UN Backs Seed Sovereignty in Landmark Peasants’ Rights Declaration

By Timothy A. Wise

Cross-posted at Food Tank.

On December 17, the United Nations General Assembly took a quiet but historic vote, approving the Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and other People Working in Rural Areas, by a vote of 121-8 with 52 abstentions. The declaration, which was the product of some 17 years of diplomatic work led by the international peasant alliance La Via Campesina, formally extends human rights protections to farmers whose “seed sovereignty” is threatened by government and corporate practices.

“As peasants we need the protection and respect for our values and for our role in society in achieving food sovereignty,” said Via Campesina coordinator Elizabeth Mpofu after the vote. Most developing countries voted in favor of the resolution, while many developed country representatives abstained. The only “no” votes came from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Hungary, Israel, and Sweden.

“To have an internationally recognized instrument at the highest level of governance that was written by and for peasants from every continent is a tremendous achievement,” said Jessie MacInnis of Canada’s National Farmers Union. The challenge now, of course, is to mobilize small-scale farmers to claim those rights, which are threatened by efforts to impose rich-country crop breeding regulations onto less developed countries, where the vast majority of food is grown by peasant farmers using seeds they save and exchange.

Multilateralism Undermined by Globalization’s Discontents

By Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram
Cross-posted with Inter Press Service. 
On 24 October 1945, the world’s most inclusive multilateral institution, the United Nations, was born to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, … reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, … establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom” (UN Charter: Preamble).
Thus, one major purpose of the UN is to foster international cooperation to resolve the world’s socio-economic problems and to promote human rights and fundamental freedoms (UN Charter: Article 1.3).
Hence, all Members are obliged to “refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state” (Article 1.4), and to give the UN “every assistance in any action it takes in accordance with [its] Charter” (Article 1.5).
For many, however, the world today is increasingly at odds with the ideals of the UN Charter. Wars and conflicts are causing unprecedented humanitarian crises, worsened by rising intolerance and xenophobia.
Important international organizations and treaties are being threatened by unilateral withdrawals, non-payment of dues, virtual vetoes and threats of worse. Meanwhile, bilateral and plurilateral trade and other agreements are undermining crucial features of the post-Second World War order.

Financing for Development: Time for the UN to Take Centre Stage Again

Jesse Griffiths, Guest Blogger

Jesse Griffiths is Director of the European Network on Debt and Development (Eurodad).

Little progress has been made since the last conference of the United Nations Financing for Development (FfD) process, held in Addis Ababa in July 2015, which agreed the Addis Ababa Agenda for Action (AAAA) – the framework for how the world would finance the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Since Addis, however, there has been little headway and last year’s UN FfD Forum was disappointing, with few concrete outcomes achieved. As the FfD Forum outcome document highlighted, that current policies are not delivering the economic step-change needed to achieve the SDGs.

Given the slow rate of reform since Addis, it is clear that global leaders need to work towards a major new set of concrete actions on financing for development. The European Network on Debt and Development (Eurodad) recently launched a short paper setting out three key tests that this year’s UN FfD Forum should pass if it is to be regarded a success:

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UN Role in Reforming International Finance for Development

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Growing global interdependence poses greater challenges to policy makers on a wide range of issues and for countries at all levels of development. Yet, the new mechanisms and arrangements put in place over the past four decades have not been adequate to the growing challenges of coherence and coordination of global economic policy making. Recent financial crises have exposed some such gaps and weaknesses.

Multilateral UN inclusive

Although sometimes seemingly slow, the United Nations (UN) has long had a clear advantage in driving legitimate discussion on reform because of its more inclusive and open governance. Lop-sided influence in the current international financial system is a principal reason why many countries lack confidence in existing arrangements. Rebuilding confidence in such arrangements will require that all parties feel they have a stake in the reform agenda.

But the UN is also suited to drive the discussion because of its long tradition of reliable work on international economic issues. The UN secretariat has developed and maintained a coherent and integrated approach to trade, finance and sustainable development, with due attention to equity and social justice issues.

The ongoing ‘secular stagnation’ has again highlighted the interdependence of global economic relations, exposing a series of myths and half-truths about the global economy. These include the idea that the developing world has become “decoupled” from the developed world; that unregulated financial markets and the new financial instruments had ushered in a new era of “great moderation” and “stability”; and that macroeconomic imbalances — due to decisions made in the household, corporate and financial sectors — were less dangerous than those involving the public sector.

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Land and the Right to Food in Zambia

U.N. Envoy Urges Shifts Away from Large-Scale Projects

Timothy A. Wise

Leave it to the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Hilal Elver, to remind the Zambian government—and all of us—that in agricultural countries such as Zambia the right to food depends on the access of the rural poor to land.

“The push to turn commercial large-scale agriculture into a driving engine of the Zambian economy, in a situation where the protection of access to land is weak, can risk pushing small-holder farmers and peasants off their land and out of production with severe impacts on the people’s right to food,” Elver said in Lusaka on May 12, 2017, at the end of her 10-day official mission to the land-locked southern African country.

In the absence of secure land rights, she warned, small-scale farmers can become “squatters on their own land,” as they become laborers or contract farmers to export-oriented commercial farms. “This situation is particularly alarming since small-scale farmers represent 60 percent of Zambians and at the same time produce 85 percent of the food for the population.”

With nearly four-fifths of rural Zambians living in poverty and 40 percent of children—more than one million—suffering stunted growth from malnutrition, Zambia has become one of Africa’s most impoverished countries. This, despite strong economic growth and large increases in the production of maize (corn), the country’s staple food crop.

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The UN and Global Economic Stagnation

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

When the financial crisis preceding the Great Recession broke out in late 2008, attention to the previously ignored UN Secretariat’s analytical work was greatly enhanced. This happened as the UN and the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) had been almost alone in warning, for some years, of the macroeconomic dangers posed by poorly regulated financial sector developments.

In contrast, most other international organizations – the IMF, World Bank and OECD – which monitor developments in the world economy have failed to see the crisis coming. Until the third quarter of 2008, they were still predicting continued robust growth of the world economy, and, ‘soft landings’ in the unlikely event of financial turmoil, including in the US.

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Sustainability Goals to Get Action Going

Martin Khor

The newest fashionable term coming from the United Nations system is “sustainable development goals”.

These are goals that all countries, represented by their top political leaders, have signed up to strive to achieve by the year 2030.

There are 17 goals altogether, and they cover three main aspects – economic, social and environmental, which are the components of “sustainable development”.

There is also the global partnership for development, in which developed countries pledge to assist the developing countries to fulfil their goals.

The SDGs were adopted at a UN Develop-ment Summit in New York in September 2015, attended by top political leaders.

The Summit adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Its centrepiece is the SDGs.

These goals may seem like something obvious, which few can quarrel with.

In fact, it took a long and arduous process of negotiations to agree on them.

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Did Beijing 1995 Make Any Real Difference For Women?

What Else Do We Need To Do?

Jayati Ghosh

“More of the same will not do.” That’s the important takeaway from the new report “Progress of the World’s Women 2015” from UN Women.

Twenty years ago, the Beijing Summit of the UN was seen as a pathbreaking attempt to bring about major improvements in the conditions of women across the world. But did it really make much difference? What has actually changed in terms of gender disparities? And what can we do to make sure that this time around—as the international community contemplates new global goals for sustainable development—there will be genuine and transformative progress for women?

The Report answers these questions by framing them in the language of human rights, and uses international human rights standards such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR)—to assess laws and policies for their actual effect on women and girls on the ground. The answers are somewhat dispiriting: positive movements are slow, uneven and in some regions even going in the opposite direction.

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An Era of Global Turbulence

Martin Khor

When the Cold War ended two decades ago, people throughout the world looked forward at last to a period of peace.

A political scientist wrote a book predicting “the end of history”. Conflict between ideologies and big powers was over, as those advocating the free market and democracy had won.

The illusion of the end of conflict is over. Last week, at the annual summit of the United Nations, “global turbulence” was much the theme of the leaders gathered there.

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Battling to Curb “Vulture Funds”

Martin Khor

External debt is rearing its ugly head again. Many developing countries are facing reduced export earnings and foreign reserves.

No country would like to have to seek the help of the International Monetary Fund to avoid default.

That could lead to years of austerity and high unemployment, and at the end of it, the debt stock might even get worse.

Low growth, recession, social and political turmoil are probable. This has been experienced by many African and Latin American countries in the past, and by several European countries presently.

When no solution is found, some countries then restructure their debts. Since there is no international system for an orderly debt workout, the country would have to take its own initiative.

The results are usually messy, as it faces a loss of market reputation and the creditors’ anger. But the country swallows the pill, rather than have more turmoil at home.

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