FIAN International

But✊A growing movement is proposing governance & technology design rooted in communitarian ethics & human rights.

We'll explore how digital trade agreements infringe on rights, how new technologies impact food systems, & what alternative visions look like when rights drive innovation.

For Indigenous Peoples, peasants, women, & workers in food systems, this means:
🚨Destruction of farmer food systems
🚨Biopiracy & knowledge theft
🚨Land dispossession through digital means
🚨Unfair data practices & market manipulation
🚨Growing corporate control.

As digital technologies reshape our world, their impact on fundamental human rights—especially the right to food—remains largely unaddressed.

Platform economies, AI systems, and data extraction models are reinforcing unjust socio-economic structures.

🔗Register: us02web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

🌐 Digital Rights Meet Food Rights at WSIS+20.

Join our virtual side-event: "Protecting Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in the Digital Age - Spotlight on the Right to Food"

📅 December 15 | 8:00-9:15 AM ET

@3rdworldnetwork.bsky.social @itforchange.bsky.social

They provide sustenance, income, & identity for thousands of families. Yet systemic obstacles keep them marginalized.

✊ Join us in demanding economic justice, physical safety, & dignity for women street vendors.

🔎 Spotlight on Uganda's Fishing Communities: FIAN Uganda's research uncovers another layer: "Women at the Water's Edge" documents how women in fishing communities—despite being central to fish processing and marketing—face massive barriers to market access that undermine their right to food.

Women make up the majority of street vendors & market traders 🌍 Every day, they're at marketplaces & street corners, supporting their families & driving local economies.

These women face: ❌ Physical violence ❌ Harassment and intimidation ❌ Economic exploitation ❌ Psychological abuse

📊 Data is Power: The Hidden Violence Against Women Street Vendors

This year, the Supermarket Watch, by FIAN, Grain & StreetNet International, is shining a light on the women who feed our communities—but whose safety and dignity are under constant threat.

⚠️ The battle for seed control is heating up. Powerful interests want to reshape this Treaty. Communities and countries are pushing back.

📊 Understand what's at stake. Share widely. This affects all of us. 🌍

🫵 Why you should care:

This Treaty controls access to the genetic resources that feed the world 🌾. It determines who owns seeds, who profits from them, and whether farming communities keep their rights—or lose them.

What happened in Lima isn't over.

Here's what actually happened:

The Global South said NO 🛑 to a rushed proposal that would've rewritten the rules on seeds—without real debate, without transparency, and without their consent.

This wasn't diplomacy breaking down. This was resistance working. ✊

👀 Lima Just Changed the Game for Global Seed Control

Something major just went down at the ITPGRFA session.

The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources collapsed into chaos. Consensus broke. And behind it all? A power play most people never saw coming.

Change grows from the ground up. Communities are uniting to demand policies that truly support peasants' rights and agroecological transitions.

#FoodSovereignty #PeasantSeeds #Agroecology #WestAfrica #SeedFreedom #IndigenousKnowledge #southsouthsolidarity

This isn't just about agriculture—it's about:
✊ Protecting ancestral knowledge
🌾 Advancing food sovereignty
🤝 Building South-South collaboration
🌍 Preserving the world's agricultural biodiversity

Defending peasant seeds = defending our right to food, territory, and future.

✊ Exchange knowledge and traditional practices
🤝 Strengthen South-South solidarity networks
🌍 Visit agroecological farms and community projects
🌾 Reinforce strategies to protect agricultural biodiversity

Movements from 11 countries are traveling 1,200 km to defend the right to seeds.

YouTube video by Jardins d'Hambe Nianamaya ye Suma Shiw ye - Sowing for life, claiming our rights

🌱Seeds of Resistance: Historic Peasant Exchange Launches in West Africa

🌾A 2-week peasant-to-peasant exchange has just kicked off, bringing together movements from Colombia, Mali, Togo, Benin, Burkina Faso, Niger, Guinea, Ghana, Senegal, Sudan &Tunisia.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=cat5...

📢 Our Message is Clear: The Treaty must serve those who have created and maintained agrobiodiversity — not those seeking to privatize it.

No recognition without protection. No protection without resources. No resources without autonomy.

And that responsibility calls on all of us:
- Social movements
- Governments committed to peoples, not corporations
- International institutions
- Every person who eats

Protecting seeds is protecting life. 💚

🌍 Latin America Speaks: This region — birthplace of maize, potato, quinoa, beans, tomato, cacao, and countless other crops that feed the world — will not be silent while seeds are enclosed, patented, and stolen.

⚖️ The Responsibility is Collective. Protecting seeds is protecting life itself.

💡 Seeds Are More Than Genetics, they are:
- Not neutral biological material waiting to be "improved" or commodified.
- The result of thousands of years of co-creation between peoples and nature.
- Testimony of struggles for autonomy and survival
- Active resistance against dispossession and erasure

🔥 Why This Matters Now: As the future of agricultural biodiversity is debated in international arenas, seeds stand as a living legacy. Defending them is a matter of justice. It is the defense of: ✊ Food sovereignty ✊ Rights of peoples ✊ Continuity of our collective history.

🌱 Seeds Are Not Mere Inputs, they are Life, Culture & Autonomy

Seeds carry the memory of peoples, the spirit of their territories, and the ancestral knowledge of those who have selected, cultivated, and defended them for millennia.

🌱🌀 WHERE SEEDS ARE BORN, RESISTANCE TAKES ROOT

🌾💚From Latin America —where some of the most diverse seeds are produced, preserved, & resisted — we reaffirm: The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources #ITPGRFA must protect what has been collectively created & cared for across generations.

📍 Lima, the negotiations that will shape seed futures for decades. Whose side are governments on? Communities or corporations? The answer will determine whether the Treaty serves food sovereignty — or corporate interests.

💡 The Fundamental Truth:
- Peasant and Indigenous communities are not just "stakeholders" in seed systems.

- They ARE the seed systems. Without their knowledge, practices, and autonomy, there is no agrobiodiversity to govern, protect, or benefit-share.

Seed systems don't exist in a vacuum — they exist in communities, in territories, in hands that have selected, saved, and shared seeds across generations.

🔥 Why This Matters: Justice / The future of peoples' food systems / Who gets to decide what we eat and how we grow it

⚠️Corporate Push: Some governments push changes that could open the door to privatization.
Same old playbook: enclosing the commons, turning life into property.

✊ IPC's Position: no mechanism can work if not:✅Recognize peasant seed systems✅Protect peasant seed systems✅Finance peasant seed systems

🚨 What's at Stake: From the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC) — the space of social movements and farmers' organizations — delegates are defending seed rights against

❌ Digital biopiracy
❌ Patents on seeds
❌ Market concentration

🌱 LIMA: THE BATTLE FOR SEEDS Who controls the future ?

The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources (ITPGRFA) is at a crossroads. 🌾 Peasant and Indigenous communities who have cared for them for generations VS 🏢 Corporations seeking to expand their control.

Marks the 16 Days of Activism against gender based violence, new edition of 'Supermarket watch' highlight the vulnerability that women street & market traders endure while making a living and contribute to local economy. grain.org/e/7333
@fian-international.bsky.social @margteixeira.bsky.social