Presentation of the Report

The Bolivian Ambassador Nardi Suxo Iturre presented her report on the third session of the Intergovernmental Working Group on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas to the thirty-third session of the Human Rights council in September 2016.

A delegation from La Via Campesina, backed by the CETIM, took advantage of this event to come to Geneva and reaffirm its firm support for the process. In the course of the presentation of the report, the African peasant leader Ndiakhate Fall addressed the Council’s plenary in the name of the CETIM. N. Fall emphasized that the African peasant organizations wish that the essential content of the draft be maintained (notably the recognition of the right to land, to water, to seeds, to biodiversity, to adequate income, to food sovereignty) and that some of its articles should be reinforced, in particular the right to participate in decision-making and the right to information, cultural rights and traditional knowledge as well as the article on the right to land. This article must, imperatively, include agrarian reform, the prohibition of latifundia (vast holdings), the recognition of the social function of land and states’ extraterritorial obligations.

Also within the context of the thirty-third Human Rights Council session, the president of Bolivia, Evo Morales Aymu, one of the founders of La Vía Compesina, came to Geneva to address the Council, insisting on the importance of adopting an instrument that will protect the rights of peasants. On this occasion, the four representatives of La Vía Compesina had the opportunity of meeting with the Bolivian president to discuss the future of this historic process.