With the theme “women, youth, rural peoples demand food, land and climate justice,” PAN Asia Pacific (PANAP) and its partners and networks from across the globe today launched this year’s 16 Days of Global Action on Agroecology.
16 Days is an annual global campaign to advance agroecology as an alternative to chemical-based corporate agriculture and as a way towards achieving food sovereignty. For this year, with women and youth at the forefront, the campaign highlights the rural peoples’ demands for food, land and climate justice amid the overwhelming global crises of hunger, poverty and climate catastrophe under corporate-controlled food systems. a series of collective actions that will culminate on October 16 marking ‘World Hunger Day’, a protest against the UN’s World Food Day to emphasize continuing global hunger and the need for people’s food sovereignty.
Now in its 9th year, the 2023 16 Days campaign opens with participating groups and rural communities planting or displaying flaglets of the Global Peoples Caravan for food, land and climate justice. The caravan is led by coalitions, movements and networks asserting rural peoples rights and welfare, including PANAP, People’s Coalition on Food Sovereignty, and Indigenous Peoples Movement for Self-Determination and Liberation, among others. Groups will also hold collective land cultivation, educational discussions, workshops, food festivals, seed exchanges, forums, book launching, farm visits and mobilisations, among others.
On October 15, to mark Rural Women’s Day, the campaign will highlight through community mobilisations rural women’s demands and aspirations of a future free from hunger, dispossession and destruction.
As in its previous years, this year’s 16 Days celebrates the role of women and youth in leading the way towards advancing agroecology and fighting for food sovereignty. Their contributions need to be supported by movements and advocates everywhere. The youth bear the torch of hope and pave the path towards a sustainable future through the global agroecology movement and pursuit of food sovereignty . Women, including rural women, have displayed enduring strength and resourcefulness as food producers, custodians of biodiversity, and community leaders.
As the campaign highlights the struggles and victories of the rural peoples worldwide in these 16 days, PANAP invites everyone to take part whether on ground or online, and join the ever-growing movement for agroecology and food sovereignty.
Reference: Terence Krishna Lopez, PANAP Agroecology Campaign Officer, terence@panap.net
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