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ISSN 2063-5346
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Transnationalization of the Peasants Movement: Study of La Via Campesina's Struggle for the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (Undrop)

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Virtuous Setyaka1, Arry Bainus1, Widya Setiabudi Sumadinata1
» doi: 10.48047/ecb/2023.12.si7.623

Abstract

Global neoliberal hegemony carried out by trade (WTO), finance (IMF) and development (WB) agencies through free trade, financial liberalization, and international development as part of structural adjustment programs in fact makes the condition of farmers and rural communities experience human rights violations and are in the worst situation. La Via Campesina is a transnational peasant movement organized in which there are 182 farmer organizations from 81 countries in the world with more than 200,000,000 members. La Via Campesina succeeded in pushing the United Nations namely the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly to adopt the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other Persons Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP) on 18 December 2018 after struggling for 17 years against the hegemony of neoliberalism in the world. The struggle of La Via Campesina is analyzed as a political process with a Coxian perspective in International Relations and it can be described that La Via Campesina succeeded in transnationalizing social movements and institutionalizing peasant human rights as part of a form of counter-hegemony or an instrument against neoliberalism after being able to manage the potential of material capabilities, ideas and institutions within the scope of socially strong production activities in the complexity of relations between society and the state that affect the world order. Although the struggle is not over yet because UNDROP is just a set of non-binding norms for Member States of the United Nations, so to implement it requires greater political pressure in the next political process by building an alternative global historical bloc led by La Via Campesina. This global historical bloc is needed to continue the war of positions at the national level, namely in the member countries of La Via Campesina and at the international level in their interactions with various countries, international organizations and transnational corporations through broad alliances and well-institutionalized movement organizing.

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