GLOBAL NEWS MOVEMENT NEWS
Movements slam corporate takeover of food systems summit
© National Network of Agrarian Reform Advocates
Food sovereignty activists in the Philippines join the mobilisation in July.
Over 100 organisations of farmers, Indigenous Peoples, agricultural workers and others came together in the summer to prepare for a Global People’s Summit on Food Systems. Online events as well as ‘real life’ protests were held from Jakarta to Rome and around 9,000 people took part. The People’s Summit was a
response to the formal UN Food Systems Summit in September, which has been taken over by corporate interests including the World Economic Forum and agribusiness. Global Justice Now joined more than 500 organisations in warning against this last year, but the warning was not heeded. Yet the energy to resist the corporate
hijack was clear and the call for an alternative summit arose. The People’s Summit was led by movements actually involved in building a better food system, all across the world. As Saúl Vicente from the International Indian Treaty Council said: “They wanted to bury us so that we would disappear, but they didn't know we were seeds.”
Pakistan to terminate 23 corporate court treaties The government of Pakistan announced in August that it will terminate 23 bilateral investment treaties, known as BITs, with different countries in order to avoid the corporate court provisions they contain, which override domestic law. It follows a succession of scandalous cases brought against Pakistan in corporate courts (also known as 6 Ninety-Nine 2021
investor-state dispute settlement or ISDS) in recent years. In 2019, two international mining companies were awarded $5.9 billion – more than twice Pakistan’s annual budget for healthcare for 200 million people – in lost revenues from a proposed gold and copper mine found not to be legally constituted by the country’s Supreme Court. The decision is part of a growing
trend by developing countries, including South Africa, India and Indonesia, to terminate existing BITS and develop models of investment agreements which do not enable foreign corporations to sue governments. Pakistan was able to unilaterally terminate 23 treaties; a further nine will require agreement with the partner government.
