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Cooking Up Political Agendas

Inspired by the historical resistance of women in rural areas, a new guide is launched to support transformative feminist food politics.

The ‘common cooking pot’ has historical and political significance. At different moments in time, women in Latin America living under authoritarian regimes would come together while cooking around the community pot. They employed this strategy to create a space within which they had the freedom to discuss politics and articulate actions of resistance or respond to severe economic and food crises. Although the practice is not “common” as such throughout the world, the political meaning and use of the ‘common cooking pot’ is seen across borders and contexts. 

‘Cooking up Political Agendas’ evokes the emancipation of women through collective organizing and knowledge construction. The Guide has been developed by female human rights practitioners, activists and rural workers. It provides women in rural areas -  whether or not they belong to local or national organizations -  with practical guidance on how to build a right to food and nutrition agenda based on recent international human rights law standards. 

“Women do politics and engage in acts of political resistance everyday around the globe. The aim of ‘Cooking up Political Agendas’ is to bring forward these different experiences and ways of knowing as starting points for transformative feminist food politics,” says Andrea Nuila, Peasants Rights Coordinator at FIAN International. 

The methodologies proposed throughout the Guide take the experiences and knowledge of participants - referred to as ‘cooks’- as a starting point. It is designed to be adapted by different groups to address their needs and priorities in response to their own realities and aims to encourage women to share their experiences across borders. This will enrich a collective discussion and reflection on the different resources available to give life to feminist political agendas on the right to food and nutrition in rural areas.

“The Guide is about creating spaces for women to do politics. It is about recognizing women’s political subjectivities and their role in the fight for just food systems,” concludes Nuila.

The guide is launched together with a series of materials to facilitate capacity-building exercises across the world. You can find the guide and other supporting materials in English here

Find the guide in Urdu here

Follow the debate on social media #CookUpPolitics

NOTES TO EDITORS:

Coordinated by FIAN International, this publication has been the result of collective work between La Vía Campesina, FIAN Mexico, FIAN Colombia, FIAN Honduras, Latin American and Caribbean Committee for the Defense of Women’s Rights, University of Miami School of Law Human Rights Clinic, National Autonomous University of Mexico, National Coordinator of Indigenous Women CONAMI, Cooperative Producers of Hope of the Great Coast of Guerrero, Ecology and Health Training Center of Chiapas, and the Global Network for the Right to Food and Nutrition