{"id":4821,"date":"2015-05-26T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-05-26T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/new.conectas.org.inf.br\/wp\/noticias\/right-to-urban-and-rural-land\/"},"modified":"2018-01-30T22:09:04","modified_gmt":"2018-01-30T22:09:04","slug":"right-to-urban-and-rural-land","status":"publish","type":"noticia","link":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/noticias\/right-to-urban-and-rural-land\/","title":"Right to urban and rural land","content":"

For Raquel Rolnik, architect and professor at FAU-USP (Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning of the University of S\u00e3o Paulo) and former UN special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, and Diego Mont\u00f3n, coordinator of CLOC (Latin American Coordination Office for Rural Organizations – Via Campesina), the right to land is so fundamental in world that its deprivation directly affects democracy.<\/p>\n

Rolnik and Mont\u00f3n participated this Monday, May 25, on the panel \u201cPublic space, land and protests\u201d of the 14th International Human Rights Colloquium. Both emphasized the importance of occupying public spaces for protests as a form of struggle and access to housing.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn times of financialized capitalism, land – whether rural or urban – has been increasingly captured by the global financial circuit,\u201d said Rolnik. According to the professor, this prevents public spaces from enabling the establishment of social and cultural relations and the experience of citizenship.\u00a0\u201cAs a result of the growing curtailment of public spaces by the financial-real estate complex, we are living in a time when the government of the city is excluded from the democratic negotiation. We are living in a state of exception in which political power has merged with economic power. This is a scandal of democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the coordinator of Via Campesina, the State has to guarantee the right to the collective management of natural resources and the right to return to the countryside, which are directly linked to the identity of each group of people. \u201cWhen an individual is expelled from his land, part of his identity is also expelled,\u201d he said, while pointing out that half the world\u2019s population is rural.<\/p>\n

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Mont\u00f3n also emphasized that the control and the concentration of land in the hands of large corporate and multinational complexes generates a capitalist way of thinking with no advantages for humanity. Proof of this, he said, is that 10 multinational companies currently own 80% of the world\u2019s grain production chain and nearly 70% of the production of agrochemicals, besides controlling the production of transgenic seeds. Meanwhile, 24% of the land cultivated by small farmers feeds 70% of the world\u2019s population.<\/p>\n

\u201cProgress will not be possible without taking to the streets, without the workers protesting in a single voice. This is our only hope,\u201d explained Mont\u00f3n.<\/p>\n