Media Advisory: Right to Farm! Right to Feed! Right to Eat!

La Via Campesina International Conference on Pesant Rights Jakarta, Indonesia –

June 19-25, 2008

The international farmers' movement La Via Campesina and the Indonesian Peasant's Union (SPI) are inviting the media to cover the International Conference on Peasant's Rights that will be held in Jakarta from June 19 to 25, 2008. (YTKI building, Gatot Subroto n°44, Jakarta Selatan)
More than 50 farmers leaders, men and women from around the world will join hundreds of Indonesian farmers to debate and promote the right of small producers to farm, to eat and to feed their communities.
People living in rural areas still comprise almost half of the world’s population, and most of the world’s poor are rural poor. Many of them are being increasingly and violently expelled from their lands and alienated from their sources of livelihood. Mega development projects and a mix of national policies and international framework conditions are responsible for practically driving peasant and indigenous communities to extinction.  
This conference is organised by the actors themselves, small farmers organisations from Asia, Africa, Europe, North America and Latin America, at a time when the crisis of food and agriculture is at the top of the global agdenda.  
It will be an opportunity for the media to talk to those who usually have no voice in the debate and to hear the voice of the millions of small scale food producers who struggle to live in dignity and defend their rights (1).   

PRESS CONFERENCE
21 June 2008 – YTKI building, Gatot Subroto n°44, Jakarta Selatan
9:00 am: Opening ceremony

11:30 am: Press conference “Defend pesant's rights to solve the food crisis”.

Full programme and back ground documents on
www.viacampesina.org
http://www.spi.or.id

Information for the media

Cecep Risandar (bahasa indonesia):         +62 8129452478 (cecep@spi.or.id)
Isabelle Delforge (English, Spanish, French)    + 62 81513224565 (idelforge@viacampesina.org)

(1)Farmers leaders will come from the following countries: Senegal, Mozambique, South Africa, Egypt, Turkey, Spain, Norway, Italy, Switzerland, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, Nepal, India, Korea, Malaysia, Timor Leste, Thailand, Philippines (and more to be confirmed).