Declaration of the Vía Campesina International Youth Meeting Puy de Cinca, Aragon, Spain 24-30 September 2009

We, male and female youth peasants representing 9 different regions including the Africa-1, Africa-2, Caribbean, Europe, Central America, North America, South America, South Asia and South East Asia, with different nationalities, communities, cultures, languages and religions - are meeting in this first La Vía Campesina International Youth Camp in Puy de Cinca, Aragon region, Spain from September 24-30, 2009.

We, La Vía Campesina youth present here, are facing discriminations, inequalities, injustice and miseries that are undergoing all over the world due to the feudalism, neoliberal capitalism and neo-colonialism. This discriminatory system is imposing the corporatization of agriculture and the commodification of food for mongering profit and making the life of the peasants miserable and compelling them to abandoning farming. Resulting then in the rise of the expulsion of young peasants to the city or to other countries in order to survive.
WE DENOUNCE:
1. Neoliberal capitalism and its policies affect the life and livelihood of peasants, small farmers, fisher folks and food growers all over the world including the peasant/indigenous youth.
2. The neo-colonialism is facilitating the illegal land grabbing and land concentration by richer countries and the large corporations in the weak and poor countries around the world which is forcing peasants, youth and the land holders to be displaced from their own land and to migrate to urban areas within their own countries or to aboard.
3. The feudalist system that prevails in some part of the world allows a palm-full of landlords to hold a large area of agricultural land and denies the access to the land for farmers, agricultural workers, poor and landless people and compels them to slavery.
4. The International Financial Institutions (IFIs) such as World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Asian Development Bank and so on, which with the help of World Trade Organization (WTO), Regional Trade Agreement (RTAs), Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) and Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs), are enforcing neo-liberal and neo-colonial policies in favor of the richer countries and Multinational Companies (MNCs)

5. The imperialist impulse of control over nation-states trough the militarization generating the forced displacement of peasant-indigenous families.
6. The criminalization and violence towards social movements, especially farmer organizations.
7. The exploitation of natural resources along with the land, air, water, forest resources and the biodiversity for benefit of a few profit mongering transnational corporations (TNCs).
8. The intellectual rights among which the most important is the patenting of seeds and life in general.
9. The introduction of GMOs, that are displacing the diversity of species in favor of a monoculture that destroys identity, culture and rights by expulsing peasant/indigenous communities.
10. the dependence on multinational and the destruction of biodiversity trough the usage of the technological package of production being imposed.
11. The use of arable land for non-agricultural purposes and a non-food corporate agricultural for agro-fuel, paper, rubber, etc.
We, young peasants/indigenous, organized in defense of life, are a present reality building the future. The identity of the youth is key for the development of humanity.


THEREFORE, WE DEMAND:
1. A pro-peasant and pro-people agricultural policy that guarantees the peoples' fundamental right of food sovereignty and creates an attractive environment for the young farmers to maintain producing good quality and healthy food.
2. An agricultural policy that recognizes the agriculture as a dignified profession and ensures the identity of the peasants and farmers, especially the rural youth and the youth peasants.
3. A comprehensive agrarian reform based on biodiversity, ecological agriculture, sustainable, organic and independent of the agriculture technological packages. Therefore, eliminating the use of agro-toxics / agro-chemicals and walk towards agro-ecological farming.
4. Enhancement of co-operative agriculture to save the peasants and small farmers and to struggle against the exploitation of TNCs and corporate agriculture.
5. An immediate stop to the violence against the farmers, especially women farmers, and the criminalization of the peasants' movement.
6. End the criminalization of social protest and the persecution of the peasent/indigenous movements.
7. A return to their land to those who have been expelled, evicted and displaced by military force, paramilitaries, transnational corporations and their owns state and secure their rights.
8. The elimination of all kinds of discrimination based upon the gender, sexual orientation, raze, caste and religion in all aspects of life and work including agriculture.
Long Live: Agricultural Revolution.
Long Live: La Vía Campesina.
Long Live: Youth Peasants' Unity.
Globalize the Struggle. Globalize the Hope.

INTERNAL COORDINATION:

1. Implement the campaign: “Young Peasant in Struggle for the Land in resistance to the Transnational Neoliberalism”.
2. Formalization of the campaign at the CLOC meeting in October 2010.
3. Create an international youth commission of La Vía Campesina with focus on gender.
4. April 2010 – International Youth Commission of La Vía Campesina meeting
5. Impulse the political-ideological formation / technical within the youth movement of La Vía Campesina.

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