Month of Action for Day of the Landless 2025

Peasants Rise for Land! Intensify Peasant Struggle Against Imperialist Plunder, War and Militarism!

This year, in support of the League’s ongoing campaign against imperialist plunder, the ILPS through its Peasant Commission (Commission 6) is joining the Asian Peasant Coalition, Peoples’ Coalition on Food Sovereignty, and the Pesticide Action Network – Asia Pacific for a month of action leading up to Day of the Landless and culminating with Palestine Land Day! See below for the description of the campaign and how to get involved in the days of action:

The International League of Peoples’ Struggle along with other militant peasant movements that include its Peasant Commission, the Asian Peasant Coalition, the Peoples’ Coalition on Food Sovereignty, and PAN Asia Pacific reaffirm their anti-imperialist position and the centrality of the peasant struggle for land, food, and justice in achieving sustainable agriculture and food for all. There is no doubt to the clear onslaught of imperialism in its many forms in the Global South, particularly in the sector of peasants, farmers, farmworkers, indigenous peoples, fisherfolk, rural women, rural youth and children. 

The past year has once more recorded massive injustices and brutal violations by the Global North, especially the imperialist US – from its brewing of wars and militarism to the expanding corporate and private capture of the world’s resources such as land, water, and even data in the guise of climate action.

The decline of its global hegemony of the US has seen its vicious lashing out through its absolute support of the Zionist Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians, and Yemenis. The US has also set its sights in the Asia Pacific, with the Indo-Pacific Strategy priming the region for war against China with ally states by building its military bases, clinching security agreements and military partnerships that embolden “counter-insurgency” programs, and holding big war exercises. The predatory eye of monopoly capital is roving over all continents, with peasants and rural communities in Africa and Latin America also suffering from the free trade agenda imposed on countries. 

A major component of imperialist expansion and capture of communities and food systems is facilitated through technology, greenwashing, and supposed “carbon-offsetting” practices – neoliberal solutions that put corporations as fundamental and on leading duty for climate change mitigation and adaptation. These so-called “sustainable” and “smarter alternatives” that imperialists and their corporations long campaign and promote are robbing small farmers and rural communities of their land and resources, preserving the current capitalist mode of production in agriculture. Such has been the case in Africa, with governments pledging 1.2 billion hectares of land for “green grabs” staged as climate initiatives. Land grabs are not only for agriculture production but for putting us military bases that serve dual purposes of violent suppression of people’s resistance as well as geographic control of regions for imperialist expansion. Just recently new bases have been set up in Kenya.

Corporate concentration of resources in the food systems – from production, marketing and distribution, to how consumption is facilitated – is further enabled by digitalization that treats land and resources as immaterial data. With only four to six agri-business TNCs dominating across resources (from seeds, agrochemicals, livestock genetics, synthetic fertilizers, farm machinery, animal pharmaceuticals, commodity traders, food processing, retail and food delivery), comes the unmistakable influence on development that attune the public to corporate soft power. 

In the semi-colonial, semi-feudal countries, puppet governments are complicit in advancing agricultural privatization, converting land use from self-sustaining food production to serving corporate demand for profit, disrupting established farming practices, displacing communities, and by promoting intense use of agro-chemical inputs and toxic pesticides are responsible for vast destruction of fertile land. In Indonesia, the government of Prabowo Subianto inherited Joko Widodo’s partiality toward streamlining wide-scale monocropping, facilitating the logistics of food and energy’s profit- and export-oriented production, and coordinating government support for foreign investments into the Indonesian agriculture, energy, and mineral sectors. Displaced farmers then become migrant workers and refugees pursuing precarious jobs overseas like in Malaysia – a host to such cases of mass refugee movements and rural displaced peoples from its neighboring countries. This phenomenon is also widely seen in many countries in Latin America, especially rural to urban migration, with many millions forced to work as seasonal migrant workers in Canada and the US. The result has been  millions suffering from hunger, lack of livelihood and forced migration. The recent humiliating measures taken against migrant workers from Colombia, Mexico and other countries is testament to the atrocious abuses that peasant migrant workers face across the globe. 

There are also cases of rural people reportedly fleeing due to militarization and conditions of war, which also make use of advanced technology including its massive data gathering for surveillance and attacking those engaged in agricultural-based labor to facilitate landgrabs for green projects, mining of critical minerals, and the corporate capture of food systems. One such account is the US-contracted surveillance plane that crashed into a rice farm in Ampatuan, Maguindanao del Sur in southern Philippines. Drones are used in Gaza and the West Bank to target civilian Palestinians and control movement. In southern Thailand, farmers report feeling concerned about their safety where the state is explicitly placing communities under surveillance, storing digital records of routines, and controlling peoples’ political expressions and participation. In India, in Manipur, rural and indigenous communities face constant fascist attacks, being red-tagged so as to declare them as ‘terrorists’ and push them off their land. Military expansion and agricultural digitalization go hand-in-hand in rationalizing the profit-driven production rather than collective nutrition and national development.

The undeniable potential of technological advancements to uplift people’s lives is quashed by imperialism’s greed for profit and militarism, which in turn exploit, marginalize, and deprive people especially the rural sector. Worse, today’s climate crisis is capitalized to push for neoliberal reforms that enable imperialist plunder and secure corporate interests. While rural communities suffer the havoc created by floods, droughts and other extreme weather events, monopoly capital cashes on the suffering of millions to peddle their products such as micronutrient food products and therapies as remedy to food insecurity and malnourishments. Corporate greed is hidden through such ‘humanitarian acts’ where they provide such false solutions to catastrophe caused by their hands. In all such instances, rural people with peasants at the forefront continue to build and strengthen the broadest and widest mass resistance for their right to land and life.

In this year’s Day of the Landless, we the organizations and movements in service to the peasantry, fisherfolk and all small producers, reaffirm our various campaigns, which include land to the tillers, fight against neoliberal policies of imperialist institutions such as the IMF, World Bank and the World Trade Organization. These institutions have not only made agriculture production so expensive that farmers are forced to sell off their land to pay off debts, but also ensure the all means of production from seeds to livestock are wrested away from the control of the peasantry, pushing rural communities into an abyss of misery and pauperization.

 Our call: Intensify peasant struggle against imperialist plunder, war and militarism. PEASANTS RISE FOR LAND! ASSERT OUR RIGHTS TO OUR RESOURCES, RECLAIM OUR FOOD SYSTEMS!

The DOTL 2025 campaign is organized by the APC, in partnership with the Peasant Commission of the International League of Peoples’ Struggle, People’s Coalition on Food Sovereignty, and PAN Asia Pacific.

March 29 Global Action for the Day of the Landless

• Join the global day of action on March 29 to assert for people’s right to land and express solidarity with the landless people worldwide on-ground and online.
  • We encourage our members and network to organize mass actions/mobilizations at the community and/or country level to highlight your local land struggles.
  • Post content on social media as participation. These can be in the form of photos, videos, statements, graphic art, etc. that echo our calls for this year’s DOTL GDA.
  • Contributions will be featured during the Global Landless Speakout.

• Take part in the ILPS Commission 6 Global Landless Speakout 2025 on March 29!
  • Register: bit.ly/LandlessSpeakout2025
  • The International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS) Commission 6 will host the Global Landless Speakout that brings together movements and organizations from Asia, Latin America, and Africa to highlight the pressing peasant struggles and campaigns currently unfolding in these regions. These movements will share their on-the-ground experiences, detailing the challenges faced by peasants and rural communities as they confront issues such as land dispossession, economic inequality, and environmental destruction. These powerful testimonies will shed light on the collective action of rural populations fighting for justice and self-determination.

March 30 Palestine Land Day

• Let us show our continuing solidarity for Palestine, with emphasis on supporting their resistance, through local actions and social media postings. Day of action guidance TBD.

Build up activities

• March 18 – Zero In: Mindoro

Register: bit.ly/ZeroInMindoro

Organized by Ground Zero

Large-scale military operations are taking place on the resource-rich island of Mindoro in the Southern Tagalog region of the Philippines. Ten battalions-worth of armed forces are currently deployed to facilitate the entry of mining and renewable energy projects. As a result, a de facto martial law is in place, subjecting locals with many forms of violations to their human rights and the international humanitarian law. Zero In: Mindoro aims to call the attention of the international community on the situation and urge for support and solidarity to #DefendMindoro.

• March 24 – Global Speak Out for Rivers and River Defenders

Register: bit.ly/Speakout4Rivers

Organized by IPMSDL, PCFS, & APC

In light of urgent concern for our rivers and river defenders, and in commemoration of the International Day of Action for Rivers on March 14, we are calling on Indigenous Peoples organizations, allies, and advocates, as well as peasant leaders, climate activists, and human rights defenders to Speakout for Rivers and River Defenders. Through this venue, we aim to spotlight pressing local, regional, and global issues that negatively impact our rivers, as well as the rights of those defending rivers from further degradation and resource plunder. Join us and together, let us rally behind our calls for accountability, climate justice, and peace.

• March 25 – Landless Voices: Land & Climate Change

Register: bit.ly/LandlessVoices2025

Organized by PCFS & PANAP

Landless Voices is an online consultative forum where rural people’s groups can share their land issues and struggles amid the global food crisis. In line with DOTL 2025, the theme of this session will center on land struggles amid the climate crisis. Participating organizations may share their experiences and best practices in campaigning against land and resource grabs for climate-tech and in forwarding people-led climate solutions including genuine agrarian reform and agroecology.

• March 27 – Advancing People’s Food Sovereignty in Africa (webinar)

Register: bit.ly/AdvancingPFSinAfrica2025

Organized by ILPS Africa & PCFS

This webinar aims to analyze the state of food sovereignty in Africa, particularly in the countries of Kenya, Zambia, and Burkina Faso, in accordance with broader global context. Key themes to be discussed include the corporate takeover of food systems, the role of IMF-WB, and action points and strategies for resistance.