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Across the world, millions of rural people wake each day to cultivate the land, protect seeds, harvest food, and sustain life. They are smallholder farmers, fishers, pastoralists, agricultural workers, indigenous peoples, and landless communities. They are also, collectively, peasants — a term that is not simply descriptive, but deeply political. It speaks to identity, struggle, and resistance.
For generations, these communities have fed nations while facing systemic marginalisation, land dispossession, climate vulnerability, and exclusion from decision-making processes. Despite producing much of the world’s food, they remain among the most food insecure. Their knowledge systems are often undermined, their seeds commodified, and their labour undervalued. Yet, they continue to organise, resist, and lead.
It is within this context that the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP) emerged as a historic achievement. Adopted in 2018 after over seventeen years of global mobilisation led by peasant movements such as La Via Campesina, UNDROP represents a collective victory — a declaration that affirms that peasants and rural people are rights holders, not beneficiaries of charity.
UNDROP is more than a document. It is a tool for transformation. It recognises fundamental rights including the right to land, seeds, water, food sovereignty, biodiversity, and participation in decisions that affect rural lives. It places particular emphasis on the rights of rural women, acknowledging their central role in food systems while confronting the inequalities they face.
At its core, UNDROP challenges dominant systems that prioritise profit over people and nature. It calls for agrarian reform, agroecology, and climate justice. It insists that food systems must be controlled by those who produce food, not by distant corporations. It reminds us that sustainable futures are rooted in local knowledge, collective action, and respect for the earth.
This publication is designed as a practical and political guide. It introduces UNDROP in accessible terms, traces its history, outlines its key provisions, and most importantly, explores how it can be used by communities to defend and advance their rights. It is not only meant to inform, but to mobilise.
As highlighted throughout this booklet, UNDROP becomes powerful when it is used — when communities raise awareness, organise collectively, demand accountability, and engage institutions at all levels. It is a living instrument, shaped by the actions of those it represents.
In a time marked by deepening inequality, climate crises, and growing corporate control over food systems, the urgency of UNDROP has never been greater. Rural communities are not waiting for solutions — they are already building them. UNDROP simply affirms what has always been true: that those who nurture the land, water, and seeds are the true guardians of life.
This is not just a declaration of rights. It is a declaration of power, dignity, and possibility.
