Intervention by Henry Saragih to the Round Table on Land Tenure and International Investment in Agriculture

Rome, October 13, 2010

Thank you Chair person for this opportunity to present our position. I am Henry Saragih from Indonesia, Chair person of the Indonesian Peasant Union and General Coordinator of La Via Campesina. La Via Campesina is an international peasant movement. Our members include small-scale family farmers, peasants, and landless farmers from every region in the world.

At this moment, we ask the CFS to:

• Recall the importance of the International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ICARRD) which was held in Brazil in June, 2006.

• Urge States to implement the commitments they made in the ICARRD final declaration in relation to secure access to and control over land and natural resources for small scale food producers/providers, genuine agrarian reform and sustainable rural development policies.

• Develop an appropriate legal framework to implement the ICARRD commitments.

   

Genuine agrarian reform means that: agricultural land is distributed to landless and small scale farmers; governments support agroecological and sustainable peasant agriculture models; governments protect national and local markets from international commodity and financial markets, and; build national and local buffer stocks of food.

We further recommend to the CFS that the ICARRD declaration be developed into a framework for agrarian reform and rural development policies, which realise the rights of women, youth, peasants, small-scale family farmers, fishers, nomadic pastoralists and indigenous peoples.