The Voluntary Guidelines on the Tenure of Land Fisheries and Forests are complete..

 CSO Press Release


(Rome, 13/03/2012) Last Friday, 9th of March in the evening, the Committee on Word Food Security
 (CFS) completed the intergovernmental negotiations of the FAO Voluntary Guidelines on the
 Tenure of Land Fisheries and Forests in the context of National Food Security. With the
 successful completion of these negotiations after a participatory process lasting nearly 3
 years, the CFS has shown clearly that it has the capacity to bring a wide variety of social
 actors to the debate and to seek solutions to one of the most difficult and delicate issues we
 face today, that of access to natural resources for food production/provision. More than 45
 persons representing 20 civil society organizations attended the final round of negotiations.
 The Guidelines contain valuable points that will provide backing to organizations in their long
 struggle to ensure the care and use of Resources and Natural Goods in order to produce
 more nourishing food, so helping to eliminate hunger from the world by addressing its root
 causes.

 Ensuring access to land, fisheries and forests is absolutely vital, not just to enable small food
 producers to nourish the world. Access to natural resources is a question of dignity and a
 matter of life and death for millions of peasant communities, pastoralists, indigenous
 Peoples and fisher folk. In many parts of the world, land-grabbing causes great suffering by
 displacing people and communities and destroying and confiscating their lands, further
 increasing the incidence of violent conflicts.

 Just in the last few months, while this document was being negotiated, leaders of social
 movements in different parts of the world have been persecuted or assassinated for their
 struggle. In Latin America, we wish to remember Jerónimo R. Tugri y Mauricio Méndez de
 Panamá, Bernardo Méndez Vásquez de México, Christian Ferreyra de Argentina, and the
 peasants who were assassinated in the land conflicts of the Bajo Aguan region of Honduras.
 We also want to show our solidarity with Herman Kumara, leader of the World Forum of
 Fisher Peoples, who has been threatened with death and forced to leave his country, Sri
 Lanka.

 In spite of the massive and systematic violations of human rights, violations that take many
 forms in rural regions of the world, governments remain reluctant to re-affirm the
 commitments they have already made to different international Human Rights instruments
 relating to natural resources. This means we must all redouble our efforts. We deeply regret
 the fact that over the course of these negotiations, governments maintained their position
 that large investments in industrial agriculture are essential for development.
 We call once more on the whole international community, the states and governments of
 the world, to finally commit themselves to establishing a new era in history, based on food
 sovereignty. These Guidelines, when understood as rights to land, fisheries and forests, are
 another tool in the ongoing struggle to eradicate hunger from the world

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 CSO media contact: Sofía Monsalve Suárez, monsalve@fian.org, phone +4962216530051


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La Via Campesina
Via Campesina is an international movement of peasants, small- and medium-sized producers, landless, rural women, indigenous people, rural youth and agricultural workers. We are an autonomous, pluralist and multicultural movement, independent of any political, economic, or other type of affiliation. Born in 1993, La Via Campesina now gathers about 150 organisations in 70 countries in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas.

International Operational Secretariat:
Jln. Mampang Prapatan XIV no 5 Jakarta Selatan 12790, Indonesia
 Tel/fax: +62-21-7991890/+62-21-7993426
 Email: viacampesina@viacampesina.org