Peasants' Rights and the United Nations System

Marc Edelman博士（亨特学院）将研究跨国集体行动和社会运动的新发展。研究人员的重点将是最近的努力，农业社会运动，使联合国执行一项“国际农民权利公约”，类似于以前成功的努力，执行联合国公约的土著人民的权利。2002年在雅加达举行的农民之路会议上首次提出的《农民权利公约》草案列举了一系列权利，其中许多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将现有规范推到了其目前界限之外，例如要求“有权拒绝”作物遗传材料的知识产权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，是一个脆弱群体，具有文化上的具体特点和习俗，应得到国际承认和保护。 研究人员将收集有关该运动的起源，发展，资金和当前活动的信息。他还将研究该运动对它所参与的民间社会网络的影响，以及对人权设定进程、关于权利和发展的讨论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;与主要利益相关者进行访谈;以及在农民组织办公室，会议和公共活动中进行观察。 研究地点包括联合国在纽约、日内瓦和罗马的机构;为跨国农业运动提供资金或后勤支助的欧洲合作机构办事处;以及雅加达的农民之路跨国农业运动总部。以及（3）全球治理机构与民间社会行为体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中的一个庞大群体中发展和传播关于权利的新思想的跨国进程，而这些人的新权利要求以前从未被研究过。

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.