Adianto P Simamora, Jakarta – More than 100 representatives of farmers groups from across the world will gather in Jakarta next week to seek international recognition of their rights and to tackle the food crisis currently affecting many countries.
The five-day meeting, to be attended by farmers from Asia, Africa and Europe, will start on June 20. The Indonesian Farmers Union and the Indonesian Human Rights for Social Justice will host the forum. The international conference will also seek to put an end to agricultural workers' rights violations.
"The conference is expected to result in an international legal instrument on the rights of peasants, in order to protect farmers from violations and the effects of market liberalization," Indonesian Farmers Union chairman Henry Saragih told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.
"Right now, there is no convention on farmers' rights. We have to start pushing for the United Nations to recognize our rights."
Henry said the existing UN human rights convention had failed to stop physical attacks on local farmers worldwide.
"Furthermore, the Peasant's Charter on agrarian reform and rural development cannot protect farmers against the effects of market liberalization policies," he said.
The union reported that rights violations against Indonesian farmers remained widespread particularly in resolving disputes over land ownership.
"We recorded 1,753 cases of violations against farmers during the 1970-2001 period. The same trend has also been seen in other countries, even though we report such cases to the Human Rights Council annually," he said.
He said farmers had the right to land, food, agricultural production facilities, seeding and appropriate commodity prices.
The Indonesian Farmers Union is affiliated with La Via Campesina, an international farmers movement made up of millions of small farmers and agricultural workers.
Henry, who is also coordinator for La Via Campesina, said the world's agriculture policies tended to support the market liberalization system.
Market liberalization has forced farmers to produce food for export and encouraged transnational companies to occupy more land, leaving farmers with only small blocks of land, he added.
Henry said La Via Campesina had long been struggling for agrarian and land reforms to help farmers control larger farming areas.
Indonesia, most of whose 200 million people are farmers, is currently facing problems with the limited land allocation for farming.
He said many Indonesian farmers have less than one hectare of farmland. "Our target is to distribute about 200,000 hectares to local farmers by 2012," he said.