A number of forces – including transnational land acquisitions, domestic investors, migrants, conservation efforts, and government policies – have come together in recent years to put commercial pressure on land in the South and encourage its commodification. This has accelerated processes of agrarian transition, affecting rural livelihoods and impacting food security.
It is likely that the outcomes of these processes differ for women and men. Existing data show that food insecurity is distributed highly unevenly, with women and girls disproportionately hungry. There also is evidence that women do not gain as much as men from agricultural modernization. And yet, studies show that food security improves when women control income and land.
The right to food, codified in various international legal instruments, establishes a legal obligation for states to respect, protect, and fulfil the right without discrimination. It is a powerful tool to help achieve food security by holding governments accountable and by helping fight discrimination and exclusion.
Launched in March 2015, DEMETER (Droits et Egalité pour une Meilleure Economie de la Terre) is a six-year research project taking a right to food and gender equality perspective to examining changes in food security in the wake of land commercialization in two focus countries, Cambodia and Ghana.
The overarching goal is to strengthen knowledge, awareness, and debates about the relationship between food security, the right to food, and gender equality with an eye towards empowering women and men to claim their rights and encouraging governments to create the conditions to facilitate their realization.
Our transnational, transdisciplinary and longitudinal study of livelihoods, legal systems, policies and politics will generate new evidence and debate on food, gender and land, furnishing stakeholder dialogue with a stream of new insights on gendered agrarian transitions. Our scope is global, regional and national with research sites in Ghana, Cambodia and Switzerland.
Our Change Scenario Approach to gender equality and the right to food will empower women and other vulnerable groups to mitigate inequalities and strengthen resilience to the challenges of food security and land commercialisation.
The project will contribute to better understanding the effects of land commercialization and to filling three knowledge gaps:
First, much of the contemporary literature on the issue focuses on large-scale land acquisitions by foreign investors, and fails to place the phenomenon in a larger context of agrarian transition, including the policies and politics that guide such transition.
Second, the new livelihoods resulting from land commercialization have a gender dimension, which has not been comprehensively studied.
Third, there is a dearth of evidence regarding the effectiveness of the right to food and gender equality approaches to alleviating food insecurity, and of studies that examine processes of land commercialization from a right to food and gender equality perspective.
By approaching contemporary pressures on land as part of a new phase of agrarian transition, examining its gendered outcomes, and injecting a rights perspective into the debate, the project will broaden existing evidence on the effects of land commercialization on food security and the power of human rights to affect these outcomes.
Our country selection is theory-driven in order to provide the basis for paired comparisons. We looked for countries where processes of land commercialisation are pronounced, where our different transition scenarios can be identified, and where there is at least some evidence of a commitment to the right to food and gender equality. At the same time we need countries that are internally diverse in terms of our transition scenarios (large-scale agriculture with wage labour, contract farming, commercialisation of family farming), in terms of contemporary and historical levels of food insecurity, and in terms of gender orders (often reflected in inheritance patterns) and ethnicity. Picking countries from two different continents adds political and economic diversity among our cases that can cement the robustness of our findings.
Both Ghana and Cambodia are undergoing rapid agrarian change with considerable commercial pressure on land. For governments in both countries agricultural development is a priority and both have in place policies to encourage large-scale production. In Ghana, the dominant character of agriculture, including commercial agriculture is representative of other African countries in terms of technology and use of labour. The land tenure system is controlled mainly by customary authorities, and inheritance is both patrilineal and matrilineal. There are well-developed systems of contract farming and family farming; large-scale commercial farming is less developed than in Cambodia, but there are enough examples to compare and contrast. There is clear evidence of development processes putting pressure on land across the country, of changing land tenure, and of increasing land sales even in Northern Ghana, which has less developed land markets.
In Cambodia national policy-makers have approached agricultural development mostly from a macro-economic perspective seeking to foster growth. This has generated foreign investments in large-scale rice production and irrigation scheme in lowland provinces or around the Great Lake, and in rubber plantations in Ratanakiri and Kampong Thom. But in addition to foreign investors gaining national concessions, there are also national elites who buy or occupy land at a large scale. Agrarian change has accelerated significantly. Documented impacts seem to be uneven. While people are losing land, there is an increase in job opportunities and the emergence of improved cropping systems, with different effects on women and men. Food increasingly is provided through the market rather than through subsistence production, with new challenges especially for women, to ensure food security for their families.
Both countries have made commitments to the right to food, to gender equality, and to ending racial discrimination and are parties to the relevant UN Conventions, including the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women and its Optional Protocol. Cambodia’s constitution provides that these treaties supersede domestic law and should be fully implemented (article 31). However, reviews of Cambodia’s commitments by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights Situation in Cambodia and by the relevant treaty bodies have found violations of women’s rights and the rights of vulnerable groups in the context of large-scale land acquisitions and there is considerable agitation around the issue. Cambodia has implemented fairly progressive legal reform on gender rights and a land titling program that sets up joint titles (rather than defaulting to “head of household” title as is often the case), but has done so in a context of on-going gender based violence and broad discrimination against women.
In Ghana, gender equality is protected by the Constitution, and the Supreme Court recently confirmed that the right to food is also protected by constitutional provisions, even if implicitly. Ghana has ratified the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and its Women’s Protocol, which recognizes women’s right to food and the obligation to ensure gender equality, and it has a National Human Rights Institution—the Commission on Human Rights and Administration of Justice, which has a broad mandate to protect human rights, including the right to food and gender equality. Ghana underwent its first Universal Periodic Review at the Human Rights Council in 2008 where NGOs raised concerns that the expansion of mining operations and the related deployment of the military and police to the mining areas has led to human rights violations, including of the right to food.
This project investigates the effects of contemporary processes of land commercialisation on food security, and the way in which policies and human right contribute to ensuring food security. Food security is thus our dependent variable. The 1996 World Food summit defined food security as a situation “when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life” (FAO 1998). This well accepted definition embraces the four components of food security, namely food availability, accessibility, utilization, and sustainability. Definitions of the right to food build on this definition of food security, but add to it the element of state obligations. In our model, the right to food therefore appears as a factor facilitating the achievement of food security.
In thinking through the influences on food security (our “independent variables”) we draw on different traditions of research from different disciplines: agrarian livelihood transformation, legal studies, and policy analysis. The three traditions inform our research questions. While they diverge in their conceptualization of issues influencing food security, they share a parallel focus on structures, processes and outcomes. Structures are conceptualized variously as vulnerabilities, policies and institutions, or laws and legal mechanisms; processes as adaptations or strategies, politics, and jurisprudence or claims making). Our explanations for the impact of land commercialisation on food security combine various elements of structure and processes.
Because gender is pervasive, our gender analysis is integrated throughout. We treat gender as an analytical tool that allows us to diagnose inequalities in both structures and processes. As an organising principle of society and politics (most visible perhaps in gender divisions of labour and power) gender structures livelihood vulnerabilities, policies and institutions, laws and legal mechanisms. But in order to be re-produced, gender needs to be enacted; we thus also look for performances of gender in livelihood strategies, politics, and jurisprudence. Moreover, when looking at the lived experiences of individuals, gender cannot be divorced from other status differentiations, such as ethnicity, class, or age. Therefore our livelihoods study will approach gender as intersectional, i.e. it will recognize that other status distinctions shape what it means to be a woman or man in particular contexts.
In order to help us make generalisations—by identifying patterns, mechanisms or typologies—we have designed this study to involve three types of comparisons. First, we are comparing developments over time by repeating our livelihood survey conducted in year 2 again in year 5. Over time comparisons will allow us to gauge changes in a context of land commercialisation. An ancillary purpose will be to measure the effects of our trainings and policy dialogues.
Second, the study is designed to allow us to compare the effects of different scenarios of transition: the creation of large-scale farming with wage labour, the development of contracting farming, and the commercialisation of family-based farming. This type of comparison is geared towards identifying mechanisms of adaptation, of access, of policy translation, and of human rights in action. We intend to select for analysis two of our scenarios at a time in order to compare how policies, politics, the law and its use similarly or differently influence food security. Paired comparisons of this kind are particularly useful for analysing processes with sensitivity to historical context, a high degree of in-depth, thick and detailed description, and a view from within. They will help us understand processes in addition to outcomes.Finally, the study is conducted in two countries, i.e. Ghana and Cambodia, allowing for comparisons between vastly different contexts.
Our research is founded on partnership between the Centre for Development Oriented Research in Agriculture and Livelihood Systems, Cambodia; Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Ghana; Programme on Gender and Global Change, Graduate Institute Geneva and, the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights.
Seng Suon
Country Coordinator Cambodia
Seng Suon is Executive Director of Centre for Development Oriented Research in Agriculture and Livelihood Systems (CENTDOR) since 2008. Previously director of research and development CEDAC.
He holds a Masters in Development Agricole Tropical, CNEARC, Montpellier, France(2006), and a BA of Agronomy and Crop Science, Royal University of Agriculture, Cambodia(1996).
Muy Seo Ngouv
Researcher
Muy Seo Ngouv is a researcher at the Center for the Study of Humanitarian Law in the Royal University of Law and Economics (RULE), Cambodia. She holds an LL.M. in International Human Rights Law from Lund University in Sweden, an LL.B. from RULE, and a BA in International Studies from Royal University of Phnom Penh.
Muy Seo conducts legal research and training on topics related to human rights law, humanitarian law and fair trial rights. As part of the Demeter project, she conducts research on challenges to the implementation of laws and policies on gender equality and right to food in Cambodia. Adding to her research role, Muy Seo teaches courses of International Human Rights Law, International Humanitarian Law, and Legal Methods at RULE. She also coaches law students in legal memorial writing and oral pleading to participate in the Nelson Mandela World Human Rights Moot Court held in Geneva, Switzerland.
Prior to joining the project team, Muy Seo was a visiting researcher at the Law Department of the Tallinn University of Technology in Estonia, as part of the European Commission Horizon 2020 Project, where she co-authored a paper on the implementation of children’s right to be heard and be represented in the criminal proceedings in Cambodia.
Kimsan Soy
Researcher
Kimsan joined Center for the Study of Humanitarian Law at Royal University of Law and Economics (RULE) in Cambodia, as one of its researcher in August 2014, before becoming its Director in September 2016. He holds a Master in Human Rights and Democratisation from the University of Sydney, Australia. Kimsan’s recent publications include “Judicial Independence in Cambodia: An Overview Analysis” and “Understanding Acceptance of International Justice through Duch’s Sentence at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia”. His current research focus on human rights related to gender equality, land grabbing, fair trial, labor rights, and access to justice.
Alongside his research role, Kimsan teaches human rights and fair trial courses regularly at RULE and provides human rights and research training to legal professionals, practitioners and law students both in Phnom Penh and at provincial universities. Before joining the Center, he also worked at Asian International Justice Initiative as a trial monitor for two years on Case 002/01 of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal.
Dzodzi Tsikata
Country Coordinator Ghana
Dzodzi Tsikata is Associate Research Professor at the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER) at the University of Ghana where she has worked since 1991. She holds Ph.D in Social Science from Leiden University in the Netherlands. Her research is in the areas of gender and development policies and practices; the politics and livelihood effects of land tenure reforms; agricultural commercialisation, agrarian change and food security; and informal labour relations and the conditions of work. She has coordinated various research projects and has many publications on these subjects.
Her most recent publications include a co-guest edited (with Cheryl Doss and Gale Summerfield) special issue of Feminist Economics on Land, Gender and Food Security (2014) and an edited book (with Ruth Hall and Ian Scoones), “Africa’s Land Rush: Implications for Rural Livelihoods and Agrarian Change”, published by James Currey (2015). Dzodzi teaches the advanced gender and women’s studies course in the Ph.D Development Studies Programme at ISSER. She is on the editorial advisory board of several journals, a member of the UN Committee for Development Policy and Ghana’s National Development Planning Commission (NDPC). Between 2005 to 2012, Dzodzi was deputy head and then head of the Centre for Gender Studies and Advocacy (CEGENSA) at the University. She is the President of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA).
Fred Dzanku
Researcher
Fred Mawunyo Dzanku has 10 years of cutting edge research experience and interests spanning a wide range of research areas including: multidimensional household welfare analysis, poverty reduction policy analysis, applied econometric modelling, the economics of agricultural production, food security, and the evaluation of projects and programs.
He has been part of teams of researchers that have designed and implemented many programs and projects. He has extensive experience in the implementation and supervision of household surveys, and multi-country longitudinal surveys in rural areas of developing countries.
Gertrude Dzifa Torvikey
Research Assistant
Gertrude Dzifa Torvikey is pursuing Ph.D in development studies at the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER) University of Ghana. She obtained her MPhil in migration studies from the same University and BA in French from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology.
She worked as a teaching assistant at the Centre for Gender Studies and Advocacy (CEGENSA) at the University of Ghana and also as a researcher/research assistant on several projects including Gender, Land and Accountability in Ghana, Land and Agriculture Commercialization in Africa, Four Basins Gender and Agriculture Profiles Project amongst others. Her research interests include gender, agrarian livelihoods and internal labour migrations.
Irene Tagbor
Administrative Assistant
Irene Tagbor, HND in Secretarialship and Management Studies, has been working as an Administrative Assistant at the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research since 2011. Her work entails store management, conference facility managemen,t and the organisation of conferences and workshops.
Irene also works in administrative positions on some research projects at the Institute.
Martha Awo
Researcher
Martha A. Awo obtained her Master’s training in Development Studies in the Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague, The Netherlands and her PhD in the Center for Research Development (ZEF) in University of Bonn, Germany. She is currently a Research Fellow at the Institute of Statistical Social and Economic Research (ISSER), University of Ghana where she also teaches Research Methods at the graduate level.
As a former employee of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture in Ghana, Awo has since 2000, been involved in the implementation of government projects and collaborated with local and international scientists to carry out studies in different areas of agriculture. She has also undertaken a number of studies for both local and international organizations such as the UN (International Trade Center) and the World Bank. Her research interest includes agricultural trade issues, domestic and rural markets, gender dynamics and rural development, food security and poverty issues.
Peter Atupare
Researcher
Peter Atudiwe Atupare is a full-time Lecturer at the School of Law, University of Ghana, Accra. He received his B.A and LL.B in 2003 and 2006 respectively from University of Ghana. He earned his M.A in Comparative Politics from Brock University in 2007 and his LL.M (Thesis Option) and PhD (Law) from Queen’s University, Canada in 2008 and 2011 respectively. He is a leading figure in Public Law in Ghana and Nigeria and has published widely on these two states.
He is the author of the much acclaimed book: Constitutional Justice in Africa: An Examination of Constitutional Positivism, Fundamental Law and Rights in Ghana and Nigeria (Durban, LexisNexis, 2013), and journal articles like Reconciling a Fundamental Law of Reason with Socio-Economic Rights and Directive Principles in Ghana and Nigeria (2014) 27 Harvard Human Rights Journal; The Taxonomy of Transitional Justice in Africa: A Reflection on the Theoretical Trajectories of Truth Commissions and International Criminal Courts (2014) XXVI University of Ghana Law Journal etc. He has released a two volume book entitled Case Brief: The Law of Torts in Ghana. His areas of interest include Constitutional Law, The Law of Torts, Criminal Theory, Human Rights, Jurisprudence, and Legal Ethics.
Promise Eweh
Research Assistant
Promise Eweh is a PhD student in the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana where his research focuses on food security as a discourse. Prior to enrolling in the doctoral programme, Promise worked as a teaching assistant at the Institute of African Studies, and was involved in the implementation of a number of research projects including the Quality of Life Project. His main research interest is in African development with special attention to African agriculture, issues of employment and the informal economy in Africa.
Alice Beban
Affiliated Researcher
PhD candidate Alice Beban France is currently in Cambodia conducting research on smallholder land reform initiatives. She is funded by an award from Fulbright-Hays.
Joanna Bourke Martignoni
Project Coordinator and Postdoctoral Researcher
Joanna Bourke Martignoni is a Research Fellow at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights. She’s working on the right to food and gender equality components of the project from the perspective of international human rights law.
Joanna holds a PhD in law from the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) and her doctoral thesis analysed the implementation of the right to education within the framework of international development cooperation with a special focus on the activities of the World Bank. She also has an LLM in international law from the Graduate Institute in Geneva and degrees in South East Asian history and Law from the University of New South Wales and the Australian National University.
Prior to joining the Academy, Joanna worked in the legal division at the International Committee of the Red Cross and as a project officer at the World Organisation Against Torture. She has also been a Consultant to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on different issues including; equal political participation, access to justice for women, attacks against girls’ education, violence against women and human rights and human trafficking. Since 2013, she has taught a Masters’ level course on economic, social and cultural rights at the University of Fribourg and she has also been involved in a research project on the treatment of intersectional forms of discrimination by UN human rights monitoring mechanisms.
Christophe Gironde
Researcher - Coordinator Livelihoods
Christophe Gironde is a political economist, currently working as a senior lecturer at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID) in Geneva. He received his Ph.D. in Development Studies from the University of Geneva. His main research fields are agrarian change and human development. He has extensive field experience in Vietnam since the late 1990s and has carried out research in Cambodia over the last three years on large-scale land acquistions.
Christophe Golay
Coordinator Legal
Dr. Christophe Golay is Research Fellow and Coordinator of the Project on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights. He is Lecturer and Teaching Coordinator at the Geneva Centre for Education and Research in Humanitarian Action.
He has been Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism at McGill University in 2013. From 2001 to 2008, he was Legal Advisor to the first United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. He undertook missions with the United Nations in Brazil, Guatemala, Bolivia, Cuba, Niger, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, India, and the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
Among other publications, he is co-author of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in International Law. Contemporary Issues and Challenges (OUP, 2014), “Human Rights Responses to Land Grabbing: A Right to Food Perspective” (Third World Quarterly, 2013), “The Contribution of the UN Special Procedures to the Human Rights and Development Dialogue” (SUR International Journal on Human Rights, 2012), and The Fight for the Right to Food. Lessons Learned (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
Ruth Harding
Administrative Assistant
Saba Joshi
PhD Researcher
Saba Joshi is a PhD student in the Political Science/International Relations department at the Graduate Institute. Her PhD focuses on agrarian transformation, gender, peasant resistance and land rights in Cambodia.
Before starting her PhD, she worked at the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in Geneva, Switzerland and the Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA) in Ahmedabad, India. She has degrees from St Stephen's College, Delhi University, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and the Graduate Institute, Geneva.
Kristina Lanz
PhD Researcher
Kristina Lanz is a doctoral student in Social Anthropology based at the University of Berne. She holds an MA in International Studies and Diplomacy from SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies), University of London and a BA in Development Studies from the University of East Anglia, Norwich. Her doctoral research investigates the impacts a large-scale land acquisition in Ghana has had on the local food system (production, processing, distribution and consumption) from a gender perspective. She is particularly interested in how various local actors use resources, institutions and repertoires to further their interests and adapt to a changing local food system and to (de)legitimize the investment.
Elisabeth Prügl
Principal Investigator and Coordinator Policy and Politics
Faculty member since 2009 and Deputy Director since 2010, Professor Prügl previously taught at Florida International University, where she co-directed the Miami-Florida European Union Centre of Excellence. Her research focuses on gender politics in global governance and feminism in International Relations.
In addition to having published numerous journal articles, book chapters and anthologies, she is the author of The Global Construction of Gender: Home-based Work in the Political Economy of the 20th Century (Columbia University Press, 1999) and Transforming Masculine Rule: Agriculture and Rural Development in the European Union (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press 2011). Currently, she serves as associate editor of Politics and Gender, a journal of the Women and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association. Prügl also heads the Graduate Institute’s new research programme on Gender and Global Change.
Andres Torrico
Research Assistant
Andres Torrico is a research assistant for the Demeter project, who has worked both on the implementation of the 2016 Baseline Household survey as well as the quantitative analysis of the results. He holds a Master in Development Studies from the Graduate Institute and a Master in Public Policy and Management from the Catholic University in Bolivia. Prior to joining the institute, Andres worked for the Research Center and Promotion of Peasantry in Bolivia (CIPCA), implementing rural development projects in indigenous and peasant communities in the Bolivian amazon region. Andres also holds a Bachelor degree in Law from the Catholic University of Bolivia.
Bourke Martignoni, Joanna, Gironde, Christophe, Golay, Christophe, Prügl, Elisabeth, Tsikata, Dzodzi. 2022. Agricultural commercialization, gender equality and the right to food insights from Ghana and Cambodia.
Bourke Martignoni, Joanna, 2022. Feminisms and human rights, In: Global Challenges. - Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies. - No. 11(2022), Article 6
Joshi, Saba, 2022. Gendered repertoires of contention: women’s resistance, authoritarian state formation, and land grabbing in Cambodia. In: International Feminist Journal of Politics. - Volume 24(2022) No. 2, pages 198-220
Beban, Alice; Bourke Martignoni, Joanna, 2021. Now the forest is over" transforming the commons and remaking gender in Cambodia's uplands. In: Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems. - Volume 5(2021), Article 700990, pages 1-15
Bourke Martignoni, Joanna, 2021. A feminist methodology for implementing the right to food in agrarian communities reflections from Cambodia and Ghana. In: The Journal of Peasant Studies. - Volume 48(2021), no 7, pages 1459-1484
Prügl, Elisabeth; Reysoo, Fenneke; Tsikata, Dzodzi, 2021. Agricultural and land commercialization feminist and rights perspectives. In: The Journal of Peasant Studies. - Volume 48(2021), no 7, pages 1419-1438
Gironde, Christophe; Reysoo, Fenneke; Torrico Ramirez, Andrés; Seng, Suon, 2021. No cash, no food gendered reorganization of livelihoods and food security in Cambodia. In: The Journal of Peasant Studies. - Vol. 47(2021), no. 7, pages 1485-1506
Prügl, Elisabeth; Joshi, Saba, 2021. Productive farmers and vulnerable food securers: contradictions of gender expertise in international food security discourse. In: The Journal of Peasant Studies. - Volume 48(2021), no 7, pages 1439-1458
Dzanku, Fred Mawunyo; Tsikata, Dzodzi; Ankrah, Daniel Adu, 2021. The gender and geography of agricultural commercialisation: what implications for the food security of Ghana's smallholder farmers ? In: The Journal of Peasant Studies. - 2021, pages 1-30
Agricultural and land commercialisation: do they foster gender equality and the right to food ? Demeter Research Brief ; 2/2020
Joshi, Saba, 2020. Contesting land grabs, negotiating statehood: the politics of international accountability mechanisms and land disputes in rural Cambodia. In: Third World Quarterly. - 2020, p. 1-19
Kristina Lanz; Elisabeth Prügl; Jean-David Gerber, 2020. The poverty of neoliberalized feminism: gender equality in a ‘best practice’ large-scale land investment in Ghana. in The Journal of Peasant Studies, Volume 47, 2020 - Issue 3, pages 525-543
Bourke Martignoni, Joanna, 2020. The right to food. In: Research handbook on economic, social and cultural rights as human rights. - Cheltenham, England ; Northampton, Massachusetts : Edward Elgar Publishing, 2020
Gironde, Christophe; Torrico Ramirez, Andrés, 2019. Dépossession foncière, transition agraire et capacité d’adaptation: devenir des populations autochtones de Ratanakiri (Cambodge). In: Revue internationale des études du développement. - Vol. 2(2019), no 238, p. 291-322
