H
Human Rights and Peasant
People
Zayda Sierra1, Hader Calderón-Serna1,
Hernán Porras-Gallego2 and
Sonia Cárdenas-Solís3
1
Research Group Unipluriversidad, Universidad
de Antioquia, Medellín, Colombia
2
Corporación CEAM, Marinilla, Colombia
3
Instituto de Sociología y Estudios Campesinos,
Universidad de Córdoba, Córdoba, España
Abstract
The current dominant discourses on the bene-
fits of a global market economy offer the illu-
sion of a homogeneous world that is constantly
moving towards progress. However, for thou-
sands of rural communities, this process has
meant a major impoverishment due to the
expansion of agro-industry and extractive
mine business, causing the destruction of
water sources and ecosystems, the forced dis-
placement of peasants to urban centers, and the
enormous loss to humanity of diverse cultures
and knowledges.
The current Covid 19 pandemic evidences
the enormous social and environmental debt
with peasants, indigenous and Afrodescendant
people, and other rural population who feed the
world but are in a very vulnerable social, polit-
ical, and economic situation, and therefore the
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
V. P. Glăveanu (ed.), The Palgrave Encyclopedia of the Possible,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98390-5_152-1
importance of protecting and implementing
their human rights.
All societies – globally, nationally, and
locally – need to keep transforming unjust
and exploitive relationships among people
and with nature. Here we briefly present some
discussions related with the need of special
rights for peasant people from equality and
equity perspectives, acknowledging the com-
plexity and challenges that rural men, women,
and children handle in their territories, inviting
researchers from different disciplines, social
leaders, and other practitioners, to join the
implementation of their rights and keep dream-
ing, with the peasant movement around the
world, the possible.
Keywords
Equality · Equity · United Nations · Human
rights · Peasants · Rural population ·
Neocolonization · Sustainability
The Complex Interweaving of Equality
and Equity Rights
Human rights theory and practice can be summa-
rized as a commitment to respect, cherish, and
treat all life with the utmost care, without any
distinction. However, the complex interrelation-
ship between universality versus diversity, equal-
ity versus equity rights is continuously on debate.
2 Human Rights and Peasant People
The concept of equality involves the recognition
that any person, regardless of race, sex, creed, or
social status, should have the same rights, possi-
bilities, and opportunities. “Equality” means that
everyone should receive the same or similar treat-
ment. However, as the Ontario Human Rights
Commission (2013) has indicated, the problem is
that “formal equality” ignores historical and ongo-
ing barriers, does not allow for special needs, and
can even continue inequality for certain groups.
Therefore, the need for the development and use
of special programs as effective ways to achieve
“substantive equality” by helping reduce discrim-
ination, or addressing historical prejudice.
Facio and Morgan (2009) have called the atten-
tion to the restrictive formal way the concept of
equality has been interpreted and applied in the
history of women’s rights. For them, the concept
of equality is androcentric, which is to say that
men are the frame of reference and their experi-
ence is the norm, while the concept of equity
allowed feminists to bring to the table the enor-
mous differences not only between men and
women but also the intersectionality of gender
with ethnicity, economic class, geographic loca-
tion, immigration status, sexual identity and ori-
entation, age, abilities, and other such factors.
Nevertheless, both authors argue, the term
“equity” is a subjective term that can mean differ-
ent things to different people. Human rights for
women based only on equity would not have any
practical worth because there will be thousands of
justifications for limiting them for reasons of sex,
ethnicity, age, ability, sexuality, etc. Instead, the
term equality, as “substantive equality,” is mea-
surable in that it can only be reached when there
no longer exist any of the various forms of dis-
crimination against women: “neither our differ-
ences nor our similarities should be reason for
exploiting, discriminating against, oppressing, or
in any other form dehumanizing us” (Facio and
Morgan 2009: 23).
In the same order of ideas, Karima Bennoune,
the United Nations special rapporteur in the field
of cultural rights, examined the cultural rights
approach to the universality of human rights, and
the close interrelationship between universality
and cultural diversity:
Universality is about human dignity, not about
homogeneity. But we must also recognize the diver-
sity of diversities, not only between, but within all
human groups, and the fact that, among others,
women, minorities, freethinkers and persons
targeted because of their sexual orientation or gen-
der identity have also been wrongfully subject to
hegemony and abuse within groups. (Bennoune
2018: 5)
Thus the complex interrelationship between
universality and cultural diversity, equality, and
equity has been under constant debate and scru-
tiny. It explains why different social movements
around the planet have demanded to the United
Nations to expand the human rights law from a
dominant male, individualist, and liberal meaning
to encompass specific standards for vulnerable
groups such as women in 1979, children in
1989, persons with disabilities in 2006, indige-
nous people in 2007, and, more recently, peasants
in 2018. However, a more equitable access does
not necessarily mean more equal access. As
Vivallo Urra (2013) have shown, the notion of
equity, through compensatory operations, can per-
fectly coexist with the social, political, and eco-
nomic processes responsible for the unequal
access to resources that it tries to mitigate. Equity
tries, therefore, to compensate, but does not guar-
antee human rights.
A Paradigm Shift: Human Rights from a
Decolonial Perspective
A decolonial perspective contributes today on
interpreting better the must-needed changes
towards recognizing human rights across different
cultures and groups of people (equality) without
ignoring diversity (equity), not merely compen-
sating but challenging the historical causes of
social injustice and discrimination. As reviewed
elsewhere (Sierra and Glăveanu 2019), the most
recent United Nations Declarations of the Rights
of Indigenous Peoples in 2007 and of Peasants
and Other People Working in Rural Areas in 2018
draw on the resistance of racialized and oppressed
groups against the dehumanization, exploitation,
and genocide that have occurred during several
centuries of colonization and that, in other guises,
Human Rights and Peasant People
continues today. Both declarations challenge
predatory and unsustainable economic models
and are a call for a decolonial and eco-feminist
agenda that allows the recreation of life under new
terms, in balance with nature, based on social
justice and equity (Escobar 1998; Harding 2000;
Mignolo and Walsh 2018).
The structure of the society and its worldview
are still strongly influenced by the modern colonial
project: a global hegemonic structure of power that
has been in place since the European conquest,
articulatin grace and labor, land and people, on
the basis of material gains (Mignolo and Walsh
2018). As Escobar (1998) explains, over the last
50 years, concepts like “poverty,” “Third World,”
or “underdevelopment” were coined to promote
the First World’s capitalist model of development
globally and extend costly credits to former colo-
nized countries (neo-colonization). Indigenous
people, rural Afrodescendants, and mestizo peas-
ant populations in Latin America, for example, are
those who have suffered predominantly the nega-
tive effects of such an oppressive system. This is
evidenced by their persistent marginalization, the
loss and neglect of their own languages, knowl-
edge, and culture, their difficult access to good
lands and water resources, and the frequent viola-
tion of their basic rights – to health, to education,
to welfare, and protection.
The process of capitalist development, charac-
terized by an economy of unlimited consumption,
despite its multiple crises, reinvents ways to con-
tinue growing and demanding territories. This
modernizing process has been extremely violent
in territories where new areas of crops are grabbed
by international markets, where minerals and fuel
sources continue being extracted, and where new
dams, roads, and ports are built to circulate goods.
This is why the territories of indigenous and peas-
ants’ communities continue to be the target of
“development” projects and resource extraction,
which ends up depleting them and displacing the
women, men, and children who inhabit these ter-
ritories, who have been preserving and cocreating
them (Escobar 2014; Cárdenas 2015).
According to Harding (2000: 245–246), from
an ecofeminist and decolonial critique, the con-
ception of development as economic growth has
3
generated several problems, among them, (1) the
conceptualization of development and human
progress only in terms of economic production,
which made women and household work more
susceptible to be exploited; as a result, rural
women’s living conditions have worsened and
their workload has increased; (2) nature itself pre-
sents limits to economic growth, as the world
does not have sufficient resources to sustain
global consumerist growth, and (3) conceptualiz-
ing development in terms of increased economic
productivity and consumption ignores and
devalues other “goods” that women and other
cultures prioritize such as ethical, political, aes-
thetic, and spiritual values.
Different peasant organizations and different
experts have been insisting on the need for a
paradigm shift against extractivism and extended
monocultivation to, instead, strengthening family
agriculture, local economies, community ties, and
the reconstitution of the peasantry (Ploeg 2010;
Hilmi 2013; Sourisseau 2014). “Peasants and
rural workers and their families still account for
nearly half the world’s population, yet nobody –
or almost nobody – used to give a thought to their
needs” (Hubert 2019: 92). Concepts and princi-
ples of alternative paradigms to development are
needed: Ikerd, Gamble, and Cox (2014) suggest
an economy of deep sustainability, when
questioning the growing threats to ecological
and social sustainability rooted in a neoclassical
paradigm of economic development dominant
today, which is inherently extractive and exploit-
ative, that is, unsustainable.
Food Sovereignty, Agroecology, and
Rural Women’s Rights
In the declaration of Nyéleni (2007), 500 repre-
sentatives from more than 80 countries, of orga-
nizations of peasants/family farmers, artisanal
fisherfolk, indigenous peoples, landless peoples,
rural workers, migrants, pastoralists, forest com-
munities, women, youth, consumers, and environ-
mental and urban movements outlined food
sovereignty as the right of peoples to healthy and
culturally appropriate food produced through
4 Human Rights and Peasant People
ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and
their right to define their own food and agriculture
systems. “It puts the aspirations and needs of
those who produce, distribute, and consume food
at the heart of food systems and policies rather
than the demands of markets and corporations. It
ensures that the rights to use and manage lands,
territories, waters, seeds, livestock, and biodiver-
sity are in the hands of those of us who produce
food” (1).
Food sovereignty relates in a very pertinent
way to agroecology, understood as the ecological
management of natural common goods (air, water,
land, and biodiversity), based on the application
of local peasant and indigenous knowledge, to
generate markets organized horizontally by the
actors involved (Cuéllar Padilla and Sevilla
Guzmán 2018). Unlike conventional and indus-
trial agriculture, agroecology encourages greater
knowledge about local ecosystems and sustain-
able agricultural techniques, which strengthens
negotiation capacities and facilitates self-determi-
nation. According to Altieri and Toledo (2011),
“after centuries of cultural and biological evolu-
tion, traditional farmers have developed and
inherited complex agricultural systems, adapted
to local conditions. These have helped to sustain-
ably manage harsh environments and satisfy their
subsistence needs, without depending on mecha-
nization, chemical fertilizers, pesticides or other
technologies of modern agricultural science”
(cited by Delgado et al. 2013: 183). Agroecology
as a science is a transformation alternative with
great political potential, rooted in the power that
people take when they recognize their own knowl-
edge and historical contribution to the coevolution
of agroecosystems and, at the same time, they give
themselves the possibility of transforming their
lives.
Timmermann and Felix (2015) highlight the
role of agroecology for contributive justice, that
is, the equitable distribution between meaningful
work and tedious tasks. Conceiving the garden,
the farm and the territory as an ecosystem requires
paying close attention to the entire agricultural
production process, which brings cognitive advan-
tages, not only for food production. Agroecology
makes the field work more interesting and
encourages problem-solving, since farmers must
develop skills and acquire valuable experiential
knowledge on local ecosystems and agricultural
techniques. This facilitates self-determination and
makes farm work more attractive to a younger
generation, an essential factor for safeguarding
the continuity of family farms. By
reconceptualizing and giving a new value to
work in the field, the principles of agroecology
also contribute to the movement for food sover-
eignty and a greater well-being of rural families,
particularly women.
Peasant women produce a large part of the
world’s food and have been the guardians of tra-
ditional productive systems in which they have
conserved germplasm and knowledge about them.
However, these fundamental roles have not been
recognized and promoted, and the overload of
women is increasingly noticeable as they have to
assume greater responsibilities in the productive
dynamics, in addition to taking care of reproduc-
tive tasks, family health, the production of food
for consumption, and to be the emotional support
of their family nucleus. Likewise, they have been
used in industrial agricultural systems as cheap
wage labor. On the other hand, men are the ones
who generally make decisions about the produc-
tive processes, even though the land belongs to
women and they participate in the cultivation. To
break initiatives to promote the strengthening of
women as subjects of law are required that allow
them to put themselves in a position of equality to
work for a common future, in which their dreams,
their potentialities, knowledge, and resources are
also taken into account (Cárdenas 2015).
From eco-feminist educational experiences,
Cárdenas and Zuluaga (2016) have shown how
women, when they get to know their rights and
knowledges, change their vision of themselves as
mere agricultural helpers or laborers, engaged in
insignificant jobs. Women learn to revalue the
agricultural and food culture of their own territory,
recognizing their contributions as producers of
material goods (food, medicinal plants, and
income) and symbolic goods (knowledge, inno-
vation, and ability to create). They gain autonomy
to define what interests them and defend their own
options for associativity, the same ones that has
Human Rights and Peasant People
led to these gains. By acquiring respect for their
knowledge and work, women achieve important
transformations in their families and communi-
ties. Agroecology is considered, then, of enor-
mous impact for rural women due to its role in
the reconstruction of the social fabric, environ-
mental care, and food security of the family and
local markets.
Peasants’ Rights: An Historical Claim for
Equally Substantial New Rights
Peasantry has a fundamental role in the right to
food, in the conservation of biodiversity and in the
mitigation of climate change through sustainable
agriculture. However, because of their particular
conditions, peasants suffer enormous vulnerabil-
ities in a globalized world, which threatens peasant
livelihoods, for example, through land grabbing
resulting from the combined effect of the expansion
of agribusiness, mining and real estate speculation.
Based on this observation, the Declaration con-
cludes that peasants require special recognition
and protection by the States. (Uprimny 2018: 1)
In December 2018, the United Nations General
Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Rights
of Peasants and Other Rural Workers (UNDROP),
at the initiative of La Via Campesina (LVC) move-
ment, supported by the Centre Europe – Tiers
Monde (CETIM), among other international orga-
nizations. The LVC union arose in 1993 out of
earlier meetings that had pinpointed the similari-
ties in peasants’ conditions and difficulties in
countries that seemed to have nothing in common
but a related enemy: the World Trade Organiza-
tion (WTO). Sharing analyses of their common
experiences, the LVC peasants had developed a
critical view of globalization and were aware of
the dangers inherent in the worldwide liberaliza-
tion of agriculture (Hubert 2019). After 25 years
of discussion, this declaration was finally
approved recognizing that the peasantry has par-
ticular living conditions because of its special link
with the land and food production, and because of
the development of particular forms of family and
associative work.
As related by Hubert (2019), the declaration
opens with a preamble presenting the concerns at
5
the origin of the project, on how around the world,
people living in rural areas are those most affected
by hunger and poverty, along with those living in
slums:
Today, rural workers do not earn enough and are
under pressure from the cost of the inputs necessi-
tated by the model of agriculture imposed on
them. . . Most peasant protests about their situation
are met with repression and violence. To under-
stand this scenario is to understand the urgent
need to better protect the rights of peasants and
other persons working in rural areas. (The
UNDROP, introduction. In Hubert 2019: 65–66)
The declaration has among its objectives: to
protect the rights of peasants and improve the
living conditions in rural areas, particularly of
rural women; to strengthen food sovereignty, the
fight against climate change, and the conservation
of biodiversity; to encourage genuine agrarian
reform and a better protection against land grab-
bing; for the right of peasants to save, use,
exchange, and sell their seeds; and for remunera-
tive prices for peasant production and the rights of
agricultural workers, among others. Of the 28
articles covering the declaration rights, the lead-
ing organizations as La Via Campesina and
CETIM highlight 7 because of their novelty and
transformational potential: the right to land and
other natural resources; the right to seeds; the right
to a decent income and livelihood and to the
means of production; the right to adequate food
and to food sovereignty; the right to social secu-
rity; the right to participate in decision-making;
and, following from these rights, the general obli-
gations on states (see Hubert 2019: 66–77).
A separate article of the declaration was
devoted to the rights of peasant women and
other rural women workers. As seen above,
although women from rural contexts play a sig-
nificant role in the economic survival of their
families and in contributing to the rural and
national economy, they are often denied tenure
and ownership of land, equal access to land, pro-
ductive resources, financial services, information,
employment or social protection, and are often
victims of violence and discrimination in a variety
of forms and manifestations. The declaration stip-
ulates, therefore, the need to change legislation
6 Human Rights and Peasant People
that perpetuates discrimination against rural
women. Their rights are one of the central pillars
of the declaration (see Article 4 in Hubert 2019:
108–109).
The Multidimensional Nature of Rurality
In many different countries around the so-called
Third World, the national educational systems are
an imposed legacy of colonialist domination.
These educational systems, from preschool to
university, are centralized, monocultural, and
hierarchical, ignoring the learnings and contribu-
tions of indigenous, Afro-descendent, and mes-
tizo peasant knowledge about the social and
environmental complexity of their territories.
Thus, the national educational systems contribute
to the exclusion, marginalization, and invisibility
of rural population. Lander (2000: 69), on his
reflections on the geopolitics of hegemonic
knowledge, sustains how the disciplinary struc-
tures of Latin American universities, “with their
parceling of knowledge,” have become an obsta-
cle to critically address questions about what and
for whom of the knowledge that is taught and the
research that is carried out. Current problems such
as unlimited growth, wild capitalism, inequalities,
human rights, militarism, and the risk to life on the
planet are addressed in a fragmented way by dif-
ferent academic programs.
Haverkort and other authors (2013: 22), based
on experiences with rural communities in Latin
America, Asia and Africa, have expressed their
concern about the injustice done to the diversity of
cultures and local knowledge systems in the world
if scientists, educators, and development practi-
tioners limit their attention to imported knowledge
and technologies of Eurocentric origin, which do
not recognize the problems, challenges, and
stakes of solidarity and self-consumption econo-
mies, which usually are described as premodern,
retrograde, or primitive. Rural policies and edu-
cation have been designed mainly from an eco-
nomic and productive perspective, which peasants
see merely as work force.
For Wallerstein (2001), the knowledge that is
taught in universities ceases to be objective
precisely because of the ignorance and denial of
other knowledges. We cannot continue ignoring
the political, economic, and power interests that
have defined the evolution of modern sciences
today, with adverse implications for the life of
people and the planet (see also Fals Borda and
Mora-Osejo 2004; Harding 1996; Haverkort et al.
2013; Nieto 2009).
If we consider rurality from a multi-
dimensional view, we need to see the interrelating
components of a territorial system. That is, taking
into account not only the economic and produc-
tive dimensions, but also the political, social,
environmental, and cultural ones. The interaction
of these dimension can, at a given time and cir-
cumstance, be as important as the main compo-
nents. Based on Sepúlveda (2008), the social and
cultural dimension refers to the spatial, gender,
and population distribution in a territory and their
relationships, which include aspects such as the
satisfaction of basic needs, preservation of cul-
tural heritage, and proper ecological practices.
The economic dimension involves the interfaces
of primary activities with those of processing and
trade. It includes poverty eradication; access to
goods and services; the creation of markets for
sustainable activities; and the establishment and
promotion of even markets. The environmental
dimension relates to a balanced management of
the ecosystems and natural resources. The politi-
cal dimension has the democratic governance as a
priority, looking at the interaction between hege-
monic groups and other actors, as well as various
types of political balances and negotiation
processes.
The UNDROP contributes to a better under-
standing of the complexity and multiple dimen-
sions of rural life. Different educational initiatives
need to be created to ensure the knowledge of
their rights by rural men, women, and children,
and that they can strengthen their political partic-
ipation and decision-making in all dimensions:
States shall formulate, in partnership with peasants
and other people working in rural areas, public
policies at the local, national, regional and inter-
national levels to advance and protect the right to
adequate food, food security and food sovereignty
and sustainable and equitable food systems. States
Human Rights and Peasant People
shall establish mechanisms to ensure the coherence
of their agricultural, economic, social, cultural and
development policies with the realization of the
rights contained in the present Declara-
tion. (UNDROP, Article 15, 5).
Some Conclusions
With the adoption of the Declaration on the Rights
of Peasants (UNDROP), the nations of the world
face the challenge of seeking equity and equality,
nondiscrimination and the right to development
for peasants and all rural workers and populations,
to guarantee their right to participate in the man-
agement of natural resources and to enjoy in a fair
and equitable manner the benefits of their devel-
opment and conservation in their community, to
provide land to work, as well as the right to access
seeds to sow and distribute the products of their
crops, and the right to income and decent liveli-
hoods. This is a greater challenge for the educa-
tional systems (Hubert 2019).
Strengthening family and subsistence agricul-
ture has been proposed as a key element in
responding to global challenges such as climate
change, food security, scarcity of fossil resources
and employment, and emerging diseases. Self-
consumption agriculture has persisted despite the
invisibility with which it has been treated by
development in the modernization process and
by policies that have become a constraint and
risk of its disappearance (Cárdenas 2015: 2).
Family and small-scale agriculture are inextri-
cably linked to global food security. Family farm-
ing rescues traditional foods, contributing to a
balanced diet, the protection of the world’s agri-
cultural biodiversity, and the sustainable use of
natural resources. Family farming represents an
opportunity to boost local economies, especially
when combined with specific policies aimed at
social protection and community well-being
(Grisa and Sabourin 2019).
In agreement with Machado (2011), recogniz-
ing rural populations’ rights imply reviewing not
only the negative impacts of the so-called “green
revolution” (abuse of agrochemicals, monocul-
tures, and deforestation), but also understanding
7
that rurality goes beyond the economic, produc-
tive, and competitive dimension of extractive
economies. It is clear that the maintenance of
present and future generations depends on the
possibility that rural people can remain in their
territory, strengthening their human and social
capabilities, that they are not forced to emigrate
due to poverty and violence, that there are envi-
ronmental safe conditions, and an adequate stan-
dard of living for themselves and their families.
From an eco-centric paradigm, it is necessary
to recognize the interconnection of reality and the
fundamental unity of the universe and other more
responsible forms of social organization (Shea
1998). The recognition of the rights of peasants
and other rural populations is part of another con-
ception of life. Their implementation means trans-
forming androcentric and anthropocentric
oppressive paths of development and creating
other possible ways of existing (re-existing, see
Walsh 2015). It is our duty, as citizens of the
world, to learn about indigenous people and peas-
ants’ rights to work towards their implementation
in each sphere of human action.
Annex: The Colombian Case
Defeating the Vulnerability of Peasants’
Rights: A Challenge for Universities
For us, territories are for life, that is, territories
must be for people. For the neoliberal model, the
territories are not for the people, that is, the terri-
tories are worth as soon as there is an economic
interest there. . . The territory for us is also spiritu-
ality, that is, the construction of that form of feel-
ings, thoughts and relationships beyond the
physical part. (Robert Daza, agrarian leader, in
Quintana 2015: 1)
The territory is and forms part of our social and
cultural experience and can never be considered as
a commercial exchange property. For us, the
owners and ancestral inhabitants, it is a space
that welcomes the life of the communities in an
integral manner, with its own peoples, cultures
and social organizations, and that provides us
with the natural resources for the reproduction of
life and culture. (Ascoba-Asociación de Consejos
Comunitarios y Organizaciones del Bajo. Atrato.
Cited in Coronado 2009: 11–12)
8 Human Rights and Peasant People
Despite its relatively small size, Colombia is con-
sidered one of the world’s ten “megadiverse”
countries because of its varied ecosystems and
cultural and linguistic diversity (Maffi 1998,
2005). About 33% of the Colombian population
still lives in predominantly rural areas inhabited
by indigenous people, rural Afrodescendants and
peasant communities (small mestizo families ded-
icated to agriculture) (Machado 2011). The most
recent agricultural census (DANE 2014) corrobo-
rated that Colombia is still a country with a high
concentration of rural property. Land ownership
in Colombia is far from being democratic: 69.9%
have less than 5 hectares and occupy only 5% of
the census area, while lands of more than 500
hectares are in the hands of 0.4 of the owners
and represent 41.1% of the 113 million hectares
surveyed.
This concentration of land has been an endless
source of conflict. The expansion of the agrarian
frontier has generated deforestation, alarming
poverty, and inequality (Mejía and Mojica 2015;
OXFAM 2013; Misión Rural 2013). Peasants and
other rural inhabitants continue having the least
opportunities in society: 5% are in a condition of
multidimensional poverty, 89% have no access to
loans; illiteracy in rural areas of the country reaches
11.5% in those over 15 years of age (while the
national percentage is 6.6%), 20% of children
between 5 and 16 years of age have not attended
any institution, and 73% of children under 5 years
of age do not go to kindergarten (DANE 2014). As
Cárdenas (2015) ascertained: in five decades of
social and armed conflict, peasants, indigenous
peoples, and rural Afrodescendants have lived
through the pain of scattered horrors. The reality
is overwhelming and shows Colombia as a char-
acteristic example of capital accumulation
through dispossession in the five last decades:
5.2 million peasants violently displaced from
their regions and deprived of 8 million hectares,
many of which were integrated into mining devel-
opment as well as palm, sugarcane, and other
monoculture projects.
This represents a social catastrophe as power
continues to be in the hands of a few agents with
broad territorial dominance: traditional land-
owners or hacienda owners, agricultural or mining
entrepreneurs, drug traffickers in their search for
social and political legitimacy, and the guerrillas
as a state power. The peasant culture faces high
risks of survival and environmental damage
(Rojas Guerra 2012; Londoño 2015: 1–2); rural
women were particularly affected (Cárdenas and
Zuluaga 2016). Although there are historical
achievements in the recognition of political, terri-
torial, and cultural rights in favor of indigenous,
Afrodescendants and peasant populations,
achieved in the Political Constitution of 1991,
the Law 70 of Black Communities of 1993, and
Law 160 of Rural Peasant Development of 1994,
these rights continue on paper and rural
populations continue to face the violation of
their human rights, the destruction and loss of
their territories by extensive cattle ranching, agri-
culture and mining, and the assassination of their
leaders.
Unfortunately, to date the peasant person has not
been recognized as a social subject by those who
construct public policies in the country, generating
a crisis for this social group, exacerbated by phe-
nomena such as forced displacement, change in
land use and concentration of ownership, inade-
quate use of productive resources and in general
the conditions of poverty in the rural sector. (Misión
Rural 2013: 3)
The economic role of the peasantry in food
production, contribution to exports and foreign
exchange generation has not been properly recog-
nized, despite peasants’ capacity to transfer sur-
pluses to other sectors of the economy. The
Misión Rural (2013) shows how small producers
and family farmers are those who contribute to the
country’s food security and demonstrate not only
economic efficiency when they have access to
relatively acceptable production conditions but
also the capacity to generate economic develop-
ment and effective solutions to rural poverty.
Although Colombia was among the 54 absten-
tions for the Declaration of Peasants’ Rights, the
final vote by 193 member states in December
2018 lead to a new promising chapter in the strug-
gle for the rights of peasants and other rural com-
munities, guaranteeing their access to and control
over land, peasant’s seeds, water, and other natu-
ral resources.
Human Rights and Peasant People
Education in Rural Contexts Should Be Based
on Socially Relevant Problems
According to our experience and discussions with
rural participants from different Colombian con-
texts and projects (Calderón Serna 2015;
Cárdenas 2015; Porras 2019; Sierra et al. 2010,
2016), education in rural contexts, from an equal-
ity and equity perspective, should serve to identify
and address the different factors that render so
vulnerable their rights. Vulnerability aggravated
by the absence of higher education programs rel-
evant to the diverse social, cultural, and environ-
mental rural contexts, which has led the new
generations of rural youth to migrate to the cities
in search of postsecondary studies and sources of
employment to finally not return to their terri-
tories. Hence, for Jiménez (2017), addressing ade-
quately the challenges of higher education in the
rural setting should not become a priority but a
national emergency, promoting the sense of
belonging within rural society through a new
rural educational policy, making the demands
and rights of diverse rural population visible (San-
tos 2012), incorporating their life experiences,
worldviews, and cultures; constructing with
them other forms of learning, doing, and teaching
(Arias 2017), and critically building knowledge
dialogue with other views and perspectives.
To respond to this historical debt of advancing
culturally pertinent higher education for diverse
rural populations at Universidad de Antioquia, we
developed a research project during 2012–2019 to
design in collaboration an undergraduate program
in Pedagogy in Rurality and Peace, to get the
approval of the Ministry of Education and be
formally offered in 2021. This implied the crea-
tion of alliances with peasants community orga-
nizations and NGOs that work with/from/and for
rural communities and the Faculties of Education,
Public Health, Agrarian Sciences, Social and
Human Sciences, among others.
Different encounters, some formally organized
through outreaches courses or diplomas, allowed
us to explore better how the university should get
closer to the rural communities and establish dia-
logue with diverse participants. With social
leaders, men and women, young and elders, issues
relevant to their contexts were identified, as well
9
as objectives, themes, and guiding questions,
reflecting on personal, family, community, and
territorial life. A main issue is how participants’
different personal interest and common topics
should contribute to build or enhance the commu-
nity life plans (CNA 2015), promoting partici-
pant’s capacity for action on different political
spaces, not as passive subjects or mere recipients
but as creators of their own reality.
All encounters with the diverse rural partici-
pants served as the basis for the collaborative
curricula construction of the Pedagogy in Rurality
and Peace program, which can be better described
in the following Graphic 1:
The guiding questions help participating com-
munity leaders, women and men, to identify prob-
lems or situations to improve in their community,
towards designing creative community proposals,
which will configure the investigative work that
each participant will develop. The creative com-
munity proposals configure the space of connec-
tion and tessitura of the discussions of the
different training spaces, and at the same time
the translation of them to their territory, from a
collaborative and projection perspective.
The sustainability of rural communities and
their ecosystems requires the strengthening of
leadership capacities and creativity in their popu-
lation, especially young people, in what we have
seen as four content axes: territorial management,
human rights, well-being of the communities, and
pedagogies towards the construction of peace.
These content axes are intertwined considering
the challenge posed by an ecosystem perspective,
that is, that the whole is meticulously articulated
in all its levels and manifestations, and that each
one of the parts can only be understood and
explained in terms of the whole (Aristizábal
2001).
For a better understanding of the interrelation
of the different content axes in the Pedagogy in
Rurality and Peace Program, we use the metaphor
of a tree, seen as a complex ecosystem itself (see
Graphic 2 Tree of Knowledge).
Through the Pedagogy in Rurality and Peace
Program by the University of Antioquia, we hope
to contribute with discussions and reflections on
the social construction of life and rights of peasant
 10

Guiding questons towards strengthening

Final year and the Comunitarian Life Plans
graduation
How to continue improving the well-being in my
Rflection-Action for the territory and the community?
How to promote educational leaderships committed to
implementation of creative
peace in the territory and in the community?
Fourth year community proposals What local, regional, natonal and international
interactions should I consider when leading projects
with my community?

Inter/ transdisciplinary How does other people (re)construct their territorial and
dialogue knowledge community life?
Third
towards enhancing the What do we dream of in my community for a better
year future?
creative community
What creative proposal(s) can I lead with my
proposals
community for a better well-being?

Second Participative inquiry How did we live in my territory and my community before
year to design creative and how our situation is now?
What changed in my community and why?
community proposals What should we take back and/or transform?

First year What is the current situation of my territory, family and community?
Contextualization How can I recognize and value their well-being?
what is my role in the life of my territory, family and community?
Beginning of
the Process

Human Rights and Peasant People, Graphic 1 Pedagogy in rurality and peace. Main guiding questions and spiral educational process towards strengthening the community
life plans
Human Rights and Peasant People
Human Rights and Peasant People
Degree projects: community creative proposals by each student ni permanent dialogue with
community organizations or other rural participants
Pedagogy of Territory
and Territorial
Governance
Pedagogical research and participative interaction
Pedagogies of Rurality
Inter / transdisciplinary dialogue towards a rurality with equity and equality
Nature and Territory
Human Rights and Peasant People, Graphic 2 Pedagogy of rurality and peace. Tree of Knowledge
communities and other rural populations in
Colombia, from decolonial paradigms and socio-
cultural perspectives of sustainability.
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