Declaration of the creation of the Arab and North African Region (ARNA)
Within the Vía Campesina Movement
Bogotá on December 3, 2023
There is nothing on this earth that is not worth living for and fighting for.
We come dragging ancestral pain and visceral suffering, we come from lands that have known
occupation, exploitation, usurpation, destruction, wars and massacres, but we are still standing,
resisting, fighting and rebelling. The sweat of our peasants, with their cracked and dry hands and
wrinkled faces, is the one that proudly watered our lands. We are the fruit of a historical and long
struggle waged by our peasants, agricultural workers, fishermen, cattle breeders, youth, women and indigenous people, who, clinging to their lands, resisted persecution, exploitation, injustice and oppression in countries such as Palestine, Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Tunisia, Morocco, Mauritania, Sudan, Syria, among others in the region. Adhering to the values of the struggle in defense of the Palestinian land and having traveled a long road of constant and organized militant action, on behalf of agricultural workers, peasants, fishermen, rural women farmers and everyone related to the land, we the agrarian organizations and associations of the Arab and North African region, in the framework of the Via Campesina movement announce the establishment of the Arab and North African Region (ARNA). Thus achieving the creation of a new region, the tenth, within LVC. ARNA, a movement of struggle and resistance formed by various organizations, which takes into account the essence of the Universal Declaration of the United Nations on the rights of peasants and workers in rural areas, in addition to international conventions guaranteeing rights in their universal and international meaning, declares the adoption of the Charter of the International Peasant Movement, its principles, constants, laws and internal regulations. And affirms its willingness to fight for the land and the rights of peasants and workers of the land and those of the sea, and for a popular and integral agrarian reform, food sovereignty, climate justice and anti-capitalism, the struggle against imperialism, Zionism and patriarchy. This will be done through organizing, study, protest and all available peaceful means of struggle.
The declaration of our ARNA area as a new member region of La Via Campesina comes in a
dangerous and complex historical context, characterized by the escalation of the genocidal Zionist war perpetrated against the Gaza Strip and throughout Palestine. A war in which the Zionist regime is committing the most heinous war crimes and crimes against humanity, including mass murder, destruction of buildings, an inhumane siege by denying access to water, food, medicine and electricity to 2.3 million Gazans, continuing with a barbaric military offensive causing the death of more than 14.000,000 Palestinians, half of whom are women and children, and 40,000 wounded, the displacement of 15 million citizens and the destruction of 50,000 homes. All this in the midst of a complicit silence at the international level, the backing and support of the Israeli usurper entity by the imperialist powers, led by the United States of America, Great Britain and the European Union, and the open complicity of the corrupt and authoritarian regimes of the region.
But it must also be said that this war, on the other hand, provoked massive popular anger not only in the region but throughout the world. An international condemnation, in support of the people of Palestine and their right to resistance, by free peoples. Supported by left-wing Latin American governments, which expelled the ambassadors of the Zionist entity, led by Colombia, the host country of our conference, Bolivia and Honduras.
The war of extermination against the Gazan people is framed in the context of a long history of
occupation, usurpation of Palestinian lands and continuous aggressions that has lasted eight
decades, if we count from the Nakba or “Catastrophe” of 1948. Or more than a century if we go
back to the ill-fated Balfour Declaration of 1917, according to which Great Britain promised to cede a land that was not its own, Palestine, to the Zionist movement, thus allowing the Zionist usurpers to take over lands that never belonged to them. Since then, the Palestinian people, within their own territory, have suffered for 75 years, endless aggressions, persecutions and tortures, including mass murders, massacres, forced displacements, usurpation of land, destruction of homes, felling of trees, destruction of farms, arrests and tortures without trial, etc.
This conflict is a link in a long history of occupation, which makes the Palestinian question, the
liberation of all its land, from the river to the sea, one of the priority concerns of ARNA, its
organizations and its work agendas, in order to fight and mobilize until the liberation of Palestine is achieved.
This statement with which we announce the birth of ARNA also comes in the midst of protracted
wars in Yemen, Libya and Sudan, in the aftermath of the war in Syria and Iraq, with the aim of
dividing them according to the new plan for the Middle East. This turns our region into a conflict
zone, thus threatening the security of human beings, the environment and the earth. Therefore, our struggle for peace and to stop imperialist and civil wars within these countries is one of our top priorities. However, the situation is becoming even more complex in the region in light of the intensification of the neoliberal imperialist attack of the major imperialist powers and multinationals against the peoples of the region, to exploit the riches of our land and plunder our resources. This weakens the capacity of these countries to achieve food sovereignty or even sovereignty over their own lands. This is why peasants, agricultural workers, fisherfolk and villagers are fighting for land sovereignty and against the domination of multinationals. They are behind the decrease of fertile land, undermine the right of farmers to cultivate their land and pollute due to the use of fertilizers and chemicals, as well as extractive industries. They also operate in the light of government agricultural policies that are agents of imperialist powers. They do not benefit the interests of farmers and the local population, but seek their own profits and those of the colonial powers. Which are based on the supply of wheat, so as not to achieve self-sufficiency and therefore not achieve food sovereignty, and focus on export-oriented crops with a high need for water. This damages the land, depletes water resources and results in the deterioration of fertile land. The struggle for equitable agrarian reform means confronting current subordinate agricultural policies by cutting export crops and focusing on an agroecological pattern that promotes local and family farming, which is based on farming methods based on local knowledge and ancestral experiences, thus ensuring food sovereignty and climate justice, while protecting the land and the environment. Since current policies cause the impoverishment and consequently the displacement of young people in the region. Thousands of them die at sea in pursuit of their European dream and those who do achieve it
suffer exploitation and racism in distant lands.
All of these realities and many others require us to become more organized, involving more social
movements, trade union organizations and agricultural associations in which small peasants,
farmers, fishermen, rural women, youth and indigenous people are organized. In addition to
defending the goals, principles and values of the Vía Campesina movement, we must provide them with support and training so that they can become self-organized and acquire the organizational strength to defend their lands and interests.
Our struggle, it is true, is closely linked to the specific characteristics of ARNA, the peculiarities of
our lands, values and origins, however, we are open to the whole world. Our struggles and hopes
gain their strength precisely thanks to their globalization, hence the importance of extending bridges of solidarity and cooperation with all the regions of the International Peasant Movement and their respective organizations.
ARNA’s voice is in favor of the struggle for land, freedom, food sovereignty, agrarian reform, social and spatial equity, climate justice and the defense of the rights of peasants, agricultural workers, fisherfolk, and all those who work the land and live off the sea, and in general, the oppressed and marginalized.
Let it be a strong struggle that strengthens the international peasant movement and gives it a new positive impetus.
Freedom and liberation for Palestine.
Peace and prosperity for the peoples of Sudan, Yemen, Libya, Syria, Iraq and all the peoples of the region and the world.
Glory to the struggles of peasants, agricultural workers and all workers of the land and those who live off the sea in the Arab Region and North Africa.
Globalize the struggle, globalize hope!
On behalf of the Arab and North African Region of the La Via Campesina Movement
- Member organizations participating in the conference:
- Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) – Palestine
- Million Rural Women and the Landless (MRWL) – Tunisia
- National Federation of Agricultural Syndicates (FNSA) – Morocco
- Mauritanian Farmers Syndicate (MFS) – Mauritania
- the land syndicate of Mauritanian farmers (LSMF) – Mauritania
- Alliance of Egyptian Small Farmers (AESF) – Egypt
- Coalition of Al Jazeera and Al Manaqil Farmers (CAJF) – Sudan
- General Syndicate for Agriculture and Food Processing Workers (GSAFP) – Palestine