Thirty years of our collective struggle for justice, peace, life and dignity! Viva La Via Campesina!
Call for Global Solidarity Actions | Bagnolet | 01 April 2022
17 April is the International Day of Peasant Struggles, commemorated by La Via Campesina every year to remember the Eldorado do Carajás massacre in 1996 and to highlight the continued criminalization, oppression and repression of peasants, workers, and indigenous people communities worldwide.
This year also marks a special milestone in the life of La Via Campesina. We are entering the fourth decade of our collective struggles for food sovereignty, popular agrarian reform and dignity. Peasant and indigenous peoples’ organizations sowed the first seeds of the global movement at a gathering in Managua in 1992. La Via Campesina took its formal birth in 1993 at the first international conference in Mons, Belgium.
The world is in a difficult place at the moment. The food crisis continues to deepen while hunger and social injustices worsen each day, further aggravated by a COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, conflicts, wars, and financial speculations. It highlights the absolute failure of the transnational capital and agribusiness system enabled by free trade agreements and industrialized monoculture soaked in toxic agro-inputs. This industrial system displaces peasants and degrades the environment and productive resources while supplying our countries with expensive, imported and unhealthy foods. Rising global food prices and costs of farm inputs push peasant communities everywhere deeper into hunger, poverty and debt.
We, La Via Campesina – the peasants, indigenous peoples, rural populations, agricultural workers, and youth in urban and rural areas, propose and promote Food Sovereignty as a solution to build the national productive capacity. Food Sovereignty is a principle rooted in the peasant and family farm sector through supportive public policies, guaranteed prices, credits, and other support forms—including direct marketing between producers and consumers and genuine agrarian reform.
Peasant Agroecology and the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Peasants and other People Working in the Rural Areas (UNDROP) are tools to build better societies with justice. Our local food production, self-determination with dignity, peace, feminism, and people’s sovereignty are possible only with these tools. There is no future without food sovereignty!
This 17 April, as we are launching our thirty-year celebrations, let us make this moment to remind and take pride in the long and arduous journey thus far.
On this road to justice, we have also lost our people to repression and criminalization. It is essential to keep alive their memories, struggle for their freedom and highlight the victories inspired by our historical struggles.
Now is the time to give visibility to the triumphs, the sacrifices, the alternatives, the big and small transformations that we affected and how we grew to be present and organized in 81 countries. It is time to advance our #25YearsOfFoodSovereignty struggles and convince the people, governments and policymakers how this vision can solve the multiple crises and build better and healthier societies with justice, dignity, peace, and people’s sovereignty.
MOBILIZATION PLANS, STARTING FROM APRIL 2022:
- Main Slogan:
- “30 years of collective struggles, hope and solidarity.”
- Main Hashtags:
- #LVC30Years #17April2022
- #NoFutureWithoutFoodSovereignty #FoodSovereigntyNOW
- Official Poster: La Via Campesina has released an Official Poster for all our members and allies to mark our 30th anniversary. Download the files here
- Unifying Action in April – Plant Trees! : Throughout April, we call upon all our members and allies to plant native and indigenous trees in your farm, neighbourhood, backyard or garden – as a symbol of our collective existence, persistence and resistance.
- Do share the details of the trees you plant and the images/video messages on social media with the hashtag #LVC30Years and tag La Via Campesina on Facebook (@ViaCampesinaOfficial), Twitter (@via_campesina) and Instagram (@la_via_campesina_official).
- Seeds Fairs and more: Starting 17 April and through the next 18 months, we encourage all our members and allies everywhere to hold events, food donations, workshops, seed fairs, film festivals, music festivals that promote Food Sovereignty, Solidarity and Peasant Feminism.
- You can email the schedule of these local events to lvcweb@viacampesina.org, and we will plot it on a global map of events. Please mention the title of the event, location/date/time, event banner and contact details of the organizers. Alternatively, you can also add the information to this online form.
- Premiere of Food Sovereignty Animation Film: La Via Campesina will also release a short animation film on Food Sovereignty on 17 April 2022, premiere on the official Facebook page in English, Spanish and French. We encourage all our members to save the date, watch this film together, share it widely and spread the message of Food Sovereignty.
- Use our Training Modules: La Via Campesina has already launched a series of training kits on UNDROP, Peasant Seeds and Peasant Feminism. There are also a set of postcards that define the different elements of our struggle for Food Sovereignty. We encourage all our members and allies to use these materials and adapt, translate, and disseminate them among all movement members.
- Video Library: Visit La Via Campesina’s video archives on Vimeo, curate your collections and screen local film festivals to spread the message of agroecology and food sovereignty
- Regional Actions and Amplification: La Via Campesina also encourages all our members and regional secretariats to use the national and regional social media pages, instant messaging groups, blogs and websites to highlight the history of struggles in each region.
- Blank Version of Posters: We are also releasing blank versions of popular posters from the past that members and allies could re-use if they wish to during these celebrations.
30 years of collective struggles, hope and solidarity – Viva La Via Campesina!
#LVC30Years #17April2022 #NoFutureWithoutFoodSovereignty #FoodSovereigntyNOW
DOWNLOAD THE COMMUNICATION KIT