At least two people from rural communities have been killed weekly in struggles against land grabbing worldwide over the past five years, according to estimates by PAN Asia Pacific’s (PANAP) Land and Rights Watch 2022. Meanwhile, at least eight are arrested and detained, and at least two are harassed and assaulted weekly in incidents of violence mostly perpetrated by state forces.
Land and Rights Watch is an initiative of PANAP’s No Land, No Life! campaign to monitor human rights abuses against communities opposing land and resource grabbing. The latest Land and Rights Watch annual report, covering data from January to November 2022, shows that killings remain the most common human rights violation (HRV) with 51 incidents and 74 victims. This is followed by arrests, detention and legal persecution, with 32 incidents and 477 victims. Almost half or 14 of those arrested or legally persecuted in cases linked to land conflicts are women.
Land-related HRVs were monitored in 17 countries. Colombia again registered the highest number of casualties with 27 victims of killings, followed by the Philippines (8 victims), Peru (6), Brazil (5), Papua New Guinea (4) and Venezuela (4). Cases of killings in Latin America were mostly linked to protection of the Amazon. In Africa, most killings were related to farmer communities resisting displacement, while some land-related killings in the Asia Pacific were linked to participation in protest actions.
In 2022, indigenous peoples accounted for the most number of victims of land-related HRVs (12,475 victims), followed by farmers and farmworkers (1,640), and land activists (173). Reports did not identify the specific sector for 7,479 victims. Police, military, and paramilitary personnel were responsible for inflicting violations against at least 98% of victims, or 21,413 victims of killings, arrests, threats, and displacement.
Several industries were implicated in land-related HRVs, with the plantation sector affecting the most number of victims (12,100 victims), followed by the real estate (7,009), energy (944), and mining (250) sectors.
“As global monopoly capitalism navigates its latest bout with an economic crisis lingering since 2008, the world’s wealthiest capitalists are looking for ways to protect their investments and make more money. The financialisation of the global economy allows them to turn to assets such as farmlands, even when the likes of giant property holder BlackRock or mega-billionaire Bill Gates have no interest in producing food or engaging in agriculture but merely hedge their other investments or squeeze profits from the land’s value and rent,” according to the report.
The report further pointed out that giant corporations are using the climate crisis to justify more land concentration. “They peddle so-called nature-based solutions (NBS) to address the climate crisis, such as through investments in biofuels, green finance, carbon credits, ecotourism, profit-driven conservation, and large-scale infrastructure supposedly for renewable energy.” PANAP has monitored 32 cases of ongoing and planned NBS, covering almost 4 million hectares, which threatens to displace rural communities worldwide.
“In just five of the NBS projects we compiled from Cambodia, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Tanzania, the number of displaced or potentially displaced farmers and indigenous people could reach almost 300,000,” the report said.
“The global community must support rural communities in asserting their rights to land and resources. People’s control over land and resources is an integral part of people’s food sovereignty and central to the pursuit of climate justice. To stop the culture of impunity and fear that pervades farming and indigenous communities in the Global South, perpetrators of human rights abuses against food producers and land defenders must be held to account. Only when their rights are respected can people be empowered to break monopoly corporate control over food and agriculture that is causing the global food and climate crisis, and lead the creation of new equitable, healthy and sustainable food systems,” said Arnold Padilla, PANAP’s Food Sovereignty programme coordinator.###
Reference: Arnold Padilla, Programme Coordinator, nolandnolife@panap.net
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