By Zakithi Sibandze
SRWA had on the 30th April 2024 commemorated the International Day of Peasants struggles. The event’s objective was to raise awareness on the United Nation Declaration on the Rights of Peasants (UNDROP) and also lobby the government to sign the declaration and Members of Parliament to put it in parliament.The commemoration that heard in presence the Private Secretary from the Ministry of Agriculture and his Director, a local Member of Parliament and farmers who are SRWA members. This meeting acknowledged that the current climate crisis, pandemic and ongoing conflicts have only accentuated hunger. All these so-called crises are an indictment of the dominant model of capitalism that exists today. Our territories, whose climate and biodiversity are continuously destroyed as capitalist interests impose new and increasingly dangerous technologies without any debate, consultation, or public participation, threaten every life system worldwide.
The Political and social instability is widespread as a result of massacres, forced disappearances, high rates of femicide, imprisonment, intimidation, harassment, and threats, prosecution of defenders of territories, forced migration, and wars against ordinary people were mentioned as challenges that rural women peasant continue to face and these challenges cause loss of our indigenous seeds thus threaten our campaign for food sovereignty.
SRWAs demands to the government were that:
- Government should sign the UNDROP
- Raise awareness on climate change
- Develop a policy that will protect the indigenous seeds
- Implementation 211 article of the Swazi constitution in all communities so that women get land
- The land policy should go to parliament so that it becomes a living document.
