Dakar Appeal against the land grab
Forum Social Mondial 2011 – Dakar (Sénégal)
Du 6 au 11 Février
« Assemblée de Convergence pour l'Action »
11 Février
We, farmers organizations, non-governmental organizations, religious organizations, unions and other social movements, gathered in Dakar for the World Social Forum 2011:
Considering that small and family farming, which represent most of the world's farmers, are best placed to:
meet their dietary needs and those of populations, ensuring food security and sovereignty of countries,
provide employment to rural populations and maintain economic life in rural areas, key to a balanced territorial development,
produce with respect to the environment and to the conservation of natural resources for future generations;
Considering
that recent massive land grabs targeting tens of millions of acres
for the benefit of private interests or third states - whether for
reasons of food, energy, mining, environment, tourism, speculation or
geopolitics - violate human rights by depriving local, indigenous,
peasants, pastoralists and fisher communities of their livelihoods,
by restricting their access to natural resources or by removing their
freedom to produce as they wish, and
exacerbate the inequalities of
women in access and control of land;
Considering that investors and
complicit governments threaten the right to food of rural
populations, that they condemned them to suffer rampant unemployment
and rural exodus, that they exacerbate poverty and conflicts and
contribute to the loss of agricultural knowledge and skills and
cultural identities ;
Considering
also that the land and the respect of human
rights are firstly under the
jurisdiction of national parliaments and governments, and they bear
the greatest share of responsibility for these land grabs;
We call on parliaments and
national governments to
immediately cease all massive land grabs current or future and return
the plundered land. We
order the government to stop oppressing and criminalizing the
movements of struggle for land and to release activists detained. We
demand that national governments implement an effective framework for
the recognition and regulation of land rights for users through
consultation with all stakeholders. This requires putting an end to
corruption and cronyism, which invalidates any attempt of shared land
management.
We
demand that governments, the Regional Unions of States, FAO and other
national and international institutions
immediately implement the
commitments that were made at the International Conference on
Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD) of 2006, namely
securing land rights of users, the revival of agrarian reform process
based on a fair access to natural resources and rural development for
the welfare of all. We ask that the elaboration process of the FAO
Guidelines on Governance of Land and Natural Resources be
strengthened, and that they are based on Human Rights as defined in
the various charters and covenants - these rights being effective
only if binding legal instruments are implemented at the national and
international level to impose on the states compliance with their
obligations. Moreover,
each state has to be held responsible for the impact of its policies
or activities of its companies in the countries targeted by the
investments. Similarly,
we must reaffirm the supremacy of Human Rights over international
trade and finance regimes, which are sources of speculation on
natural resources and agricultural goods.
Meanwhile,
we urge the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) to definitively
reject the World Bank principles for responsible agricultural
investment (RAI), which are illegitimate and inadequate to address
the phenomenon, and to include the commitments of the ICARRD as well
as the conclusions of the International Assessment of Agricultural
Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) in its
Global Framework for Action.
We
demand that states, regional organizations and international
institutions guarantee
people's right to land and support family farming and agro-ecology.
Appropriate agricultural
policies should consider all different types of producers (indigenous
peoples, pastoralists, artisanal fishermen, peasants, agrarian reform
beneficiaries) and answer specifically to the needs of women and
youth.
Finally,
we invite people and
civil society organisations everywhere
to support - by all human,
media, legal, financial or popular means possible - all those who
fight against land grabs and to put pressure on national governments
and international institutions to fulfil their obligations towards
the rights of people.
We
all have a duty to resist and to support
the people who
are fighting for their dignity!
FSM 2010, by: