Land struggle in the Philippines

On April 17, the International Day of Peasant Struggles highlighted an essential battle on the international scene: peasants and rural communities fighting for their lands and rights.

Land grabbing is spreading like wildfire, spurred on by profit-driven agribusiness, transnationals corporations’ extractivism and large-scale “development” projects. These dynamics are detrimental to peasants, resulting in deforestation and commodification of natural resources, as well as the transformation of agricultural lands into commercial and industrial zones. Facing this threat, peasants’ resistance is often brutally repressed: bullying, surveillance, false accusations of being “enemies of the state” or against “progress”, imprisonment under unfounded accusations, even disappearances. Those who destroy the lands are protected, while its protectors are criminalised. Despite this hostile context, peasants continue to defend their right to land and to a decent life.

In the Philippines, an emblematic case supported by the CETIM and its partners illustrates this struggle: since 2009, peasants of the Bataan region, organised under the movement SANAMBASU, are fighting land grabbing by two companies: Litton & Co. and Riverforest Development Corporation. These companies, looking to industrialise agricultural zones, have intensified the repression: criminalisation of peasants who mobilise for the defence of their rights and eviction proceedings to remove them from their homes and farmlands.

On September 16, 2024, following the submission of a complaint by the CETIM and its partners, several United Nations Special Rapporteurs addressed a joint statement to the companies involved and to the Philippine government, expressing serious concerns over arbitrary arrests, forced evictions, housing demolitions and the criminalisation of civil society’s struggles.

Riverforest Development Corporation denied these accusations, stating that the land was not suitable for farming and accusing peasants of abusing the agricultural reform program. The Philippine government falsely stated that peasants’ accusations of consolidated group fraud (“estafa sindical”)³ had been withdrawn, despite their litigation being still under way. On a positive note, in January 2025, following the complaint and pressure exerted at the national and the international level, the imprisoned farmers were released.

The SANAMBASU movement, with the support of numerous organisations and civil society movements, including the CETIM, continues its fight to obtain :

• the implementation of agrarian reform and the redistribution of land to those who cultivate it;
  
• the protection of ancestral domains and native territories;
  
• an end to land grabbing, militarisation of the region and private companies’ expansionist and aggressive policies;
  
• repeal of laws and policies that promote private interests over those of communities;
  
• justice for the victims of arbitrary arrests and harassment linked to the struggle for land;
  
• an end to the criminalisation of leaders and defenders of peasants’ rights;
• the recognition and protection of peasants’ rights, as enshrined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas;
• the realisation of food sovereignty.