Via Campesina

Grassroots International partner La Via Campesina celebrated international women's day, March 8, 2010 with a re-affirmation of their global campaign to end violence against women. Last November 25th, on the occasion of International Day against Gender Violence, the Via called for an end to all forms of violence against women and called on its members to work with their ally, the World March of Women to coordinate actions against gender violence. The Via launched its campaign to end violence against women at its fifth international congress in 2008, in Maputo, Mozambique.

Since a devastating earthquake shook Haiti more than two weeks ago, Grassroots International’s partners on the ground have been working to assess the situation and respond to the needs of the community – even as they themselves have suffered great losses.  With help from hundreds of people who have donated in response to the crisis, Grassroots International has made three initial grants to three of our partners in Haiti.

Grassroots International partner La Via Campesina, a global network of peasant, family farmer and small producer movements more than 100 million strong, and with members in Haiti issued this call for solidarity with Haitians including the peasant population.

As dignitaries and politicians meet in Copenhagen to discuss ways to curtail climate change, some of the people most affected by the crisis are also present, including the Via Campesina. One of Grassroots International’s partners, the Via represents more than 150 million small farmers, fishers and producers worldwide. As Henry Saragih, General Coordinator of Via Campesina, notes in the speech below, small farmers are cooling down the earth, while big industrial farms pose grave risks.
 
Why We Left Our Farms to Come to Copenhagen

I have had the privilege of being the point person for Grassroots International on our U.S-based advocacy work on food and farm policy issues. A large part of this work is done in conjunction with our allies in the US Working Group on the Global Food Crisis, where Grassroots is a member of the ad hoc steering committee  I have been working to raise the voices of Grassroots’ partners, like the Via Campesina, in the policy solutions put forward for consideration in Washington. Among the strategies for which our partners, and we, advocate is a transition away from large-scale industrialized fossil-fuel-dependent agriculture toward a more earth and people friendly model of sustainable agriculture.

Paraphrasing Lisa Sullivan, School of the Americas Watch Latin America coordinator, the Honduran election last Sunday is another case of political ‘whitewash’ in the American continent.

In 1996 the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) organized the first World Food Summit in Rome to, in their own words, “renew global commitment to the fight against hunger. The FAO called the Summit in response to widespread under nutrition and growing concern about the capacity of agriculture to meet future food needs.”