West African lawyers, activists rally against GMOs

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Legal activists from Nigeria and Ghana have called on the governments of both countries to ban genetically modified organisms (GMOs) from their nations’ agricultural systems.

The lawyers made the call at a one-day ‘Regional Legal Strategic Meeting,’ which was held over the weekend in Accra, Ghana.

The meeting was organised by the Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) and hosted by Food Sovereignty Ghana (FSG) in collaboration with the Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoE), and the GMO-Free Alliance, in Ghana on Sunday.

The lawyers in their deliberations and in a communique called on the governments of both nations to reject the introduction of GMOs and adhere to the Precautionary Principle in dealing with biosafety issues.

The legal experts agreed that both nations should utterly reject the oppressive food systems that GMO profiteers support and represent, which puts corporate profit, biotech, and market expansion over food sovereignty and People.

They also called on the governments to meet their human rights obligations and to listen to their communities and peoples and immediately stop any policies, which lead to violations of the human right to safe food.

The experts pledged to promote and defend agroecology and farmers’ seeds, which represent hope and are the future of humanity.

In their experiences and analysis, participants agreed to support their struggles against the threat to food sovereignty and overall biodiversity.

Informed by the robust, structured and eye-opening presentations, discussions and contributions from legal experts present from both countries, highlighted strong objections to the release of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) in Nigeria and Ghana and indeed the sub region.Related News

The experts agreed that Africa’s fertile land guarantees their nations’ food sovereignty and food security. They stressed that hunger is a result of bad governance, poor infrastructure for processing, preservation and distribution of food and lack of adequate all-round support to small holder farmers who constitute over 70% of the farmers in Nigeria and Ghana. They, therefore, sternly recommend to their governments to invest more in agriculture, especially agroecology.

The participants in their comments noted that both nations’ Biosafety Laws, in their present forms, are recipes for the destruction of their ecosystems and food cultures. They said that the processes leading to their passage were devoid of critical inputs and public participation that would have enabled their people to significantly determine and protect their food cultures and systems, which might have led to the rejection of such laws. It was also noted that the laws lacked adequate legal safeguards for protecting their rights.

They further alleged that the Nigerian and Ghanaian Biosafety Laws are not in the best interest of both nations’ citizens, as they facilitate the introduction of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) on massive scales that violate the precautionary principle, which forms the basis of the African Union’s revised African Model Law on Biodiversity, to which both countries are signatories.

“The potential socio-economic, cultural and ethical impacts of GMOs are enormous and diminish the positive contributions of smallholder farmers who are feeding both counties,” the communique said.

Consequently, participants called for the promotion of cultural practices, community well-being, traditional crops and varieties; reducing rural unemployment; engendering trade; raising the quality of life of indigenous peoples and ensuring food security.

Additionally, the experts stressed that concerns about GMOs are not only about food, health and environmental safety for consumers but also about the more damaging systematic appropriation of the rights to seeds by transnational corporations that deprive farmers of their traditional rights to seeds, in favour of patents by these corporations.

Participants agreed that there has been intensive and sustained propaganda on the so-called positive contributions of GMOs to food security. However, very little has been done to draw attention to the inherent risks and hazards of industrial mono-cropping and consumption of GMOs

Stating further dangers, participants agreed that Industrial agriculture without sustainable practices has no real contribution to the national food sovereignty of their people, stating that it is part of a biotech corporate agenda and capitalist economic regime bent on making Africa remain a cheap resource continent and market for finished products and dumping ground. More fundamentally, the GMO project is anti-creational, as it disturbs, contradicts and destroys the ecosystem.