FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The Rural Women’s Assembly (RWA), a movement of rural women from across Southern Africa, expresses its full support for the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism (CSIPM) in rejecting participation in the UN Food Systems Summit Stocktake +4 (UNFSS+4). As rural women who are on the frontlines of food production and the food system but who bear the brunt of hunger, poverty, and climate change, we are gravely concerned by the Summit’s continued legitimisation of corporate control over food systems and its disregard for the realities faced by grassroots communities.
For decades, as rural women we have been clear: our food systems are broken not because of a lack of innovation or productivity, but because the rights, knowledge, and leadership of women, small-scale farmers, and Indigenous Peoples are systematically undermined. The UNFSS+4 process, like those before it, has ignored calls for real structural reform, choosing instead to amplify the voices and interests of powerful agro-industrial corporations while sidelining those most affected by food crises.
By failing to address core issues such as land dispossession, food apartheid, the use of hunger as a weapon of war, and the criminalisation of land and human rights defenders, the Summit reveals a deep moral crisis at the heart of global food governance. Rural women in Southern Africa and across the globe continue to witness firsthand how so-called “inclusive” dialogues become platforms for co-optation, while our communities struggle with the impacts of drought, floods, conflict, and economic injustice.
We echo the words of CSIPM, there can be no talk of sustainable or equitable food systems while millions go hungry due to war, occupation, and political impunity. Every silence in the face of deliberate starvation, every compromise that strengthens corporate power, is a betrayal of our collective struggle for food justice.
RWA calls for a radical paradigm shift in global food systems governance, specifically one that puts people before profits, centers human rights, and restores power to rural women, small-scale producers, and grassroots movements. We urge the United Nations and all governments to uphold their responsibilities as duty-bearers, ensure meaningful participation of rights holders, and reject the voluntary, weak safeguards that have allowed corporate interests to dominate at the expense of our communities and planet.
Now, more than ever, we need genuine solidarity, not token gestures. The time is long overdue for food systems that empower people, protect our land and seeds, and guarantee the right to food for all.
