The upcoming 3rd Nyéléni Global Forum [1] to take place in September 2025, is set to be one of those milestones that shape the history of peoples’ struggles, in this case, the struggles of peasant movements and organisations that promote food sovereignty [2], alongside all the organisations that carry that banner in every corner of the planet.
Following the 2007 [3] and 2015 [4] editions in Selingué, Mali, the upcoming September gathering in Kandy, Sri Lanka, comes at a time in which the global context is plagued by attacks on democracy and peoples’ rights, led by the most reactionary conservative forces, which are gaining ground across several regions of the world.
A meeting of grassroots organisations to analyse global challenges and search for answers in a collective way is as challenging as it is urgent. And those behind Nyéléni 3 are well aware that they carry the huge responsibility of conveying hope. But how can this be done?
With April just behind us, a month of celebration of peasant struggles, Real World Radio set out to find some answers regarding the motivations behind the 3rd Nyéléni Global Forum, interpretations about the international context, and how peoples’ responses can be woven together.
From the local and national level
“We are the producers, but we cannot put a price tag on our products. That’s a huge challenge we are facing. That’s why we thought that in Nyéléni we need to think about the different ideas of the trading,” said peasant leader Anuka De Silva, of the Movement for Land and Agricultural Reform of Sri Lanka (MONLAR) [5]. Access to markets and the role in those markets is a key challenge of the Sri Lankan peasants.
Anuka is one of the national leaders in the organisation of the 3rd Nyéléni Global Forum, which brings together several Sri Lankan and international organisations that face the complex task of running a meeting of tens of thousands of people from 80 countries across all continents, representing around 50 organisations and social movements. Anuka is also a member of the International Coordination Committee of La Vía Campesina [6], the network of peasant organisations that in 1996 launched the banner of food sovereignty, and founded the Nyéléni forums.
In the context of a country that, like many others, has turned to export-oriented agriculture, under the influence of institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank, Anuka asserts that “land is a right. It is not for sale.”
With such powerful external actors seeking to influence the country’s agricultural policies, Sri Lankan peasants are deeply concerned about the loss of their right to seeds and the control over plant genetic resources. Anuka also spoke about the serious role played by agribusiness corporations, the World Trade Organisation (WTO), and UPOV laws (International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants [7]), which control seeds.
The fight against rural debt caused by microfinancing is literally a matter of life and death. According to Anuka, 2.4 million women in Sri Lanka have been affected by microfinance schemes, and 204 have committed suicide after being unable to escape debt following their inability to cover production costs.
In this context, attention must now be given to the implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP), [8] which is “the basis of peasants’ rights,” according to Anuka.
Winds of Change
Another Sri Lanka is possible. The election of Anura Kumara Dissanayake as the country’s first leftist president in September 2024, following the nation’s bankruptcy in 2022, has opened up a new horizon of hope. “Now we have a people’s led government. That’s a special time to host in Sri Lanka. We need to bring food sovereignty as a main pillar of the new government,” explained Anuka.
Nyéléni was a woman of legend in rural Mali [9], known for domesticating fonio and samio (grains native to the West Africa region), she resisted social discrimination, refused marriage, and worked the land to become a better farmer. She is a symbol of the struggle for food sovereignty, and that is why the 2007, 2015 and the upcoming forums are named after her.
Anuka spoke about the work and legacy of Nyéléni and took the opportunity to highlight the importance of women in food production. “Definitely in the food web women are the ones who decide what kind of food we are going to eat, who produces the food, who is going to feed the world.” “We are the seed savers in the community. My grandmother, my mother and myself, we know how we keep our seeds for the next season,” she added.
That is why Anuka believes that women need feminism [10] to take root in communities, against patriarchy and all forms of oppression. “Feminism is the basis of food sovereignty, of agroecology [11] and all peasants rights.”
Connected at global level
Martín Drago, from Uruguay, has coordinated the Food Sovereignty program at Friends of the Earth International [12] for the past 16 years. He participated in the previous two Nyéléni forums and is now actively involved in the international committee supporting the organisation of the 3rd Global Forum.
“Nyéléni means territory, process and methodology for building connections between social and grassroots movements and organisations. The methodology is based on the principle of internationalist solidarity and works through a horizontal dialogue of knowledge based on the heritage and diversity of peoples, cultures and struggles,” he said to Real World Radio. “It is a process that builds unity,” he added.
Martín explained that Friends of the Earth International is contributing to the Nyéléni 3 process with its system change vision [13] aimed at dismantling corporate power, as well as with the narratives it has built together with allied social movements and organisations, from the grassroots to decision-making spaces.
According to the environmental activist, the 2007 Nyéléni Forum in Selingué agreed on a common characterisation of food sovereignty and ideas to strengthen the global movement defending and promoting it. In 2015, the milestone of the second forum was the collective characterisation of agroecology and agreeing on strategies and actions to scale it up. Nyéléni 3 has a broader and very ambitious goal: “it aims to become a fundamental milestone in the articulation of social and grassroots movements and organisations, from the local to the global level, to transform the system and dismantle all forms of oppression and exploitation.”
Quite a difficult task. But how can that be actually achieved? Martín often returns to the idea of process, as in a desperate attempt to soothe the understandable anxieties involved in a titanic struggle against the brutal manifestations of a capitalist system that crushes both human and natural life. A system that fails to overcome its own contradictions, producing and consuming without limits in a finite world can never truly be aligned with life.
Martín also speaks of agreeing at Nyéléni on a “joint political action agenda.” He explained that while social movements walk together in confronting the power of transnational corporations and neoliberalism, resisting the rise of fascism and the far right, and defending democracy, it is essential to push forward alternatives. “This is a process, a joint agenda that we will deepen as we walk together in defence of territories, in defence of peoples rights, while we build, implement and scale-up the emancipatory initiatives of the peoples, incorporating a feminist, anti-racist, anti-capitalist, anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist perspective, to bring us closer to social, environmental, economic, gender and racial justice.” The Food Sovereignty program coordinator highlighted that a more “radical implementation of internationalist solidarity” is needed.
Amid despair, a vision of hope
The question that arises, then, is: what are the main global challenges that, in the eyes of grassroots movements around the world fighting for food sovereignty, must be addressed through a common political agenda, built in unity at the 3rd Nyéléni Global Forum?
In the interview with Real World Radio, Martín listed six key trends: the rise of fascism and the far right; the strengthening of neoliberalism; the crisis of multilateralism [14]; the economic and debt crisis; the capitalism of disaster, which is how transnational corporations and allied national elites take advantage of the disasters caused by neoliberalism; and the growing control that technologies exert over various areas of life, now even with the rise of artificial intelligence.
“In this seemingly bleak context, taking care of ourselves and resisting in the best way possible is key and requires strengthening grassroots organisational processes,” said Martín. “But it also requires understanding that we will not find solutions within the dominant system and that no movement can ensure transformation, care, or resistance on its own.”
The process leading up to the Nyéléni Forum and the forum itself aim to be a space for convergence and strengthening organisational processes, to articulate both resistance and transformation, so that people power can emerge with its proposals. “The 3rd Global Nyéléni Forum also seeks to be an important moment to promote a vision of hope.” Let it be so.