By Antoine Lenique

This is the second blog post in a series unpacking the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other Peoples Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP). You can read the first blog post here. 

To facilitate the implementation of the UNDROP, the Human Rights Council established a dedicated Working Group (WG) on 11 October 2023. This WG, which consists of five independent experts of balanced geographical representation, works collectively as a group. Members are elected by the Human Rights Council for a period of 3 years, which can be renewed once for an additional 3 years.

The role of the WG is to identify and promote best practices and lessons learnt from conversations with peasants and civil society organisations as well as fostering collaboration and technical capacity-building to achieve UNDROP implementation goals.

This is the reason why La Via Campesina, as a key player in the launching and implementation of the UNDROP, organised this regional consultation to provide referencing and mutual support to the WG. 

The UNDRIP case in Australia 

If we go back to 2007 and we take the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), which has similarities with UNDROP as a reference, the Australian government’s position was to vote against it. Several reasons prompted the Howard government to discard its support to the aspirational and non-binding international instrument.

1. Concerns over self-determination: Australia was dissatisfied with references to self-determination in the declaration. The government worried this could be interpreted as allowing for the creation of a separate Indigenous nation within Australia.
2. Issues with land and resource rights: There were concerns about provisions related to lands, territories and resources traditionally owned or used by Indigenous peoples. Australia felt these provisions were overly broad and could potentially conflict with existing land rights arrangements.
3. Potential conflicts with national law: Australia objected to elements that it believed could place customary law above national law.
4. Concerns over veto powers: The declaration included provisions requiring states to obtain free, prior and informed consent from Indigenous peoples for projects affecting their lands or resources. Australia interpreted this as potentially giving Indigenous peoples a right of veto over national legislation and resource management.
5. Territorial integrity worries: Although the declaration actually protects the territorial integrity of states, Australia initially misinterpreted some provisions as potentially threatening its sovereignty.

And yet, 2 years later the Rudd government changed Australia’s position and announced its support for UNDRIP. The declaration has not been fully implemented, as AFSA has raised multiple times, but the Joint Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs published a report in 2023 with recommendations to start implementing UNDRIP in Australia.

While UNDRIP and UNDROP complement each other and there are differences in the scope and specificity of rights granted in each declaration, similarities between both instruments are salient. They are both non-binding in nature, have similar provisions, and recognize collective rights. Both declarations have a strong emphasis on the importance of land and natural resources and address issues of discrimination. They both have potential for legal development, expose best practices, establish a moral imperative for states, and can generate social pressure to encourage compliance.

Lessons from abroad

One of the lessons learned from UNDRIP and UNDROP’s implementation in other countries is that a significant way to implement farmers’ rights is through legal frameworks at the national level. While legal frameworks are not the sole means of supporting farmers, the rights enshrined within them serve as valuable instruments that can be invoked in cases of violation. 

For instance, Article 9 of The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) states that the responsibility for realising Farmers’ Rights rests with national governments. Contracting Parties should take measures to protect and promote Farmers’ Rights, subject to national legislation. The Options document developed by the Ad Hoc Technical Expert Group on Farmers’ Rights includes several options related to legal measures, such as: 

• Realising Farmers’ Rights within national legislation, administrative and policy frameworks
• Reviewing and adjusting intellectual property laws, seed laws, and access and benefit-sharing laws

Switzerland

The case of Switzerland’s advocacy for UNDROP ratification and implementation provides valuable insight. After an initial negative approach towards the Declaration by the Swiss delegation to the Human Rights Council, Uniterre (the Swiss peasant union and member of LVC) published a press release indicating that Switzerland did not implement all human rights and that it was host to one of the biggest seed companies in the world, Syngenta, which blocks peasants’ access to seeds. From that point onwards, Uniterre and its allied organisations strategically used Switzerland’s decentralised federal structure to mobilise cantonal members of parliament, bridging the left-right political divide, agitating with open letters to the President and members of parliament, until Switzerland ended up not only supporting the Declaration but also co-sponsoring the resolutions on renewal of the Working Groups from 2014 onwards and finally voting for the declaration in 2018. After the adoption of UNDROP, Uniterre and allied organisations formed a coalition called “Friends of the Declaration” in 2019 in order to promote UNDROP’s implementation.

Canada

The case of Canada might be even more closely related to the Australian situation, since Canada has not ratified the Declaration. At a State level in the summer of 2020 and thanks to the work of Canadian Lawyers for International Human Rights, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice released a decision based on Article 23 of the UNDROP to defend the right of migrant farm workers to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health. These workers were facing dangerous living conditions given the pandemic context. This decision is relevant since despite Canada’s abstention when UNDROP was adopted in 2018, judges cited UNDROP in this case, introducing it in Canadian case law. 

Americas

At a regional level, in February 2020, the Inter-american Court of Human Rights (IACHR) handed down a ruling recognising the right to land of both Indigenous Peoples and peasants, in accordance with UNDRIP and UNDROP. The case dealt with the restitution of lands that had been occupied by creoles, including peasant families, to Indigenous Peoples. In its ruling, the Court recognized the importance to respect the right to land of Indigenous Peoples but also the need to find a solution that would take into account the vulnerable situation of the soon to be displaced peasants (according to their rights under UNDROP). The case is a “first example of successful articulation between the two UN Declarations”.

AFSA is actively working to support UNDROP’s ratification in Australia, join us now to make it happen!

AFSA will have to be strategic and work closely with allied organisations in order to leverage existing mechanisms such as parliamentary processes (amending parliamentary human rights scrutiny processes to include consideration of UNDROP) and engage with relevant committees and human rights organisations, like human rights lawyers or the Joint Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs which has been involved in UNDRIP discussion. AFSA is unable to do this alone and will have to align with existing initiatives by connecting with Indigenous-led movements and drawing parallels between UNDROP and indigenous-led initiatives like the Uluru Statement from the Heart. By joining forces with ally organisations and highlighting complementary goals, AFSA can demonstrate how UNDROP aligns with and supports existing efforts towards self-determination and rights protection. 

By learning from the UNDRIP process and highlighting the shift in stance, we have identified Australia’s initial hesitation so that we can address similar concerns which might be necessary for UNDROP advocacy efforts. These efforts need to also emphasise domestic adaptation by calling for a National Action Plan for UNDROP implementation and pushing for comprehensive adoption to avoid a “piecemeal manner”.

Building public awareness on the importance of human rights and international declarations and mobilising civil society to encourage engagement with the rights outlined in UNDROP are other crucial steps towards ratification. Emphasising that Australia is party to seven international human rights treaties, AFSA can stress global commitments and showcase international examples as a foundation for supporting UNDROP. As Jessie MacInnis from the National Farmers Union of Canada puts it, “the more articles and the Declaration itself are referenced in case law, the more we have the capacity to create a foundation for rights-based agriculture policy”.

In October, AFSA’s Focal Point for Farmers, Tammi Jonas and AFSA’s General Coordinator Jessie Power, began systematically incorporating UNDROP’s articles into a series of diary entries documenting the recent Agroecology Roadshow events. With this approach, AFSA contextualises the grassroots experiences and observations within the framework of international human rights standards specifically tailored to rural communities and agricultural workers. 

AFSA is effectively creating a bridge between localised agroecological practices and global policy frameworks. Importantly, this approach situates the Agroecology Roadshow within the broader discourse on food sovereignty and the rights of rural populations. Furthermore, it demonstrates the practical application of international declarations in grassroots agricultural movements, potentially providing valuable insights for both policy-makers and practitioners in the field of agroecology.

Australia has much to win by signing the Declaration but AFSA’s resources are limited and our movement needs support in the form of lobbying and advocacy training. It is also known that policy coordination mechanisms in Australia are patchy across the food system and UNDROP could provide a more holistic and coherent policy approach to food systems transformation. 

“There are no peasants without land as land is part of a peasant’s culture”, would Zainal say, Chair of the DPP-SPI Department of Foreign Affairs and LVC Regional Coordinator of East Asia and Southeast Asia. With the right policies, land and rights, peasant-led agroecology-oriented strategies could double or even triple rural employment, substantially reduce the pressure for urban migration, significantly improve nutritional quality and availability and eliminate hunger while slashing agriculture’s GHG emissions.