Peasants Negotiating a Global Policy Space
La Vía Campesina in the Committee on World Food Security
Routledge Studies in Food, Society and the Environment Series

Being the public voice of over 180 member organisations across nearly 90 countries, La Vía Campesina, the global peasant movement, has planted itself firmly on the international scene. This book explores the internationalisation of the movement, with a specific focus on the engagement of peasants in the processes of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS).

Since the reform of the CFS in 2009, civil society actors engage in the policy processes of this UN Committee from a self-designed and autonomous global Civil Society Mechanism. The author sheds light on the strategies, tensions, debates, and reconfigurations arising from rural actors moving between every day struggles in the fields and those of the UN arena.

Whereas most theories in the dominant literature on social movements expect them to either disappear or institutionalise in a predetermined pattern, the book presents empirical evidence that La Vía Campesina is building a much more sophisticated model. The direct participation of representatives of peasant organisations in the CFS is highlighted as a pioneering example of building a more complex, inclusive and democratic foundation for global policy-making.

Foreword by Olivier De Schutter, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food (2008-2014).

1. Exploring Agency in a Global Movement 2. The Consolidation of an International Peasant Movement 3. Carving Out an Autonomous Space for Participation in the UN Committee on World Food Security 4. The UN Committee on World Food Security as a Political Battlefield 5. From the Plough to the UN Negotiation Table 6. Reaching Outwards and Looking Inwards 7. Main Tensions and Debates: Strategic Engagement with Others Final Conclusions and Perspectives: Peasants’ Agency in the Global Age Society

Ingeborg Gaarde holds a PhD in Sociology from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris, France. She has ten years of experience working with social movements on five continents. She has divided her time between research and consulting for international NGOs and the UN, mainly on issues related to natural resources conflicts, tenure governance and involvement of civil society actors and participation in global policy-making processes.