Global Partnerships

By La Via Campesina

Prices on the world market for cereals are rising. Wheat prices increased by 130% in the period between March 2007-March 2008. Rice prices increased by almost 80% in the period up to 2008. Maize prices increased by 35% between March 2007 and March 2008 (1).  In countries that depend heavily on food imports some prices have gone up dramatically. Poor families see their food bills go up and can no longer afford to buy the minimum needed.

Grassroots International was selected as a finalist for the MySpace Impact Awards. Grassroots is in the final 3, with the winner receiving a $10,000 donation and extensive promotion throughout the MySpace website. If you are a MySpace user, please vote for us right now, then each day until December 24th and forward this to others: http://www.myspace.com/impactawards.

In an historic session of the United Nations General Assembly, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was adopted. This Declaration, which outlines the basic rights and fundamental freedoms of the world’s Indigenous Peoples, has been in the making for nearly 25 years.

Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, indigenous Igarot activist from the Philippines and Chair of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, stated: “The 13th of September 2007 will be remembered as an international human rights day for the Indigenous Peoples of the world, a day that the United Nations and its Member States, together with Indigenous Peoples, reconciled with past painful histories and decided to march into the future on the path of human rights.”

“Our Youth is not the Future, Our Youth is the Present” – Julian Moya, Southwest Organizing Project (SWOP), Albuquerque, New Mexico

“We cannot choose the historical conditions we find ourselves in, but we can choose how we respond to them” – Ajamu Baraka, Director, U.S. Human Rights Network, Atlanta, Georgia

These two quotes, among many other hopeful messages I heard at the U.S. Social Forum (USSF) from June 27 to July 1, 2007 in Atlanta epitomized for me the USSF – what it stands for and envisions in terms of a different kind of United States. Both represent the truth embedded in the official slogan of the USSF – Another World is Possible; Another US is Necessary.

With land, water and seeds increasingly controlled by a small number of poorly regulated transnational corporations, effective social change for resource rights and a fair food system must match this global reach. We call this life-giving cross-border work globalization from below. This work puts us at the front lines of the struggle between private gain and public good.

In that work, we are honored to have formed partnerships with powerful and visionary global networks like La Vía Campesina, which represents more than 200 million small producers in over 70 countries.

Building local, national and international solutions for hunger and the crisis in the global rural economy

Earlier ths week at the Community Food Security Coalition conference in Vancouver, BC, Grassroots and the National Family Farm Coalition debuted a new booklet that we created this summer on food sovereignty.

In the simplest terms, food sovereignty is the belief that communities should have plenty of food that's not only healthy for the bodies, healthy for their way of life and that the communities themselves have control over.

Everyday more than 800 million people go hungry. Many of the hungry are family farmers or landless farm workers in the Global South. In the U.S., family farmers are struggling to stay in business and fighting for a cleaner environment and for a food system that will protect rural livelihoods and provide consumers with safe, delicious, local food. To face these daunting challenges, family farmers from around the world are organizing themselves into a global movement for social justice.

In Washington D.C., Grassroots and the National Family Farm Coalition organized a public forum for farmers movements, academics and activists from around the nation and around the world to share theirglobal vision for food and farming.

Via Campesina Tsunami Relief and Reconstruction Fund WEEKLY NEWS BULLETIN No. 2, January 12, 2005

Via Campesina Tsunami Relief and Reconstruction Fund
WEEKLY NEWS BULLETIN No. 2, January 12, 2005

The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) shares the grief of those faced with one of the worst natural catastrophes of recent times by way of the tsunamis that devastated several countries s