29 February 2024: The National Association of Rural and Indigenous Women ANAMURI, in the face of the 13th World Trade Organization (WTO) summit taking place in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, from February 26 to 29, 2024. We once again express our rejection of the nefarious role this institution plays in ensuring the big business interests of multinational corporations, against which La Vía Campesina has been actively and consistently resisting.

Recently, at the Ministerial Conference (MC13), La Vía Campesina reiterated its demands that food and agricultural negotiations during the 13th Ministerial Conference address: (i) a permanent solution to the issue of public stockholding, pending since 2013, (ii) the Special Safeguard Mechanism, a long-standing demand from developing countries, (iii) checking substantial subsidies provided by developed countries in the Global North to their agribusinesses, and (iv) checking subsidies to industrial fishing, and responding to the special and differentiated treatment requested by developing countries to protect small-scale fishing.

Despite these issues having been under discussion for several years, with significant struggles against the WTO, and with our comrade Lee sacrificing himself in Cancun, stating that the WTO kills peasants, it has repeatedly demonstrated its irrelevance by failing to address the demands and aspirations of a large part of the Global South and small-scale farmers worldwide. Instead of addressing these concerns, the WTO continues to generate and exacerbate crises of global hunger, extreme poverty, agrarian conflicts, and food crises.

“The WTO has become a space where the Rule of Power prevails, with a few developed countries determining the course of global trade.” Despite the firmness of the Global South, the WTO remains stuck in limbo, seemingly digging its own grave.

ANAMURI strongly opposes the character of Free Trade Agreements which, following WTO rules, endanger the Food Sovereignty of the world’s peoples, undermining the autonomy and self-sufficiency of national and local economies with adverse effects on the living conditions and wages of all workers, including migrants and especially women who daily struggle for the right to food.

We join the global voice of indigenous peasant farmers, calling for a fair International Trade Framework based on principles of solidarity, social justice, internationalism, aligned with the definitions contained in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Indigenous Peoples and Other People Working in Rural Areas. It is imperative to achieve peace in the world and guarantee food sovereignty with a fair and equitable trade system.

Free trade agreements endanger native seeds, the heritage of peoples in service to humanity, the right to food, and the planet’s life, along with the loss of food sovereignty.

WTO out of Agriculture! Food Sovereignty NOW!
To ensure a future for humanity!
Without Fear, with Conviction and Hope, We Turn Our Dreams into Action!

Directorio Nacional, ANAMURI

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