Landless Yolanda survivors’ weary celebration of the World Food Day

Press Release
October 16, 2014

TACLOBAN CITY – Today, communities all around the globe is observing World Food Day in celebration of “Family Farming: Feeding the World, Caring for the Earth.”

This year’s theme recognizes the vital role, contribution, the great importance of small farming families and communities to global food security. For the Landless Yolanda Survivors – Katarungan (Kilusan para sa Repormang Agraryo at Katarungang Panlipunan) Eastern Visayas, this year’s World Food Day theme is only but a concept. How can they celebrate with the rest of the world if they cannot even provide their families adequate food?

Denying farmers’ land rights, denies their Right to Adequate Food

The Right to Adequate Food is an internationally recognized right of each individual. The Right to Adequate Food It is the Right for food to be Accessible, Available, and Adequate.

In its General Comment No. 12, the Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (CESCR) of the United Nations succinctly and authoritatively defined: “The right to adequate food is realized when every man, woman and child, alone or in community with others, has physical and economic access at all times to adequate food or means to its procurement.”

“The right to have regular, permanent and unrestricted access, either directly or by means of financial purchases, to quantitatively and qualitatively adequate and sufficient food corresponding to the cultural traditions of the people to which the consumer belongs, and which ensure a physical and mental, individual and collective, fulfilling and dignified life free of fear,” CESCR states further.

To produce their own food, farmers need land, water and other resources. Therefore, the government, as state party to the international covenant to protect, respect and fulfill the citizens’ right to adequate food is responsible in enabling farmers to maximize the lands’ potential to the fullest in producing for themselves and their families adequate food or the nutrition required by the human body.

In their quest for land, Katarungan Eastern Visayas farmers who are beneficiaries of the “dead” CLOAs (Certificate of Land Ownership Award), engaged the Agrarian Reform Program Officers in dialogues and were promised untangling problems in releasing the Land Titles. Farmers have long submitted necessary documents needed as what was required of them. Yet, only a few hundreds were distributed.

In an interview with ABS-CBN last October 7, 2014, Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) Regional Director Atty. Sheila Enciso promised to fast track the release of CLOAs before the year ends. To this, Katarungan Eastern Visayas farmer leader of LSBDA (Leyte Sab-A Basin Development Authority) land, Villamor Urena retorts “narinig na namin ‘yan. Magbibigay ng kaunti tapos bibilang ka ng taon wala na ulit. Mukhang hindi na kayang ayusin dito sa region, kailangan na sa Kongreso na idulog ito.”

Continuing violation

The “dead” CLOAs, until revived and distributed represent a continuing violation of every Filipinos’ right to adequate food.

The Philippine government, being a state party to the international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights (ICESCR), and the attached agencies, in fulfilling the Landless Yolanda farmers’ right to adequate food, has the key obligation to:

• respect the farmers’ unrestricted access to the land and other support services;

• protect the interests of the farmers and ensure that no individuals or government agencies, in the case of the “dead” CLOAs, deprive their access to land and adequate food by the slow implementation of the agrarian reform program;

• fulfill or facilitate the completion of the distribution of CLOAs that will ensure the farmers’ access to support services from other national government agencies, international and national government organizations that are involved in the rehabilitation of Region 8 after Yolanda.

Katarungan Eastern Visayas is calling on the national government to intervene, on their behalf, in the early resolution of the issues they are now facing. The government, after all, has the obligation to implement the right to adequate food directly, in the failure of the agencies in doing so. General Comment No. 12 of the CESCR specifically states that government intervention apply “for persons who are victims of natural or other disasters.”