July 15, 2024
As a prelude to Africa’s participation in the 2025 Nyeleni Global Forum in India organized by the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty’s (IPC), the Africa region is organizing its consultation in Addis Ababa – Ethiopia to discuss and adopt common positions.
For three (3) days, about forty participants, from West, Central, East, Southern Africa and more than eighty (80) participants registered online, representing small farmers, artisanal fishers and fish workers, herders-pastoralists, Ethnic minorities, and Indigenous Peoples, agricultural workers, consumers, women, youth, Forest Dwellers, NGOs, Urban Poor…, discuss to build a common political agenda, strategies and working methods to transform the global system to achieve economic, social, gender, racial and environmental goals and ultimately achieve food sovereignty. The discussions include: the progress made by the food sovereignty movement in the region since 2007, the analysis of the current situation in the African region, the key themes and struggles on which the movements have engaged as well as the main successes, the analysis of the main challenges and obstacles to food sovereignty and justice in Africa, the main opportunities, key trends, policy arenas, strategies, agendas, actors and political forces for justice and food sovereignty in the region, next steps.
Indeed, in 2007, the IPC played a critical role in uniting small-scale food producers and their allies to establish a common vision of food sovereignty and implement strategies to make it a reality. Over time, a robust global movement for food sovereignty emerged, gaining significant political recognition. Together, we have succeeded in democratizing the world food and agricultural scene, including the reform of the Committee on World Food Security.
Its struggles have also influenced food sovereignty policies in various national contexts and have resulted in important milestones and standards for the rights of peasants and indigenous peoples: the ratification of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP) and the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP); the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources with the concept of farmers’ rights; the Voluntary Tenure Guidelines (VGGT) and the Voluntary Guidelines on Small-Scale Fisheries (SSF Guidelines); and international conferences on agroecology.
These achievements are now under threat due to a long period of systemic crises. Extremism, political forces, authoritarian regimes and corporate capture of democratic governance spaces are on the rise globally, in parallel with the dismantling of the United Nations multilateral system. Human rights violations against peasants and indigenous peoples, as well as climate change, biodiversity loss, armed conflict and hunger are rapidly intensifying. Moreover, new threats to food sovereignty come from new business configurations, in which speculative corporations, hedge funds, and digital titans join forces to oil the wheels of a failing agro-industrial production system.
In this context, the IPC advocates for a new global Nyeleni process, leading to the next Global Nyeleni Forum in India in 2025. Recognizing the power of people’s movements, it will be about building solidarity and unity by connecting local and global struggles. The effort is being made to adopt an intersectional and perspective approach to effectively address the multidimensional global crisis.
As part of this Nyéléni process, all civil society and indigenous organizations, organizations, social movements or NGOs already working within the framework of the principles of food sovereignty and/or are willing to interact with food sovereignty from an intersectional perspective.
A global steering committee has been set up to guide the process, with IPC members and international allies from other sectors: health, trade unions, solidarity economy, etc. This Nyéléni process is built on the basis of consultations in the regions: North America, Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe, Africa, MENA and Asia and the Pacific. In each region, the aim is to involve as many allied organisations as possible, to open up politically to allow other social organisations and movements to contribute, and to give birth to a regional steering committee, which will be responsible for leading the convergence towards the Nyéléni Global Dialogues, which will take place in 2025 and beyond.
The results of this consultation will be used to strengthen discussions at the global forum.