On October 15, the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP) will be holding a webinar to highlight the struggle of peasants in the Philippines for genuine land reform, and against state violence at the hands of the Marcos Jr. regime. The webinar will feature speakers from the peasant movement, as well as from the international solidarity movement. It will be held in two sessions, one for the Europe and Asia-Pacific regions, and one for North America.
In the Philippines, farmers, fishermen, and agricultural workers are suffering due to the continued monopoly of land by a few, declining income and livelihood in farming and fishing, deepening debt, and various forms of feudal and semi-feudal exploitation. Local and foreign monopolies are maintained through land grabbing and conversion of agricultural land. The suffering of the peasant masses is further aggravated by the neoliberal economic policy in agriculture of the Philippine government, including relentless importation of agricultural products, which only decreases farmers’ income even more.
The peasant masses are the primary victims of state terror and violations of human rights and international humanitarian law (IHL) by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), and they are an essential part of the struggle for a just peace. Peasants in the countryside face the brunt of IHL violations in the context of the ongoing armed conflict because their struggle for land reform is a threat to the monopoly land ownership and big foreign companies which the AFP protects.
