09/04/2018
Business profit or diverse food systems?
more
A new report unveils how corporations and governments are actively pushing for commercial seeds in West Africa having profound implications on people’s diets and rights.
21/11/2022
As competition to control the world’s water resources increases the 2022 Right to Food and Nutrition Watch calls for global fisheries governance that recognizes small-scale fishers as custodians of water ecosystems and protects their rights from the onslaught of extractive industries and other commercial interests.
09/04/2018
more
A new report unveils how corporations and governments are actively pushing for commercial seeds in West Africa having profound implications on people’s diets and rights.
13/10/2016
Valuing Women and the Seed They Keep more
In Africa as in other regions of the world, it is the seed systems women value and maintain that form the bedrock of food and nutrition security for families and communities. However, their resilience in fulfilling multiple and crucial roles are not only challenged by persistent gender inequality and religious fundamentalism, but also by the impact of migration, conflict and HIV/AIDS. The current emphasis on industrialising African agriculture will result in large scale dispossession of seed, land and water and so undermine women’s rights in a way that will have a devastating impact on future generations.
The piece "African Food Sovereignty: Valuing Women and the Seeds they Keep" argues that, to ensure continued access to seeds and land, we need to pay attention not only to gender equality but also to the intergenerational impacts of patriarchy.
13/10/2016
The Neglected Backbone of the Right to Food and Nutrition more
This article discusses the importance of seed control and agricultural biodiversity for the right to food and nutrition. The authors argue that seeds are the neglected backbone of this human right, and that new ways to respect, protect and fulfill people's access to and use of seeds, plants, and animals must take center stage in the ongoing development of the right to food and nutrition, within the framework of food sovereignty. The authors also advocate the recognition of a stand-alone human right to seeds. Two complementary insight boxes describe how farmers' rights to seeds are currently protected in international legal regimes, how and where these regimes conflict, and describe ongoing efforts to better protect peasant seed systems in the framework of the negotiation of a Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas at the UN Human Rights Council. A third insight box shares the experience of a seed sovereignty experiment in war-torn Syria, which calls itself the 15th Garden.
13/10/2016
Experiences from Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Honduras and Guatemala more
This article discusses ongoing struggles in the region with regards to seed sovereignty. It reveals that civil society in Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Honduras, and Guatemala is combining resistance to GMOs and industrial certified seeds with legal strategies to protect peasants' seed rights and associated traditional knowledge.