Rights Abuses Vs Farmers, Land Grabs Continue Amid Calls For Food Systems Change And Climate Justice

PENANG – As the agenda of big corporations prevailed in global dialogues on food systems transformation and climate change, the pressure on rural peoples to protect whatever remains of their control over land and resources continues to mount up. This mounting pressure, as always, is accompanied by intensifying attacks on rural communities’ civil and political rights, according to a report by PAN Asia Pacific (PANAP).

The Malaysia-based regional advocacy network launched the Land & Rights Watch (LRW) 2021 report today, Dec. 10, to mark International Human Rights Day. In its report, PANAP monitored 145 cases of human rights violations related to land conflicts and struggles in 37 countries worldwide. The monitoring covered reported cases from Jan. 1 to Nov. 30, 2021.

(Download the full report)

PANAP noted that 2021 was a significant year for food sovereignty advocates, including those fighting for the people’s rights to land and resources, with the United Nations (UN) holding the Food Systems Summit (FSS) and the Climate Change Conference of the Parties or COP 26. The former was to chart the path towards supposedly transforming the global food systems, while the latter aimed to accelerate the global response to the climate crisis, in which food and agriculture play a crucial role.

“For farmers, indigenous, and other rural peoples, land ownership and effective control over resources are key to radical transformation of food systems and achieving climate justice and genuinely sustainable development. But big farms linked to the expansive production and supply networks of monopoly corporations heavily control most of the world’s farmlands,” said Sarojeni Rengam, PANAP’s executive director.

With people’s issues and demands sidelined in the UN FSS and COP26 in favour of big corporate interests, PANAP warned that rural communities would suffer increasing displacement and rights violations.

Among the monitored land-related human rights abuses are 45 cases of killings that claimed 55 victims, including 18 indigenous people, 16 farmers and farmworkers, and 15 land activists. Six of the victims were not identified in reports as belonging to any of these specific sectors. Eleven of those killed are women.

Most of the killings happened in Colombia with 14 cases and 16 victims, followed by the Philippines with seven cases and 11 victims. The report also monitored land-related killings in 14 other countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

The PANAP report also monitored 67 cases of arrests, detention, and legal persecution with 642 victims. Land grabbers often resort to using defective legal systems in developing countries by filing trumped-up charges and criminalising the resistance to land grabbing of affected communities.

Further, the report monitored 17 cases of threats, harassment, and physical assault involving 351 victims. An overwhelming majority of the victims – 332 – are farmers and farm workers.

Lastly, an estimated 44,430 people – of whom more than half (27,528) are farmers and farm workers – were also displaced during the period covered by the report.

As in previous years, state forces figured prominently as perpetrators of human rights atrocities, the PANAP report revealed. The police, military, and paramilitary were implicated in 33 cases of killings, 642 cases of arrests, detention, and legal persecution, and 92 cases of threats, harassment, and physical assault.

More than half of the reported cases did not specify which economic sectors are involved in the rights violations. The mining and plantation sectors were each identified in 18 cases, followed by energy with 12 cases. Logging and real estate development are involved in six cases each.

On top of the dominance of corporate interests in food and climate policies, the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic also heightens the contradictions between monopoly capitalists and rural peoples. The health, economic, and political crises created by the COVID-19 response has spawned new levels of global poverty and hunger that primarily impact rural peoples, PANAP pointed out in its report.

“The challenges are daunting, and the recent corporate-dominated global responses to food systems transformation and climate change offer no hope of meaningful reforms coming from policymakers anytime soon. But the people are hungry for change, and they are ready to consolidate and expand their movements for land, life, and the planet,” Rengam stressed. ###

Land & Rights Watch is an initiative of PANAP and our partners and networks under the No Land, No Life! campaign to closely monitor and expose human rights abuses against communities opposing land and resource grabbing. PANAP culls the data and information from online news and articles, and reports from our partners and networks. Because of this limitation, the report does not claim to represent the true global extent of human rights violations related to land and resource grabbing and similar conflicts in the rural areas.

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