Protecting Peasant Peoples and other Rural Workers’Rights through The EU Mercosur Trade Agreement

In recent years we have seen an intensified interest in the international protection of peasants and other rural workers' human rights. This interest has been demonstrated in particular by the adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other Rural Workers (UNDROP) in 2018, namely the first international legal instrument specifically aimed at guaranteeing the protection of the human rights of peasants and other rural workers. Although the UNDROP is heavily grounded in existing human rights and freedoms (including farmer rights and freedoms encompassed in Article 9 of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) and indigenous rights and freedoms encompassed in the United Nations Declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples (UNDRIP)), it purports to provide states and other international actors with a new legal tool that furnishes the extra guidance needed to peasant peoples and other rural workers to enjoy their fundamental freedoms and rights that are interlinked with their unique lifestyle. Using the recently adopted EU-MERCOSUR trade agreement as a case study, the present article, the third of a quadrilogy by these authors on this trade deal, critically considers whether the UNDROP - although not legally binding - could be of use to enhance and strengthen the protection of peasant and other rural workers' human rights within the normative framework of international trade agreements concluded by the EU with third states.