The Global Campaign for Agrarian Reform, coordinated by La Via Campesina, an international alliance of small farmers' and landless peoples' organizations, and the Food First Information and Action Network (FIAN), supports landless and land poor peoples around the globe in their on-the-ground struggles to achieve the right to land. Action Alerts are posted when we receive word from the Campaign or from our other partners, like the Landless Workers Movement (MST) in Brazil , that a crisis exists somewhere in the world where land rights are being threatened and where those involved believe that international action can help.

(The following is from the Campaign's website (<www.fian.org/english-version/e-agrarian-reform.htm>):

The Campaign as a Bridge

The fundamental task of the campaign is to assist the already existing national peasant movements struggling for agrarian reform in their own countries and to strengthen them internationally. Moreover, new movements have to be encouraged and promoted.

In order to strengthen the national intiatives internationally, it is necessary to: 

• promote solidarity with all peasants, women and men, whose human right to food is violated or who are victims of persecution due to their struggle for agrarian reform;
  
  
• facilitate internationally the lobby work in order to find wide support so that the new agrarian reform can take a top position on the agendas of agrarian policies, human rights and development cooperation, nationally and internationally;
  
  
• jointly seek the dialogue with the intergovernmental organizations - including the international financial institutions, about an agrarian reform based on human rights;
  
  
• exchange information and experience between different participating organizations and movements.

Let us construct tomorrow’s agrarian economy

As a platform of our struggle for the right to feed oneself, we will:

• Build up an emergency network which allows international intervention by protest campaigns if the right to feed oneself is violated and agrarian reform activists are oppressed;
  
  
• Lobby the institutions of the United Nations, the international financial institutions, and the national governments both in the South and in the North to put the new agrarian reform on their agendas;
  
  
• Build international alliances between peasant organizations, but also with other actors such as the ecological movement, the consumers´ movement, the women´s movement, etc.;
  
  
• Carry out mutual visits to different countries to promote the exchange of experience especially among the peasants in the South;
  
  
• Build up an information network linking the different existing agrarian reform initiatives in order to exchange information and find new allies;
  
  
• Publish special studies on specific aspects of the new agrarian reform like, for example, agrarian reform and human rights, agrarian reform and sustainability;  market oriented agrarian reforms, the role of women in agrarian reform, etc.;
  
  
• Assist peasant movements in specific countries during a certain period of time that may be critical for agrarian reform.
  
  This Campaign is open to Everybody!

The time has come to act for food, land and freedom. The joint struggle for the new agrarian reform will allow the landless people to build a life in dignity and liberty.

And for the rest of society and the international community it will assure sustainable agriculture, guaranteeing healthy food for us and for future generations as well as the conservation of humankind´s means of subsistence.

Via Campesina and FIAN facilitate the start of this campaign. The campaign is open to all other organizations accepting its principles.

Let us unite in the global struggle for a new agrarian reform!

For more information, contact: 

La Vía Campesina
Int'l Operative Secretariat
Apartado Postal 3628
Tegucigalpa, Honduras
Telefax: ++ 504 232 2198
email: viacam@gbm.hn 

FIAN International Secretariat
P.O.Box 102 243
69012 Heidelberg, Germany
Tel: ++ 49 6221 830620
Fax: ++ 49 6221 830545
email: fian@fian.org