There Is No End In Hunger Without The Right To Self-Determination

On the 16th of October, as the world celebrates the United Nations’ (UN) Food and Agricultural Foundation’s (FAO) brainchild celebration – World Food Day (WFD), we join the broader peoples movement in commemorating World Hunger Day.

While this year’s World Food Day theme is “Water is life, water is food. Leave no one behind”, which touches on the Sustainable Development Goal 6 about ensuring availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation, data and reports exposes the current growing lack of food security that could extend in the upcoming several years. Data shows that 276 million are facing severe food insecurity; there is a 25% increase in acute hunger; and 50 million people are at the brink of starvation.

As many Indigenous Peoples around the world suffer socio-economic vulnerabilities and disproportionate poverty, lack of access to their traditional, healthy and sustainable food sources remains one of their biggest challenges due to the loss of their ancestral lands, waters and territories.

While world powers are peddling the narrative of taking care of the right to water, rivers, lakes and bodies of waters in indigenous territories are destroyed for business deals, tourism development, and government infrastructures. For the longest time, mega dams and large hydro-power projects have been constructed on Indigenous territories killing off rivers and the biodiversity on indigenous lands. Large mining, extractive, oil pipelines and big plantations continue to poison lands and waters that natural sources and sustenance of food, indigenous livelihood and ways of life.

On top of this, massive forced displacement due to militarization, bombing, wars of aggression, criminalization and attacks on indigenous communities further push indigenous communities away from their lands and livelihood and towards the brink of severe hunger, malnutrition and starvation.

Big talks about zero hunger will remain lip service while landlessness and monopoly of elite and imperialist interests dominate over our basic resources, food and water supply. Genuine sustainability and food sovereignty can only be achieved when Indigenous Peoples right to self-determination is recognized and upheld.

Only through the unconditional recognition of indigenous land, its governance and management, can we end hunger. Only through the recognition of this right can we truly practice agriculture rooted in deep connection with nature, protect indigenous seeds and recognize indigenous food production that is owned, led, and controlled by the community and not for profit. This is the essence of the right to self-determination we have long been fighting for.

On World Hunger Day, we demand the urgent halting of the encroachment and destruction of the environment that we call home. We join all struggling peoples of the world, farmers, workers, and other oppressed peoples in fighting for their right to food, water, & land. The ever growing crisis of imperialism has driven many toiling communities to hunger, on top of the fascist and tyrannical attacks that come coupled with capitalism’s crusade of juicing the world dry of its resources.

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