Grassroots International

Demise of Doha Negotiations a Cause for Celebration

2008-08-18T02:21:57+00:00

Grassroots International ally and grantee, the National Family Farm Coalition (a member of Grassroots' partner the Via Campesina ), celebrated the demise of the recent Doha Round of negotiations at the World Trade Organization in Geneva. Grassroots supports the NFFC's and Via's demand for the WTO to "get out of agriculture" as this is imperative to realizing food sovereignty. The disastrous neoliberal trade policies pursued by the WTO benefit the "industrial agricultural complex" while harming family farmers, peasants and farm workers worldwide.

Read the NFFC's thoughts on the long-awaited end of the Doha negotiations on their website .

Insights - Summer 2008

2008-08-18T02:14:23+00:00

Food and Climate Crises Show Urgency of Change

Dispatch from Haiti: "We are Forming Ourselves"

2008-08-14T02:03:53+00:00

"N'ap forme" are the first words that I hear after stepping into an open-air training center high in Haiti's Central Plateau after a nail-biting plane ride across the mountains in a four-seater Cessna. The training center is run by the Peasant Movement of Papay (MPP), a Grassroots International partner. N'ap forme is the Kreyol way of saying we are training, literally, we are forming ourselves.

Chavannes Jean Baptiste, the longtime leader of MPP and a fixture in the Haitian fight for resource rights, greets me as he would a member of his own family, even though it is the first time we have met face-to-face. The center is buzzing with activity – peasant leaders from all but two of Haiti's 10 departments have travelled long distances to bring their people's concerns to the table and figure out solutions to the root causes of economic hardship in their broken country.

I take long walks and motorcycle rides around the area, visiting some of the many projects that the MPP has pursued in their 35 years of organizing – during nearly half of which they have been a partner of Grassroots International. Even the land itself impresses me, with young forests and farms growing in what used to be a wasteland. Like much of Haiti today, the Papay region was so deforested that people were unable to live off the land and were defenseless in the face of natural disaster. Now Papay is rich with various fruit and forest cover, a humble paradise at the crossroads of hardship. A new friend from the MPP tells me, "It is us who have to undertake the work necessary to create such a place." His dream is to look out over the mountains in 10 years and see Haiti as it once was.

On the way to a local water source, where one of the projects supported by Grassroots International is in full swing, we stop to talk to the mayor. His Kreyol is thick and dense, but I understand the immediate importance of our solidarity with the community in conserving rainwater in this untypically arid corner of Haiti. Peasants come to work here, creating a sort of terracing with intricate rock walls in order to manage mountain runoffs. This allows rainwater to permanently pool, and fish are abundant. Trees are being planted everywhere. People tell me that while some international groups haphazardly plant random seeds, MPP agronomists are constantly studying which trees are native to Haiti and making every effort possible to recreate the natural landscape.

Back at the center, everything happens in the spirit of community and sustainability. We drink local coffee, eat from the plentiful gardens, and compost waste. Peasants grow vegetables in recycled tires and plastic tubes. Farmers come from far away to bring seedlings back to their lands that will both grow into trees and provide food for their families. A women's group busily harvests medicinal plants and a young people's group creates a new banana field. This is movement building and food sovereignty in action.

I join the training of peasant leaders for their afternoon meetings that run late into the night. Their analysis of the internal and external forces that plague Haiti is astonishing. We make lists on an old blackboard of macro-economic policies aimed at trade liberalization and privatization of resources that have sent Haiti on a downward spiral. It feels like one of my graduate-level seminars on the politics of globalization. The rain is so loud that we can barely hear one another. We huddle together and keep exploring – keep believing that another Haiti is possible. N'ap forme – We are forming ourselves.

Via Campesina Central America Appreciates Prompt Calls for Action

2008-08-13T01:10:09+00:00

"Life in Silin community in Honduras is coming back to normal," said Wendy Cruz, an advisor for Via Campesina Central America based in Honduras. In a telephone call yesterday, Cruz expressed gratitude for the prompt actions taken by allies: "Thanks for your support and solidarity. We received hundreds of emails and calls from friends worldwide. Your rapid response and caring gives strength to continue our struggle for land rights in Honduras."

According to Cruz, a local Human Rights Center is closely monitoring the safety of the remaining 300 families in the encampment, as fear of a backslash from landowners continues. In recent days, Rafael Alegría – a peasant leader of Honduras and member of the International Coordinating Committee of the Via Campesina – received death threats after a clash between the national police and peasant activists in the community of Silin left 11 dead and more injured. Due to pressure from the international community, the Honduran government sent a military squad to protect the area and avoid new confrontations.

The response from Grassroots International supporters and allies in the U.S. was fantastic. Activists sent more than 1,400 emails in the span of two days. Thanks for your promptness. With your support, we will continue joining peasants and indigenous people around the globe in the struggle for justice.

Women and the Food Crisis

2008-08-07T00:59:48+00:00

Since I started my internship with Grassroots International in May, I have come to realize the true magnitude of the food crisis. The way that the economic system produces and distributes food is leaving far too many people hungry and jobless. Throughout my research, I studied the effect that the crisis has had on women, and I believe that their role, though historically overlooked, is crucial to finding a sustainable solution. I believe, along with everyone at Grassroots International, that women's economic and land rights are not just rights that they deserve as people, but steps that must be taken in order to bring the world out of the food crisis.

The severity of the current food crisis has shocked people all over the world and called into question the effectiveness of a free-market economy that allows so many to starve. The privatization of resources necessary to farm and the increasing price of farming supplies is forcing small farmers to abandon their work. Big agribusinesses are making huge profits as prices rise, but family farmers don't benefit from the increased costs. Fertilizer, land, and water sources are bought up by big companies, and land formerly used to grow food is often switched to produce only corn and grain meant to make more lucrative ethanol, taking food out of the mouths of the hungry.

Though the victims of this broken economic system are many, female peasants have suffered enormous losses. Representing the majority of the working poor, women work on land they do not own, and live under a market system in which they cannot fully participate. Long denied the same level of access to the means of production as men, the rising costs of supplies now makes it nearly impossible for women to support themselves. When they can no longer afford to grow their own food, women are often compelled to take a job on a plantation, where they are favored because owners consider them easier to manipulate than men – they pay them lower wages and use them for tedious activities that require great attention and careful handling, though these tasks are often dangerous. The current economy has long assigned no real value to the labor of women, and despite their exclusion, its collapse is ironically their downfall as well.

Grassroots International believes that helping women gain autonomy is crucial to fixing some of the damage caused by the food crisis. Women, since they have long farmed the fields they cannot own, have retained the knowledge of how best to farm the land, in a way that they have been preserving for centuries. If one was to give these rural women better access to land, water, and the resources needed to effectively farm, they would be able to regain the ability to feed themselves and their families, breaking the cycle of hunger and dependency. Here at Grassroots International we are working hard to fight the destructive effects of the food crisis, and we believe that helping peasant women is essential not only just to improve their situation, but also to give communities the strength they need, through the skills of these strong women.

Support to Youth National Conference in Brazil

2008-08-06T04:42:38+00:00

Grassroots International is pleased to announce our support to Via Campesina-Brazil's Youth Collective. The Youth Collective is a broad coalition of rural and urban working class youth dedicated to support training and networking between young people organizing for social justice in Brazil. Via Campesina-Brazil, formed by seven peasant, indigenous, women and youth organizations, is leading several initiatives through the Youth Collective to educate young people about the impacts of neo-liberalism and globalization, empower new generations of organizers through learning exchange and establish new alliances with counterpart organizations in urban areas.

The Youth Collective is organizing its National Conference in the State University of Niteroi, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The First National Conference, Linking Urban and Rural Youth, is expected to gather 1,400 participants from 27 states of Brazil. Through the generosity of our donors, Grassroots International was able to make a small contribution to the empowerment of young people in Brazil.

Playing the Blame Game: Who is Behind the Food Crisis?

2008-07-25T01:37:28+00:00

Research presented in the Oakland Institute's recent publication "The Blame Game: Who is behind the World Food Crisis?" pokes holes through the myth that the "economic prosperity" experienced by an emerging minority in India has been a major contributor to the dramatic increase in global food prices.

The report challenges the messaging spin of the US State Department that both scapegoats the two largest emergent economies (India and China) for the surge in food prices and supports a neoconservative argument "that the economic boom has improved people's diets ... also helps generate the perception that the market friendly reforms initiated in India have contributed positively to the to uplifting of the poor and underprivileged. Data proves the contrary."

While several world leaders, including President Lula of Brazil and President Bush of the US, were quick to blame India and China's growing economies as the cause of the sharp increase in food prices, Grassroots International and our partners point to underlying long-term structural causes of the broken food system. For many years Grassroots International has been working with our partners in the Global South on resource rights (rights to land and water) and the right to food. We have learned from our partners and allies – mostly peasants and family farmers – that food sovereignty, or the local control of food production and consumption, is the most powerful way to address the food crisis.

I invite you to read "The Blame Game: Who is behind the World Food Crisis?" to learn more about how "growing hunger and poverty in India amidst plenty is emblematic of hunger worldwide [and how the crisis in food prices has been] manufactured by decades of neglect of agriculture in poor countries.".

Rocks in the Sun

2008-07-21T00:00:52+00:00

Haiti's fight for basic human rights often finds its way into the Kreyol language's vivid and plentiful proverbs. Sak vid pa kanpe means that a hungry person cannot do anything – literally, an empty sack cannot stand up. Of the many root causes of the current food crisis that is rendering the poor majority of Haitians unable to feed them themselves, the lack of water rights is of utmost significance.

A focus group of Haitian woman in Port-de-Paix concluded that the water problem is what often causes massive hunger. They reported that the water problem is causing "people to die in its hands."

Bad water policies, in fact, largely follow the same lines as bad food policies. Privatization and free trade guidelines set forth by international financial institutions make it nearly impossible for a country like Haiti to be able to provide clean and sufficient water to the growing population. International policies aimed at structural adjustment and export-led growth are linked to the commoditization of water and the poor's increasing difficulty in accessing it.

Haiti's trade agreements make it one of the most open economies in the world, yet Neoliberal policies have continually battered the country. One such example is the US government's approach to loan lending within the Inter-American Development Bank. After Haiti was forced to reduce basic services and adhere to privatization, the US government made it clear that if any money was to be lent, the Haitian government was to pursue unrelated political priorities that would benefit the US and further worsen the local economy. In one case, these conditions involved removing all subsidies on petrol (which were already lower than the highly petrol subsidized US), an option that would have shocked the entire country.

Countries in the Global North that are responsible for the policies that ail countries like Haiti are all too often oblivious to the human suffering they cause. Another Haitian Kreyol proverb says it beautifully – wòch nan dlo pa konnen doulè wòch nan soley – rocks in the water do not know the suffering of rocks in the sun.

Grassroots International and its partners and allies in Haiti recognize the need to address these underlying causes. Every Grassroots International partner in Haiti works for access to and management of water, some within their communities and others at the national level. Each of them is intimately acquainted with the central place of water in their struggle for a new and better Haiti.

A joint report recently released by Partners in Health, Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights, the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, and Haiti-based Zanmi Lansante outlines the details of Haiti's water situation. Wòch nan Soley: The Denial of the Right to Water in Haiti provides an intimate study of the situation on the ground in Haiti and the past and present policies that fuel it. This report explains the linkages and suggests moving forward in a way that will work for Haiti rather than against it by adapting a rights-based approach. A rights-based approach includes the key elements of empowerment, indivisibility, non-discrimination and attention to vulnerable groups, accountability, and participation. Progressing in this direction moves away from the politics of power, allowing Haitians to ensure their own survival.

Haiti's right to water is at the very core of achieving Haiti's other basic human rights. Adequate, clean water is a core component of food sovereignty and the right to life with dignity. Dignity breeds hope, and according to a well known proverb, lespwa fè viv. Hope gives life.

West Bank Wall Elevates Barrier to Water Access for Palestinians

2008-07-20T23:46:43+00:00

The construction of the Wall by the Israeli government in the West Bank is viewed by many as the third and final wave of expulsion of the Palestinian people, following the forced Palestinian exodus in 1948 in the wake of Israel's independence, and then the 1967 Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. Perhaps, more than any other element of the occupation, the Wall illustrates the severity of the Palestinian situation and the urgency for access to resources, including water.

The World Health Organization records that Israel uses 83% of the water in the West Bank. After the vast majority of water is expropriated from their land, only 17% is left for Palestinians. As a whole, Palestinians presently use only one quarter of the water consumed by Israelis and one third of their Jordanian neighbors, according to a study by the Palestinian Hydrology Group. Water use in Israeli settlements, deemed illegal by international law and the world community, exacerbates the situation. On average, Israeli settlers are allowed 2,400 cubic meters of water per capita per year. This number is 48 times greater than the 50 cubic meter average allotted to a Palestinian civilian. To add insult to injury, oftentimes sewage runoffs from hilltop settlements compromise the health and limited water access of the Palestinian villages located beneath.

Now the Wall adds to the disparity. It cuts deep into the West Bank rather than being built on the internationally recognized Green Line – annexing not only land but Palestinians' most vital source of life - water. The human cost of not having enough water has been devastating for Palestinians, in some cases threatening their very survival. As a barrier that ensures unequal access to resources like water, the Wall makes a geographically contiguous State within the 1967 borders virtually impossible.

The Wall has obstructed and further threatened any Palestinian control over water. The barrier's construction strategically underwent its first phase in the north, cutting off access to the Western Aquifer. It further changes the territorial allocation of the Western Groundwater Basin leaving the majority of it trapped between the Wall and the Green Line with Israel gaining control of an additional 38% of the Basin.

Israel's control of West Bank water allows for control and domination by the settlements and the government in any future negotiations. The Wall's final phase will essentially mean cutting off the Jordan River and the Jordanian border to Palestinians. The strict Israeli policy of controlling water includes permitting, denying permits to and monitoring all wells built by Palestinians, often destroying them.

The politics of controlling water resources are in no way intended to be clandestine, as they were clearly outlined in several agreements. During the 1978 Camp David Accords with Egypt, Israel stated its intent to maintain control of the Western Aquifer in any future agreement. Again at Camp David in July of 2000, the purportedly generous offer proposed to Palestinians failed to afford authority over their water. Topographical evaluation confirms that the Wall annexes the mass of the Western Aquifer so that the Palestinian localities are dependent upon Israel for the quantity and quality of water that they receive. The Israeli-owned company Mekerot sells water to Palestinians at prices they cannot afford.

In addition to the enormous implications of the Wall as a physical barrier that secures the cantonization of the West Bank, its effect on people's access to the most precious of all resources is suffocating. The human cost amounts to a deepening cycle of poverty and hopelessness, and further complicates the possibility for a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Million Cistern Project Provides Life-giving Water in Brazil

2008-07-20T23:16:32+00:00

Brazil's northeast, with the biggest population of any arid region in the world, is home to many of the more than 10 million Brazilians who live without regular access to clean and safe drinking water. For years the people of the region struggled to survive with no help from national public policy makers. Now policy makers are pursuing two very different approaches to the problem of the northeast's water insecurity: a community driven, grassroots public policy that supports building low-cost cisterns to provide water to the families who need it most, and a top-down mega-project to redirect the São Francisco River through a massive series of dams and canals.

Polo Sindical, an association of rural unions and a Grassroots International partner based in the northeastern states of Pernambuco and Bahia, is a key part of the movement that was instrumental in building the grassroots model and struggling to make sure that the mega-project does not have catastrophic results for the region's citizens.

Polo emerged in 1979 to protest the construction of the Itaparica Dam, a hydro-electric dam in the mid-course region of the São Francisco River. When the dam displaced thousands of peasants and small-scale farmers, bringing land and water rights became top priorities for Polo. One of their early victories was the resettlement of the affected families.

The idea for the cistern project was born in the 1980s, when Manuel Apolônio de Carvalho, a worker from the northeast, migrated to São Paulo to find work. He realized that the construction techniques he learned to build swimming pools for the wealthy could also be used to capture rainwater for the poor. He returned to the northeast and began collaborating with local groups like Polo to perfect the system using the principles of agro-ecology. Each cistern can capture enough water in a few rainy months to provide water for an average household of 5-6 people for the rest of the year.

In addition to building cisterns with their own resources, the groups organized and lobbied and now the federal government is helping to finance cistern production. What began as a grassroots self-help movement has become a national policy–embodied in the Million Cistern Project–that will provide drinking water to 5 million people.

Polo Sindical and its affiliated organizations are members of a larger network called Articulação no Semi-Árido (ASA), or in English the Semi-Arid Network. ASA includes more than 800 organizations. As one of the 45 management units of ASA, as of 2005 Polo Sindical has overseen the construction 1,379 cisterns benefiting 7,049 people. In all, more than 100,000 cisterns were built between 2001 and 2005 (including 77,000 that were financed by the Brazilian government).

While cisterns provide life-giving water to thousands of homes, some would prefer to develop water resources on a grander scale. The Lula government is the latest in a series to propose a monumental reconfiguration of the landscape of the northeast by re-distributing the water of the São Francisco River. Political leaders believe that the plan will transform the dry northeast into a productive agricultural region, and re-cast the political landscape in favor of whichever party is able to succeed in pushing the plan through.

Brazil's social movements aren't so sure about the supposed benefits of the plan. Over the years, similar projects around the world have had disastrous results, from the toxic wasteland left by the evaporation of the Aral Sea, to the catastrophic flooding of the canal-ized Mississippi. Several points in the São Francisco project are troubling: environmental impacts may cost the sustainability of poor people's livelihoods; the claim that 12 million people will have access to water seems wildly exaggerated; irrigation projects along the way will displace hundreds or thousands of people to make room for large agribusinesses; and last but not least, the control over water resources will remain in the hands of ruling local political groups, not in the hands of families of communities. The proponents of the plan in the government have not responded properly to these concerns.

Social movements are working on different fronts to fight these potentially disastrous top-down policies. Among other strategies, they are using legal procedures to stop the São Francisco transposition project.

Through the support of Grassroots International, Polo has built cisterns in rural households in Pernambuco and the neighboring state of Bahia, organized workshops about water management in dry areas and is pioneering the development of new technology like underground dams that trap sub-surface water in seasonal streams. "With Grassroots' help, we are developing new agro-ecological solutions," said Ademar Silva, one of the directors of Polo Sindical. With the help of a dedicated movement, Polo is transforming the political and economic landscape of the Northeast from the grassroots.