Photo by Gayatri Malhotra on Unsplash
It’s unclear what the Canadian government’s position is at this time.
While a defender who PBI accompanies tells us that some corporations and states have been blocking the creation of this Treaty, we have also been told that Canada has largely been absent from the process so far.
UN Binding Treaty talks
La Via Campesina is an international movement bringing together millions of peasants, small and medium size farmers, landless people, rural women and youth, indigenous people, migrants and agricultural workers from around the world. Built on a strong sense of unity, solidarity between these groups, it defends peasant agriculture for food sovereignty as a way to promote social justice and dignity and strongly opposes corporate driven agriculture that destroys social relations and nature.
Neoliberal globalization has opened the doors for the savage exploitation of the world by the big economic powers. Megaprojects, agribusiness and militarization, among other processes, express a patriarchal, neoliberal and racist system that amounts to an assault on life as such. As a result, peoples’ rights have been systematically violated, the Earth and its resources destroyed, pillaged and contaminated, while corporations continue committing economic and ecological crimes with total impunity. They also throw us into an environmental and climate crisis of unknown proportions, for which they do not take responsibility.
In order to challenge corporate power and the system that protects and benefits it, it is necessary and urgent to give a systematic response. We must unite our experiences, struggles, collectively learn from our victories and our failures, share strategies and analysis in order to curb the impunity of the transnationals. The United Nations Binding Treaty process on transnational corporations and human rights constitutes a space, within the framework of the Human Rights Council of the United Nations, from where we can force corporations to respect human rights, creating a mechanism so that affected states and peoples can sue transnational corporations.
PBI co-organized virtual roundtable notes that Canada abstained in vote on the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants
One of the speakers was Andrea Nuila who coordinates the gender and women’s rights work at the International Secretariat of FIAN International.
Her presentation referenced that Canada had abstained in the vote on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and other people working in rural areas that was adopted by the UN General Assembly in December 2018. |Read more|