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Date: Thu, 23 May 2002 13:35:47 -0700
From: charlotte utting <[log in to unmask]>
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Subject: [WASAN] FW: Africa: Farmers' Rights
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From: "Africa Action" <[log in to unmask]>
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Date: Thu, 23 May 2002 09:58:39 -0500
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Subject: Africa: Farmers' Rights
Africa: Farmers' Rights
Date distributed (ymd): 020523
Document reposted by Africa Action
Africa Policy Electronic Distribution List: an information
service provided by AFRICA ACTION (incorporating the Africa
Policy Information Center, The Africa Fund, and the American
Committee on Africa). Find more information for action for
Africa at http://www.africaaction.org
+++++++++++++++++++++Document Profile+++++++++++++++++++++
Region: Continent-Wide
Issue Areas: +political/rights+ +economy/development+
+security/peace+ +US policy focus+
SUMMARY CONTENTS:
This posting contains an article from the Africa Faith & Justice
Network (AFJN) about community and farmer rights, as well as the
declaration of the March 2002 meeting in South Africa on this
issue. AFJN and colleague organizations in the Africa
Trade Policy Working Group are actively promoting legislation to
support the rights spelled out in the Valley of 1000 Hills
Declaration (below). There is a sign-on letter, and much additional
background information, on the AFJN web site: http://afjn.cua.edu
+++++++++++++++++end profile++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
April 2002
From Larry J. Goodwin, Africa Faith & Justice Network
This is an article I've written for AFJN's April newsletter. It
serves as an overview of the recent meeting I attended in South
Africa of over 40 participants representing more than 30 NGOs from
12 African countries. The meeting was held to discuss community
and farmer rights and draw up advocacy plans for national
legislatures and regional policy-making bodies. Participants also
discussed ways to influence the upcoming Earth Summit in
Johannesburg.
I hope it will give you a flavor of what took place at this very
important gathering of African NGOs and grassroots groups, and
what they have to say about sustainable agriculture, food security
and sovereignty, and community rights to agricultural resources in
the face of present trade rules and practices.
- - - - - - - -
AFRICAN NGO'S MOBILIZE FOR COMMUNITY & FARMER RIGHTS
By Larry J. Goodwin
On 01-08 March 2002, I was privileged to represent AFJN and the
Africa Trade Policy Working Group* (ATPWG) at a meeting on
community and farmer rights, which was held at the Valley Trust,
1,000 Hills, Kwa Zulu Natal, South Africa. Forty-three participants
took part, representing 31 NGO and professional groups from 12
African countries, and Asia, Latin America, North America and
Europe. We met to support the rights of African local communities
and farmers to sustainable agriculture, food security and
sovereignty, bio-diversity, indigenous knowledge and technologies.
Background:
As Around Africa readers know, AFJN has helped lead a 2-year
effort to persuade the US Government (USG) to back the rights of
African farmers to freely access, use, save, exchange and sell
their seeds, plants and food crops. Global trade policies that
mandate the patenting of these agricultural resources threaten
African farmers' food security and livelihoods. Multinational
pesticide and agribusiness companies, many from the US, have
already laid claim to seeds and plants that Africans developed and
have used for generations. By asserting exclusive rights over
these agricultural resources - often termed "biopiracy" - the
companies are in a position to deny local farmers access to them,
or to exact fees for their use.
In another twist to the issue, international trade rules favor
multinational companies introducing genetically altered seeds and
plants (Genetically Modified Organisms, or GMOs) into developing
countries. This raises serious concerns for Africa about GMOs'
effects on biodiversity (contamination/replacement of local
species), development (cost to farmers of using these untested
technologies and their chemical inputs) and land ownership (GMOs
induce large-scale industrial agriculture, which spurs land
consolidation to the detriment of small holder farmers). The USG
aggressively backs the patenting of living organisms (including
seeds, plants and crops) and the dissemination of GMOs, where US
companies hold the international research and marketing edge. The
USG is the chief opponent of Africa's attempts to overturn WTO
provisions requiring the patenting of life forms.
Africa's response: One of Africa's most innovative responses to the
threats its sustainable agriculture faces is the formulation of
African Model Legislation for the Protection of the Rights of
Local Communities, Farmers and Breeders, and for the Regulation of
Access to Biological Resources, or simply African Model Law. This
instrument, initiated by the African Union (formerly Organization
of African Unity), seeks to introduce the principle of community
rights over agricultural resources into international law in
contrast to the present sole recognition of individual/corporate
rights. The African Union has reaffirmed its commitment to the
African Model Law at two high-level meetings, and it is urging
individual African countries to incorporate it into national law.
[See text at:
http://afjn.cua.edu/African%20Model%20Legislation%20Text.htm]
AFJN and its colleagues in the Africa Trade Policy Working Group,
backing this critically important African initiative, have launched
a series of efforts to bring African farmers' rights to the USG's
attention. In 2000, we organized an on-going international sign-on
campaign for the Declaration of Support for African Smallholder
Farmers that now has nearly 400 endorsers [see http://afjn.cua.edu
for the text and list of endorsers]. In November 2001, we worked
closely with Rep. Maxine Waters (D- CA39) to introduce a resolution
(H. Con. Res. 260) into the House of Representatives upholding the
principles of the African Model Law [see Action Alert on web
site]. We are currently trying to get a companion resolution
introduced into the Senate, and we have initiated an
organizational sign-on letter to Congress urging passage of the
resolution.
The South Africa meeting: In view of the key role the USG is
playing in this issue and AFJN/ATPWG efforts to generate support
for the African Model Law, African partners invited me to attend
the South Africa meeting. I came away greatly impressed by the
caliber of the participants, mostly from African grassroots
organizations highly committed to community rights, sustainable
agriculture and the protection of indigenous knowledge, especially
related to food and medicinal plants.
There was keen awareness of the role local agriculture plays in
African culture, family life and livelihood systems. Food security
and sovereignty figured prominently in our concerns, as did the
importance of enhancing the viability of sustainable agriculture.
We agreed strongly on the threat GMOs, patenting and the resultant
corporate control of agriculture pose to community and farmer
rights; we affirmed the need to expand the capacity of farmers to
employ sustainable agricultural techniques and to participate in
local, national and regional policy decisions.
Each country group devised strategies for on-going action. The
African NGOs committed themselves to intensified collaboration
with partner groups to lobby their legislatures and regional bodies
in support of community and farmer rights. They laid plans to
liaise with farmer and community organizations to create awareness
of how GMOs and patenting living organisms could undermine
sustainable agriculture, community rights, food security and
biodiversity.
Participants placed considerable emphasis on the UN's Aug/Sep 2002
Earth Summit (World Summit on Sustainable Development, or WSSD) -
the follow-up to the 1992 Rio Summit - that will devise and
promote international environmental and development policies. We
agreed to contact our delegates to the summit, urging inclusion of
the principles of the African Model Law in the final declaration.
There is great concern that proponents of market-style
globalization, who oppose community rights over agriculture, are
steering the summit away from initiatives such as the African
Model Law.
NGOs from many developing countries are organizing an alternative
"People's Summit" to coincide with the WSSD as a way to make their
positions known to the delegates and media on critical issues like
community rights, sustainable agriculture and food security.
A major outcome of the meeting was the Valley of 1,000 Hills
Declaration. This statement sums up the principal concerns and
commitments that came out of our discussions. We agreed to
circulate the declaration widely, using it as an educational and
lobbying tool to advance African community and farmer rights.
We face monumental challenges from USG and WTO policies,
multinational corporations and even UN bodies in mobilizing
support for including community and farmer rights in international
law and agreements. The stakes are high, and the only real hope
for successfully resisting the economic and political forces
seeking to privatize and control the seeds, plants and crops on
which food security rests is the combined efforts of citizens and
grassroots groups committed to community rights and sustainable
agriculture. That is the urgent message I brought home from the
Valley of 1,000 Hills.
* ATPWG is part of the Advocacy Network for Africa (ADNA), a
coalition of nearly 200 US-based NGOs that seek a greater focus on
human rights and economic justice in US policy toward Africa.
Larry J. Goodwin is Associate Director for Organizing at AFJN
************************************************************
THE VALLEY OF 1000 HILLS DECLARATION
We the participants of the Conference on Community Rights held at
The Valley Trust, 1000 Hills, Kwa Zulu Natal, South Africa,
between 1 - 8 March 2002, who came from Africa, Asia, Latin
America, North America and Europe, discussed the rights of local
communities, and make the following declaration:
1. Human beings are an integral part of the community of life on
Earth. Human well-being is derived from and depends on the health
of this community. Accordingly, we must ensure that human actions
do not destroy the web of mutually enhancing relationships that
create the earth community.
2. The human species is social and the individual cannot live a
solitary existence. We, therefore, believe that the local community
is essential for the survival of the human species, and local
communities create and use knowledge in partnership with other
life forms to meet society's basic needs of food, health, clothing
and shelter.
3. The Industrial system has alienated us from the rest of the
earth community and is increasingly privatizing biological, land
and water resources. This privatization is destroying rural local
communities and their natural resource base.
4. Many local communities have maintained an intimate relationship
with the ecosystems on which they depend and have shared timeless
connectedness with all life. It is, therefore, fitting that the
local community is humanity's best manager of land, water and
biodiversity. Privatisation and so-called free trade destroy this
connectedness. By allowing the destruction of our local
communities, we condemn other living organisms to accelerating
extinction and further impoverish local communities.
5. The most potent instrument in this destruction is the patenting
of living organisms. The Convention on Biological Diversity
recognizes the rights of local communities and their role in
generating agricultural bioodiversity out of wildland
biodiversity. Yet corporations are patenting living things and
increasingly controlling agricultural production systems. We
condemn this act as violence both to humans and to other living
things.
6. The rights of Local Communities are being threatened by genetic
engineering of crops - a dangerous technology that comes with
corporate control, dependence on external inputs, and the
undermining of regenerative systems of agriculture and sustainable
use of biodiversity. We oppose the introduction of genetically
modified organisms in agriculture and the increasing corporate
control over Africa's agriculture and biodiversity.
7. The world adopted the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety and the
precautionary principle. Because of genetic engineering's negative
effects we are concerned about the pollution of food and
agriculture through genetic engineering and the way the
biotechnology industry inevitably pursues its interests at the
expense of the public good. This has led to the disastrous
adventurism in Mexico, where the immensely valuable diversity of
maize, developed by local communities over thousands of years, has
been polluted with unintended genes from genetically engineered
maize, some of which have not even been approved for human
consumption. The food-base of the world's communities must be
protected from such adventurism. We call upon all governments to
provide this protection.
8. Local communities have the inalienable right and responsibility
to nurture, manage, exchange and further improve the biodiversity
on which their livelihoods are based - for the benefit of
themselves, ecosystems and of future generations. This is the
basis of community rights, which cannot be made subservient to any
other right or responsibility, and includes the right to life,
food, land, water, healthy environment and a decent livelihood.
9. Community rights over biodiversity and indigenous knowledge are
collective in nature, and therefore cannot be privatised or
individualised. Current systems of intellectual property rights
applied to biodiversity and traditional knowledge are private and
monopolistic in nature and therefore incompatible with community
rights.
10. In that context, the initiative of the World Intellectual
Property Organisation (WIPO) to develop systems for the protection
of traditional knowledge is highly inappropriate. WIPO should work
to stop biopiracy that occurs because of biodiversity patents, and
not to define the rights of communities which should be done by
the communities themselves.
11. Access to water is a natural and fundamental right. It is not
to be treated as a commodity traded for profit. People should have
the right to freedom from thirst and should have adequate access
to safe water for their needs.
12. We call on the global community to urge governments to
acknowledge the community rights to land, water and biodiversity,
protect them globally and initiate internationally legally binding
frameworks for such protection.
13. Communities over millennia evolved equitable and sustainable
ways of gathering, producing and sharing food based on cooperation
and partnership, to meet their food needs. The present thrust
towards corporatization of food production and distribution
systems threatens the co-operative nature of communities,
jeopardizes their ability to meet their food needs through
culturally appropriate and equitable ways and thus destroys their
sovereign right to food security.
14. The African Model Law for the Protection of the Rights of Local
Communities, Farmers and Breeders, and for the Regulation of
Access to Biological Resources has been endorsed by the OAU Summit
of Heads of State and Government in May 1998 in Ouagadougou and
re-endorsed in July 2001 in Lusaka. It represents the African
position on the protection of local community rights, farmers and
breeders' rights and the regulation of access to biological
resources. We support this position and strongly urge all African
governments to take steps to implement it at the national level.
15. We, therefore, urge the global community to support the
implementation of the African Model Law for the Protection of the
Rights of Local Communities, Farmers and Breeders, and for the
Regulation of Access to Biological Resources and desist from any
activities or policies that directly or indirectly undermine its
adoption and operation by African countries.
Dated this 7th Day of March, 2002.
Names of Participants:
Gichinga Ndirangu (Kenya); Gathuru Mburu (Kenya); Dr Jack Githae
(Kenya); Vugutza Amadi (Kenya); Zachary Makanya (Kenya); Davis
Ddamulira (Uganda); Irene Makumbi (Uganda); Dorothy Ndaba
(Botswana); Michaela Figueira (Namibia); Bernadette Lubozhya
(Zambia); Emma Sitambuli (Zambia); Godfrey Mwila (Zambia); Julius
Mugwagwa (Zimbabwe); Fred Zinanga (Zimbabwe); Fred Kalibwani
(Zimbabwe); Kent Nnadozie (Nigeria); Jeanne Zoundijhekpon (Benin);
Dr Tewolde Berhan Gebre Egziabher (Ethiopia); Sue Burnell Edwards
(Ethiopia); Million Belay (Ethiopia); Dessalegn Mesfin (Ethiopia);
Hailu Araya (Ethiopia); Elfrieda Pschorn-Strauss (South Africa);
Cormac Cullinan (South Africa); Roger Chennels (South Africa);
Belinda Bowling (South Africa); Lulu Gundwana (South Africa);
Elias Mkhwanazi (South Africa); Harald Witt (South Africa);
Richard Haigh (South Africa); Vusie Khosa (South Africa);Mohammed
Haroon (Ghana); Antonieta Coelho (Angola); Henk Hobbelink (Spain);
Liz Hosken (UK); Radha Hola-Bhar (India); Nico Bermudez
(Colombia); Devlin Kuyek (Canada); Larry J. Goodwin (USA); Carol
Friedman (South Africa); Fiona Worthington (Colombia)
************************************************************
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