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Land Rights

Towards Food Sovereignty: Reclaiming Autonomous Food Systems now available online

By: Carol Schachet | October 20, 2009

The International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), an independent international research and development organization, recently published a book that should be of interest to Grassroots International's supporters. Available free online, Towards Food Sovereignty: Reclaiming Autonomous Food Systems offers great analysis and links to video and audio files that show farmers, indigenous peoples and consumers all working to promote food sovereignty.

Throughout the world, social movements are the driving force behind a new food sovereignty policy framework, which aims to guarantee and protect people's space, ability and right to define their own models of production, food distribution and consumption patterns.
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Land Rights

Land + Water + Food = Resource Rights = Human Rights = Poverty Eradication

By: Nikhil Aziz | October 18, 2009

October 17th is marked as by the United Nations as the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. At Grassroots International, we have been working with our partners for over 25 years towards achieving that goal. Clearly, a lot needs to be done to get us there.
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Land Rights

Land Water Food = Resource Rights = Human Rights = Poverty Eradication

By: Nikhil Aziz | October 18, 2009

October 17th is marked as by the United Nations as the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. At Grassroots International, we have been working with our partners for over 25 years towards achieving that goal. Clearly, a lot needs to be done to get us there.
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Land Rights

Today is World Food Day!

By: Lilian Autler | October 16, 2009

Today is World Food Day!

World Food Day is celebrated every year on October 16 – the date of the founding of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in 1945. World Food Day raises awareness of the issues behind poverty and hunger. This year's theme for World Food Day is "Achieving food security in times of crisis."

A critical issue related to food and agriculture that is finally gaining more attention is climate change. Industrial agriculture contributes significantly to climate change through greenhouse gas emissions.
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Land Rights

Family Farmers Feed Brazil

By: Saulo Araujo | October 16, 2009

The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) recently published a report on the country’s agricultural sector. The last report had been published in 1996. The new document supports several points raised by peasant organizations, such as our partner the Via Campesina International, around the critical role of the small scale agriculture to climate justice and hunger. The main points are outlined below.
1.
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Land Rights

Amigo, Can You Spare a BTU?

By: Daniel Moss | September 23, 2009

Chances are, the average U.S. resident has no idea that their demand for electricity might require that a Mexican village be flooded for a hydroelectric dam. The question is: if the human cost were known, would we consume just a little bit less?

At Grassroots International, our bet is that a little bit of knowledge would go a long way. For those who value human rights, that high social and environmental cost is not likely to sit right.

Our unabashedly biased perspective is based upon the way we’ve worked for more than a quarter century: offering financial support to communities around the world whose natural resources have been extracted and despoiled and sharing their stories in living rooms, community centers and across cyberspace.
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Land Rights

Why Do We Need a Global Climate Justice Movement?

By: Nikhil Aziz | September 16, 2009

Because we need just, equitable and not simply effective action on climate change – it’s not just about numbers but about just numbers. Because the rich countries are shifting the burden to the South – on the developing and least developed countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America that have contributed the least to global warming. Because short-term economic interests are driving the negotiations – the considerable lobbying power of big oil, big coal, big agriculture, and other big corporations is out in full force ahead of the upcoming Copenhagen negotiations in December 2009. And because the people are not being heard – especially those who will be adversely affected
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Land Rights

Guatemala is Hungry for Justice

By: Saulo Araujo | September 15, 2009

Earlier this week, the BBC produced a shocking article: “Eyewitness: Guatemala food crisis.” The piece exposes the sad reality that haunts families throughout the country, particularly those in indigenous and peasant communities. I also encountered this dire situation -- children dying of starvation and many others suffering from hunger-related diseases -- during my visit to Guatemala last April, when I heard from our local partners that many peasant communities were showing signs of a food shortage.
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Land Rights

Growing hope and fighting hunger on the Gaza Strip

By: Nikhil Aziz | September 10, 2009

This is the time of year when gardeners start to reap their rewards—fruits and vegetables that make for a healthy feast. But for the people of Gaza, gardens produce a serving of self-sufficiency, too.

Urban gardens usually bring to mind savvy urbanites indulging in an organic lifestyle—witness Michelle Obama and her model urban garden at the White House. Although urban gardens in the West may not be a total indulgence—Ms.
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Land Rights

Land Reform Under Lula

By: Carol Schachet | July 20, 2009

The Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) of Brazil, which has mobilized more than a million Brazilians to occupy and farm large landholdings, was cautiously optimistic when Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva of the Workers Party won the presidency in 2002. “We campaign for Lula,” remarked MST organizer Jonas da Silva (no relation) during the campaign, “even though we are critical of him for shaping his discourse for the middle class.” In the country with perhaps the most unequal land distribution in the world, electing a pro-worker, pro-poor president marked a potential turning point.

But as Lula finishes up his second term (new presidential elections take place in October 2010), the MST’s assessment is grim. Land redistribution has stagnated, the government continues to b
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Land Rights

The Early Phases of Recovery in Gaza:

By: Carol Schachet | July 16, 2009

Ahmed Sourani is the Director of Projects & Cooperation for the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees (PARC). PARC is a longtime partner of Grassroots International and perhaps the most important player in the Palestinian agricultural sector. PARC focuses its work in the West Bank and Gaza Strip on rural development including food security, income generation, water rights and protecting against land confiscation by Israel; environmental protection; and strengthening women's position in society.
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Land Rights

Honduras: Crisis of Democracy & Human Rights

By: Nikhil Aziz | July 2, 2009

Last April my colleague Saulo Araujo (Program Coordinator for Brazil & Mesoamerica) and I visited Honduras. What impressed us the most was the strength and vibrancy of social movements, like our partners the Via Campesina (Central America) and COCOCH (the Honduran Coordinating Council of Peasant Organizations), and our allies like COPINH (Civic Council of Indigenous and Popular Organizations of Honduras) and OFRANEH (Honduran Black Fraternal Organization). And especially the strong and resilient women in the forefront of struggle. Afro-Hondurans like Leoncia and Wendy, Lencas like Pasqualita, and Mestizo women like Analina and Berta

At a candidates forum convened by the Via every single presidential candidate attended.
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Land Rights

Violence Sparked by US-Peru FTA Highlights the Need for Stronger Communal Resource Rights

By: Dory Dinoto with Saulo Araujo | July 1, 2009

The US-Peru Free Trade Agreement (FTA), created in 2005 by the Bush and Garcia administrations, came into effect on February 1st, 2009. Since this time, several protests have been held within the country by indigenous groups, peasants and their supporters. At the heart of the protests are several laws, which have been enacted, and since revoked, by the Garcia administration under the FTA.
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Land Rights

Help Protect Democracy and Human Rights in Honduras

By: Carol Schachet | June 30, 2009

Social movement leaders in Honduras, including members of Grassroots International's partner, La Via Campesina, fear for their lives, as tens of thousands have gathered to protest Sunday's coup d'etat against President Jose Manuel "Mel" Zelaya Rosales.

Please call on the Honduran Embassy to demand that the congress and military respect and guarantee the human rights of all Hondurans and reinstate the democratically elected president, Mel Zelaya.
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Land Rights

A Field of One’s Own: Gender & Land Rights Pioneer Bina Agarwal recognized with Leontief Prize

By: Nikhil Aziz | June 25, 2009

Grassroots International's friends at the Global Development & Environment Institute (GDAE) at Tufts University announced their award of the Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought to Bina Agarwal of Delhi University, India. Agarwal is an early pioneer of research and advocacy on gender and land rights, which many of Grassroots' partners have been fighting for in the field.
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Land Rights

Program Coordinator Salena Tramel’s article is published in Common Dreams

By: Carol Schachet | May 22, 2009

Salena Tramel, Grassroots International Program Coordinator for the Middle East and Haiti, recently visited with all of Grassroots' partners in the occupied Palestinian territories and Israel. This was not her first time in the region, having lived and worked in the West Bank just two years ago. Her previous experience in the region provides a vantage point from which to consider the current political, economic and social reality in the region.
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Land Rights

Liberation: Of Land & Women

By: Nikhil Aziz | May 11, 2009

Saulo and I traveled with our partner Rafael Alegria of the Via Campesina and COCOCH (Honduran Coordinating Council of Campesino Organizations), about an hour northeast of Honduras' capital Tegucigalpa, near the town of Comayagua, to meet Analina Claros, one of the leaders of the Nueve Noviembre (November 9^th) settlement, and her neighbors. This is what she shared with us over a wonderful homecooked stew of chicken and vegetables and freshly made corn tortillas, all grown and raised in their settlement:
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Land Rights

Feeding the world and cooling the planet

By: Carol Schachet | May 11, 2009

"The cascading series of events now known as the world food crisis started in Mexico as the 'tortilla war' in January 2007. It then flared up in Italy as the 'spaghetti strike' nine months later. Later it became an unstoppable avalanche ... La Vía Campesina believes that this crisis is the result of decades of destructive policies: pressure from international institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to decrease investment in small-scale food production through structural adjustment programs; increasing the power of transnational corporations; financial speculation; and more recently, governments' support for the frantic escalation in the production of agro-fuels."
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Land Rights

The People at the People’s Summit

By: Nikhil Aziz | May 5, 2009

Many social movements from across the Americas were in Trinidad for the 4th People’s Summit to articulate their demands for moving the hemisphere towards economic (including trade) and climate justice, food sovereignty, human rights, and an end to militarization. They represented movements of women, peasants, indigenous peoples, labor and those struggling for environmental justice.
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Land Rights

Brazilian activists weigh in on U.S. environmental policy

By: Saulo Araujo and Lilian Autler | April 29, 2009

Representatives of two of Grassroots International’s Brazilian partners were in the San Francisco Bay Area April 22 - 29 to meet with U.S. allies and help educate the U.S. public about the damaging impacts of agrofuel production in Brazil. Altacir Bunde is an economist and leader of the Popular Peasant Movement (MCP) and coordinator of the Creole Seeds Project in Goiás, Brazil. Altacir has been a leading voice in the movement to protect agro biodiversity and defend against the expansion of large scale single crop plantations in the Central Plateau of Brazil.
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