[E-rundbrief] Info 1424 - Rights to Water and Land - Declaration at WSF 2015
Matthias Reichl
info at begegnungszentrum.at
Sa Apr 4 09:59:11 CEST 2015
E-Rundbrief - Info 1424 - Global Convergence of Land and Water
Struggles: Rights to Water and Land, a Common Struggle - Dakar to
Tunis: Declaration of the Global Convergence of Land and Water
Struggles at World Social Forum Tunis 2015.
Bad Ischl, 4.4.2015
Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit
www.begegnungszentrum.at
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Rights to Water and Land, a Common Struggle
Dakar to Tunis: Declaration of the Global Convergence of Land and
Water Struggles
Tunis, 28 March 2015
Published on Saturday, 04 April 2015 13:27 by La Via Campesina
http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php/main-issues-mainmenu-27/agrarian-reform-mainmenu-36/1775-declaration-of-the-global-convergence-of-land-and-water-struggles
We, social movements, grassroots organizations and civil society
organizations engaged in the defence of the rights to land and water,
gathered in October 2014 in Dakar at the African Social Forum. We are
fighting and protesting against natural resource grabbing, especially
water and land grabbing of our Commons, and against the systematic
violations of the associated human rights. Sharing our ideas led to
acknowledgement of the essential linkage between our struggles, given
the inextricable nature of land and water grabbing. We met again at
the World Social Forum in Tunis in March 2015 to continue this
dialogue with movements and organizations from all over the world in
order to broaden this convergence.
To date, more than 200 million hectares of land have been grabbed
globally by private firms, governments, elites and speculators, often
with the support of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund,
the G8 and other institutions and consortiums. The minority's
appropriation of our Commons leads to concentration, forced evictions
and the oppression of peoples. This is implemented in the name of
environmental protection, the prevention of climate change, the
production of “clean” energy, mega-infrastructure projects and/or
so-called development, often promoted by Public-Private partnerships,
such as the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition in Africa.
Entire areas and territories are thus dispossessed and local
populations evicted, while the loss of identity and ecosystems makes
life impossible! Communities whose rights and dignity have been abused
find themselves with broken up families, or obliged to become
refugees, forced to migrate, lose their rights, and are impoverished
and starving. The access to and management of spaces of community life
are destroyed by military and armed groups that perpetuate war and
occupation, criminal State authorities, supported by economic,
financial and political elites. This undermines local food systems and
many local producers who feed the majority of the world’s population.
When people resist they are criminalized, jailed and killed.
The huge profits of elites are thus built on the systematic violation
of human rights of the majority of peasant farmers, informal
settlement and slum dwellers, fisher folk, pastoralists, indigenous
peoples and communities, nomads, rural and urban workers and
consumers, especially youth and women, who are dispossessed of their
land and livelihoods through violence, intimidation and torture. Land
grabbing always goes hand-in-hand with water grabbing, and takes
different forms: cases of unsustainable water-consuming farming,
through the privatization and management of water utilities (stealing
this vital resource from those who are unable to pay for it),
contamination of aquifers caused by unregulated mining, the change of
river courses and waterways through the construction of dams and the
resulting eviction of communities, the militarization of access to
water points, the dispossession of pastoralists and fisher communities
of their livelihoods through practices such as coastal sand mining.
The criminalization of activists fighting for the protection of the
Commons has become widespread, albeit hidden by the authorities. Land
and water resources are increasingly scarce, and therefore critical to
the security of societies and the sovereignty of States. However, the
scarcity underpinning the water, land and food crises is not a given;
it is a political, geo-strategic and financial construct.
In response to these threats to our lives and wellbeing, we are
fighting back, asserting our rights and providing real solutions. We
believe that peoples’ access to and control of land and water is
essential to peace, to stopping climate change, as well as to
fulfilling fundamental human rights and guaranteeing a dignified life
for all. Equal distribution of land and water, and gender equality are
central to our vision of food sovereignty, based on agroecology (as
outlined in the Declaration of the International Forum for Agroecology
in Nyéléni, in February 2015), local food systems, biodiversity,
control of our seeds, and respect for natural water cycles. This
vision applies to rural, urban and peri-urban populations and includes
respectful producer - consumer relationships of mutual solidarity and
cooperation.
Our solidarity, grounded in our commitment as activists, is built upon
the following principles and convictions that unify our struggles:
1. That the human rights to water, food and land are fundamental, and
crucial for life. All people, men, women, adults, children, rich,
poor, rural and urban dwellers, are entitled to them.
2. That water and land are not only vital natural resources, but are
also part of our common heritage, whose security and governance must
be preserved by each community for the common good of our societies
and the environment, now and for future generations.
3. Water, land and seeds are Commons, and not commodities.
4. We recognize that States are legally and constitutionally mandated
to represent peoples' interests. States are therefore duty-bound to
oppose any policy and international treaty that undermines human
rights and their own sovereignty, such as Investor-State Dispute
Settlement schemes as included in the Transatlantic Trade and
Investment Partnership and the majority of investment treaties.
5. Land water management policies should promote the achievement of
social justice, gender equality, public health and environmental justice.
6. We take a firm stand against foreign occupation and domination in
all forms.
We therefore jointly with civil society organisations from around the
world,
pledge to:
* Raise awareness, educate and organize communities in rural and urban
areas in order to build a strong and united movement struggling for
the recognition and enforcement of our human rights to food, water and
land and territories
* Always defend the right of citizens and communities to free, prior
and informed consent and full participation in the governance of
natural resources in citizens’ legal institutions
* Build synergies between civil society actors across constituencies
struggling against land and water grabbing in order to build national
and regional platforms that support the building of an international
convergence of land and water struggles
* Reclaim our lands, waters and seeds; reclaim the legitimate
political spaces that we as rights-holders have fought for, such as
the Committee on World Food Security and Nutrition; and oppose
co-optation of our language in a way that supports false solutions
such as “climate smart agriculture”
* Express our solidarity with and support for human rights defenders
and those who resist land and water grabbing, especially when they are
criminalized
* Oppose national policies and international treaties promoting the
privatization and commodification of natural resources, as well as
land and water grabbing, including prepaid meters, automatic tariff
adjustments and the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) between the
EU and ACP countries, for both goods and services
* Denounce the World Bank’s “business” climate ranking and
biodiversity offsetting systems, that are drafted solely to support
speculation and foster land and water grabbing, while completely
neglecting human rights and social and environmental standards.
We call on international governmental organizations, States and Local
Authorities to:
* Recognize the indivisibility of human rights and their international
obligations towards their realization, especially for vulnerable and
marginalized groups, women and youth. They must systematically apply
the human rights approach, stop violations and prevent and prosecute
human rights abuses
* Implement adequate policies of agrarian reform, genuine land
restitution, equitable redistribution and sustainable management of
land, water and other natural resources
* Adopt coherent policies including on development that benefit
communities' empowerment rather than economic and geopolitical interests
* Respect, protect and fulfil the human right to water and sanitation
that was recognized and made explicit by the UN General Assembly
resolution 69/2010, and adopt the constitutional and legislative
regulatory frameworks that guarantee everyone the availability and
accessibility of water and sanitation, as well as the effective
justiciability of the human right to water
* Recognize, respect and protect the collective customary rights
regulating the access, security and governance of land and water, our
Commons, by ensuring women’s’ rights * Strictly uphold their
obligations not to recognize illegal situations, including and
especially prohibited acts by occupying powers, and not to cooperate
or transact with any parties that engage in, or benefit from illegal
situations
* Guarantee peoples' free, prior and informed consent and full
participation when decisions are made about the management of land,
water, and other natural resources. And not just hear us, but address
our demands, including our right to say No to land and water grabbing
* Implement the International Labour Organization Convention 169 on
the Rights of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples and the UN Declaration on
the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
* Explicitly endorse the promotion of human rights, including the
human rights to water, food and land, as part of the Sustainable
Development Goals of the UN post-2015 Agenda
* Implement the CFS/FAO Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of
Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests, and the FAO Guidelines for
Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries immediately and with our
full participation as rights holders; and enact national laws that
make their provisions upholding peoples’ rights fully justiciable
* Support and adopt the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and
other People working in rural areas as currently being developed in
the Human Rights Council
* Adopt and implement a Binding Treaty to prevent and prosecute crimes
committed by transnational corporations and other business enterprises
* Adopt the relevant measures and instruments of international law,
especially in the framework of the International Covenant on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) of the United Nations, in order to
effectively strengthen the human right to water and sanitation, and to
clarify and specify its content and States' obligations, and to
prevent any form of water grabbing
We call upon civil society, social movements, grassroots
organizations, workers’ unions and NGOs of the world to engage in this
discussion, to strengthen this declaration and support its claims by
all available means. We need to foster the solidarity of our
struggles, including the struggle for our rights to the essential
resources required for life, we need to make civil society’s voice
heard in the negotiations towards the adoption of the Sustainable
Development Goals of the UN Agenda post-2015, in the application of
international and regional guidelines on land and natural resources,
and the COP 2015 in order to stop climate change.
As we continue to build this convergence, we recognize and appreciate
our diversity, and welcome diverse initiatives that are emerging and
which we will debate and discuss. To do this we commit to
disseminating this declaration widely. We will take it to our
territories and communities in order to involve them further in the
process of shaping this Convergence.
Water and land: same plight same fight!
Tunis, 28 March 2015
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Matthias Reichl, Pressesprecher/ press speaker,
Begegnungszentrum fuer aktive Gewaltlosigkeit
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