By Matters India Reporter

Jakarta, May 25, 2019: An international gathering of food right activists has denounced transnational firms dictating what people should cultivate, trade and consume.

The corporations increasing role in policy making gives the state to excuse itself from its duty to uphold people’s human rights, bemoaned 44 participants of the Global Network for the Right to Food and Nutrition that met May 20-24 in Jakarta.

They represented social movements, indigenous peoples and other civil society organizations from 18 countries spread over five continents.

The network’s fifth global meeting noted that the corporations try to convince governments to normalize “multi-stakeholderism” that great control over policy making. However, it prevents governments to address private actors’ conflict of interest in the food system, the participants explained.

The Global Network strives to strengthen global movement for the right to food and nutrition. Its members work together to mobilize grassroots struggles against violations of the Right to Food.

The network also helps develop and share methodologies that promote co-construction and exchange of knowledge and highlights the impact of human rights violations on the Right to Food and Nutrition. It also facilitates collective action and advocacy.

The participants denounced corporations’ aggressive advertising of ultra-processed foods, breast-milk substitutes and sugar-laden beverages that threatens people’s well-being.

They also condemned corporate grabbing natural resources such as land, water, oceans, and seeds. They also studied emerging threats to society masked by technology and innovation.

Patenting of living organisms after collecting land data and seeds has led to the privatization of seeds, finacialization of land, and the implementation of genetic modifications on plants and animals that will have huge impacts on world’s ecosystem and biodiversity.

The participants recognized the serious impact that conflict, occupation, and war has on the basic human rights and dignity of millions of people globally.

The food activists condemned the increased weaponization of food aid as happened in Venezuela, or the aid blockages in Yemen and Syria, leading to famine-like conditions. Such a situation betrays the international community’s failure to uphold principles of humanitarian law, and check the human cost of political conflicts.

These conflicts have created a global refugee and migration crisis, they noted.

The meet also denounced neo-colonialism and globalization that use trade agreements, financial and technological aid for control nations. These legitimize structural exploitation and occupation and deny true sovereignty for former colonies and independent states,” the meeting added.

Therefore, the activists resolved to:
• Build and strengthen the Right to Food and Nutrition movement to face global challenges, through developing methodologies and strategies to guarantee rights, build regional and national resilience to resist regressive policies
• Build the capacity of the movement to have intersectionality as a perspective — going beyond human created borders– understanding multiple forms of discrimination, building solidarity across struggles;
• The decolonize self, organizations, food systems, social, economical and cultural systems;
• Shift power and control to communities, and ensure citizens participation in decision making;
• Reaffirm commitment to the struggle against the grabbing of natural resources, including land, forests, oceans, rivers, lakes, lagoons, seeds, and local animal genetic resources.
• Prioritize the support to implementation of the Declaration of the Rights of Peasants and other people working in rural areas, adopted in December 2018, as a result of a long social movement struggle.
• Prioritize the support to real solutions to face climate through the transition to agroecological food systems, embedded in traditional knowledge, also as a way to ensure healthier diets.
• Promote real solutions to hunger, malnutrition and obesity, based in community visions and leadership, creating alternatives, and a challenging co-opted narratives, dominate market dynamics and systems, corporate power and charitable false solutions.

The meeting was sifted from Kandy in Sri Lanka to Indonesia because of the Easter Sunday bomb attacks in the island nation.

The participants urged the Sri Lankan representatives to convey their condolences to their countrymen deeply impacted by this act of hate and violence.

Jesuit food right activist Father Irudaya Jothi, who represented India, bemoaned growing erosion of human rights. “This extreme conservative and authoritarian wave has gained ground across the world, deepening all forms of xenophobia, racism, discrimination, and violence against rights defenders and marginalized communities.”

Father Jothi condemned criminalization of social movements and human rights defenders and persecution of small scale food producers in the name of property rights. He cited the case of Pepsico suing farmers in India for saving seeds as an example.

Global food production is increasingly based on a few staple export crops while nutritious, locally grown, produced by peasants and indigenous peoples are being replaced by low quality, ultra-processed products.

Mariana Menenes Santarelli from Brazil noted an increase in legal, constitutional and policy frameworks for the right to food in the past 15 years. This has opened up spaces for people’s participation at national level. This was possible largely due to the struggles and advocacy of networks and movements, such as the Global Network, she claimed.

At the same time, the global Right to Food movement has faced major setback after the Brazilian president winding up the Food and Nutrition Security Council and nation’s adopting repressive environment, she explained. The movement has emerged as the role model for building meaningful policies that help reduce hunger in the world.