal knowledge and his commitment and dedication as UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, have been a great source of inspiration Working as his special adviser between

2008 and 2014 was a privilege

Doing my PhD at the University of Louvain (UCL), I benefited greatly from

an inspiring group of scholars I thank all the members of my PhD supervising committee, Olivier De Schutter at the Centre for Philosophy of Law (CPDR), Isabelle Ferreras, Jean De Munck and Geoffrey Pleyers, at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Democracy, Institutions, Subjectivity (CRIDIS), and Jean-Philippe Peemans at the Center for Development Studies (IED) I am particularly indebted to Geoffrey Pleyers who encouraged me but also positively challenged me throughout my writing process Geoffrey helped me refine my use of concepts from social movements’ studies and gave me very constructive guidance on how to conduct research on a transnational social movement I also thank Cristoph Eberhard for initiating me into the field of legal anthropology

I took great pleasure in attending the various conferences and seminars he organized at the Université Saint-Louis in Brussels

I had the great fortune of having Annette Desmarais, of the University

of Manitoba (Canada), and Jun Borras, of the International Institute of Social Studies (Netherlands), sit on my PhD jury Their encouragement, enthusiasm and challenging feedback have meant a lot Both of them have all the rare qualities I personally value in academics They are intellectually and emotionally smart, and manage to articulate their academic life with a deep and critical commitment to social struggles I also benefited greatly, throughout the course of this research, from intellectual exchanges with various people, colleagues and friends I am grateful in particular to Carole Samdup, Sofía Monsalve, Antonio Onorati, Isabelle Delforge and Michel Buisson for the many discussions we had

Acknowledgements ix

My academic colleagues have been a source of great support, understanding and intellectual stimulation Thank you Audrey, Nadia, Mathias, Christine, Elise, Gặtan, Nick, Julie, Bernard, Laurence, Alain, Anne, Emeline, Deborah, Samuel, Christian, Grégoire, Carlos, Julien, Etienne, Laura and Ingeborg My recognition also goes to the UCL-based team of the UN Special Rapporteur

on the right to food (and all those who have visited us through the years) and

to my colleagues at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, for the shared experiences and great teamwork For their specific support on parts of this book, I thank Natalie Rulloda who conducted research on public policies for food sovereignty, Sara Bailey who gave me insightful comments on the whole manuscript, Monica Rawlinson, Nick Jacobs and Nadia Lambek for their edits and corrections All the mistakes are mine

Some of the arguments in this book as well as earlier versions of various

sections were previously published in Sociology and Globalizations, as well as in the book Rethinking Food Systems: Structural Challenges, New Strategies and the Law published by Springer (2014) I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers

for those publications for their useful comments The works of Boaventura

de Sousa Santos, Balakrishnan Rajagopal and Neil Stammers have been a tremendous source of inspiration, and I owe a special debt to their research on the ways in which social movements can bring about a cosmopolitan, multi-cultural and anti-hegemonic conception of human rights

This book was finalized during my post-doctoral research stay at the Collège d’Etudes Mondiales in Paris, which was funded by the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013 – MSCA-COFUND) under grant agreement no 245743 – Post-doctoral programme Braudel-IFER-FMSH

I also wish to thank Ashley Wright at Routledge for her support and sound advice

I thank my family and friends for their patience, love and support My sons Raoul and Isaac were born in the years I conducted this research and gave me the strength and distraction I needed I send my regards to María Eugenia Sánchez Díaz de Rivera and Eduardo Almeida, in Mexico If I had not met them, I would never have become an academic

AIAB Associazione Italiana per l’Agricoltura Biologica (Vía Campesina

member in Italy)ALBA Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra AméricaALBA-TCP Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América-

Tratado de ComércioANEC Asociación Nacional de Empresas Comercializadoras de

Productores del Campo (Vía Campesina member in Mexico)ANPFA All Nepal Peasants’ Federation (Vía Campesina member in

Nepal)APC Asian Peasant Coalition

ASOCODE Association of Central American Peasant Organizations for

Cooperation and DevelopmentATC Asociación de Trabajadores del Campo (Vía Campesina

member in Nicaragua)CECCAM Centro de estudios par el cambio en el campo mexicano

CESR Center for Economic and Social Rights

CETIM Centre Europe Tiers Monde

CFS Committee for World Food Security

CIDSE International Alliance of Catholic Development AgenciesCIEL Center for International Environmental Law

CLOC Coordinadora Latinoamericana de Organizaciones del CampoCNC-Eloy Alfaro Coordinadora Campesina-Eloy Alfaro (Vía Campesina

member in Bolivia)CNCR Conseil National de Concertation et de Coopération des

Ruraux (Vía Campesina member in Senegal)CNOC Coordinadora Nacional de Organizaciones Campesinas (Vía

Campesina member in Guatemala)CNOP Coordination Nationale des Organizations Paysannes (Vía

Campesina member in Mali)COAG Coordinadora de Organizaciones de Agricultores y Ganaderos

(Vía Campesina member in Spain)CONIC Coordinadora Nacional Indígena y Campesina (Vía Campesina

member in Guatemala)

Abbreviations xi

CONAIE Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas del EcuadorCONSEA Conselho Nacional de Segurança Alimentar e Nutricional

(Brazil)COPACO Confédération paysanne du Congo (Vía Campesina member in

the DRC)COPISA Conferencia Plurinacional e Intercultural de Soberanía

Alimentaria (in Bolivia)

CSO Civil society organization

CSUTCB Confederación Sindical Unica de Trabajadores Campesinos de

Bolivia (Vía Campesina member in Bolivia)CUC Comité de unidad campesina (Vía Campesina member in

Guatemala)

EAFF Eastern Africa Farmers Federation

ECOSOC Economic and Social Council of the United Nations

ECOWAP Agricultural Policy of the Economic Community of West

African StatesECOWAS Economic Community of West African States

ECVC European Coordination Vía Campesina

EHNE Euskal Herriko Nekazarien Elkartasuna (Vía Campesina

member in the Basque country)FAO Food and Agriculture Organization of the United NationsFENACLE Federación Nacional de Trabajadores Agroindustriales,

Campesinos e Indígenas Libres del Ecuador (Vía Campesina member in Ecuador)

FENOCIN Federación Nacional de Organizaciones Campesinas, Indígenas

y Negras (Vía Campesina member in Ecuador)FIAN FoodFirst Information Action Network

FONGS Fédération des Organisations Non Gouvernementales du

SénégalFUGEA Fédération Unie de Groupements d’Eleveurs et d’Agriculteurs

(Vía Campesina member in Belgium)FWA Fédération wallonne de l’agriculture (Belgium)

GCAR Global Campaign for Agrarian Reform

GMO Genetically Modified Organism

HIC Habitat International Coalition

HLPE High Level Panel of Experts of the Committee on World Food

SecurityHRC Human Rights Council of the United Nations

IATP Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy

IBASE Instituto Brasileiro de Análises Sociais e Econômicas

ICC International Coordinating Committee of the Vía Campesina

xii Abbreviations

ICESCR International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural

RightsICJ International Commission of Jurists

IFAD International Fund for Agricultural Development

IHCS Indonesian Human Rights Committee for Social Justice

IIED International Institute for Environment and DevelopmentILO International Labour Organization

IMF International Monetary Fund

IPC International Planning Committee for Food SovereigntyKMP Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (Vía Campesina member in

the Philippines)KRSS Karnataka State Farmers’ Association (Vía Campesina member

in India)LOA Loi d’orientation agricole/Agricultural Orientation Law (Mali)LOASP Loi d’orientation agro-sylvo-pastorale (Senegal)

LRAN Land Research Action Network

MAF Mesa Agropecuaria y Forestal (Vía Campesina member in

Nicaragua)MAP Mouvement d’Action Paysanne (Vía Campesina member in

Belgium)MIJARC International Movement of Catholic Agricultural and Rural

YouthMPNKP Mouvman Peyizan Nasyonal Kongre Papay (Vía Campesina

member in Haiti)MPP Mouvement Paysan de Papaye (Vía Campesina member in

Haiti)MST Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra (Vía Campesina

member in Brazil)NFU National Farmers Union (Vía Campesina member in Canada)OECAS Organizaciones Económicas Campesinas, Indígenas y

Originarias de Bolivia/Economic Peasant Organisations of Bolivia

OECOM Organizaciones Económicas Comunitarias/Economic

Community Organisations (Bolivia)OECD Organization for Economic Cooperation and DevelopmentOHCHR Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights

PAN-AP Pesticide Action Network, Asia Pacific

PSSA Política de Seguridad y Soberanía Alimentaria (Bolivia)

PWESCR Programme on Women’s Economic, Social and Cultural RightsRAIP Regional Agriculture Investment Plan (ECOWAS)

ROPPA Réseau des organizations paysannes et des producteurs agricoles

d’Afrique de l’OuestSISAN Sistema de Soberanía Alimentaria y Nutricional/Food

Sovereignty and Nutritional System (Ecuador)

Abbreviations xiii

SOC Sindicato de Obreros del Campo de Andalucía (Vía Campesina

member in Spain)SPI Indonesia Peasant Union (Vía Campesina member in

Indonesia)TNI Transnational Institute

UNAC União Nacional de Camponeses (Vía Campesina member in

Mozambique)UNAG Unión Nacional de Agricultores y Ganaderos de Nicaragua (ex-

Vía Campesina member in Nicaragua)UNORCA Unión Nacional de Organizaciones Regionales Campesinas

Autonomas (Vía Campesina member in Mexico)UPA Union des Producteurs Agricoles (Quebec)

WFS: fyl World Food Summit five years later (2002)

WSFS World Summit for Food Security (2009)

WTO World Trade Organization

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1 Introduction

Today we face a double social crisis On one hand, a crisis of regulation has emerged,

in the shape of failing regulatory and welfare states On the other hand, a crisis of emancipation has arisen, in terms of the decline of social revolution and socialism

as paradigms of radical social transformation Human rights, as an incarnation

of both regulatory and emancipatory politics, are trapped in this double crisis and are struggling to overcome it (Santos 1997, 80–1) Since they are globally recognized, human rights are at the heart of contemporary global governance debates, and are closely tied to what some have called the emergence of a global

civil society (Kaldor et al 2007) or transnational public sphere (Habermas

2010, 475) A large number of social movements and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) use the human rights framework for its legitimizing force and universalizing effect, to the extent that some are able to argue that human rights have become a near-hegemonic ideology (Gauchet 2000, 280) Indeed, it is against a backdrop of failing ideologies that human rights have risen

to their current prominence (Moyn 2012), leading to a situation where other emancipatory strategies may now be marginalized (Kennedy 2002, 108)

At the same time, human rights are increasingly criticized for having individualizing, Western and liberal implications (Engle Merry 1997; Rajagopal 2003), for reducing their subjects to victims (Rancière 2004), for being imperialistic (Douzinas 2007) and for supporting the expansion of liberalism (Charvet and Kaczynska-Nay 2008) and capitalism (Sardar 1998) They have also been accused of being tied to the state (Baxi 2007b) and domination processes (Agrikoliansky 2010), of not addressing issues of power (Stammers

1995, 2009), and of promoting unrealistic expectations, thereby discouraging political dialogue and increasing social conflicts (Glendon 1991) Finally, it has been argued that human rights alienate activists from their own local cultural understandings (Engle Merry 1997), and reduce social solidarity and appreciation

of the public good (Kneen 2009) Human rights stand at a crossroads Can they serve as a progressive form of politics? Or are human rights just one more variety

of a global, state-centric and individualistic (Gauchet 1980, 22, 25) hegemony (Santos and Rodríguez-Garavito 2005, 14)?

The food sovereignty movement, a transnational movement of rural social organizations that work towards achieving structural changes in the global food

2 Introduction

system (Holt-Giménez 2011), has widely relied on the discourse of rights to advance its claims (Patel 2007; Rosset and Martinez 2010) Those who call themselves peasants – and make up the vast majority of the almost 870 million people chronically undernourished on the planet (FAO 2012) – have put the right to produce, the right to land, the right to protection from dumping and the right to food sovereignty at the core of their struggles over the last decades The transnational agrarian movement Vía Campesina1 has even adopted a Declaration on the Rights of Peasants, and succeeded in putting it on the agenda

of the United Nations Human Rights Council (Edelman and James 2011; Golay 2009; Claeys 2012b) If human rights are indeed of little use to the oppressed, why are we witnessing ‘the increasing frequency of the language of rights in the statements of peasant movements’ (Kneen 2009, 2)? What can be made of this apparent contradiction (Landy 2013), and under which conditions can the use of human rights by social movements be subversive?2 In other words, is

it possible for social movements’ activists to use human rights in a way that challenges power (Stammers 1999, 1005)?

To answer this question, this book explores the following themes: (a) why are assertions of rights so prevalent in the discourse of contemporary agrarian movements, and what are the advantages of framing claims as rights?; (b) what are the various understandings of human rights that circulate within the food sovereignty movement, and how do these conceptions differ from dominant conceptions of human rights?; (c) what constraints are associated with the human rights framework and what strategies are adopted by social movements

to overcome these constraints?; (d) how did the food sovereignty movement succeed in transforming its concerns into internationally acknowledged human rights claims? Where and why did it fail?; (e) how did human rights organizations and rights-based development NGOs react to the emergence of the food sovereignty movement and its demand that new rights be recognized for peasants?; and (f) how are human rights being reconfigured under the impetus of contemporary agrarian movements?

Human rights have enabled the common framing of claims across different political, economic, cultural and ideological contexts (Borras 2004), and have facilitated the food sovereignty movement’s insertion into global food governance debates (Patel 2009) But rights claims have also presented food sovereignty

activists with a challenge in the shape of the paradox of institutionalization, because

human rights praxis tends to be reduced to a praxis that is organized through and oriented towards institutionalized structures of power This may seriously endanger the ‘emancipatory thrust’ of human rights (Stammers 2009, 106, 225), and sheds light, in my opinion, on why those who arguably need the right to food the most have found the existing human rights framework lacking My main argument is that, to inject subversive potential into their rights-based claims, food sovereignty activists have developed an alternative conception of rights that is more plural, less statist, less individualistic and more multi-cultural than dominant conceptions of human rights In parallel, they have deployed

a combination of institutional and extra-institutional strategies to demand

Introduction 3

new rights and reinforce grassroots mobilization through rights Their creating activity has had considerable impacts: various dimensions of the right to food sovereignty have been institutionally recognized at local or national levels (Beuchelt and Virchow 2012), and new rights that are constitutive of the food sovereignty paradigm are in the process of being recognized at the UN Human Rights Council (Golay 2013) In addition, the emergence of transnational peasant movements in the 1990s has led to a partial reconceptualization of the right to food, a human right already recognized in international human rights law The transnational right to food network has placed an increased emphasis,

rights-in recent years, on the importance of movrights-ing toward sustarights-inable, relocalized and pro-smallholder agricultural development models At the same time, food sovereignty activists face many challenges: how can new rights for peasants be advanced while alliances with other rural constituencies are built? How can the effective implementation of the new legal frameworks be ensured? How can local food sovereignty practices be developed, state action secured (and of what kind?) and structural changes in global governance obtained?

In this book, I adopt a ‘social constructionist’ view of rights which does not see human rights as a given but instead as products of human social interaction (Short 2009, 103) I look at the reconfiguration of human rights under the impetus of contemporary transnational agrarian movements, following the efforts of indigenous peoples to ‘reconstruct’ human rights (Rodríguez-Garavito and Arenas 2005; Daes 2004; Kenrick and Lewis 2004; Díaz-Polanco and Sánchez 2002; Sieder and Witchell 2001; Falk 1988) I explore grassroots perspectives on human rights, from North and South, and show that the study of both institutional and extra-institutional arenas is necessary to analyse the process of emergence of ‘new rights’ (Bob 2010c) I demonstrate that, if social actors are indeed ‘forced to resort to using exogenous, internationally legitimated means to secure their right to be different’ (Hirtz 2003, 910), this

is not the end of the story Peasant movements have proven to be extremely creative in their grappling with human rights, although serious consideration

of the limits of the human rights framework will be needed to further advance food sovereignty Vía Campesina’s use of rights moves beyond the Marxist critique of human rights because the movement deploys rights to challenge capitalism itself Marx, and many Marxist intellectuals after him, rejected human rights as part of their wider critique of capitalism (Douzinas 2010) At the heart of this critique was the belief that the recognition and enforcement of rights for the disadvantaged was unlikely to improve their well-being in absence

of reforms altering distribution of wealth and power, an argument that has also been advanced by some liberal thinkers (Simon 2003, 20) The question raised

by Vía Campesina is no longer: are human rights bourgeois rights (Marx 1875) but by whom are they appropriated? Are they defined by social struggles or by hegemonic powers? This book shows that, as nearly every social controversy today is framed as a clash of rights (Glendon 1991, 4), the struggle to determine human rights is highly political

food sovereignty Right to food defenders are NGO staff, academics, legal experts

and UN representatives who work towards the promotion and protection of the human right to adequate food A good proportion of these human rights defenders are lawyers, although many are not

Food sovereignty activists have been at the forefront of the global justice movement,4 while right to food defenders have played an important role in

advancing economic, social and cultural rights It is striking that human rights

defenders have played only a minor role in the global justice movement,5 while food sovereignty activists, despite their use of the human rights framework, remain somewhat on the margins of the human rights community The reasons for this double disconnect are explored in this book Both food sovereignty

activists and right to food defenders form part of the global food movement6

(Holt-Giménez 2011, 110) In their efforts to defend alternative, fair and more sustainable or healthy food systems, they are joined by many other types of activists – for example, organic, fair trade, slow food and local/community food activists – who would not necessarily identify with either food sovereignty or the right to food, although some might The global food movement is rapidly growing, and the 2007–8 global food crisis revealed its vitality It is multifaceted and diverse, in large part because the members of this movement – consumers, landless people, agricultural workers, peasants, indigenous peoples, rich and poor, rural and urban – all experience the global food system differently

Within the global food movement, the transnational movement for food sovereignty7 (see Figure 1.1) is particularly vibrant The food sovereignty movement is, at its core, a movement of rural social movements and organizations that work towards achieving food sovereignty.8 Analysis of this movement is highly relevant because the rise of transnational agrarian movements in the 1990s has reinforced worldwide opposition to neoliberal capitalism, and has given a new resonance to centuries of debates on the agrarian question (Byres 1982; Bernstein and Byres 2001; Bernstein 2014, 2010; Araghi 1995) and on the role of peasantries in revolutionary processes Contemporary peasant movements have found ways to simultaneously localize and internationalize their actions, in response to both state decentralization and globalization (Borras

2009, 11) Their mobilizations against genetic crops, dams, mining concessions and trade liberalization have questioned the nature of the relationship between food producers and consumers, between cities and the countryside, between nature and humanity, between North and South (Claeys 2012a, 105) The food

Introduction 5

sovereignty movement has put an alternative vision on the table (Desmarais 2008b), at a time when the convergence of the financial, food, energy and environmental crises forces us to look for an alternative development model This may explain why food sovereignty has had so much resonance: numerous NGOs, academics, environmentalists, and even states today defend some

version of food sovereignty.

In this book, I focus on the transnational and formally organized network Vía Campesina, but I also give the floor to many other food sovereignty activists, who belong to other agrarian movements,9 or to agrarian-oriented NGOs,10 and/or to academia.11 Vía Campesina was formally constituted on 16 May 1993, by 46 farm leaders from around the world who had gathered together in Mons, Belgium.12

Twenty years later, the network claims to represent 200 million peasants worldwide (Vía Campesina 2012b) As of the last International Conference of Vía Campesina in Jakarta in June 2013, membership amounts to 164 national and subnational organizations in 79 countries.13 Some of its member organizations have become famous for their struggles over land, against genetically modified organisms (GMOs) or against the World Trade Organization (WTO), such as the landless workers movement MST (O Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra) in Brazil, and the Confédération paysanne in France.14 Vía Campesina relies on a decentralized structure and derives its vitality and legitimacy from its

The Food Sovereignty Movement

Transnational Agrarian Movements

International Planning Committee (IPC) for Food Sovereignty

NFU, Union paysanne (Canada)

NFCC (USA)

ANEC, UNORCA (Mexico)

MPNKP (Haiti)

CNOC, CUC, CONIC (Guatemala)

ATC, MAF (Nicaragua)

CSUTCB, Bartolina Sisa (Bolivia)

MST (Brazil)

ANPFA (Nepal) SPI (Indonesia) KRSS (India)

…

Figure 1.1 The food sovereignty movement

6 Introduction

member organizations at local and national levels.15 Among these organizations, differences in worldviews, political agendas and methods of work abound, despite the fact that all defend the interests of economically and politically marginalized sectors of society (Borras 2004, 9) Vía Campesina has a mixed membership, ranging from farm workers and landless peasants to indigenous peoples and ‘small’ farmers with different types of economic activity, land sizes and methods of production and distribution (from direct consumer sales to contract farming) The ideological, religious, cultural and political persuasions

of its member organizations vary too, from those coming from the communist party-based frameworks to those of the anarcho-syndicalist tradition, from those of broadly liberal provenance to those arising from environmental or feminist activism Divisions between member organizations of Vía Campesina are common in national contexts (Desmarais 2008b) In recent years, the movement’s membership has considerably expanded to take in new members from Asia and Africa, but the Latin and North American regions, as well as Europe, remain very influential

Also located within the global food movement, the transnational right to food network (see Figure 1.2) has a very different feel It consists of a constellation

of human rights organizations, development NGOs and individual experts attached to various national or international institutions Advocates of the right

to food form what Keck and Sikkink (1998) have termed a transnational advocacy network, but not, in my opinion, a social movement.16 Right to food defenders use advocacy and campaigning as key repertoires of action, but do not (or rarely) engage in protests They speak on behalf of the hungry and malnourished, but

Right to Food Network

Church organizations

Right-based development NGOs

United Nations

Academics Human Rights

organizations

Bread for the World CIDSE EEA ICCO

UN Special Rapporteur on the RTF

Rights & Democracy

FIAN International (works exclusively

on the Right

to Food)

Figure 1.2 The transnational Right To Food Network

Introduction 7

do not seek to improve their own life situation (they usually enjoy a decent standard of living and work to improve the welfare of others) Expressions of solidarity and support towards ‘victims’ of human rights ‘violations’ (Kennedy

2002, 111) form a central part of their work At the heart of the transnational right to food network is the international human rights organization FIAN, which stands for FoodFirst Information and Action Network.17 Inspired by the approach of Amnesty International, FIAN has advocated for the realization of the right to food since the mid-1980s, mostly reacting to threats of eviction

of rural communities and land conflicts through letter-writing campaigns The organization still actively follows a number of cases of violations worldwide, but is today more renowned for its advocacy and awareness-raising.18 Since its creation, FIAN has stressed the importance of securing ‘peoples’ access to the resources that they need in order to feed themselves, now and in the future’.19

This ‘agrarian-oriented’ identity has facilitated joint work with Vía Campesina

on land issues.20

Over the last 15 years, a growing number of development organizations have incorporated the right to food into their mandate and activities Of those working on food security issues, ActionAid21 and Oxfam22 are amongst the NGOs that have most explicitly incorporated human rights into their mandates Many church-affiliated organizations have also sought to address food-related injustices through a right to food lens.23 Finally, researchers and legal experts from universities and from the United Nations,24 such as Amartya Sen, Jean Drèze, Philip Alston, Katarina Tomaševski, Asbjorn Eide, Eibe Riedel, Wenche Barth Eide, Henry Shue, Jean Ziegler, Olivier De Schutter, and others, have played a key role in advancing the right to food Global mainstream human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch,

in contrast, have been slow in taking up the economic and social rights agenda and are barely discussed in this book, as they have been almost entirely absent from food security debates.25

Right to food defenders and food sovereignty activists often work together They

take part in the same alternative global summits, follow the same international processes and may be involved in the same national coalitions or local struggles

At the international level, they often debate joint statements at NGO forums that are organized in parallel to international gatherings, or discuss joint (or separate) strategies in institutional processes under way at the UN At the national or regional level, they may join forces in food sovereignty campaigns or events (e.g Campaña sin maíz no hay país in Mexico) or meet regularly in food sovereignty ‘platforms’ (e.g Plate-Forme Souveraineté Alimentaire in Belgium) Yet they are surprisingly easy to distinguish The right to food sovereignty and the right to food are not merely, as we will see, human rights in the making, or frames deployed by social actors to make sense of their environment They are social markers, or identifiers, which actors use to talk about themselves and recognize each other One cannot

be both a right to food defender and a food sovereignty activist (although some

people have succeeded in positioning themselves on the threshold)

8 Introduction

Moving across different sites of engagement

The study of transnational networks needs to be located at multiple scales,

both the globalized and the localized (Baletti et al 2008) The ideas and activists

of these movements travel from the local to the global, and back again The study of human rights also requires navigating between the local and the global

(Goodale 2007) In order to select my different sites of engagement (Scoones 2008),

I travelled within the transnational food sovereignty movement with a view to identifying the spaces in which the issue of rights was most often discussed Vía Campesina functions both as an actor at the international level, with agendas and aims that broadly reflect those of its member organizations, and as an arena

of action, because these agendas and aims are products of internal negotiations among the different member organizations (Borras 2004, 3) Looking at Vía

Campesina as an arena of action, I followed discussions within the movement’s

Human Rights commission and Food Sovereignty and Trade commission,26 as well as the debates on food sovereignty and rights taking place at the local level Some contexts proved particularly conducive to the exploration of alternative conceptions of human rights: Mexico and Central America (fieldwork in 2008, 2009) where food sovereignty originated; Indonesia (2010) where peasants’ rights emerged; and Bolivia (2011) where food sovereignty is tied to indigenous peoples’ territorial struggles and the rights of Mother Earth Fieldwork in Nepal (2007), Haiti (2008), India (2010), Malaysia (2010) and the Democratic Republic

of the Congo (2011), and in France, Belgium, Spain and Canada (between

2008 and 2014), enabled me to witness wide variations in the ways in which human rights and food sovereignty were perceived across regions Looking at

Vía Campesina as a transnational actor, I identified a number of international and

local arenas in which I could study the interactions of food sovereignty activists with representatives from other movements and from human rights and development NGOs, but also with opponents, such as states and international institutions My selection of the transnational sites (Engle Merry 2006, 38) to study was facilitated by the very choices made by Vía Campesina itself Strategic decisions on which institutions to engage with are made very carefully by the movement and only a limited number of arenas are identified as potentially useful I focused my attention on UN processes where the institutionalization of new rights was actively pursued or at least envisaged: the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the UN, the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) and the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS)

In the course of this research, I conducted more than 110 semi-structured interviews with food sovereignty movement leaders and activists, and with right

to food defenders.27 In the book, I have changed the names of my interviewees, with the exception of public figures I have not included long descriptions

of the various national and local contexts in which I conducted fieldwork, in spite of the influence of local contexts on how activists frame their claims Some of these contexts I was able to study in some depth; others I could only imagine A potential drawback of studying transnational processes is that local

Introduction 9

complexities can be glossed over In addition, participant observation at around

70 various meetings and events informed my views on how rights are framed

by food sovereignty activists.28 In order to complete my exploration of the movement’s rights discourse, I have analysed the statements, declarations and press releases issued by the food sovereignty movement in the period ranging from 1993 to 2014 Food sovereignty forums and parallel conferences provided important opportunities to discuss the food sovereignty concept and elaborate food sovereignty as an alternative vision.29 Protests and marches also played an

important role as they helped to identify what food sovereignty stood against.30

Before becoming a researcher, I worked for a number of human rights and development NGOs during the 2003–8 period This NGO experience allowed me to develop a good grasp of the issues at the intersection of food and agriculture, trade, globalization and human rights, and gave me a solid understanding of the working practices of the NGO world Subsequently, I worked as an adviser to the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food during his six-year mandate, from 2008 to 2014 Much of what I did in that period

can be described as studying sideways (Hannerz 2004) Studying up became a

well-known figure of speech in anthropology some decades ago, in relation

to Laura Nader’s observation that anthropologists mostly engaged in studying people less powerful and prosperous than themselves (Nader 1972), that is

studying down In contrast, my position was closer to that of a colleague activist

(and I already knew many of the people that I interviewed) There is something

inevitably uncomfortable about studying sideways On many levels, when writing,

I was confronted with the uneasy feeling that I was revealing stories that had been shared with me in confidence, and discussing tensions that many people felt very sensitive about Agrarian activists invest a lot of energy in presenting coherent and ‘official’ narratives about their movements (Edelman 2009, 249) The same goes for human rights defenders The challenge for researchers is how

to react when aspects of the NGO’s or movement’s practices conflict with the official line Edelman argues that portraying movement practices and strategies

in a critical way is often complicated by the fact that most university researchers who study or accompany social movements are profoundly sympathetic to the activists’ goals (Edelman 2009, 250) This is certainly a challenge with which

I felt confronted personally Aware that the extent of my contribution to the struggles of agrarian movements would depend directly on my ability to pose

‘difficult questions’ (Edelman 2009, 258), I have tried to be as honest and respectful as possible

Finally, I have used the term ‘peasant’ to describe all family farmers, peasant farmers, community-based farmers and small and medium-scale farmers31

who are members of the Vía Campesina network Although this term is the adequate translation of the Spanish ‘campesino’ and of the French ‘paysan’, and

is widely used in Asia, I am aware that it is not used in the US, Canada and the

UK, particularly in a domestic context I am also aware that the term peasant

may conjure up a somewhat archaic image in the eyes of the reader of what are often very complex and modern rural realities Despite the fact that the term

10 Introduction

peasant does not do justice to the huge diversity of economic, social and cultural

situations in which Vía Campesina members find themselves today, I have chosen to use it for its prominence in my various fieldwork sites and because of its political significance

Structure of the book

In the first three chapters, I discuss the various conceptions of human rights that circulate among food sovereignty activists and right to food defenders Three case studies are presented: the right to food sovereignty (Chapter 2), the rights of peasants (Chapter 3) and the right to food (Chapter 4) Chapter 2

describes the emergence of the right of peoples to food sovereignty, probably the most

emblematic invention of the Vía Campesina movement in the area of human rights The food sovereignty concept was born in the mid-1980s and appeared on the international scene in 1996, in a context of opposition to neoliberal policies

in agriculture, in particular in Latin America This context is described in some

detail, as is the alternative model (relocalization) put forward by Vía Campesina

In the second part of Chapter 2, I analyse food sovereignty as a human right I show how claims by Vía Campesina that food sovereignty should be recognized

as a human right signal and contribute to an alternative conception of human rights I close with a discussion of attempts by the movement to institutionalize this new right, and describe the advances made at the national and international levels

Chapter 3 describes another instance of rights creation by Vía Campesina: the ‘Declaration of the Rights of Peasants – Women and Men’, which was adopted by the movement in 2008 While the right to food sovereignty can be understood as a direct reaction to trade liberalization and the dismantling of state services, the rights that are proclaimed in the Declaration question the agrarian transition to capitalism In Chapter 3, therefore, I discuss some of the long-term transformation processes that are denounced by Vía Campesina,

such as the commodification of nature, the incorporation of farmers into (global)

markets and the modernization of agriculture This leads me to describe

the alternative (repeasantization) that is put forward by Vía Campesina, with

a particular emphasis on autonomy and control over land and territories In the second part of Chapter 3, I describe the conception of human rights that underpins the Declaration of the Rights of Peasants and discuss the institutional advances that have been attained thus far I explore the various factors which enabled the successful uptake of the draft Declaration from Indonesian peasant activists, to other organizations in the Vía Campesina network, to supportive NGOs, and finally to the UN Human Rights Council

Chapter 4 looks at the interpretation and implementation of the human right to food by a transnational network of human rights experts dedicated to

its realization An analysis of the foundations of the right to food is offered as this will assist in identifying the conceptual innovations introduced by peasant movements Chapter 4 is distinct from the previous two chapters because of the

Introduction 11

nature of the social actors analysed and because of the institutional trajectory

of this right The right to food is a legally recognized human right that has been elaborated primarily in UN, academic and NGO circles It cannot be considered to constitute a reaction to neoliberalism or capitalism Nonetheless,

it was not conceptualized in a vacuum and as I demonstrate in Chapter 4, its current interpretation is reflective of multiple theoretical influences over recent decades, many of which indicate an (at least conceptual) dialogue between human rights and development theorists and practitioners

In the next two chapters, I consider the various categories of rights described

above as evolving and contested frames deployed by social actors, and analyse

the tensions between them Chapter 5 explores some of the challenges that

peasant movements are confronted with when using rights frames It discusses the

advantages and constraints – both conceptual and strategic – of the human rights framework and explores the various ways in which peasant movements have

tried to overcome these obstacles It analyses framing as a contested activity and

looks at the impact of ‘framing disputes’ and ‘framing contests’ on the way that rights are (or are not) institutionalized The second part of Chapter 5 discusses the paradox of institutionalization and efforts by movements to ensure that the subversive potential of their rights-based claims is kept intact It compares the institutional trajectory of the right to food sovereignty with that of the rights of peasants

Chapter 6 offers a peasant critique of the human right to food and attempts to

assess the extent to which the conceptualization of the right to food has evolved

in response to peasant claims Chapter 6 describes the various tensions that have surfaced between right to food defenders and food sovereignty activists over the years, as well as the strategies used to deal with these tensions It suggests that some right to food defenders feel presssed to endorse a more pluralistic conception of human rights because they feel that their legitimacy depends on their ability to respond to the claims formulated by peasants themselves, who form the bulk of the hungry and food insecure Other right to food defenders prioritize other sources of legitimacy, such as the universality and codified nature

of human rights, and therefore resist such changes The future of the right to food, as well as that of the new rights put forward by peasant movements, will largely depend on how these legitimacy and representation issues are dealt with

2 The right to food sovereignty

Introduction

Vía Campesina leader Paul Nicholson, from the farmer organization EHNE

in the Basque country in Spain, recalls: ‘When the concept came out, it was intuitive and uncontrollable; it came out of a small group, which today is the whole world.’1 The genealogy of food sovereigny is the subject of intense debates The term appears to have emerged in the discourse of peasant organizations

in Mesoamerica in the mid-1980s, in response to drastic structural adjustment programmes, the vanishing of state support for agriculture and the arrival of

US food imports The food sovereignty rhetoric was used by the Mexican government in its 1983 National Food Program (Edelman 2014, 4–5), and its initial meaning probably designated something like national food security Increasingly, however, peasants used it to claim their ‘right to continue being producers’ (Edelman 1999, 102–3)

Two central factors enabled the emergence of Vía Campesina as a national agrarian movement First, a new generation of peasant organizations appeared in the mid-1980s, that were either born from the older ones – often attached to political parties – or founded virtually from scratch, and that were less clientelist and corporatist than their forebears and refused to

trans-be subordinated to urban interests (Rosset and Martínez-Torres 2010, 5) Second, there was a shared understanding that their national governments were weak and that the issues at stake required some kind of organizing

at the transnational level Exchanges between peasant organizations from North America, Central America and Europe (Desmarais 2008b, 114, 115) helped develop ties between peasants who soon realized that they were faced with similar problems, and the victims of a similar system Together, they demanded a mixture of restoring improved versions of the state services, and structural changes, such as land redistribution Marc,2 a French peasant from the Confédération paysanne who raises pigs in the Côtes-d’Armor region, attended the 1993 meeting in Mons, Belgium, which was to lead to the creation of the Vía Campesina network He recalls: ‘before, the state of mind was, we need to help the starving poor in Africa, but then we realized that we were destroying each other’.3

The right to food sovereignty 13

By the time Vía Campesina held its second International Conference in

Tlaxcala, Mexico, in April 1996, food sovereignty had already acquired a certain

standing Food sovereignty was associated with the right to produce, with access

to land and with the democratic control of food systems A first list of food sovereignty principles was established The negative impacts of the dumping of food surpluses produced by the North and the growing presence of transnational corporations in agriculture were clearly identified as being in contradiction with food sovereignty (Vía Campesina 1996a)

Food sovereignty made its appearance on the international scene in 1996 At

the World Food Summit (WFS) that was held in Rome in November 1996,

an NGO Forum was organized The NGO Forum Declaration stated that

‘food sovereignty’ should take ‘precedence over macro-economic policies and trade liberalization’ (NGO Forum to the World Food Summit 1996) Vía Campesina, in a statement released at the WFS, defined food sovereignty as

‘the right of each nation to maintain and develop its own capacity to produce its basic foods respecting cultural and productive diversity’ (Vía Campesina 1996c) The diagnosis was explicit: ‘The neo-liberal agricultural policies have led to the destruction of our family farm economies and to a profound crisis in our societies’ (Vía Campesina 1999) In the Seattle Declaration of 3 December

1999, Vía Campesina demanded ‘the right to produce our food for our own consumers, with great diversity in production and consumption according to cultural preferences’ (Vía Campesina 1999) The Seattle Declaration lists some

of the implications of food sovereignty:

• To secure food sovereignty in each and every country giving priority to food production for its people, social aspects and environment;

• To give each country the right to define their own agricultural policies

in order to meet their internal needs; This includes the right to prohibit imports in order to protect domestic production and to implement Agrarian Reform providing peasants and small to medium-sized producers with access to land;

• To stop all forms of dumping To protect the production of staple domestic foods

(Vía Campesina 1999)Although the Seattle Declaration focuses on food and agricultural policies,

food sovereignty includes many other dimensions than trade and WTO-related

claims, such as access to resources, territory, seeds, local knowledge, local markets and so on In this chapter, I focus on trade issues, because of their visibility and prominence in the international arena, certainly up to the mid-2000s Non-trade issues are addressed in the next chapter, which focuses on

peasants’ rights.

At the Nyéléni Food Sovereignty Forum, which was held in 2007, food sovereignty was conceptualized as relying on six pillars: (1) the right to food for all and the rejection of the commoditization of food; (2) support and respect for

14 The right to food sovereignty

food producers; (3) localized food systems (against dumping and dependency towards transnational corporations); (4) local control over natural resources and territories (against privatization and exploitation, for access to land); (5) development and exchange of local knowledge (against genetically modified organisms); and (6) work in harmony with nature (against monoculture, industrial farming, for agro-ecological practices) (Nyéléni Food Sovereignty Forum 2007a) These different pillars are highlighted by certain activists more than others, and their interpretation varies across regions The implications of food sovereignty, in all these areas, are still being discussed and defined Food sovereignty means something different in each local context, and evolves as it is being debated In the words of Josie Riffaud, a French peasant woman from the Confédération paysanne (in the Gironde department), former member of the International Coordination Committee of the Vía Campesina: ‘food sovereignty

is what we have in our gut’.4

Food sovereignty and relocalization: a reaction to

neoliberalism

When peasant organizations’ representatives from Europe, North America and Central America met in April 1992, in Managua, at the initiative of the Unión Nacional de Agricultores y Ganaderos (UNAG) of Nicaragua, they identified three core issues: the burden of external debt and fiscal deficits; the protection

of the environment; and the negative impacts of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) (Vía Campesina 1992) The Managua Declaration, issued at the end of the meeting, states: ‘We as producers need to be guaranteed sufficient income to cover as a minimum our costs of production … We reject policies which promote low prices, liberalized markets, the export of surpluses, dumping and export subsidies’ (Vía Campesina 1992)

So as to understand these claims, we need to recall a context of drastic restructuring of state–society relations and the multiplication of neoliberal policies aimed at overcoming rampant inflation and declining rates of profits and growth in the 1980s At the time, the economic and social crisis of the so-called ‘Fordist’ regime of capital accumulation led conservative governments

in the North to abandon the ‘welfarism’ of social democracy (Dardot and Laval 2009, 273) A double movement of state restructuring took place: from

the outside, the privatization of public enterprises – the minimal state – put an end to the producer state; from the inside, the creation of a managerial state led

to the structuring of new relations between government and social subjects

This new notion of the state as evaluator and market regulator was propagated by

international organizations, in particular in developing countries (Dardot and Laval 2009, 355)

Rural landscapes endured deep transformations as national governments redefined agricultural policies and legislation to facilitate greater integration into the international economy Existing agricultural and marketing structures were dismantled while new agrarian laws aimed at restructuring land tenure, land

The right to food sovereignty 15

use and marketing systems were introduced to increase production for export, and to industrialize the agricultural sector (Desmarais 2003, 2) The early 1980s also marked a shift from the expansion of the home market to an emphasis on the promotion of an agricultural export-led strategy as ‘the principal means of enhancing rural accumulation’ (Borras 2009, 7) Peasants were directly hit by the combined effects of subsidies in the North and the dismantling of supply management schemes in the South, resulting in oversupply (Rosset 2006, 43, 30) Vía Campesina’s statement at the World Food Summit in 1996 was a direct reaction to this situation: ‘Food imports must not displace local production nor depress prices This means that export dumping or subsidized export must cease Peasant farmers have the right to produce essential food staples for their countries and to control the marketing of their products’ (Vía Campesina 1996c)

Structural adjustment policies were denounced for exacting ‘an unacceptably high price on the poor and rural people in many of our countries’, and for reducing the capacity of governments to provide basic services (Vía Campesina 1996b)

In the 1990s, peasant movements’ reactions to the impacts of the neoclassical counter-revolution of the 1980s crystallized around a new international actor: the World Trade Organization (WTO) The creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) on 1 January 1995 marked the biggest reform of international trade since the Second World War Agricultural trade, which had long escaped liberalization because of the highly strategic relationship between food security and national security, was incorporated in the negotiations Developing countries had to strike a difficult balance between seeking to conquer world markets in agricultural products, and protecting their own farming sectors The aftermath of the debt crisis of the 1980s left them with little choice but to prioritize agro-export, which they hoped would bring them much needed foreign exchange They were accused by Vía Campesina of ‘pandering

to tiny but wealthy and politically powerful agro-export elites’ (Rosset 2006, 30) Peasants insisted that they lacked access to the levers of political power and were in effect excluded from decision-making (Vía Campesina 2003a)

Adding to the impacts of trade liberalization, the technical transformation

of farming through chemicalization and mechanization in the US and industrialized North resulted in increased concentration and in a growing labor and land productivity gap between large-scale capitalist farmers in both North and South and small-scale farmers mostly in the South (Bernstein 2010, 71) Large transnational corporations increased their power over small-scale farmers, causing further dualization of the agricultural sector (De Schutter 2009d) Korean peasant leader Kyung Hae of Vía Campesina explains: ‘Since massive importing began, we small farmers have never been paid as much as our production costs Sometimes, prices would drop four times over, all of a sudden What would be your emotional reaction if your salary drops suddenly

to a half without knowing clearly the reason?’ (Kyung Hae 2003)

The WTO became one of the predominant targets of the global justice movement (Reitan 2007), and certainly of Vía Campesina activists, in the late

16 The right to food sovereignty

1990s and early 2000s Opposition to the WTO helped federate the movement,

as activists identified the WTO as a common enemy: ‘The negative impacts

of globalization are acute and tragic in the countryside The imposition of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and regional trade agreements is destroying our livelihoods, our cultures and the natural environment’ (Vía Campesina 2000) The WTO came under attack as an institution, and as a symbol The WTO Ministerial Conferences – the topmost decision-making body of the WTO, which usually meets every two years – punctuated the life of the food sovereignty movement Peasant organizations had not yet sufficiently organized to make their voices heard at the first WTO Ministerial

in Singapore (1996), and they didn’t know much about the WTO at the time But thousands marched in protest against the WTO in the streets of Geneva (1998), Seattle (1999), Cancun (2003) and Hong Kong (2005), although their presence in Doha (2001) was severely constrained, as was the participation of most activists

In recent years, the WTO has lost its number one ranking in peasant struggles, which now feature land grabbing, climate change, food prices volatility and financial speculation The international environment and agenda have evolved, and so have socio-economic and political realities on the ground The global food prices crisis (2007–8) nevertheless gave rise to hot debates on the pros and cons of trade liberalization, as the crisis reactivated fears that protectionist measures would be taken in response to the failure of world markets to provide access to low-priced food imports at all times Much debated also was the issue of public and private investment in agriculture and that of state intervention Smallholder farmers in the developing world were

at the forefront of the food crisis Vía Campesina seized the opportunity to reaffirm that ‘small farmers are key food producers in the world’ and that

‘peasants are part of the solution’ (Vía Campesina 2008a) The Rome Level Conference Declaration (High-Level Conference on World Food Security 2008) and the UN High-Level Task Force also presented the crisis

High-as an opportunity to promote policies and programmes that would benefit smallholder farmers Yet there was no consensus on how to go about assisting small farmers On the one hand, there was the view that ‘reducing trade barriers and market distorting’ policies would ‘give farmers, particularly in developing countries, new opportunities to sell their products on world markets’ (High-Level Conference on World Food Security 2008) World food production and increased revenues for small farmers will be achieved, according to that perspective, and in particular in Africa, by launching a ‘new green revolution’,

an agricultural development model which relies heavily on hybrid seeds and access to fertilizers On the other hand, the prevalent view was that ‘more free trade will not solve the crisis’ (Vía Campesina 2008a) High food prices were unlikely to translate into new opportunities for small farmers who were, as consumers, themselves hit by price spikes (Saragih 2008) For these reasons, Vía Campesina, reiterated its ‘Agriculture out of the WTO’ or rather ‘WTO out of agriculture’ message, a slogan that had become popular in Seattle

The right to food sovereignty 17

in 1999 In April 2009, at the G8 agricultural ministers summit, it insisted

on preventing the WTO, WB and IMF from intervening in domestic food policies (Louail 2009) It emphasized the necessity to rebuild national food economies, demanded increased investments in peasant-based and farmer-based food production (Saragih 2008), and insisted on the need to transition toward diverse production systems that are labor intensive and sustainable in their resource use, such as agro-ecology (Vía Campesina 2008a)

In reaction to the combined effects of neoliberalization, modernization and trade liberalization in agriculture, Vía Campesina activists have defended the ‘Vía Campesina model for development’.5 In this section (see Table 2.1) I present the

relocalization project that is at the heart of the food sovereignty paradigm.

Localized food systems should be protected ‘against dumping and dependency towards transnational corporations’ and supported by ‘market, trade and price policies that prioritize local and national production and consumption’ (International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC) 2009) A kind of ‘subsidiarity test’ is envisaged to determine which products should feed the local/regional level and which food products should

be sold at the international level At minimum, the food sovereignty idea

translates into a do no harm principle Javier Sánchez, from Vía Campesina

member organization COAG in Spain, is adamant: ‘Food sovereignty is not autarchy or self-sufficiency It is not protection at the borders The condition

is without dumping We need rules to define what gets exported and what gets imported.’6 Solidarity, synergy and cooperation between regions of the world with radically different food systems are to replace competition and comparative advantage This could take the form of regional zones that share agro-ecological characteristics, as suggested by Thierry Kesteloot, a food

Table 2.1 The globalization project vs the relocalization project

Globalization (neoliberal) project Relocalization (food sovereignty) project

Deterritorialized global food system

dominated by global supply chains and

transnational agribusiness corporations

Re-embedding food and agriculture in

the community and territory, rebuilding

short supply chains International food trade based on

competition and specialization Relocalized food systems based on diversification, solidarity, synergy and

cooperation

Entrepreneurial state, supportive of

oligopolistic interests State intervention in the agrarian economy to support national and local food

markets Neoliberal objective of sustained

economic growth, achieved through trade

and investment liberalization and the

exploitation of natural resources

Societal objective of conserving and rehabilitating rural environments, natural

resources and food traditions and of ensuring that all people can live in dignity

Import-based food security Locally provided food security

18 The right to food sovereignty

and agriculture specialist at the NGO Oxfam in Belgium: ‘The idea is to complement each other at the regional level, without excessive specialization.’7

The belief that trade should be ‘mutually beneficial’ – as in the often cited examples of barter or gift economies (Pérez-Vitoria 2010, 225) – is at the core

of food sovereignty.8 Marc9 from the Confédération paysanne summarizes:

‘The richness of Vía Campesina is to say that the world market does/should not exist.’10 The fact that farmers have very unequal access to farming animals, tools and machinery, and work in very diverse climatic and soil conditions, leading to high differences in labor productivity11 (Mazoyer and Roudart

1997, 455), is often cited to explain why the world’s peasants should not be forced to compete with each other

The neoliberal objective of economic growth is replaced by that of conserving and rehabilitating ‘rural environments, fish stocks, landscapes and food traditions based on ecologically sustainable management of land, soils, water, seas, seeds, livestock and other biodiversity, the very objective that states should pursue’ (Nyéléni Food Sovereignty Forum 2007a) The old domestic approach to food security is revisited to incorporate a multiplicity of levels where

‘communities and nations should be able to define the extent and boundaries

of self sufficiency, build and strengthen local-national food production and distribution systems, and regulate trade and markets through democratically formulated public policies’ (IPC 2009) Community control over localized food systems is seen as key to ensuring food sovereignty The community level is where ‘cultural and productive diversity’ (Vía Campesina 1996c) can be best valued, recognized and respected Food sovereignty is to be built on the basis of concrete local experiences, from the local to the national (Vía Campesina 2008e) Direct exchanges between producers and consumers of food, modelled after the

Teikei system in Japan, are pursued for they respond to consumers’ need to put

a human face on the food they eat, and constitute a way for producers to bypass agribusiness corporations (Pleyers 2011) Appeal to consumers and improved quality are vital to local experiments which seek to ‘re-embed agriculture and food consumption in socially and ecologically defined regions’ (Friedmann and McNair 2008, 409)

Food sovereignty as a new human right

In addition to advocating for food sovereignty as an alternative paradigm (Rosset and Martínez-Torres 2010, 169–70), Vía Campesina activists have claimed food

sovereignty as a new human right – the right of peoples to food sovereignty – and

sought ways to ‘establish’ this right at the international, national and local levels (Vía Campesina 2001) Compared to the broader term ‘food sovereignty’, references to ‘the right to food sovereignty’ are not extremely numerous in Vía Campesina official documents, but they exist A websearch conducted on Vía Campesina’s website on 10 January 2013 provided 17 occurences of the ‘right

to food sovereignty’ between 2003 and 2011, and 18 occurences of ‘el derecho

a la soberanía alimentaria’ between 2001 and 2011 Here are some of the ways

The right to food sovereignty 19

in which the right to food sovereignty is used in Vía Campesina statements, or in

statements issued jointly by Vía Campesina and other civil society groups:

Each nation must have the right to food sovereignty to achieve the level of

food sufficiency and nutritional quality it considers appropriate without suffering retaliation of any kind … All countries and peoples have the right

to develop their own agriculture

(NGO Forum to the World Food Summit 1996)12

Food Sovereignty is every community’s fundamental right Every

community should have the right to produce their own food, the right to food sovereignty This means that communities have the right to define their

own agricultural and food policies, to protect and to regulate their national agricultural and livestock production, and to shield their domestic market from the dumping of agricultural surpluses from other countries

(Vía Campesina 2003b)13

During the meeting [held in 2006 with Pascal Lamy, DG of the WTO], La Via Campesina reaffirmed the proposal it has been defending since 1996:

the recognition of the right to food sovereignty It is the only credible alternative

to solve this unprecedented economic and social crisis The representatives

of the peasant’s movement explained their struggle for the creation of an international system regulating agricultural markets based on co-operation, dialogue, responsibility and the respect of people and human communities

(Vía Campesina 2006b)14

We, women from more than 40 countries, from different indigenous peoples of Africa, the Americas, Europe, Asia and Oceania and from different sectors and social movements, have gathered together in Sélingué

(Mali) at Nyéléni 2007 to participate in the creation of a new right: the right

to food sovereignty

(Vía Campesina 2007b)15

In addition to unequivocal references to the right to food sovereignty, many

definitions of food sovereignty describe it as a list of rights or as the ‘right to’:16

Food sovereignty is the right of each nation to maintain and develop its own capacity to produce its basic foods respecting cultural and productive diversity We have the right to produce our own food in our own territory

20 The right to food sovereignty

and the diversity of peasant, fishing and indigenous forms of agricultural production, marketing and management of rural areas, in which women play a fundamental role

(Forúm Mundial sobre soberanía alimentaria 2001)

References to the right to food sovereignty are also numerous in the everyday

discourse of food sovereignty activists, and came up a lot during my fieldwork For this Haitian NGO activist from Action Aid, food sovereignty has to do with self-determination, development and human rights: ‘Food sovereignty is the right of a people to define an autonomous food policy, linked to an endogenous development process It belongs to human rights We need to repatriate this right.’17 Sidney Ribaux, from the fair trade organization Equiterre in Quebec, summarizes: ‘Food sovereignty is more autonomy at the national level, more equity at the international level.’18

To start our discussion of food sovereignty as a human right, let us explore how movement activists have defined rights-holders and duty-bearers The right to food sovereignty is most often described as ‘the right of peoples, communities, and countries’ (NGO/CSO Forum for Food Sovereignty 2002) although several definitions include other rights-holders as well The Declaration released at the occasion of the World Food Summit (1996), for example, lists the following categories of rights-holders: ‘peasant farmers’, ‘everyone’, ‘each nation’,

‘we’, ‘women’ and ‘we who work the land’ (Vía Campesina 1996c) In other definitions, individuals, regions, territories and nations are put forward, leading

to a fair amount of confusion Walter,19 a Belgian representative of Oxfam, asks:

‘The right to food sovereignty is the right of whom? It is not clear Peasant organizations, who are they? Peoples, who are they?’20

At the time of its inception, the right to food sovereignty was generally associated with the right of states and governments The focus was on policy space and alternative trade rules Jean,21 from the European Coordination of Vía Campesina (ECVC – formerly known as the Coordination paysanne européenne, or CPE), recalls:

The rights of peoples and states, we contributed a lot to that formulation

We were talking about countries or groups of countries as places where things ought to be decided Like the ECOWAS [Economic Community

Of West African States] Populations are very different, it should imply agricultural policies that are very different We are not going to replace a WTO framework with a Vía Campesina framework.22

Over the years, the emphasis seems to have gradually shifted from states and nations to communities and local economies Small projects have given life to food sovereignty practices on the ground, shaping alternative ‘market relations’ (Friedmann and McNair 2008, 410) Commenting on such projects, Vía Campesina leader Paul Nicholson reflects: ‘It is food sovereignty as a citizen concept, a farmer’s concept, a local economy whose sovereignty is a right.’23

The right to food sovereignty 21

A right of the peoples

The use of the emblematic term peoples in many definitions of the right to food

sovereignty can be interpreted as a way to embrace the multiplicity of levels where food sovereignty policies ought to be discussed.24 The term peoples also

evokes collective rights which have attained international recognition, such as the right to self-determination and the right to development, which have lost visibility over the last two decades but can be considered historic predecessors of the right to food sovereignty What exactly is the meaning of the rights of people? Are they individual rights with a collective dimension? Are they rights of states

in disguise (Crawford 1988b, 56)? The history of peoples’ rights dates back to the 19th century and the period between the two World Wars, when certain protections were granted, mostly within the Ottoman or Austro-Hungarian empires, to groups or communities which did not constitute states (Crawford 1988c, 161).25

In the 1950s, the notion of collective rights became tied to the right to determination, which first appeared in the UN Charter of 1945 (Chapter 1, Article 1, paragraph 2), and to the right of everyone to ‘a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized’ (Article 28 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948) The era of decolonization in the 1960s and the insistence of newly independent states, particularly in the 1970s, on reclaiming not only their political, but also their economic sovereignty, led to the right to self-determination being revived

self-in the self-instruments adopted durself-ing that period (De Schutter 2010b, 681) Despite the fact that the right to self-determination was ignored in the drafting

of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it was asserted in Article 1 of both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR)

of 1966 Both read: ‘All peoples have the right of self-determination By virtue

of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.’

During the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, the newly formed states attempted

to transform international law through the use of UN General Assembly resolutions, the establishment of new international institutions and the introduction of new elements into the doctrinal corpus of international

law (Rajagopal 2003, 73) The doctrine of permanent sovereignty over natural resources (PSNR) was asserted as an essential constituent of the right to self-

determination (UN General Assembly 1962) The principle of PSNR means that ‘peoples and nations must have the authority to manage and control their natural resources and in doing so to enjoy the benefits of their development and conservation’ The principle was advocated in the early 1950s, to ensure that people emerging from colonial rule would benefit from the natural resources within their territories (Daes 2004, 5)

Also defined as a right of the people, the right to development was first

envisioned in the late 1960s, and recognized in the UN Declaration on the

22 The right to food sovereignty

Right to Development in 1986 The right to development established a strong relationship between development, national sovereignty, popular participation and the rights of peoples (Peemans 2002, 476) The Declaration on the Right

to Development insisted on the ‘fair distribution of benefits’ resulting from the development process and underlined the crucial importance of international cooperation It stressed that ‘appropriate economic and social reforms should

be carried out with a view to eradicating all social injustices’ (Sengupta 2000, 3) Peoples’ rights to self-determination, permanent sovereignty over natural resources and development were widely supported by Southern states, lawyers and political leaders in the 1970s The 1976–81 period saw the drafting of the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Peoples (also known as the Algiers Declaration) of 197626 and of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (also known as the Banjul Charter) of 1981

Collective rights27 are usually described as having both an internal and an external dimension, a distinction which is useful to distinguish between rights

of peoples and rights of states (Jones 1999, 102) Internal self-determination, for example, speaks of the right of a people to freely choose its own political, economic and social system.28 External self-determination regards the international status of a people, it equates freedom from external intervention, from colonialism and imperialism (Felice 1996, 58) The right to development similarly has an internal and an external aspect (Golay and Özden 2010, 7) Looking at the internal and external dimensions of the right to food sovereignty,

it is striking that both dimensions have been constitutive of food sovereignty since its beginnings, as appears clearly in this 1993 statement: ‘The right of every country to define its own agricultural policy according to the nation’s interest [external] and in concertación [sic] with the peasant and Indigenous organizations, guaranteeing their real participation [internal]’ (Vía Campesina 1993)

Internal and external food sovereignty

In its internal dimension, the right of peoples to food sovereignty expresses peasant activists’ widespread perception that they have no voice in decision-making and that government policies fail to integrate their concerns Internal food sovereignty makes visible the divergence of interests between a state and its people/peasants In the opinion of Jean, European Coordination of Vía Campesina (ECVC) support staff, it clarifies whose rights should come first:

‘The rights of populations and states … the term populations indicates that

it is the aspirations of peasants and populations which should be taken into account first.’29 It posits the people as a potential countervailing force to state sovereignty.30 Indeed, the people are seen as the ultimate repository of sovereign rights, over the rights of any government or nation state (Felice 1996, 19)

If the definition of the right to food sovereignty more or less reiterates peoples’ right to self-determination – as a range of alternatives including the right to participate in the governance of the state as well as the right to various

The right to food sovereignty 23

forms of autonomy and self-governance (Daes 2004, 7) – it is interesting to note that it goes beyond this by introducing the term ‘community’, a term which is not applied in international law as it is not sufficiently distinct (Morten Haugen 2009) In fact, one of the definitions of the right to food sovereignty prepared for the 2007 Nyéléni Forum in Mali included the interesting category

of ‘food sovereignty-holders’ under the phrasing of ‘legitimate democratic communities’31 (Ratjen et al 2007) In its internal, political dimension, the right

to food sovereignty conveys a call for smaller political units within a world society It is kin to the right to autonomy or self-government which has been recognized in the International Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (Golay and Özden 2010, 24) But what would legitimate democratic (peasant) communities look like? Could international human rights law accommodate such a vague subject of rights?32 What about individuals as food sovereignty rights-holders?

The individual dimension of the right to food sovereignty has been little explored33 but it seems that ‘at some point there were discussions within Vía Campesina on how to individualize food sovereignty and link it to self-determination’.34 While the individual dimension of the right to self-determination and its implications are hard to capture (De Schutter 2010b, 434), the right to development has been conceptualized as the right of people and simultaneously the right of individuals35 (Rich 1988, 44–5) If it was conceptualized, the individual right to food sovereignty would need to extend to all citizens, beyond food producers, and its content would need to incorporate not only access to decision-making when it comes to food and agricultural policies, but also the individual ability (as a consumer) to make autonomous food choices

In its external dimension, the right of peoples to food sovereignty reactivates the ‘old’ rights to self-determination, development and sovereignty over natural resources, but applies these to a changed international context.36 Peasant activists

no longer emphasize liberation from colonization but react to neoliberalism and economic imperialism Marc, from the Confédération paysanne, explains:

‘the right to food sovereignty of states evokes the right to independence, it is anti- or post-colonial Here we are not talking about political independence but economic independence Today, decolonization is not about a state in relation to another, but about a state in relation to transnational corporations.’37 The right

to permanent sovereignty over natural resources is not emphasized as it was

in the past, but efforts have been made by civil society to show the relevance

of the concept in a context of increased international land grabs (Golay and Özden 2010) The right to development is rarely mentioned, but just as newly independent states called for a New International Economic Order (NIEO)

in 1974, the food sovereignty movement calls for structural changes The alternative world order that peasant movements envision, however, is of a radically different nature

Interestingly, some of the aspects of the New International Economic Order have found their way into the right to food sovereignty In the context

24 The right to food sovereignty

of the Doha Development Round of negotiations, for example, Vía Campesina systematically denounced economic imperialism on the part of the EU and the US and defended the principle of special and differential treatment for developing countries But the vision of development that dominated in the 1970s has little to do with the ‘relocalization’ project that is defended by Vía Campesina The search for a Third World alternative to US capitalism and Soviet communism, which characterized the Bandung Conference in 1955 and continued to be reflected in the NIEO proposals in 1974, was premised on the need to accelerate the ‘modernization process’ and achieve economic growth

to bridge the economic gap between developing and developed countries (UN General Assembly 1974a) This is in sharp contrast with the food sovereignty paradigm, which suggests an alternate development path for developing and developed countries alike, one which is not grounded in modernization, progress or economic growth Indeed, discomfort with the idea that food

sovereignty could be invoked to defend the right to grow or the right to export38

is widespread within Vía Campesina, marking a departure from the vision that was portrayed in the NIEO The movement has insisted more on the negative impacts of dumping and on the necessity to shield small peasants from the threat

of trade liberalization, than on the importance of increasing market access for developing countries’ products.39

The proclaimed North–South solidarity between peasants represents another departure from the ‘historical’ right to development: although the focus of the

right to food sovereignty is usually on developing countries, Northern states are

also entitled the right to define their agricultural policy provided their policies

do not have a negative impact on the ability of Southern states to develop their agriculture Adding to these differences is the fact that, while the Declaration on the Right to Development essentially saw development as to be undertaken by states, the food sovereignty movement no longer places the focus on the state as the main driver of social change But who, then, is responsible for implementing the right to food sovereignty?

Definitions of the right to food sovereignty leave duty-bearers most often unspecified Contrary to what we find in liberal theory but also in social-democratic approaches to human rights, where duties for implementing social and cultural rights are essentially ascribed to the state (Stammers 1995, 495), food sovereignty claims appear to target all perceived violators of human rights At the heart of

the right to food sovereignty are what Makinson called unspecified correspondents:

diffuse claims are tied to corresponding pre-obligations, where the bearer of the obligations is not specified (Makinson 1988, 78, 79) In that sense, the language used in the Nyéléni Declaration, which stipulates that food sovereignty is to be

‘implemented by communities, peoples, states and international bodies’ (Nyéléni Food Sovereignty Forum 2007a), is typical of third-generation rights, which ‘can

be realized only through the concerted efforts of all actors on the social scene’ (Maggio and Lynch 1997, 53) Yet, an alternative, non-statist, conception of rights remains difficult to imagine (Crawford 1988c, 174, 175), and to think of (the content and implications of) the right to food sovereignty completely outside of

The right to food sovereignty 25

the interstate framework is no easy task Let us now turn to the strategies the food sovereignty movement has put in place to achieve the international and national recognition of the proposed new right to food sovereignty

Institutionalizing the right to food sovereignty at the

international level

There are two entry points for law and social movements: movements may seek

to change the law in the name of superior principles such as human rights or they may seek to protect themselves from repression against, with and via the law (Agrikoliansky 2010, 225) In the case of the food sovereignty movement, the ambition has clearly been ‘to construct a new legality and a new institutionality

at the national and international levels’ (Vía Campesina 2008e) The objective pursued by Vía Campesina is well summarized by Walter, at Oxfam: ‘They want

to create a new legal paradigm … because they don’t recognize themselves in the existing instruments.’40

By invoking the right to food sovereignty, peasant activists demand an alternative set of international trade rules: ‘We need to think about measures to put in place so that human rights are stronger than trade.’41 The need to secure local alternatives is also expressed strongly A Portuguese farmer, member of Vía Campesina, insists: ‘We agree on the principles How can we have policies which guarantee them?’42 Alternative laws, policies and human rights are perceived as the much needed shield to protect peasants against the threat of more trade and investment liberalization, and against the enormous powers of transnational corporations Marc,43 from the Confédération paysanne, suggests: ‘as long as it

is not written down, it is WTO law’ And he adds: ‘to write down rights is to oppose the supremacy of the market through the law’.44 In this sense, the right

to food sovereignty explicitly opposes the ‘right to export’45 – that some have described as one of the pillars of the WTO Agreement on Agriculture If peasant activists seek to establish an alternative legality that reflects peasant activists’ values and principles, if they use the language of human rights, it is precisely because they feel threatened by the ‘rights’ of corporate actors, powerful governments and international institutions In the view of peasant activists, international agreements and institutions ‘have imposed legal changes that have destroyed basic principles used to protect human and social rights and which serve to create the conditions in which transnational companies can maximize their profits’ (Vía Campesina 2004b) As clearly put by Françoise,46 a French woman activist who used to be a member of the Confédération paysanne: ‘we called upon rights to oppose the law’.47 Talking about indigenous peoples, but making a similar case for peasants, she explains: ‘They were living in peace with their customary rights, then they were attacked by the law, by the right to exploit mines, forests, now they are coming back on stage with rights to oppose the law, they want the right to be there.’48

Claims that are presented as rights are usually presented as having a special kind of importance, urgency, universality or endorsement (Kamenka 1988,