La Via Campesina (LVC)

La Via Campesina (LVC) is an international movement driven by approximately 200 million peasants, small and medium size farmers, landless people, rural women and youth, Indigenous Peoples, migrants and agricultural workers. LVC has 182 member organizations in 81 countries which are organized into the following regions currently: Southern and Eastern Africa, Western and Central Africa, Arab and Northern Africa, South Asia, Southeast and East Asia, Europe, North America, Central America, Caribbean, and South America. 

Harnessing the solidarity among its members, LVC defends peasant agriculture for food sovereignty as a way to promote social justice and dignity and oppose corporate driven agriculture that destroys nature and social relations. LVC’s work centers around three struggles:

• defending food sovereignty and struggling for land and agrarian reforms
• promoting agroecology and defending local seeds
• promoting peasant rights and resisting the criminalisation of peasants.

In the International Conference that happens once every four years, each region proposes one man and one woman for the International Coordinating Committee (ICC). The International Operative Secretariat coordinates the work of the ICC and supports the coordination of the international activities of LVC, the working collectives, the concerns of youth and women farmers, the campaigns, and if necessary — the regions.

The International Operative Secretariat’s location, which rotates every four to eight years, is currently hosted in France by Confederation Paysanne in France who began hosting the International Operative Secretariat in November 2021.