Women’s Declaration on Food Sovereignty

[noamnety]

We, women from more than 40 countries, from different indigenous peoples of Africa, the Americas, Europe, Asia and Oceania and from different sectors and social movements, have gathered together in Sélingué (Mali) at Nyéléni 2007 to participate in the creation of a new right: the right to food sovereignty. We reaffirm our will to act to change the capitalist and patriarchal world which puts the interests of the market before the rights of people.

Women, who throughout history have been the creators of knowledge about food and agriculture, who still produce up to 80% of the food in the world’s poorest countries and are today the principal guardians of biodiversity and agricultural seeds, are particularly affected by neo-liberal and sexist policies.

We suffer the dramatic consequences of these policies: poverty, inadequate access to resources, patents on living organisms, rural exodus and forced migration, war and all forms of physical and sexual violence. Monocultures, including those dedicated to agrofuels, and the widespread use of chemicals and genetically-modified organisms have a harmful effect on the environment and on human health, particularly reproductive health.

The industrial model and the transnationals threaten the very existence of peasant agriculture, small-scale fishing and herding, as well as the small-scale preparation and sale of food in both urban and rural environments, all sectors where women play a major role. ...

http://www.nyeleni2007.org/spip.php?article310

[Jcrowley]

1. K&R

Yes

[grasswire]

2. very interesting, thanks

I passed this on to a Unitarian minister who is always looking for interesting things for sermons. Food sovereignty. Interesting.

[omega minimo]

3. So what's yer point!!11??

:yourock: K&R

[noamnety]

4. food, class, gender, face

... an upper-caste landowner chopped off all five fingers of a 10-year-old Dalit girl's hand with a sickle after catching her stealing a few spinach leaves from his property in Bihar state. She had been foraging for edible leaves for the family meal.

Such incidents of prejudice are routine, with Dalits punished for wearing watches or riding bicycles, all symbols of affluence and reserved traditionally only for the higher caste groups. While "unotuchability" was abolished decades ago, the practice continues. Its pervasive persistence emerged during the December 2004 tsunami, when many higher-caste survivors refused to share emergency shelter and food rations with Dalits. ...

(snip)

Efforts by Dalits such as Surekha Bhotmange, to demand their rights have provoked a brutal backlash from higher caste groups. In fact, incidents such as these, where witnesses, or those that seek judicial remedy, are brutally savaged, have become depressingly common. A Dalit rights activist from Punjab, Bant Singh, campaigning for the rights of landless or marginal farmers, has come under vicious attack a number of times. Members of the upper-caste, landowning community gang-raped his daughter. He pursued the case and secured the conviction of those responsible, who were sentenced to life imprisonment. Supporters of the rapists then organized further retribution: on 5 January 2006, Bant Singh was so badly beaten that both his arms and a leg had to be amputated.

http://www.opendemocracy.net/democracy-protest/dalits_4232.jsp

I am so tired of speaking with people who don't understand how the issues collide. So incredibly tired of explaining again and again how you can't discuss women's rights without discussing poverty, and of explaining, for the one thousandth time, how solving poverty in and of itself does not solve gender inequities. And I am tired of explaining why discussing women's rights while discussing poverty is not, in fact, sexist, because poverty is enforced in part through targeted acts against women.

[omega minimo]

5. thank you lwfern, for sharing your knowledge here

you are an asset to DU :toast:

[noamnety]

6. food, class, gender, RACE

race, not face. Urgh. My typing is not an asset to DU.

Thanks for the pat on the back, om. :)

Means a lot coming from you.

[omega minimo]

7. "face" made the point PERfectly

:spray:

[Morgana LaFey]

8. thru targeted acts against women AND

quite simply the fact that women are the ones around whom the whole concept and reality of "family" revolves. Most single-parent families (and there are a lot of them the world over) are women-headed, and that's true in any part of the world.

I remember a few years ago the genius boys on the right thought that they could make inroads against poverty if they just forced more women to marry, gave incentives for marrying (or DISincentives for NOT marrying). Force woen to name a father on birth certificates. Tie marriage to welfare programs somehow, use tax money to have faith-based programs promoting marriage. Ugh. (Or should I echo something I read a little earlier, from lwfern: ewwwww ewwwww ewwwww.)

The simple truth is that if men were more marriagable, women WOULD marry them. We women aren't stupid. We know life can be simpler -- and way better - - when ther are 2 adults in the house, if they're both responsible adults. If they both pull their weight, and esp. if one or both of them is bringing in a good income (and men can still do better at that than women, statistically speaking).

But we're also smart enough to know -- or LEARN (and fairly early) -- that a bad marriage is worse than NO marriage, and that poverty is preferrable than some alliances where the harm to us is greater, where our mate steals from us, or abuses us, or diddles our children.

I get angry just thinking about it.

Of COURSE poverty revolves around women, and affects us most. Men don't give a damn.

Oh sure, there are good men out there (I'm married to one), good fathers too. But it's NOT nearly universal, and the powers that be are perfectly content to let us and our children suffer.