Addressing the agri-food crisis in Korea: Implications of food sovereignty and the uN declaration on the rights of peasants

Abstract

A variety of discussions about the revision of the constitution are underway in Korea. One important issue currently being debated is the rights of peasants guaranteed in agriculture-related provisions. Including peasants' rights in agriculture-related provisions is one of the key issues in this constitutional revision. La Vía Campesina and other international human rights organizations first coined the term “rights of peasants” and there are now ongoing attempts to draw-up a draft declaration on the rights of peasants in the UN Human Rights Council. This paper outlines the implications of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants as a direction for a sustainable agriculture model that can suggest alternatives to the global agri-food system to be included in Korea's new constitution. To this end, this paper analyzes historical changes in the food security regime and international agri-food policies and also traces the transformation of Korean agriculture correlated with changes to the international regime. Consequently, this paper demonstrates the important contribution on discussions regarding the rights of peasants in the UN to proliferate alternative discourses on contemporary agri-food systems both at global and national level.