Social Movements

GROWING POWER IN PEASANT SEEDS SYSTEMS: Farmers seeds and struggle against GMOs, AGRA- 2nd Green Revolution

Report on a workshop at the World Social Forum in Tunis to analyse and build strategies to strengthen peasant seed systems, and challenge the forces and technologies that undermine them (GMOs, AGRA and monopoly seed laws)

Our analysis, and that of many communities and organisations across Asia, is that the CDM is an extension of the generalised approach to big project and energy intensive development that has systematically marginalised indigenous peoples and local communities and over- exploited the Earth. The “clean development mechanism” is, quite simply, a mechanism that allows polluters to avoid binding emissions reductions in one location, while shifting emissions to another location. At the same time, it allows corporations and state entities to reap additional profits from projects that are questionable in terms of sustainability, community benefits or even addressing climate change.

This was the simple yet powerful message from the ASEAN Grassroots People’s Assembly (AGPA), held November 13 to 16 In Phnom Penh and attended by about 4000 Cambodians and another 200 people from other ASEAN countries.

Via Campesina International, by means of this booklet, hopes to encourage debate and reflection concerning a subject that unfortunately is part of the daily life of many women all around the world: the phenomenon violence against women, systematically silenced, naturalized and made invisible by capitalist patriarchic society.

This material gives continuity to the Global Campaign to End Violence against Women that was launched by Via Campesina in 2008. This booklet will guide discussions in our meetings and educational processes related to this theme. It also serves as the foundation for our daily actions and struggles to end violence against women.

Participatory democracy has been studied as an auxiliary to state processes and as an institutional and cultural part of social movements. Studies of the use of participa- tory democracy by the Zapatistas of Mexico and the Movimento Sem Terra (Landless Movement—MST) of Brazil show a shared concern with autonomy, in particular avoidance of demobilization through the clientelism and paternalism induced by gov- ernment programs and political parties. Both movements stress training in democracy (the experience of “being government”) and the obligation to participate. Detailed examination of their governance practices may be helpful to communities building democratic movements in other places.

Keywords: Democracy, Social movements, Governance, Zapatistas, Movimento Sem Terra, MST

Smallholder agriculture is the foundation of Myanmar’s culture, and the bedrock of the nation’s local and national economies as well as food security. The country’s poetry, literature and art all reflect the prominent role of rural farming life.