#8M24 – “With conviction we build Food Sovereignty and we fight against the crisis and violence!”

22 February 2024 Campaign to End Violence against Women, Food Sovereignty, Patriachy, Women

Call for action March 8th, 2024 – International Working Women’s Day

Bagnolet, February 22, 2024. This March 8, International Working Women’s Day, as a result of our 8th International Conference that took place in Colombia in December 2023, La Via Campesina has been strengthened by its clear proposals based on the defense of Food Sovereignty and the acknowledgement of the fundamental role of the women in this process. The international peasant movement also committed to strengthen the Peasant and Popular Feminism in the fight against patriarchy and for the equality, bearing in mind that diversity is in the center of Food Sovereignty in all the territories.

After 31 years of existence as a peasant movement, La Via Campesina has been consolidating a unity movement for the transformation. We have been organizing, opening and deepening paths for the struggle that reflect our reality, our demands and many realities for women in the peasant territories.

Nowadays, the Peasant and Popular Feminism struggle is our tactic for the women living in the fields, the waters, the woods, the deserts, the savannah, the moors, the wetlands and the mountains. This tactic carries our struggles against the violence and the patriarchy in our territories, in our communities, organizations and countries, considering our realities as peasant women, recognizing our strengths and identifying our common enemies.

As part of this day of action, we denounce all kinds of violence, evils of the capitalist and patriarchal system that exploits and oppress women, we manifest against the femicides as the most ruthless expression of violence expressed over the women, childhoods and diversities bodies. Every year, tens of thousands of girls and women, including women are murdered around the world because of their gender. They are more at risk of dying because of gender violence due to failure of the states to fulfill its duty to effectively protect life of survivors and ensure their safety.

In the face of the alarming rise of the right wing and the conservative rhetoric, rights setbacks, of the fascism and neo-fascist threats, with wars, occupations, the displacement and the capitalist looting of the fields in Palestine, Haiti, Nigeria, Peru and Ecuador, in tandem with the criminal action of the multinationals and the judiciary system that hijack our food systems around the world, we keep claiming that Food Sovereignty is only possible with peasants and that we are responsible for cooling the the Earth. We are the responsible for feeding the peoples and we are who build societies of peace and social justice!

Since La Via Campesina adopted the policy and ethics of the Food Sovereignty, claiming the rights of the peoples to define their own agricultural and food policies, the peasant women have had a key role in making this principle a reality within their communities and territories and presenting it as a concrete alternative for the peasantry in face of the food, environmental and social crises to promote a fair and supportive trade.

However, we keep raising our voice denouncing and resisting against the:

  • states that use the food as war weapon, increasing the misery and hunger. We’re not aiming for food security; we’re going all out for food sovereignty!
  • capitalist model of agro-hydro-mining business that commodifies the food, the soil, that exploits the underground with mining, opening furrows in our land and causing environmental and social destruction.
  • alarming migrations wave seeking for jobs and dignity in a world that exploits the labor force.
  • religious actions that in name of the culture threaten the life and freedom of women and diversities around the world. 
  • genocide of our ancestral peoples and communities, their values, their rights and their forms of organization.
  • violations, the early marriages and the violence against the childhood. Girls are not mothers! Sexual and reproductive rights and sexual education are needed,
  • And we denounce the:
  • the accomplice judiciary system that promotes the impunity and re-victimizes survivors of violence.
  • the racism still rooted that justifies the racial superiority and makes even more vulnerable the peasant, black and indigenous women.

As a peasant movement, we will continue to strengthen the need for equality, the rural-urban alliances that not only challenges us to build new gender relations between human beings, but also takes care of the mother earth. Our Peasant and Popular Feminism values the peasant agriculture as a driving force for Food Sovereignty and challenges the exploitation process of people, the cornering of the soil and the water and the colonizing extractivism. For us, the soil and the territories are life spaces where we want to build healthy relations free of agrochemicals and violence.

We commit ourselves to continue to be organized and united, being the first resistance front against the extractivism, the capitalism and the patriarchy in our territories, to preserve biodiversity, the seeds, our common goods and our ancestral knowledge. We continue building the movement, revolutionizing souls and consciences, as well as fighting for the popular sovereignty, for the Food Sovereignty, for our peoples and communities’ sovereignty and for the women’s sovereignty.

We are committed to implement our Declaration of the 6th International Women’s Assembly of La Via Campesina as a political tool that gathers our challenges, our demands and guides our actions in the next period.

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