The Road to the 3rd Nyéléni Global Forum
A new dawn for global social movements is on the horizon. The Nyéléni Process — a two-decade-old and counting organizing effort of Indigenous Peoples and other rural families — is soon reaching a new benchmark with the 3rd Global Forum to be hosted in Bengaluru, India. Named after the location of the first gathering in Mali, the Nyéléni Process is the clearest expression of the resilience of rural, urban, and Indigenous communities organized in global social movements to advance the human rights to food and food sovereignty worldwide.
The road up until here has been defined by enormous challenges that require an equivalent (if not bigger) collective effort to lift an internationalist agenda to protect ancestral lands, fishing stocks, water, and food sources for millions of people. It all started with the organizing of the 2007 International Forum on Food Sovereignty in Mali. In that gathering, 500 representatives of different social movements and allies (NGOs, funders, and scholars) solidified the strategies to expand the influence of social movements in global policies to protect local communities’ rights to land, water, seeds, and food. The most prominent long-term strategy from the meeting in Mali was to build alliances with urban communities, scholars, unions, and funders. As a result, food sovereignty alliances emerged in many countries and regions, including the U.S. Food Sovereignty Alliance.
The emerging political infrastructure led by social movements contributed to successful advocacy efforts to include the explicit language of the Right to Food (RtF) in national constitutions, as a precondition for constructing food sovereignty. By 2011, 106 countries had codified the Right to Food in their national laws. In addition to RtF legislations, social movements successfully advocated for the UN adoption of voluntary guidelines on land tenure, fisheries and forests and sustainable small-scale fisheries, among others. Further, they were able to push the UN General Assembly to adopt the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other Rural People Working in the Rural Areas (UNDROP).
Many global organizing spaces led by social movements built over the years stopped during the global pandemic. The health and social crises wrought by COVID forced the organizations to direct all their energy toward the more immediate needs of local communities. Hunger and human losses were a rampant problem in many rural communities. The virtuality of negotiation processes was partly maintained after the pandemic but seriously hampered social participation. It was also a time when there were changes in the leadership of many UN branches, especially at the Food and Agriculture Organization. The arrival of pro-corporate leadership made it harder for social movements to raise funds to sustain their organizing at the global level. For most of the 2010s, corporations and mega-donors steadily grew their influence at the UN. As they stated in the Davos Conference, “it was time for a big reset” of UN processes, including the inclusive UN Committee on Food Security, where social movements had gained significant ground in advocating for the rights of communities worldwide.
In 2020, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and their allies invested $24 million in organizing the UN Food Systems Summit, which was presented as a space “to advance food policies guided by grassroots movements.” However, their attempt to control the narrative was met with resistance. The absence of global grassroots movements and Indigenous Peoples delegitimized the summit, turning it into a mega fiasco. This event stands as a testament to the resilience and influence of social movements in the face of corporate capture.
Four years of intense organizing to create a democratic process led by social movements is yet to receive full support from philanthropy. With limited resources raised through a few close allies as described here, global grassroots movements held consultations with hundreds of people and organizations from different sectors — including Indigenous Peoples, LGBTQ+ people, and urban and rural families — in five continents. The summary of the regional consultations (in Africa, Asia, Europe and Central Asia, Near East and North Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and Caribbean, and North America) will be the basis of the program and final document of the Nyeleni Global Forum in India, in September 2025.
The Nyéléni Process is perhaps the most comprehensive and inclusive global encounter of social movements in 2025. It holds promising potential to rebuild the global organizing infrastructure for the long term (post-COVID), including a stronger and more effective intervention in COP30 that will take place in Belem, Brazil, a few months after the Nyéléni Global Forum. But it needs financial support to happen. Grassroots International reaffirms our commitment to the Nyéléni Process and calls our fellow donors and funders to support this landmark effort in the struggle over the future of the food system and the future of us all.
The road to collective action goes through the Nyéléni Global Forum.