[E-rundbrief] Info 1423 - Via Campesina on Migration and Rural Workers - WSF Tunis 2015

[Matthias Reichl]

E-Rundbrief - Info 1423 - La Via Campesina Declaration on Migration 
and Rural Workers, at World Social Forum Tunis 2015, March 25, 2015,
Published on Thursday, 02 April 2015 15:28

Bad Ischl, 4.4.2015

Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit

www.begegnungszentrum.at

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Declaration on Migration and Rural Workers

La Via Campesina

at World Social Forum Tunis 2015

March 25, 2015

Published on Thursday, 02 April 2015 15:28

http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php/main-issues-mainmenu-27/migrations-and-rural-workers-mainmenu-41/1774-la-via-campesina-declaration-on-migration-and-rural-workers

The migration of peoples across arbitrary barriers is an integral part 
of human history. Rooted in the search for better living conditions, 
this movement of peoples from one place to another was later 
transformed into a social, economic, and political process that has 
largely served to benefit ruling elites – the slave traders of the 
past and the multinationals of the present. Today, as capital demands 
exceptional freedoms for itself – combined with greater restrictions 
on the poor – wars, social exclusion, economic injustice, and the 
global climate crisis are forcing millions of human beings to seek 
refuge across internationally imposed boundaries.

As financial capital and agribusiness concentrates its power and 
holdings – diminishing opportunities for diversified and sustainable 
smallholder farming – precarious livelihoods continue to aggressively 
push a growing number of rural people off their farms and into the city.

Neoliberal policies, free trade agreements, the development of 
industrial agriculture, the concentration of production areas… all 
have destructive effects on the environment, biodiversity, the climate 
and local, especially peasant, economies. These aggressive policies 
that impose a development model based on the exploitation of 
resources, the grabbing of the commons, the stealing of agricultural 
lands and the exploitation of peasants as well as that of women and 
men who work the land, have a particularly harsh effect on peasant 
communities. Ruined people have no other option to leave family, land 
and community to seek the means of survival some place else, in the 
big cities or in any countries.

Once urbanized, our people are unlikely to find opportunities in our 
countries and soon become the migrants of today, the cheap labor of 
the corporate interests. In the most telling of cases, peasant farmers 
leave family farming only to become the low-paid agricultural workers 
of corporate giants Monsanto, Cargill, and DuPont. This occurs both 
internally – within Mexico or Palestine for example – as well as 
externally, as we cross borders to work for those who forced us off 
our lands.

We of La Via Campesina, the world's largest social movement with 
millions of peasants, women, youth, indigenous peoples, 
afro-descendants, fisherfolk and – very often due to involuntary 
displacement – migrants and rural workers, denounce the fact that we, 
the poor majorities, are those who suffer most as climate change 
provokes extreme climatic events across our territories. The term 
“climate refugee” is now being used to describe those of us forced 
from our lands by the global climate crisis, by an industrialized food 
and social system that blames its victims and pardons its culprits.

To advance the struggle for Food Sovereignty and help bring an end to 
the corporate control of the global food system, we declare that it is 
necessary to:

     End all violence and repression against migrants perpetrated in 
the context of the so-called “War on Terror”. Remove the issue of 
migration from the rhetoric around “threats” to national (or domestic) 
security since these are different questions altogether;

     Stop the separation of undocumented migrant families, which has 
provoked a crisis in childhood migration. Halt the confinement of 
migrant children in detention centers, in unhealthy and inhumane 
conditions that violate their most elementary rights. End the 
deportation of all unprotected children;

     Protect all refugees through international institutions (such as 
the UN) and NGOs of recognized moral authority (such as Amnesty 
International), safeguarding their rights as refugees and providing 
protection for all those living in refugee camps;

     Halt and revoke all policies that criminalize migrants, policies 
that increase persecution, detentions, expulsions, and physical 
attacks. States should be obliged to respect international agreements 
and, if they have yet to do so, adhere to the International Convention 
on the Protection of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their 
Families. Modify all local and national legislation so as to comply 
with said agreements;

     Legalize “clandestine” migration so as to combat criminalization;

     Allow (or guarantee) to migrants access to the labor market under 
conditions equivalent to workers 'national'.

     Oppose all temporary worker programs, which serve only to divide 
the working class and weaken our organizations and struggles. With 
respect to temporary agricultural workers (braceros, guest workers, 
contratados de origen, etc.), these agreements serve only to benefit 
industrial agricultural by providing it with cheap and docile farm labor;

     Organize all migrants, strengthening our rights to bargain 
collectively and to strike. Practice solidarity on an ongoing, 
permanent basis, firmly adopting the principle that “an injury to one 
is an injury to all”;

     Dismantle all free trade agreements, especially those with the 
greatest impacts on collective resources, rural communities, and 
indigenous peoples. Implement Food Sovereignty, in direct contrast and 
in dispute with the corporate-controlled food system;

     Challenge the capitalist model of economic growth and so-called 
“green” development, which does not address the causes of the climate 
crisis, a crisis that is exacerbating the migration crisis. The 
results of the climate crisis – extensive droughts, floods, 
avalanches, earthquakes, tidal waves, etc., which are ever more 
frequent, are now responsible for 25% of all involuntary migration 
worldwide, now estimated at 210 million people [according to the 
International Organization for Migration (www.iom.int)];

     Recognize the corporate causes of the global climate crisis and 
force transnational corporations and their governments in the 
industrialized nations to accept their responsibility in the surge of 
climate refugees. At the national level, incorporate the victims of 
environmental displacement into social development strategies that 
help to organize and empower these peoples;

     Develop action plans with specific timeframes into national 
policies of research and development, giving priority to sustainable 
peasant agriculture as a viable option to combat the climate crisis 
and reduce the impacts of environmental displacement;

     Bring Down All Walls: Mexico-USA, Melilla, Ceuta, Palestine (West 
Bank), Western Sahara, etc., because they not only represent a 
barbaric aggression against humanity, separating peoples, but also 
represent an affront to nature. While existing geographic borders 
already contribute to ecological disasters, new dividing walls only 
worsen the situation;

     End all wars of territorial occupation, the extraction of wealth 
and the enslavement of indigenous peoples.

We are here in the World Social Forum 2015 in Tunis to let everybody 
know, that this is our commitment and that we are ready to unite with 
all the social and popular movements to build an international 
alliance of peasants, migrant workers, indigenous peoples and social 
fighters for a more humane, dignify and better world.

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Matthias Reichl, Pressesprecher/ press speaker,
Begegnungszentrum fuer aktive Gewaltlosigkeit
Center for Encounter and active Non-Violence
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