17 April 2025: International Day of Peasant Struggles | Call to Action
Land, Water and Territories for Life!
Bagnolet, March 24, 2025: Since the 1996 massacre of Eldorado dos Carajás in Brazil, where 21 peasants were murdered for fighting for agrarian reform—a crime that remains unpunished—we have organized globally every April 17. Forgetting only serves those who continue to oppress us, so we unite to honor this struggle, demand justice, and strengthen our resistance.
Land, water and territories are not mere commodities. They are the foundation of our communities, cultures, and Food Sovereignty. Right to land is essential for rural workers and communities to continue producing healthy food through peasant agroecology and to fully participate in social, economic, and political life. However, this right and struggle continue to be criminalized, and peasant rights, enshrined in the UNDROP, are systematically violated.
Palestine suffers a brutal occupation and annexation of land by the Israeli apartheid regime. In many countries across the Americas, Africa, Europe, Asia, and Oceania, peasants face extreme violence for fighting for a dignified life in their territories. In Pakistan, for example, landless peasants resist land grabbing and evictions driven by corporate projects under the “Green Pakistan” initiative. Similarly, the Chinese ‘One Belt, One Road’ initiative has led to massive infrastructure projects that devastate rural areas, displacing peasant communities and destroying local agricultural systems. Meanwhile, in the Global North, land artificialization—through shopping malls, highways, urbanization and renewable energy projects like photovoltaics—destroys thousands of hectares of agricultural land each year, affecting peasant livelihoods. At the same time, land financialization prevents youth who wish to become peasant farmers from accessing land.
Enough with dispossession, evictions, and the commodification of our territories!
We strongly reject the expulsion of Palestinians from their lands—a clear example of land and resource grabbing, which also takes place worldwide through wars, far-right neoliberal policies, foreign interventions disguised as humanitarian aid, and the illegitimate debt trap, which forces countries into economic subjugation, further destroying peasant livelihoods and national sovereignty. Mega-investments also continue to devastate our territories and ways of life.
We demand: A comprehensive land reform and ambitious public policies to stop land grabbing and ensure fair land redistribution to peasants. However, this struggle is undermined by international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB), which push harmful policies and promote privatization through their imposed conditions, further deepening inequalities in land access.
We call for the creation of a popular, comprehensive agrarian reform focused on Food Sovereignty, which:
- Takes into account the social, economic, and environmental dimensions of land use.
- Tackles the structural causes of inequalities, expulsions, and dispossessions.
- Returns land to the people, as in Palestine and many other regions where communities have been displaced.
- Recognizes the rights of peasant and Indigenous communities over their lands and territories.
- Promotes ambitious public policies for redistributing agricultural land in favor of small-scale food producers, with special attention to youth, women, and diversities communities.
- Puts an end to land and territory grabbing.
Week of solidarity with peasant struggles
From April 17, let’s unite our struggles to defend our rights to land, water, and territories! For our right to organize ourselves and resist! Here are some ways to mobilize.
- Download our communication pack to disseminate our materials, including our poster of April 17. Translate it into your local languages and use them in your actions
- Take to the streets: Organize and participate in marches and protests to defend land, water, and territorial rights. Check out our map of peasant struggles and add your action here
- Solidarity with Palestine: Organize and participate in events, discussions, and webinars on the impact of occupation on food sovereignty.
- Demand public policies: Contact local and national authorities to push for fair agrarian reforms. Learn from experiences within the framework of Food Sovereignty here
- Photo exhibitions: Organize exhibitions to showcase images that tell the story of the struggle for land. This year, our exhibition of LVC struggles is circulating—check it out here!
- Flood social media: Share photos, videos, and testimonies using the hashtags #17April #PeasantStruggles and tag us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
- Write in the media: Publish articles on land, water, and territorial rights based on your experiences. Send us your article at press@viacampesina.org
- Organize smallholders’ markets: Bring peasant agroecology to your community. Explore some experiences here.
- Screen films on peasant struggles: Host film screenings about the struggle for land, water, and territories.
Important announcement: ICARRD+20 in 2026
A major victory for the peasant struggle! The FAO has approved the holding of the Second Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD+20) in 2026 in Colombia. This is a historic opportunity to advance toward comprehensive agrarian reform. From La Vía Campesina, we call on all our organizations to prepare proposals from their territories. Let’s make the voice of the peasantry heard at this key international event!