La Via Campesina

What it is: La Via Campesina ("the peasants' way") is an international movement of peasants and small food producers. Its own site says it was founded in 1993 and describes 180 local and national member organisations in 81 countries, speaking for about 200 million small-scale food producers. Its 2021 annual report gave the figure as 182 organisations in 81 countries. It says it coined "food sovereignty" at the 1996 World Food Summit in Rome, defining it as the right of peoples to healthy, culturally appropriate food produced by ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and to set their own food and farming systems. It also says it and its allies led the 17 years of negotiation that ended in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants (UNDROP) in 2018.

Its Indian side: Its members list names the Bharatiya Kisan Union under South Asia. A 2024 article on its site says the peasant leader M. D. Nanjundaswamy was among its founders, and reports that the Karnataka State Farmers Association marked his birth anniversary at Bangalore. The pages opened do not say whether that association or the Samyukt Kisan Morcha is itself a member.

Its part in this history: It was one of the international voices behind the farmers' morcha at Delhi's borders in 2020 and 2021.

Key moments

• 19 November 2021: the day India announced the repeal of the three farm laws, it asked members to send congratulations to the Samyukt Kisan Morcha and to hold solidarity actions under the hashtag #SaluteToIndiasFarmers, noting the Morcha's own words that this was "a battle half won".
• 26 November 2021: a statement headed "Salute to India's Farmers!", signed by nine organisations including La Via Campesina, FIAN International and Friends of the Earth International, called the protest "an inspirational account of what peoples' power can achieve even in the most adverse conditions". It cited the Morcha's count of at least 650 farmer deaths and demanded a legal guarantee of Minimum Support Price, withdrawal of cases against protesters, compensation for bereaved families, justice for the Lakhimpur Kheri killings, and respect for UNDROP, especially its Article 16.
• February 2024: an article on its site on the second march to Delhi said the Samyukt Kisan Morcha was not organising it, that groups which had broken away from the coalition led it, and that no progress had been made on the Minimum Support Price pledge since the laws were withdrawn.

Where it stands: It is active. Its 2021 annual report says its International Operative Secretariat moved from Harare to Bagnolet, France, in November 2021.