La Via Campesina supports the National Strike for Peace with Social Justice in Colombia

(Harare, 24 April 2019) La Vía Campesina stands in support of the organized sectors of Colombian society mobilizing tomorrow, the 25th of April, in a National Peasant, Indigenous, Afro-descendent, Worker and Popular Strike. The strike is being organized to demand the full implementation of the Peace Agreement, an end to all violence in the countryside, and the outright rejection of the government’s National Development Plan which places the interests of transnational corporations above life, the defense of territories, and Food Sovereignty.

The National Strike is an articulation between trade unions, youth movements, and both agrarian and urban organizations joined together in defense of their territories and a lasting peace in Colombia.

For this reason, as La Vía Campesina, we join their voices in defense of life, land, an integral and democratic agrarian reform that guarantees Food Sovereignty, territory and peasants’ rights, as well as workers’ rights for the urban populations. At the same time, we call on the Colombian government to respect the Peace Agreement signed with the FARC and to maintain spaces of dialogue with the ELN. The Colombian people deserve peace with social justice.

We believe that the National Development Plan must recognize peasants as political subjects and therefore guarantee their rights, recognize cultural diversity, guarantee livelihoods in harmony with the environment and the social, political and cultural well-being of the Colombian people. Only in this way will a true implementation of the Peace Agreement be realized.

Solidarity is the tenderness of the peoples!

Peasants Rights NOW! With Agrarian Reform and Social Justice!

Press Contacts:

• Nury Martínez, Federación Nacional Sindical Unitaria Agropecuaria, Fensuagro. Spanish. ( +57 3107720098).

• Federico Pacheco, Sindicato Andaluz de Trabajadores, SOC- SAT. English / French (+34 0690651046)

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