1st Edition
The United Nations' Declaration on Peasants' Rights
This is the first book to address and review the United Nations' Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP), which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in December 2018.
Food security and sustainable agri-food systems, responsible governance of natural resources, and human rights are among the key themes of the new millennium. The Declaration is the first internationally negotiated instrument bridging these issues, calling for a radical paradigm change in the agricultural sector while giving voice to peasants and rural workers, recognised as the drivers of more equitable and resilient food systems. The book unfolds the impact of the Declaration in the wider realm of law and policy making, especially concerning the new human rights standards related to access and control of natural resources and the governance of food systems. The chapters in the book touch on a broad array of topics, including women’s rights, the role of and impact on indigenous peoples, food sovereignty, climate change, land tenure, and agrobiodiversity. Voices from outstanding scholars and practitioners are gathered together to inform and trigger a further debate on the negotiation process, the innovative and potentially disruptive contents, the relations with other fields of law, and the practical scope of the Declaration. The volume concludes with a collection of case studies that provide concrete examples to help us understand the potential impacts of the Declaration at regional, national, and local levels.
This book is the first comprehensive tool to navigate the Declaration and is designed for students, researchers, and practitioners in the fields of food and agriculture law, peasant, agrarian and rural studies, human rights and environmental law, and international development and cooperation.
Chapter 6 of this book is available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.routledge.com. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
Foreword
Hilal Elver
Introduction
Mariagrazia Alabrese, Adriana Bessa, Margherita Brunori, and Pier Filippo Giuggioli
1. The Peasants’ Declaration: State Obligations and Justiciability
Francesco Francioni
Part I – Rights Holders
2. Defining Peasants in the UNDROP
Marc Edelman
3. Indigenous Peoples and Traditional Local Communities in the UNDROP: Synergies and Challenges
Adriana Bessa and Jérémie Gilbert
4. No Food Sovereignty without Feminism? Negotiating Gender Equality in the UNDROP
Joanna Bourke Martignoni and Priscilla Claeys
5. Shedding a Light on the Human Rights of Small-scale Fishers: Complementarities and Contrasts between the UNDROP and the Small-Scale Fisheries Guidelines
Elisa Morgera and Julia Nakamura
Part II – Natural Resources Access and Control
6. The Right to Land
Lorenzo Cotula
7. The Rights to Water and Sanitation and the UNDROP: the Implementation Challenges of a Comprehensive Approach
Mara Tignino, Francesca Restifo, and Tadesse Kebebew
8. The Right to Seeds: Using the Commons as a Sustainable Governance Scheme to Implement Peasants’ Rights?
Sandrine Le Teno, Christine Frison, and Samuel Cogolati
9. The Rights to Food and Food Sovereignty in the UNDROP
Christophe Golay
Part III – Food and Agriculture Governance
10. Peasants Rights and Food Systems Governance
Smita Narula
11. The UNDROP and Climate Change: Squaring the Circle?
Mariagrazia Alabrese and Annalisa Savaresi
12. Farming Models and Peasants’ rights
Eloisa Cristiani and Giuliana Strambi
13. The UNDROP, Biocultural Rights, and Sustainability Standards for Agri-food Systems
Alessandra Di Lauro
Part IV – The Declaration on the Ground
14. Land Tenure: Assessing Kenya’s Legal Approach and the Practice towards Landlessness amongst Rural Smallholder Farmers Including Women’s Rights
Robert Kibugi
15. Reimagining Agrobiodiversity Conservation and Agricultural Innovation from the Grassroots up: The Case of the Peliti Seed Network in Greece
Elsa Tsioumani
16. The Rights of Small-Scale Fisherwomen in the EU: the Potential Impact of the UNDROP
Adriana Bessa and Miguel Ángel Martín López
17. The UNDROP and the Case Law of the Inter-American Human Rights System: Potential Impacts and Insights from Hacienda Brasil Verde Case
Naiara Posenato
18. Land Acquisition and Public Interest Litigation in India
Margherita Brunori and Pier Filippo Giuggioli
Conclusions
Mariagrazia Alabrese, Adriana Bessa, Margherita Brunori, and Pier Filippo Giuggioli
Biography
Mariagrazia Alabrese is Associate Professor at the Institute of Law, Politics and Development at the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, Italy.
Adriana Bessa is a Brazilian lawyer, independent researcher, and guest lecturer at the Université Catholique de Lille and the Universidad de Alicante.
Margherita Brunori is Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Sociology and Social Science at the University of Trento and in the Departmnt of Law at the University of Brescia, Italy.
Pier Filippo Giuggioli is Associate Professor in the Department of Italian and Supranational Public Law at the University of Milan, Italy.
