CIFOR
19 December 2019
On 17 December 2019, nine United Nations (UN) Special Procedures and four members of UN Treaty Bodies issued a Statement on the occasion of the 1st anniversary of the adoption of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP) by the UN General Assembly.
In their statement, in which they quote our Research Brief on the Implementation of the UNDROP, UN human rights experts call states and international and regional organizations to take steps to implement the UNDROP. They also commit to integrate the monitoring of the Declaration in the exercise of their mandates, protect the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas, and provide guidance to states on how they can implement the UNDROP.
‘The fact that they recommend to the UN Human Rights Council to create a new Special Procedure on the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas must also be underlined, as this is a major request of many stakeholders engaged in the implementation of the UNDROP’ explains Dr Christophe Golay, Senior Research Fellow and Strategic Adviser on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights at the Geneva Academy.
‘This statement contains many recommendations entailed in our Research Brief, including the fact that states must ensure the consistency of international agreements and standards to which they are party with the UNDROP, and must establish mechanisms to ensure the coherence of their agricultural, economic, social, cultural and development policies with the UNDROP’ explains Dr Golay.
‘This statement is one of the major outcomes of the expert seminar organized by the Geneva Academy, the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs and the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Geneva Office in June 2019 on the role of UN human rights mechanisms in monitoring the UNDROP’ he adds.
Our new one-week training course on the implementation of UNDROP will take place in June 2020 and will precisely address these issues.
News
ITU
Our event brought together human rights practitioners, data scientists, and AI experts to explore how artificial intelligence can support efforts to monitor human rights and the Sustainable Development Goals.
Training
UN Photo / Jean-Marc Ferré
This training course will explore the origin and evolution of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and its functioning in Geneva and will focus on the nature of implementation of the UPR recommendations at the national level.
Project
Adobe
This research will provide legal expertise to a variety of stakeholders on the implementation of the right to food, and on the right to food as a legal basis for just transformation toward sustainable food systems in Europe. It will also identify lessons learned from the 2023 recognition of the right to food in the Constitution of the Canton of Geneva.
Project
Daniel Taylor
The project will notably identify the main opportunities and obstacles to protect the right to seeds in Europe. It will also discuss how to promote changes in European laws, policies and trade agreements to ensure that they do not infringe, but facilitate the realization of peasants’ right to seeds.
Publication
Publication
Geneva Academy