Growth and Poverty Mailing List Archive

["Lies Craeynest" <<address removed>>]

Dear all,

I have been following the discussion from afar, admittedly have not been
able to catch up with all contributions, but I was relieved to see the very
interesting contribution from Julia Wright which made me realise what it had
been that had made me feel uncomfortable with the current consultation.  
War on Want believes in and supports organisations and movements that
struggle to determine a future for themselves, and have their rights as
citizens, and thus as voters and policy-influencers, recognised.  We don't
think that there is a one-fits-all solution to agriculture as a tool for
development and firmly believe that rural social movements should be
strengthened to enable them to develop those solutions themselves.  

For us, the best contribution that DFID can make to agriculture is to
promote different voices from different rural civil society groups and
ensure that International Institutions such as the World Bank, or the
European Union, open up for influence and consultation of rural social
movements.  Time and time again, we have noted that for all the talk that
these institutions have about transparency and the importance of civil
society, concerns and demands of rural social movements have not been taken
up or even considered.  

An example from only recently is that the European Union is developing
Guidelines to guide land policy in all EU member states.  Civil society in
Europe, let stand in the countries that will be affected by these policies
only found out about these Guidelines a year after the drafting group was
put together.  It was only after pressure from civil society that an
internet consultation was organised on the guidelines in March 2004.
Admittedly, the paper has included many of the longstanding demands of rural
social movements with regards to land reform, for example the recognition
that land reform is a political process, and not just a marketing exercise.
Nevertheless, the process has been opaque, with very little information
about the process of the approval of Guidelines been made available and with
very little possibilities for interaction with the drafting group.  

DFID has a role within the EU, the World Bank and the IMF to prevent such
processes from happening.  DFID has a fantastic record of consulting and
accepting different point of views, but it needs to advocate these at levels
where decision making now seems to be more important than at country-level,
i.e., Europe and worldwide. 

Agriculture, particularly in developing and least developed countries,
cannot be divorced from land policy and land reform.  DFID has made some
steps towards recognising this, but it would be interesting to see those
thoughts further elaborated within the document on agriculture.
Furthermore, it would be interesting to know what has happened to the Land
policy document that was in the process of being developed a year and a half
ago.  It was a very interesting and important process of consultation with a
useful document in elaboration, but unfortunately ended up with a not very
clear outcome.  It would be good to understand better where the process is
taking us. 

Regarding the organisation of small farmers, I would like to make the point
that the Movimento sem Terra, landless People movement from Brazil, have
managed to create systems of cooperation which have been extremely
successful according to a new research from the Federal University of Rio de
Janeiro.  83 researchers worked for two years to research more than 15.000
families between 1985 and 1997.  They conclude that the 'settlements' in
which certain activities are done within a cooperative, and others not,
according to the principle of total decision making by the settlers
themselves, have improved purchasing power of families, dynamised the local
commerce, improved nutrition for settlers, helped to strengthen family
links, helped to promote a varied agricultural production and created
labour.
Unfortunately, decision makers are not very interested in the alternative
experiences where small farmer agriculture is proven to work well, and
research into the alternative methods with which the MST, or other
farmer/landless organisations is producing to reduce dependency on
pesticides, special seeds and fertiliser is virtually absent. 

To end, I would like to draw attention to a statement of a seminar held in
Brussels on the EU Guidelines (see below).  It sums up much of the above. 

Best wishes,

Lies Craeynest
Programme officer
War on Want

____________________________________________________________________________
________________________

Land: Merchandise or Human Right? Promoting rights-based land reform through
European land policies for development co-operation
Brussels 13-14 April 2004

Final Statement

We welcome the initiative of the European Union in embarking on a process of
drafting common land policy guidelines for development cooperation. The
development of a distinctive "European approach" to land reform issues
offers good chances to contribute to the realisation of the human rights of
rural populations and to guarantee the food sovereignty of all peoples. 

Across the world today, land is being transformed from being the base of
communities' life into a commodity. Governments and transnational
corporations continue to put policies into practice which make the elites
ever richer and condemn the majority of the rural population to lives of
poverty and social exclusion. The policies of market-led land reform
promoted by the World Bank and associated bilateral and multilateral
agencies have been instrumental in privatising and concentrating land in few
hands  at an accelerated pace. Of the 842 million people who are hungry in
the world today, three quarters live in rural areas. These market-led land
reform policies are part of wider neoliberal economic policies that have to
a large extent been responsible for the disenfranchisement and landlessness
of millions of people. In Brazil 950,000 small farms have disappeared over
the past 15 years. In Colombia three million people have been forcibly
displaced since 1985, while a very small minority of the populat official
land owners, 0.4%, now owns 61% of the land compared to 35% of the land ten
years ago. 

The implementation of neoliberal policies has fuelled land conflicts and
violence in many rural areas throughout the world. Peasants, indigenous
people and rural women are often facing political persecution, harassment,
death threats and killings because of their struggle for land and for a
small holder based agriculture that guarantees economic and social rights of
the rural population. While we were  holding our seminar in Brussels, for
instance, 62 members of the peaceful Landless Peoples Movement of South
Africa were arrested on April 14, election day, for criticising land and
rural development policies of the government, while they had in no way
interfered with the electoral process or violated any law. 

It is equally violent when thousands of small family farms disappear and
entire families are forced to migrate to the slums of the cities. Especially
dramatic are the massive suicide cases of indebted small farmers in India.
In the federal state of Karnataka alone, last year more than 10,000
desperate peasants saw no other alternative but to commit suicide.

The alarming effects of neoliberal policies are present not only in Southern
countries, but also in North America and Europe. Policies like the Farm Bill
and the European Common Agricultural Policy are responsible  in these parts
of the world for forcing millions of small farmers out of agriculture and
for concentrating  food production and land ownership  in few hands with
disastrous results like several animal diseases outbreaks and food scandals
illustrate. 

Given this situation the drafting process of European land policy guidelines
for development cooperation are an excellent opportunity to contribute to
the implementation of one key step for the eradication of poverty and hunger
and for the realisation of international  commitments like the World Food
Summit and the  Millennium Development Goals. 

However, the draft land policy guidelines are flawed, in both substance and
process. The draft largely ignores the interaction between land policies,
trade rules, socio-economic policies, investment and macroeconomic policies.
It is not possible for the EU to maintain its positions on international
trade and investment, and allow corporations to commit human rights abuses,
while still claiming to act in defence of peasants' collective rights. 

The draft ignores the relationship between land and human rights issues.
This relationship is crucial in setting standards, in determining the role
of different actors and the necessity and priority of certain reforms and
policies. These rights bind not only the governments of the South, but the
EU as well. 

The EU land policy guidelines need to clearly and unequivocally adopt
pro-poor standards, and exclude any land policy that will result into or
even encourage elite-to-elite transfers, or worse, poor-to-elite transfers
of resources under the guise of land reform. Furthermore, the support of
land reform goes beyond the physical infrastructure projects. The EU should
implement land and agricultural policies that strengthen small farmers'
economies and safeguard peasants', indigenous' and communities' land from
being commodified and taken over by landlords and  agribusiness interests.
Without unconditional legal assistance and services, and funding for
political mobilizing, the social capital-building vital for successful land
reform is impossible.

The drafting process has been technocratic and opaque, marginalising
peasants, indigenous people, women and other constituencies. In the
document, peasants are mentioned only three times, yet they are the policy's
key actors. Moreover, no single peasant or landless organisation
participated in the electronic consultation on the draft guidelines held in
March 2004.

We demand that the EU process be opened up to landless movements, peasants,
rural women, indigenous peoples, minorities and NGO's who support the rights
of peasant families. The land policy guidelines should not be approved
without having taken the views of these key actors into account. Therefore a
prolonged period of consultation, with transparent and clear rules of
procedure, and a commitment of resources sufficient to ensure adequate
coverage, are necessary. The terms of consultation should be drawn up
democratically, the consultation should enable discussion at regional and
international level and include actual meetings between the EU task force on
land and the stakeholders.

We urge the executive, legislative and judiciary powers of the EU to comply
with their human rights obligations related to land and to an adequate
standard of living of rural populations. We call on the EU to support a land
policy that  contributes to free the rural population of violence and
repression. The rights to produce and to live in dignity and the rights to
food sovereignty of all peoples should be guaranteed. This is the only way
the European Union can live up to its commitment of a development policy
that eradicates the structural causes of poverty.


European Farmers Coordination
La Vía Campesina
11.11.11
War on Want
FIAN International











=============================================================
To send a reply to this message that goes to all list members,
make sure that you send your reply to <address removed>

To unsubscribe from this list, send an email to "<address removed>", with the 
message body:

unsubscribe growth-and-poverty <your-email-address>