Peasants' Rights and the United Nations System

马克·埃德尔曼博士(亨特学院)将研究跨国集体行动和社会运动的新发展。这位研究人员的重点将是农业社会运动最近为让联合国执行一项《国际农民权利公约》所做的努力，类似于早先成功实施联合国土著人民权利公约的努力。农民权利公约草案于2002年在雅加达举行的维亚坎佩西纳会议上首次提出，其中列举了一系列权利，其中许多权利已经是现有联合国公约的一部分。然而，公约草案中的其他权利使现有规范超越了现有的界限，例如主张“拒绝”作物基因材料知识产权的权利或要求参与国际经济决策进程。公约草案的起草者声称，农民同土著人民一样，是一个弱势群体，具有文化上的具体特点和做法，值得国际社会承认和保护。研究人员将收集有关该活动的起源、发展、资金和当前活动的信息。他还将审查这场运动对其所属的民间社会网络以及对议程设定进程、关于权利和发展的论述以及联合国系统内的公私伙伴关系的影响。研究方法将包括收集和分析相关文件；采访主要利益相关者；以及在农民组织办公室、会议和公共活动中观察。研究场所包括纽约、日内瓦和罗马的联合国机构；为跨国农业运动提供资金或提供后勤支持的欧洲合作机构的办公室；以及雅加达的维亚坎佩西纳跨国农业运动总部。该项目利用并将有助于以下社会科学研究：(1)集体行动和跨国社会运动；(2)人权和权利主张进程；(3)全球治理机构和民间社会行为者之间的公私伙伴关系。它将提供一个窗口，让人们了解在世界人口众多、新的权利主张以前从未被研究过的世界人口中，发展和传播有关权利的新思想的跨国进程。

Dr. Marc Edelman (Hunter College) will undertake research on new developments in transnational collective action and social movements. The researcher's focus will be recent efforts of agrarian social movements to have the United Nations implement an "International Convention on the Rights of Peasants," similar to earlier successful efforts to implement a UN convention on indigenous people's rights. The draft Peasants' Rights Convention, which was first presented at a Vía Campesina conference in Jakarta in 2002, enumerates a bundle of rights, many of which are already part of existing UN Conventions. Other rights in the draft Convention, however, push existing norms beyond their current bounds, such as claims of a "right to reject" intellectual property of crop genetic material or demands for participation in international economic policymaking processes. The authors of the draft Convention assert that peasants, like native peoples, are a vulnerable group, with culturally specific characteristics and practices that deserve international recognition and protection. The researcher will collect information on the origins, development, funding, and current activities of the campaign. He also will examine the campaign's impact on the civil society networks of which it is a part and on agenda-setting processes, discourses about rights and development, and public-private partnerships within the UN system. Research methods will include collection and analysis of relevant documents; interviews with key stakeholders; and observation in peasant organization offices, meetings, and public activities. Research venues include UN agencies in New York, Geneva, and Rome; offices of European cooperation agencies that fund or provide logistical support to transnational agrarian movements; and the headquarters of the Vía Campesina transnational agrarian movement in Jakarta.The project draws on and will contribute to social scientific studies of: (1) collective action and transnational social movements; (2) human rights and rights-claiming processes; and (3) public-private partnerships between global governance institutions and civil society actors. It will provide a window onto transnational processes of development and diffusion of new ideas about rights, in a sector of the world population that is vast and whose new rights claims have not been previously studied.