concern 6
Full Resolution on Concern No. 6:
Agrarian reform and the rights of peasants, farm workers and fisherfolk against feudal, semi-feudal and capitalist exploitation and oppression
The last decades of the 20th century have seen the gravest crises of imperialism and in response to these crises, the rapacity of monopoly capitalism. While wealth and resources, including land, water and forests are increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few, the vast majority of the world's population is being subjected to the demands of imperialist globalization. They are facing increasing domination and exploitation by monopoly capital and its domestic lackeys resulting in their further impoverishment and marginalization.
The peasants, farm workers and fisherfolk, who make up the majority of the world's population, are hit hard by the nefarious consequences of imperialist globalization. In agriculture, the imperialist monopolies are imposing high prices for farm inputs while pushing farm-gate prices down. Big commercial fishing is plundering the seas depriving the majority of small fisher folk from their livelihoods. Import liberalization and deregulation are threatening the livelihoods of numerous families who rely on farming for their source of income. They cannot compete with cheap imports from the rich countries that are dumping their heavily subsidized agricultural products in the underdeveloped countries. Peasants, farm workers and fisher folk alike are driven from their lands to make place for the commercial projects of big business and now even water is being privatize.
At the same time, imperialist globalization has continued the feudal bondage that keeps the majority of the world's peasantry and fisher folk enslaved. Indeed, the age-old problem of landlessness is still the principal problem of the vast majority of farmers, especially in the underdeveloped countries. Big landlords, who monopolize the ownership of land, are intensifying their exploitation of the peasants. Besides, they suffer from usury, resulting in indebtedness, and unfavorable market prices. Even public, tribal and communal lands are being privatized. Land and water use conversions carried out by TNCs, big agro corporations and local big landlords in the name of export-bane industrialization had already displaced over a million farmers, farmworkers and fisherfolk and this has further aggravated the condition of rural poor and intensified land reconcentration in the hands of transnational corporations and big feudal lords in the countryside. Through the intensification of monopolistic aquaculture, the semi-feudal exploitation of fisher folk is also increasing. The institutions of imperialist globalization like the IMF, the World Bank, regional banks like the ADB, the WTO and the TNCs are brazenly conniving as they share the same interests. The imperialist camp headed by the United States also utilizes regional trade formations like APEC, NAFTA and CAFTA to ensure and perpetuate their dominance over the world's economy and satisfy their endless thirst for super profits at the expense of exploited peasants, farmworkers, fisherfolk and other rural producers across the globe.
Farm workers also suffer from low wages and substandard and unacceptable living and working conditions, unacceptable even to international labor standards. It also comes to a point that many of them are forced to migrate to have a better living. Peasant, farm worker and fisherfolk women and children are being more exploited and marginalized.
Farmers and farm workers in Europe and North America also have to endure the intensifying crisis of global capitalism. Small family farms are marginalized and eventually eaten up by big agribusiness corporations. In the case of the United States, small family farms are held hostage by big agro-corporations through contract growing where farming families are compelled to sell their produce to big agro-corporations in the US. State subsidies and social services are removed while incentives are redirected to big corporate farms. Unemployment and poverty in rural areas are on the rise.
Organizations of peasants, farm workers and fisherfolk the world over are braving increasing state repression to rise against these obnoxious trends. Puppet and anti-farmer and anti-people states and governments launch all-out war and large-scale military operations to repress farmers and other toiling masses in the rural areas fighting massive landlessness, injustice, poverty and hunger. Even the joint US-national military exercises are meant to suppress and repress farmers fighting imperialist globalization, war and plunder. They are opposing the further onslaught of the agents of imperialist globalization on their lives and livelihood while they are striving to cast off the feudal ties that are restraining them.
They are actively campaigning for their democratic rights to land and fishing grounds as only genuine agrarian and fisheries reform can give them their due. They are forging ties with the other oppressed sectors of society, especially the workers and indigenous communities, in a joint campaign for development and industrialization that is geared toward the needs of the people.
Increasingly, other progressive and democratic sectors and organizations are supporting the just demands of the peasants, farm workers and fisherfolk as they are also opposing imperialist globalization. They are eager to link arms with the organizations of peasants, farm workers and fisherfolk in a broad opposition to any kind of exploitation and domination.
The militant struggle of the peasants, farm workers and fisherfolk is already bearing fruit through many initial victories. Numerous farmers, supported by militant peasant organizations, have been able to resist eviction from their lands, to reduce the land rent or to improve the conditions of the farm workers. Other organized farmers have been able to carry out land occupations through militant assertion of their rights. Militant protest demonstrations have confronted meetings of pro-imperialist organizations like the WTO.
We vow to continue the struggle of the farmers, farm workers and fisherfolk against all forms of imperialist and feudal oppression and exploitation. Therefore, we put forward the following immediate demands:
1. Implement and pursue genuine agrarian and fisheries reform, a just and democratic demand of peasants and fisherfolk. "Land to the tiller" should be its basic principle.
2. (Curb ) Expose and oppose the agrochemical and agribusiness transnational monopolies and stop their development and promotion of genetically modified organisms. Through their intensifying monopoly on agriculture, these corporations are responsible for the destruction of the environment and the livelihoods of farmers and fisherfolk.
3. End all forms of state repression (local to global repression) against farmers, farmworkers and fisherfolk who pursue their democratic rights through militant struggle. Free all political prisoners. Expose and oppose criminalization of agrarian cases.
4. Stop joint US-national military exercises such as the RP-US joint military exercises (Balikatan or shoulder to shoulder) in the Philippines and other countries which are directed against militant and progressive organizations, anti-imperialist forces and national liberation movements fighting for genuine democracy and national emancipation. These joint US-national exercises also serve as tool for state repression and national oppression.
5. Junk the World Trade Organization (WTO) as its Agreement on Agriculture has already wrought considerable havoc on the farmers and fisherfolk the world over.
6. Junk all Free Trade Agreements like AFTA, NAFTA, CAFTA, and APEC.
7. Stop the deceptive programs of the International Monetary Fund-World Bank (e.g. the market-assisted land reform and its mega-infrastructure projects) and other multilateral organizations that are only meant to intensify the exploitation of the peasantry.
8. Cancel all unjust debts of peasants, farm workers and fisherfolk. Stop all usurious practices against peasants.
9. Educate, mobilize, and organize farm workers to analyze their situation and create a unified action against imperialist policies.
10. Expose NGOs masquerading as pro farmers and pro-poor and which are serving as counter-revolutionaries and agents of imperialism and reaction.
While we recognize the importance of strong peasant movements in our own countries, we are also resolved to forge firm solidarity among farmers, farmers, fisherfolk and the working people and anti-imperialist forces all over the world to advance the democratic demands and struggles of the peasants, farm workers and fisherfolk for genuine agrarian reform and against imperialist globalization and plunder.
The broad peasant and rural people alliances at the local and international levels shall solidify and strengthen efforts and campaigns to intensify the resistance against imperialist globalization, plunder and war, expose and oppose all the US-led imperialist camp's tools and instrumentalities that put farmers and the rest of the toiling masses to slavery and worldwide exploitation by foreign monopoly capital.
While mass education, solid organizing and mobilizations of farmers, farmworkers, fisherfolk and oppressed people in the countryside are primarily considered in building strong peasant and rural organizations, the need to increase and expand the membership of farmer, farmworker and fisherfolk organizations in the ILPS is a paramount concern for all anti-imperialist and democratic forces.
We further resolve to adopt the following plan of action:
1. Exchange information that can be useful in our struggles. Encourage exchange visits where we can learn from each other's experiences. The Peasant Study Commission of the ILPS shall take the lead in providing venue for a deeper understanding of all farmers and rural people's struggle, the situation they face and the challenges they confront through education, collective discussion and exchange of information and literatures.
2. Coordinate campaigns at the regional and global level in order to amplify their impact. The workshop group proposed the holding of a parallel summit on the occasion of the 10th year of WTO in Hong Kongin 2005.
3. Support each other's national and local campaigns as an expression of international solidarity. #