Tribute to Jean Ziegler

In memory of Jean Ziegler, an organic intellectual of anti-imperialism, comrade in struggle and member of the advisory committee of our organization. His passing in no way marks the end of an era; on the contrary, it constitutes a solemn call to intensify our struggles. Faced with the systemic violence of the world order, his legacy does not invite us to mourn the dead, but instead imposes an absolute imperative to fight for the living.

The core of Jean Ziegler’s thought and action was a steadfast internationalism and a form of “third-worldism” grounded in material solidarity with the people oppressed. He understood, long before others, that neocolonial domination was no longer exercised solely through gunboat diplomacy, but through the capitalist economic system.

Within this framework, his uncompromising denunciation of the Swiss financial sector was historic. He demonstrated how Swiss banking secrecy and financial institutions acted as essential cogs in international domination, siphoning wealth from the Global South, laundering the money of predatory oligarchies, and depriving postcolonial states of the ressources necessary for their development. His engagement with anti-imperialist and anti-colonial national liberation movements around the world was not a theoretical stance, but a genuine front of resistance, woven alongside those who directly challenged Western hegemony.

This interpretive framework found its most brutal grounding in the issue of hunger, which he refused to see as inevitable. For him, every child who dies of hunger is murdered by the logic of financial capitalism. This conviction guided his historic work as United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, and led him to align himself with the struggles of rural communities and workers. He tirelessly supported peasant movements, recognizing that food sovereignty and resistance to agribusiness constitute the frontline of humanity’s survival.

The loss of Jean Ziegler is that of a member of our own political family. An active member of our association, he published several of his foundational texts through our publishing house. His writing and his deep, visceral commitment to others directly shaped the legal and political tools we carry today in international foras. Because the financial oligarchy he fought against is still in place, because peasants continue to be dispossessed, our duty is not passive mourning.

The time is for mobilization. The struggle continues.

Geneav,10^th of June 2026

* See, among other publications, his foreword to the book *The UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants: A Tool for the Struggle for a Common Future*, published by CETIM, Geneva, 2019, https://www.cetim.ch/wp-content/uploads/The-UN-Declaration-on-the-Rights-of-Peasants.pdf