La Via Campesina : International Peasant Movement

Jihye Lee's address to the Vth Conference

Friday, 21 November 2008

The daughter of the Korean farmer sacrificed in Cancun

Good evening, I am Jihye Lee

Let me begin with my gratitude for giving me this honorable opportunity to speak to you.

It’s a great honor for me to speak to a lot of peasant movement’s leaders. I’m grateful to you for inviting me with a humble heart because I’m still young an inexperienced compared to you. So I’m a little bit nervous and shy to think that I’m in front of you, who deserve to be respected.

Wednesday, 19 November 2008

Press release: European Coordination Via Campesina

We, milk producers, men and women, of the European Union can no longer support the situation we are facing because of the totally wrong decisions in favour of the dairy industry and supermarkets.

The result of the decreases of the average milk price paid to the farmers in the EU is that in many countries many farms are already selling milk at prices below the real production costs. A gradual increase of the quotas, unnecessary to cover the EU demand, only pushes these prices more downwards. This situation is not sustainable and it will only lead more sustainable milk family farms to disappear.

Thursday, 13 November 2008

October 17, 2008
La Paz, Bolivia

Sisters and Brothers
International Conference of the Via Campesina
Maputo, Mozambique

Sisters and brothers: The innumerable activities that I now have as President of Bolivia prevent me from being with you, as is my constant desire. Whenever I am informed about your activities, meetings, workshops and conferences I am filled with nostalgia because as a founder of Via Campesina I would like to be with you debating the problems that we have as a sector.

Thursday, 13 November 2008

After the ceremony comemorating the Korean farmer Lee Kyung Hae, who in defiance and despair killed himself at the manifestations, which helped to derail the WTO negotiations in Cancun, we have dinner. I am sitting next to an American farmer discussing cattle and milk production with an Indian farmer.

The conversation unfolds as a question and answer game, where maximum surprise is the premium. “How many heads of cattle do you have” (Indian famer 5, US farmer 38, “but”, he adds, “in the US we have industrial farms of 10.000 heads), or “what percentage of the retail price do you get”, or “what fat percentage does your milk have?”

Wednesday, 12 November 2008
We, peasants of the world demand our own convention! The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) turns 60 on the 10th of December 2008. As the declaration represents the worldwide expression of the rights which all human beings are inherently entitled to, it is important for the peasants to also commemorate this occasion. Peassants represent almost half of the population on earth and we are the basis of the world's food system. We are working hard to fill people's plates every day—but we face the hard reality of the food, energy, climate and financial crises. Thoses crises also create massive and systematic violations of the rights of the peasants.
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Global Campaign on the International Convention on the Rights of the Peasants

Saturday, 01 November 2008

Introduction

The struggle of upholding the rights of the peasants in La Via Campesina began 7 years ago. Since 2001, we have been working on the institutionalization of the rights of the peasants into the international human rights system. This initiative was reiterated in and by the La Via Campesina International Conference on Peasant Rights, 19-25 June 2008. This was a big momentum, as in this conference, member and allies of La Via Campesina, human rights activists and academics developed a global step for the institutionalization of rights. The conference delivered both the declaration of the conference and the text declaration of the Rights of Peasants and its annex which consist of all considerations, and development of and for the institutionalization of the rights.

Sunday, 26 October 2008
Peasant Agriculture and Food Sovereignty are Solutions to the Global Crisis Maputo, Mozambique, October 19-22, 2008 The entire world is in crisis, a crisis with multiple dimensions. There is a food crisis, an energy crisis, a climate crisis and a financial crisis. The solutions put forth by Power – more free trade, more GMOs, etc. – purposefully ignore the fact that the crisis is a product of the capitalist system and of neoliberalism, and they will only worsen its impacts. To find real solutions we need to look toward Food Sovereignty as put forth by La Via Campesina. How did we get to this state of crisis? In recent decades we have witnessed the advance of finance capital and transnational corporations (TNCs) across all aspects of agriculture and the global food system. From the privatization of seeds and the sale of pesticides, to buying the harvests, processing the food, transporting and distributing it, all the way to retail sale to consumers, everything is controlled by a handful of corporations. Food has gone from being a right of all people, to being just another commodity. Our diets are being homogenized, with food that is bad for you, is priced out of the reach of most people, and makes us lose the culinary traditions of our peoples.
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