CSIPM Intervention – Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)

CSIPM Intervention – Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)

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Regional Summit on South-South, North-South and Triangular Cooperation for the enjoyment of all human rights, including the right to development.

Chair, Excellencies, colleagues, and distinguished participants,
I am honoured to speak today on behalf of the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism (CSIPM) and Regeneration International, and to represent the millions of small-scale food producers across Africa, the women, farmers, pastoralists, fisherfolk, Indigenous Peoples, agricultural workers, landless communities, the urban food insecure, and youth whose knowledge and daily labour feed our continent. Thank you OHCHR for this opportunity to bring their realities, struggles, and visions for food sovereignty into this important dialogue on cooperation and the right to food. I would like to express gratitude for the opening remarks this morning and:

  1. CONTEXT – What African Food Producers Are Facing

As we are all aware and has been clearly stated this morning, in Africa, food systems face converging crises:

climate shocks destroying crops and seed systems;

debt pressures pushing families into hunger; land dispossession through conservation as recorded in Kenya, carbon markets, and agribusiness;

gender inequality that denies women (the main producers of food and seed 60 to 80 percent of Africa’s food) to secure land and agricultural finance;

and threats to seed sovereignty from frameworks like UPOV 1991 that undermine seed sovereignty and biodiversity.

This is the reality small-scale producers face as we discuss South-South, North-South and Triangular cooperation.

  1. What Is Going Wrong in current Cooperation Frameworks

Despite good intentions, many cooperation initiatives prioritise the wrong models, that leave grassroots behind.

We see a growing emphasis on high-tech, corporate-led agriculture, including GMOs, proprietary seed, systems, externally controlled digital platforms, and large-scale monocultures. Some Cooperation partnerships are  also advancing carbon credit schemes that require communities to alter land-use or surrender forests, grazing land, and water.

These models undermine farmer sovereignty, restrict pastoral mobility, weaken women’s land rights, and erode local markets, agroecology, and Indigenous knowledge, all while accelerating biodiversity loss.

Economic pressures worsen this. Debt repayment reduces public investment in agriculture, climate adaptation, and social protection. Hunger is rising across rural and urban areas.

Cooperation fails when it excludes the very people who feed the continent.

  1. PRACTICES – What African Civil Society and Social Movements (CSIPM) Are Already Doing as partners of Cooperation

Allow me to highlight work from Across the continent, social movements demonstrating effective, community-led cooperation. A few examples:

Regeneration International
Defends regenerative standards, globally amplifying  grassroots voices through learning exchanges and the annual People’s Food Summit.

AFSA – Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa
Defends Indigenous seed and land rights and advancing agroecology at all governance levels-Africa wide. Climate adaptation solutions, Soil health and territorial markets.

PELUM Network- Participatory Ecological Land-Use Management
Supports thousands of farmers in Eastern and Southern Africa with agroecology, from doorstep to rangelands,and engaging policymakers on emerging issues.

Seed & Knowledge Initiative (SKI)-Southern Africa
Strengthens farmer seed systems, protecting Indigenous varieties, and movement building.

Women in Agroecology Initiatives
Facilitating intergenerational mentorships in agroecological work.

Pastoralist Networks
Pastoralists in Kenya, Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Namibia are restoring rangelands through holistic grazing practices.

Community Resistance
Communities continue to resist harmful projects. In Kajiado, Kenya, the Maasai stopped a carbon offset land grab. Across Africa, fisherfolk defend traditional fishing rights, and Indigenous Peoples assert FPIC and land sovereignty.

These examples show that real cooperation is community-led, rights-based, ecological, and are already succeeding.