On April 17th, the National Federation of the Agricultural Sector commemorated the International Day of Peasant Struggle, highlighting global and national peasant resistance for social justice. It called for advocating for policies ensuring food sovereignty, environmental justice, and peasants’ rights.
As the situation of millions of migrants and their families worsens globally, La Via Campesina calls on States to ratify and implement the UN Convention on the Rights of Migrants and their Families. The peasant movement rejects the proposed EU agreement on migration and reiterates its unwavering support to the struggle for rights and dignity of migrants.
The Communications Collective of South Asia, with support from the Youth Media Collective of MONLAR, is releasing the first edition of La Via Campesina’s South Asian Dispatches. Episode 1 focuses on the ongoing farmworkers’ strike in Bangladesh, organized by the Bangladesh Agricultural Farm Labour Federation since July 21, 2023. The struggle has compelled the government to establish a committee to study the matter and provide recommendations.
A new report from the Landworkers’ Alliance (LWA) shines a light on the systemic drivers of exploitation in the UK immigration system with regard to seasonal fruit and veg pickers. The report also includes a supply chain analysis, which reveals that migrant seasonal workers picking soft fruit retain on average just 7.6% of the total retail price of the produce.
From 31 August to 3 September 2023, 150 activists from various organisations from different parts of Spain gathered in Hornachuelos (Córdoba) in a camp dedicated to agroecology and food sovereignty, to ratify the need to break with the agro-industrial food model and system. Under the slogan “we stand up”, the meeting took a stand in favour of a fair and sustainable food model and a living rural world.
The Rural Workers & Migration working group publishes today its third newsletter. Have a look at our actions regarding the support of agricultural workers’ struggles, commercial pressure towards distributors and ECVC trade unions’ mutual support. Thank you for sharing the newsletter and the call to mobilisation against agroindustry in Cordóba in September.
The situation in Sfax, Tunisia, has reached a critical point since July 2023, with extreme tension surrounding migrants from various sub-Saharan African countries. Last week, thirteen migrants from the sub-Saharan region lost their lives at sea off the coast of Sfax, when their boat sank. Despite being a transit country for migrants on their way to Europe, Tunisia resolutely refuses to be seen as an alternative solution for migrants.
36 years ago, a tragedy struck Haitian peasantry when 139 peasants, members of the organization Tèt Kole Ti Peyizan Ayisyen, lost their lives in one of the largest massacres ever seen in the country. The regime of Henry Nanphy, the Lucas family, the Poitvien family, and a faction of the Catholic Church in collusion with the American embassy in Haiti were responsible for this terrible atrocity. This massacre is one of the bloodiest episodes in the country’s history.
At a time when the Spanish government is taking over the presidency of the European Union, La Via Campesina, together with allied social movements, denounced the impunity of the Melilla massacre, in which dozens of migrants were killed while trying to cross the border fence from Morocco to Spain. La Via Campesina is commited to continue building the Global Pact of Solidarity for the Rights of Migrants and Refugees.
A delegation of La Via Campesina will take part in the Vth Maghreb Social Forum on Migration, to be held from June 23 to 25 in Nador, Morocco. The forum is a collective space with social organizations with which our movement will build common steps around the Migration Solidarity Pact.
