(Bagnolet | 19.08.2025)
To the workers, peasants, and all people of the world,
The 10th of September is commemorated by La Via Campesina and its allies worldwide as the International Day of Action Against the World Trade Organization (WTO) and Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). On this day, we remember the sacrifice of South Korean peasant Lee Kyung Hae in Cancun in 2003, when he took his life to protest the WTO-led free trade policies.
Free-market globalization has only created immense suffering for our people and the whole of humanity. Rampant privatization of the territories and commons, deregulation, import surges and dumping, war-induced supply disruptions and, most recently, the misuse of tariffs and non-tariff barriers for vested imperial agendas, have only aggravated the suffering of workers and small-scale food producers. Despite its evident failures, the WTO (and the FTAs negotiated outside of it) still have a huge influence on global trade.
The recent tariff war by the U.S. government also shows that trade measures can be used to weaponize imperial foreign policy – rather than to support small-scale food producers, improve food availability, create jobs, and strengthen food sovereignty in both the Global North and South. WTO remains dysfunctional in the face of such an imperial onslaught.
We need to step up our struggle against these neoliberal institutions, defend the peasantry and rural communities, and protect our food sovereignty and biodiversity.
Today, in almost every corner of the world, the rural and urban working classes are erupting in protests. After having been systematically marginalized and invisibilized by an economic system that expanded with the blessings of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the WTO, and FTAs – the people are expressing their frustration through mass agitations.
It is imperative that we build on this growing chorus for change. The current global context offers a window of opportunity to design a new global trade framework based on Food Sovereignty – one that truly serves the interests of peasants, small-scale food producers, and workers.
We must co-create – from our territories – a framework that will radically change the principles that define the global trade system and build food sovereignty. A framework that would allow countries to develop policies that ensure a decent livelihood for all people, especially small-scale food producers.
Minimum support prices, public stock-holding, supply management, and public food procurement are just a few of many pragmatic policies that could ensure a decent income for small-scale food producers and that can defend peoples’ right to healthy and nutritious food.
A framework that will guarantee that our food systems are democratically organized and not left to the whims of the market. La Via Campesina firmly believes that such a trade framework should mobilize tools such as tariffs, non-tariff barriers, and subsidies to prioritize support for family farmers, small-scale food producers, fisherfolk, and rural workers.
This September, the 3rd Nyéléni Global Forum is scheduled to take place in Kandy, Sri Lanka. It will bring together a wide range of social movements—including small-scale food producers, Indigenous Peoples, workers, and activists—to build proposals for a systemic transformation of our food systems. In this important forum, the proposal to build a new trade framework based on food sovereignty is also expected to be tabled, debated, and its content deepened.
Furthermore, La Via Campesina is also gearing up for mobilization at the next WTO Ministerial Conference (MC14). From the 26–29 March 2026, the WTO Ministerial Conference will take place in Cameroon. The WTO – while on its deathbed – is struggling to remain relevant in a world grappling with issues like growing inequality, poverty, hunger, and war. The WTO must get out of agriculture. We need to end the WTO. But also propose our alternative.
Join us, and let us build the world we know is possible.
Organize events, rallies, and public campaigns to raise awareness and press for alternative trade policies that prioritize solidarity, internationalism, social justice, food sovereignty, and environmental justice!
Email your plans to communications@viacampesina.org or tag us on social networks.
Hashtags: #NewTradeFramework #EndWTO #NoFTA
A New Trade Framework NOW!For Food Sovereignty and For the Rights of Peoples!