Peasants in Thailand have been affected by chronic problems of poverty and hardships production caused by landlessness, land rights violation, grabbing of agrarian resources including land, water, forest, and seeds, increasing prices of production inputs, unstable crop prices, inaccessibility to markets, exploitation by the middlemen, contract farming, debts, inaccessibility of state welfare, unsafe working condition, agrarian conflicts leading to violence against peasants, lack of political participation, and so on. The problems are shared by peasants worldwide. Peasants become vulnerable to human rights violations and need specific protection. As a response, La Via Campesina (LVC), an international movement of peasants, initiated the Peasant’s Rights at the UN level as a new instrument to protect peasants’ human rights, life, and livelihood. The concept of peasants’ rights is developed for twenty years led by La Via Campesina. In 2018, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP) was endorsed.
In 2017, AFOSP-MTCP2 Thailand launched the Peasants’ Rights campaign as it is an issue shared by farmers organizations (FOs) within the platform. The program, as an Asia regional platform, can be instrumental in spreading knowledge of UNDROP to peasants. With support from the program, partner FOs in Thailand organized actions to campaign and promote peasant’ rights and UNDROP including the following:
- Training on peasants’ rights for peasant leaders from farmers organizations in the platform
- Photo campaign for UN Human Rights Council’s and UN General Assembly’s endorsement of UNDROP
- A study by farmer organizations on the policy proposals for peasants’ rights
- Consolidated policy recommendations to be used in the Campaign for New People Constitution
- Public seminar and campaign rally on Peasants Rights as Constitutional Rights
- Translation of UNDROP in the Thai language
- Educational banners on peasants’ rights
- Educational video on peasants’ rights
The AFOSP-MTCP2 Thailand platform has a diverse constituency of peasants such as family farmers, forest-dependent farmers, cash crop farmers, marine and freshwater traditional fisherfolks, cattle farmers, indigenous farmers, urban farmers, women farmers, and youth. Hence, the Thai FOs Policy Recommendation for the Peasants Rights for New People Constitution Campaign is strong and broad-based. The FOs in the AFOSP-MTCP2 platform are already active in defending their human rights in their own aspects. Hence, it is easy for them to join the common campaign. Moreover, the public event to campaign for peasant rights gained interest from many peasant organizations and other grassroots people organizations. These other organizations became allies in the campaign.
Because of these actions, UNDROP is now a new and specific tool that peasants of all kinds can use for better defending their rights in addition to the UN Human Rights Declaration. Peasants’ rights in UNDROP encompass all aspects of peasants’ living and production, e.g. right to live, right to assembly, freedom of expression, right to land, right to seeds and biodiversity, right to a decent income, right to development, right to community natural resources, right to information, rights to education and public services, rights to social securities, rights to traditional production knowledge, etc. UNDROP and peasants’ rights can be an avenue for the solidarity of peasants worldwide because the problems that peasants in many parts of the world are facing are the same.
Although UNDROP is new, peasants could quickly relate to UNDROP’s provisions because the UNDROP is built on the peasants’ experiences and their struggles at the ground. There are plenty of experiences of human rights education and campaign for grassroots in Thailand that Thailand FOs can make use of for their actions for peasant’s rights. The sharing of information and experiences of diverse components of peasants was also useful.
However, partner FOs in Thailand also faced challenges in this campaign including the movement from civil society organizations for the Campaign for New People Constitution started in 2019 after the general election. People began to realize the weakness of the current constitution and started calling for an amendment. However, the process is difficult and needs more solidarity among people. Partner Thai FOs aimed for the integration of peasants’ rights in the Campaign for New People Constitution in 2020, however, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, their action plans were postponed. At the grassroots level, Thai FOs also need to find the peasant-friendly methodology for peasant’s rights education.
There are peasants’ organizations in Thailand that are active in their human rights defending activities. AFOSP-MTCP2 partner Thai FOs can make an alliance with them to disseminate the peasants’ rights and UNDROP. In the future, partner FOs also plan to open the discussion more widely to include other rural components, e.g. farm workers, local markets, small-scale food producers, small-scale food traders, other food and agriculture-related rural populations.
As of now, many people’s sectors in Thailand are calling for the amendment or rewriting of the constitution, our partner FOs want to take this opportunity to integrate peasants’ rights as constitutional rights. They also aim to push for the Thai Government to endorse UNDROP and to make laws in compliance with UNDROP.
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