Summit of the People “WTO Out – Building Sovereignty”, Buenos Aires, December 12th and 13th 2017.
The participants of the Forum on Food Sovereignty held in the city of Buenos Aires on December 12th and 13th want to express our agreements regarding the construction of territories of peace for the people: the peasants of the world and every community struggling to remain in our ancestral territories and to continue feeding humanity, as we have done for the last ten thousand years, while at the same time fighting for a worthy life in the cities with healthy, locally produced food.
Over 300 attendees to this Forum on Food Sovereignty – peasants, indigenous peoples, fishers and food producers from more than 30 countries in 4 continents – denounce first of all the violence of Free Trade, clearly expressed in this ministerial summit by the censorship of the Argentinean government, with the acceptance of and in collusion with the WTO, which prevented many representatives or social organizations from expressing their opinions and positions about this summit. Thus it is proven that the “freedom” this ministerial summit defends is only the freedom to impose the will of the powerful while 99% of humanity is left out of that closed, secret, walled space where they intend to make decisions that will affect all the peoples of the world, decisions marked by violence.
And it is Violence, what the agribusiness and corporate interests exerts every day on our territories, from where we are expelled, persecuted, criminalized and murdered, while they defend their interests and their profits rise exponentially.
It is violence that murdered Berta Caceres on March 3th, 2016 in Honduras and violence prevents its people today from exercising their right to choose their government.
It is violence that took the lives of Santiago Maldonado and Rafael Nahuel in the last three months in the Argentinean Patagonia; young men murdered for their solidarity with the struggle for the right to their land of the Mapuche people.
Violence corners us peasants and indigenous people worldwide in barely a quarter of the available land, while we continue to be the main source of food for all of humanity.
Violence is agribusiness destroying three fourths of the agricultural seeds we inherited from our ancestors, while they attempt to take ownership of the rest through seed laws and patents.
Violence are corporations seeking to turn our food into commodities and producing the largest food crisis in history with more than half the population malnourished or eating poorly, in starvation and with multiple deprivations and chronic illnesses due to overweight and obesity; a suffering that is worse among the most vulnerable.
Violence is the imposition of new and increasingly dangerous technologies without any debate, consultation or public participation; technologies such as GMOs, the new biotechnological developments, geo-engineering or the new gene editing techniques that threaten every life system worldwide.
Violence is the imposition of false solutions to the many different crises – food, climatic, energetic – that only continue the process of extraction and grabbing of our common goods.
Violence is capitalism and its destruction of Mother Earth, our Pachamama, destroying the climate, our forests, our soils, our plants, our animals, our common goods; contaminating our rivers and seas and turning the planet into a desert where the possibility of life itself is threatened.
Violence is what this racist patriarchal and murderous system exerts in our lives every day at every level.
We once again say, ENOUGH VIOLENCE! And we will continue building another world, taking care of our Mother Earth and feeding the peoples of the world with:
– Our commitment to continue working towards Food Sovereignty as platform, political principle and basis of our actions in order to guarantee a world without hunger and a land that is taken care of by peasant men and women who nourish it with love and awareness.
– Our commitment to defend our territories as Territories of Peace where land, water and diversity are integral parts of a full life in harmony with all living beings.
– Our commitment to continue the defense of these territories against the violence of the capital, the commodification of life and the destruction consequence of megaprojects in the name of so called “progress”.
– Our commitment to keep the knowledge and wisdom of our ancestors alive; knowledge that today, in the hands of our communities, is our main hope to face the crisis to which this insane capitalism is leading us.
– Our commitment to fight against “Free Trade” wherever they may try to impose it, be it through the WTO, bilateral or multilateral Free Trade Agreements, or multilateral institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank; to condemn their lies and show the true face of the planned plunder they intend to inflict on us.
– Our commitment to continue producing healthy, free and sovereign food through an agroecological production as diverse and rich as our communities.
– Our commitment to keep working at the local level, strengthening community gardens, rescuing local alimentary knowledge and the use of medicinal plants, as well as every experience of local and community organization that strengthen and are the basis of our collective action.
– Our commitment to the peoples of the world for the right to healthy, nutritious food, especially when it is part of any kind of food aid.
– Our commitment to continue multiplying, sharing and defending our native seeds as Heritage of the Peoples at the service of humanity, free of GMOs, agro-toxics and intellectual property rights.
– Our commitment to multiply our principles, our experience and knowledge through every educational space our movements have built, calling to every man and women who feel the commitment in their own areas of action to join forces in this crusade for agroecological peasant education.
– Our commitment to move forward in building and strengthening alternative media outlets for freedom that can overcome the media blackout created by hegemonic media that has managed to put a large part of the population in a state of collective hypnosis.
– Our commitment to continue working together with researchers from every region of the world in building a different model of science based on the new paradigms introduced by ethical science, collective construction, dialogue between different forms of knowledge and an integral non fragmented vision of the world. This ethical science must be supported by an educational system that is, at every level, consequent with the ideal of ethics and human dignity, and it must have food sovereignty as a central focus.
– Our commitment to fight against the violence of neoliberalism that is once again seeking to present itself as the unique line of thought and end of history. We know our diversity, our history and our struggles signal the beginning of better times.
– Our commitment to continue honoring those who came before us in this path, sowing hopes, ideas and dreams of a better world, to continue building a more united, charitable and free world where life is worth more than the laws of the market, private property and capital accumulation.
– Our commitment to transform the ways we relate to one another, leaving behind and fighting against every kind of domination and oppression against women, indigenous peoples, youth and everyone who is marginalized and persecuted in this society.
– Our commitment to move forward in building alliances with every social sector that has come together in this Peoples’ Summit to scream out:
– We are one single force, brothers and sisters of urban workers, consumers, unemployed, feminist movements, ecologists, youth organizations, academics and every man and women who came here committed to build a different society.
We recognize ourselves as anti-capitalist, anti-patriarchy, internationalist and anti-colonialist and we take on the commitment they imply as challenges for our everyday life, within our organizations and in the search of ways to bring about a new society, a challenge we deem both possible and necessary to achieve.
We express our solidarity with all of the people of the world in resistance and we are inspired by the brave example of the Colombian peasants who today take on the challenge of building territories of peace in a country that has gone through decades of violence. We declare ourselves committed to transform all of our territories into
TERRITORIES OF PEACE FOR FOOD SOVEREIGNTY, POLITICAL SOVEREIGNTY AND A DIGNIFIED LIFE!
OUT WTO, OUT FREE TRADE OF OUR LANDS, OF OUR AGRICULTURE, OF OUR MEALS AND OUR PLANET!
