Heidelberg, 16.04.2010 – On the International Day of Peasants’ Struggle, April 17, FIAN International together with many other civil society actors calls for an immediate stop of land grabbing. A new report published today by FIAN International documents the findings of two research missions on land grabbing to Kenya and Mozambique, and concludes that land grabbing violates human rights.
Over the past years vast tracks of agricultural lands have been taken over by foreign firms. Much of this land is located in African countries with fast increasing populations suffering hunger and under-nourishment. Such land grabbing has been happening largely outside public scrutiny. It has sparked debates in the media, in developmental institutions, in UN organisations and in civil society.
FIAN International has been working for more than twenty years against forced evictions of rural communities from their agricultural lands, pastures, forest or fishing grounds. In these two decades FIAN International has witnessed how peasant farming and pastoralism got increasingly marginalized as a matter of international and national policies. “People are now faced with losses of lands to an extent reminiscent of colonial times”, says Rolf Künnemann, Human Rights Director at FIAN International.
“Land grabbing denies land for local communities, destroys livelihoods, reduces the political space for peasant oriented agricultural policies and distorts markets towards increasingly concentrated agribusiness interests and global trade, rather than promoting sustainable peasant agriculture for local and national markets and for future generations”, says Sofia Monsalve, expert on Access to Land and Natural Resources with FIAN International. “It will also accelerate eco-system destruction and the climate crisis. Land grabbing violates human rights”, concludes Monsalve.
+ More information with Sofia Monsalve at 0049-6221-65300-30
+ The report is available in English here
+ The report is available in French here
+ An abridged version of the report dealing with Mozambique is available in Portuguese here
+ See and participate at a common Appeal by FIAN International and La Via Campesina to immediately stop land grabbing here