Journal
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HUMAN RIGHTS
Volume -, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD
DOI: 10.1080/13642987.2023.2291080
Keywords
Peasants rights; agricultural workers in Latin America; UN declaration on the rights of peasants; food sovereignty; class
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
The worsening conditions caused by the COVID-19 crisis have had a significant impact on rural and agricultural communities in Latin America. Interestingly, this happened at a time when the rights of these communities were recognized in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants (UNDROP). Unlike most universal human rights instruments, UNDROP focuses on a social class rather than gender, age, ethnicity, or other categories. This shift towards class as a social category may provide opportunities for legal mobilization, such as promoting class solidarity and addressing issues related to gender, access to land and seeds, and food sovereignty in rural areas. However, the formation of historic blocs is a contentious issue, as seen in the Lhaka Honhat Association Case.
Worsening conditions due to the COVID-19 crisis hit rural and agricultural communities in Latin America hard. Paradoxically, this happened when the specific rights of those communities were recognised in a newly adopted international instrument, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants or UNDROP. UNDROP departs from most universal human rights instruments negotiated in the UN by speaking for a group defined by social class and not gender, age, ethnicity, or other categories. In this sense, UNDROP appears to be inspired by a return to class, like instruments negotiated within different international organisations, more precisely the International Labor Organization. The reconsideration of class as a social category is not an endpoint for transnational peasant and agricultural workers' legal activism; it may create broader spaces for legal mobilisation. Such legal mobilisation may come in the form of class solidarity on issues such as gender in rural spaces, access to seeds and land, or the broader concept of food sovereignty. Nevertheless, historic bloc formation is contentious, and these same issues may be contingent, as exemplified in the Lhaka Honhat Association Case.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available