Seminar on Building Alliances on Food Sovereignty and Against Violence Towards Women - Open letter to our movements

In Maputo, Mozambique, we the women of VC, WMW and FoEI from Africa and Asia got together for the Joint Seminar on Building Alliances on Food Sovereignty and Against Violence Towards Women. We find ourselves surrounded by the happiness of sharing the richness of our diverse cultures and experiences.

We are gathered here to strengthen women leaders’ self-confidence to address the challenges of international political coordination from women’s perspective. We came together to build a common understanding and analysis on issues that are of great relevance for the women of our three movements. We believe in building the foundations on which to work in synergy at international and regional level.

This meeting is an important step towards developing a common approach -based on women’s everyday experiences- to the current context in which the peoples’ rights to decide how they wish to produce, distribute and consume their food products is negated, commodification and privatization of nature takes place, as well as the upholding of ancient forms of violence against women and the reinforcement of new ones.

We commit to continue enriching our perspectives, deepen our common analysis and develop common strategies that recognise, value and strengthen women’s roles. Over these last few days together, we have covered the following subjects: food sovereignty, violence against women and climate change.  All three movements contributed to the debate and we made progress towards a strategy proposal that we have committed to discuss within our own movements.

FOOD SOVEREIGNTY

What is food sovereignty?

It is the right of people to define their own food system and food policies in their country without any intervention. The main objective is for people to have control over food production, processing and marketing.

As regards the relationship of women and food, women should have control over food but capitalism should not control women. Although women are the main food producers across the world, for example, in Africa 90% of women are involved in processing food, collecting wood, carrying water and farming, they continue having no access to land, seeds and water and have no rights in decision-making.

Women who live in urban areas do not know who produces the food they consume or where the food comes from. They also have no available options on the market. Moreover, consumers do not have any knowledge on traditional food and how their ancestors preserved food.  Nevertheless, food control by TNCs has now become one of the causes of the food crisis. 

People who have food sovereignty have food security as well as food nutrients. They maintain their food culture within their community. Food Sovereignty means that peasants have the right to access their land. The market, especially TNCs and capitalism, should not control the whole food system.  Food Sovereignty ensures that our land, water, seeds and biodiversity stay in the hands of the food producer, the peasant. It does not accept the discrimination of gender.

Food Sovereignty is against GMOs. Small-scale farmers should continue being able to feed people thanks to our own country’s agriculture, further conserving our traditional seeds and allowing for farming to follow our own methods. The country has the right to protect its domestic market from low-priced imported products. Food Sovereignty respects the role of women in producing food within their communities.

To fulfill food sovereignty we need to achieve sustainable agriculture. It is time to keep our traditional agriculture alive. People also need to change their lifestyles by consuming their own traditional food. We need systemic change form globalization’s distribution systems.

The concept of food security is not the concept of the people. It is the government’s concept; their only concern is how to increase food amounts and benefit the TNCs. Only through food sovereignty can people have the self-determination to decide. Now that we are facing sustainable development, we need to change our consumption lifestyles concerning food and fulfill our food sovereignty at community and at international level.

Women should be able to take the decisions on how they want to produce food. Women peasants are the ones who have been guaranteeing the quality of our products. We need to establish a network and establish relations within the rural and urban areas.

Strategies:

• Awareness rising on food sovereignty especially among the women.
• Strengthen communication: access to information, meetings, etc
• Fight against GMO, against land grabbing, monoculture.
• Building alliance with peoples from all sector (women, fisher folk, Indigenous people, workers, etc)
• Have resources center on food sovereignty: website, publication, video, etc
• Organized training for women and youth
• Established the training center for peasant, organic fertilizer, seed bank, direct marketing where consumer and producers can meet.
• Land reform law and the lobby to include food sovereignty in national institution.
• Have common women action or declaration on the special date like April 17th, March 8th. 

VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

The root of violence against women is the very discrimination they suffer in society. Women work in agriculture as much as, if not more than their male counterparts. But very often, men keep the money and decide how to spend it; they are the only ones taking part in association meetings. There are hereditary traditions that deny the right of women to land. Women are often excluded from decision-making as regards the use of land, water and resources. Many families still stop their daughters from proceeding with their schooling. Illiteracy is high among women in rural areas. These situations are fed by prejudices that women are more fragile and depend on men.

Violence against women is an extreme way of perpetuating this system of discrimination. Violence has several forms, for example: acid attack, bride burning, female genital mutilation, women trafficking, feminicide, sexual slavery, son preference, forced marriage, among others physical, sexual or psychological forms.

Violence against women is maintained through silence, impunity and arguments that blame the victim, for example, punishing the woman for not behaving well, for not being in the right place or for provoking violence.

We are currently witnessing the upholding of ancient forms of violence against women and the reinforcement of new ones. For example, when TNCs take over the land for the expansion of monocultures, peasant families are driven away. Women become more vulnerable for they can no longer guarantee food for themselves and their families. They often migrate and find precarious jobs with no rights and exploitative conditions.

Monocultures require paid workers for restricted periods of the year, making women turn to prostitution to survive the rest of the year (known as seasonal prostitution in rural areas). Large mining projects and the presence of military bases pollute the environment and encourage unequal gender relations within communities. For instance, prostitution becomes one of the only ways of earning money for women. We also witness the spread of religious interpretations that do not favour women’s rights.

Religion is manipulated in such a way as to provoke conflicts between communities and escalate violence. Sexual violence and rape is increasingly used as a weapon of war and against women strugglers within the framework of the social struggle’s gradual criminalisation.   

There is still a lot to be done, but we realise that there is a growing awareness among women and a broader discussion on violence against women as a problem for society as a whole. Increasingly equitable family law and laws on the prevention of and fight against violence are on the rise, as well as state and NGO services for women in the legal, medical, social and economic fields. Nevertheless, this progress is less noticeable in the rural areas. ‘

Strategies:

• Continue and improve workshops through popular education methods, written and other material e.g. radio programmes, booklets etc in the local languages, on women’s rights and how to combat violence against women.
• Strengthen women’s economic initiatives in order to reduce their vulnerability in all situations of abuse and violence.
• Express our solidarity when women and women’s groups are demanding punishment for the perpetrators of violence against women and the dismantling of women trafficking mafias.
• Continue and strengthen our political action for the relevant laws to be enforced and for demanding services to support women victims, especially in the rural areas. Exchange information about good practices on prevention and justice in violence against women.
• Strengthen our struggles against the militarization of our societies, specially the presence of US military bases and occupation troops, and the use of violence against women as a weapon of war and women’s bodies as a war trophy.
• Deepen the debate between our three movements on the current interrelationship between patriarchy and capitalism. The debate serves to improve our common actions against the WTO, TNC’s and the exploitation of labour and nature.  

CLIMATE CHANGE

We understand that tackling climate change will involve dismantling the current neoliberal and corporate driven political and economic model that drives climate change, the degradation of the environment and the destruction of livelihoods (which reduces human and ecological resilience to CC).

We cannot allow that a powerful elite continues to benefit at the expense of the impoverished majority. An elite responsible for the unsustainable exploitation of our natural heritage, which is advancing the commodification of life, the privatization of public services, and the increasing control of production and trade by a few powerful transnational corporations.

Measures to address climate change have to be based on a fundamental transition to equitable, just and sustainable societies if they are to succeed. All measures should be directed towards realizing climate justice and fostering peoples’ sovereignty.

Climate finance mechanisms put in place so far, such as the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanisms (CDM) are flawed and will not solve climate change. They offer a way for wealthy countries, elites, companies, including banks, investors and financiers, to profit, whilst expanding power and influence over economic systems, and maintaining control over responses to global problems like CC. Those mechanisms are not aimed at addressing the main causes of climate change.

Developed countries owe developing countries a large and long standing debt, because of their excessive use of fossil fuels, which has resulted in the emission of excessive quantities of greenhouse gases into our shared atmosphere. The climate debt is part of a broader ecological debt owed by the global North to the global South, as a result of centuries of exploitation of impoverished nations’ natural heritage, which has been enabled by colonial and neoliberal economic policies and practices.

These debts continue to accumulate as natural goods are plundered and degraded. Economic liberalization programs imposed by Northern governments and international financial institutions such as the World Bank continue to force Southern economies to open their borders to resource exploitation. The forced transformation of these countries to export-dependent economies is robbing communities of the right to access their own resources, exacerbating their vulnerability to climate change.

Those countries, corporations and institutions that promote the neoliberal approach to address climate change have generated a set of solutions that stem from the same unjust model that created the crisis in the first place. 

Amongst these false solutions are agrofuels, forest and agricultural monocultures, large hydroelectric dams, nuclear energy, carbon capture and storage, genetic modification and other unsustainable options. Many of these require large areas of land and often lead to violent conflict over land and territories. They undermine peoples’ rights and sovereignty, and destroy natural and cultural goods and heritage. There is also a risk that much of the world’s remaining forests will be placed in ‘carbon offset schemes’ and carbon markets, which would significantly undermine Indigenous Peoples, peasants and local communities rights to land and territories. 

The World Bank is trying to set itself up as the world’s climate bank, through its Carbon Finance Unit (which purchases emissions reduction credits directly) and its Climate Investment Funds (which currently channel a large part of the funds for climate change measures in developing countries). Regional development banks are also increasing their portfolios of climate investment funds and loans. Yet, these same institutions continue to finance fossil fuel extraction and use: the World Bank for example, is the largest multilateral lender for oil and gas projects, and more than 80% of all oil projects it finances are for export back to wealthy Northern countries.

These false solutions are attractive to large transnational businesses because they facilitate access to the global South’s domestic markets and natural resources. Companies are very supportive of the CDM process, which allows them access to huge additional subsidies, even for unsustainable operations in the South, by selling the carbon credits generated.  Companies also play a leading role in the operation of carbon markets, acting as brokers, certifiers, consultants, and lobbyists.

Strategies:

• Raise awareness at all levels about the need to achieve climate justice.
• Raise awareness about the structural causes of climate change and the threat represented by false solutions, particularly among women at the grassroots level, communities, unions and students’ organizations.
• Produce accessible materials on climate justice and false solutions (in terms of language/style) in various formats (ex. Workbooks), from women’s perspective.
• Raise awareness about the relevance of what is at stake in Cancun 2010 Cop and Cape Town 2011 Cop, organize our presence at these forums to prevent false solutions such as market mechanisms and offsetting mechanisms from being imposed, and mobilize together following the call of VC for a 1.000 Cancuns. 
• Expose the impacts of agrofuels in Africa and Asia, and pressure the governments in countries where fuels are produced and where they are sold to stop and revert its expansion.
• Denounce the World Bank and its strategy to control climate financing and become the climate bank.
• Denounce the Copenhagen accord for serving the interest of the global north and the corporations. Use the Cochabamba peoples’ agreement as a political platform for mobilization and to defend climate justice.
• Build public support and mobilize around the call for the recognition and reparation of the climate debt.
• Within our fight to face structural causes of climate change and false solutions we will address and take action on the following issues: intellectual property rights, both on seeds and on technologies; genetically modified seeds; nuclear energy; agrofuels; REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation); plantations and monocultures.

AGENDA

International and regional event:

• Have common actions on March 8th (international women’s day), April 17 (international peasant struggle), October 16 (world food sovereignty day)
• Use international event to push on food sovereignty like G20 summit in South Korea November 2010, COP 16 in Cancun Mexico, December 2010, Organize “one thousand Cancun”
• Use regional event to push on food sovereignty like ASEAN Summit in September 2010 in Hanoi, 30th APRC of FAO September 2010 in South Korea.
• Social Movement Assembly Seminar in Dakar, Senegal, 5th to 7th November 2010
• Conference on Land Grabbing in Ghana organized by FoEI, September 2010.
• 17 -23 August, 2010 Women and People’s Summit of the America against militarization in Colombia.
• 13-17 October, 2010 , closure of III international action of WMW in Bukavu, Democratic Republic of Congo.
•  Week of Action against NATO, 15th to 21st November, 2010, Lisbon, Portugal.
• Food and Hunger conference in Africa 2011
• February 2011 WSF in Senegal.
• International forum against Agribusiness, 2010