Five conferences of peasant women were organised in South Asia in 1991. The first took place in India, organised by the Centre for Women's Development Studies, New Delhi, and the National Institute for Rural Development, Hyderabad. Three more followed in Pakistan, [organized by the Aurat Foundation], Nepal [Women in Development] and Bangladesh [Nari Pokkho], and the fifth and final conference which was regional, took place in Lahore; peasant women from the four national conferences, agricultural scientists and policy makers came together for a face to face dialogue.
The main financial and moral support came from UNIFEM which showed tremendous farsightedness and made efforts to involve other U.N. and bilateral aid organisations in these initiatives. FAO's Freedom From Hunger Campaign/Action for Development, New Delhi was involved in conceptualising and planning the conferences. FAO provided a consultancy to Dr. Vina Mazumdar of C.W.D.S to participate in the five conferences and to prepare a document about the background, rationale and outcome of the dialogues; Embracing the Earth: An Agenda for Partnership with Peasant Women is a result of that effort.
The conferences brought together peasant women who have been empowered over the years, with the help of NGOs and women's groups, to fight for their rights and improve their situation. They provided them with an opportunity to share their problems, aspirations and struggles; to have a dialogue with scientists, researchers and policy makers, to arrive at strategies for concerted action at the grassroot level to reverse trends which are leading to their marginalisation and ecological destruction; and to initiate processes for the practice of sustainable agriculture.
This document and the four video films that were made to record these national and regional events are testimonies to the knowledge, wisdom, experience and militancy of peasant women. They demonstrate clearly that these women are neither uneducated nor inarticulate. Rather, they are the managers and conservers of our agricultural resource base and are more than capable of understanding their problems and finding solutions for them. They possess excellent organisational and managerial skills, are courageous and commited and are capable of extraordinary militancy if nothing else works.
Subsequent to the regional conference three peasant women, Bibi Sultana from Pakistan, Chandrika from Nepal and Malati Mandi from India, went to the U. N. Conference on Environment and Development in Rio in 1992 to present the main findings and conclusions of their deliberations in South Asia. As a follow-up to the Rio conference several conferences of peasant women have been held in South Asia and several others are planned to pursue the implementation of the relevant suggestions made at Rio and to keep the dialogues going.
Driving Mazumdar, the author of this document, is a social scientist, a leading proponent of women's studies and a feminist activist who has been working with peasant women in West Bengal, India, for over a decade and has been actively engaged in influencing policies and programmes at local, national and international levels. We are grateful to Dr. Mazumdar for taking on the responsibility of writing this document.
It is our hope that this document will help the powerful voices of peasant women to be heard by policy makers in the corridors of power. It should remind us all that because peasant women mother the earth, their interests, knowledge and experience must be at the centre of development policies and programmes. Ignoring or marginalising them can only make the survival of our planet more precarious.
We hope the suggestions made by the women and the concrete areas of cooperation identified by them will guide policy makers and implementers, both in government and non-governmental organisations, at the local, national and international levels. We also hope that this document and the video films will feed into the ongoing preparations in South Asia for the Fourth World Conference on Women to be held in Beijing in 1995.
Kamla Bhasin
South Asian Programme
FAO's Freedom From Hunger Campaign
Action for Development
New Delhi
