KANDY, Sri Lanka (PAMACC News) – At the Nyéléni Global Forum in Sri Lanka, women from across the world issued a bold call: feminism must be placed at the heart of the Common Political Agenda and Action Plan (CPAA). They warned that food sovereignty and climate justice cannot be realized without dismantling patriarchy and recognizing women’s contributions to sustaining life and communities.
Delivering the intervention on behalf of the Women’s Assembly, Susan Owiti of La Via Campesina stressed that women globally continue to shoulder the double burden of sustaining households and communities while being excluded from decision-making. “Women’s labour in food production is systematically exploited. The liberation of women will lead the transformation we seek—one based on equality, care, and solidarity,” she told delegates.
The Assembly highlighted glaring omissions in the draft CPAA, including silence on gender-based violence, patriarchy within movements, and the realities faced by women in conflict zones. Delegates noted that even within progressive spaces, women encounter exclusion and violence. “We cannot claim to fight for liberation out there if we reproduce domination in here,” the Assembly declared, pointing to incidents of disrespect and harassment reported during the forum itself.
In a show of internationalist solidarity, women expressed deep support for struggles against oppression worldwide, from Palestine to Afghanistan. They drew clear links between the exploitation of women’s labour, imperialism, and resource plunder. The Assembly insisted that feminism is not an optional perspective but a political necessity in confronting systems of domination.
Central to their intervention was the demand to recognize women’s historic and ongoing roles as seed keepers, fisherfolk, and custodians of biodiversity. Women condemned the corporate capture of seeds, water, and natural resources, stressing that these processes criminalize seed saving, destroy ecosystems, and deepen inequality. They called for decisive action to protect peasant and Indigenous seed systems, resist destructive extractivism, and defend territories from land and water grabbing.
The women also underscored the urgency of reorganizing and valuing care work, which underpins all economies but remains invisible and unpaid. They demanded policies to guarantee equal access to land, income, education, and healthcare, alongside strong public services and renewable energy systems that prioritize people over profit. Strengthening feminist education—rooted in popular, Indigenous, and grassroots perspectives—was identified as critical for building systemic change.
Sophie Ogutu, a Kenyan feminist with the World March of Women, reminded delegates that patriarchy is a global system deeply embedded in capitalism: “The end of capitalism alone will not end patriarchy. But the end of patriarchy will end capitalism, because global economies depend fundamentally on women’s unpaid and underpaid labour.”
This analysis reinforced the Assembly’s insistence that dismantling patriarchy is inseparable from struggles for food sovereignty and climate justice. The women urged the forum to treat feminism not as a separate agenda item but as a cross-cutting principle informing every aspect of the CPAA—from democracy and people’s economies to land, health, and climate.
The Assembly concluded with a powerful affirmation: “Without feminism, there is no food sovereignty. Systemic transformation—now and never!”
