The Kandy Declaration is published! It’s a very powerful document that lights our path forward, and we encourage everyone to read it. 

In September 2025, the 3rd Nyéléni Global Forum happened in Kandy, Sri Lanka. Over 20 delegates from the World March of Women participated in a convergence with comrades from other social movements and organizations to build a political platform that will guide the fight for food sovereignty and agroecology: healthy food and autonomy over its production, distribution, and consumption. Our goal was to build a political platform to transform the system. Our delegates reiterated how anti-capitalist, peasant, Indigenous, and Black feminism, the grassroots feminism that makes up our movement, are fundamental tools for building such a transformation. In this 3rd edition, the Forum was a powerful collective platform made up of strategic alliances of global popular movements that inspired mobilisations, political changes and narratives, experiences of solidarity and agroecological practices.

The two key political documents of the 3rd Nyéléni Global Forum are the Common Political Action Agenda (CPAA) and the Kandy Declaration. Briefly put, the latter is a summarized version of the former, which consists of our common understandings, commitments and paths forward. Today, the Kandy Declaration was published and we strongly encourage everyone to read it! It´s an important step as we walk hand-in-hand in the direction of Belém in Pará, Brasil, where we´ll meet on November 12th in the People´s Summit of the COP30.

To access the Kandy Declaration, click here.

To keep going forward, let´s take some steps back and understand what it means to have sovereignty over our food. Simply put, it means to consume what we produce and to produce what we consume. It is the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriated food produced through ecological and sustainable methods, and the right to define their own food and agricultural systems. Being able to decide how we produce, distribute and consume food is necessary for transforming the world and putting an end to capitalism, patriarchy, racism, colonialism and other systems that oppress the people. Through the 25 years of the World March of Women, diverse materials have been produced on these issues, such as this video that explains how food sovereignty is a feminist struggle.

We understand food sovereignty as a broad and transformative struggle that strengthens peasant agriculture and resists the power of transnational corporations that seek to destroy our popular food systems. Peasant women play a key role by preserving local seeds, protecting biodiversity and defending their territories and ways of living. Our movement builds on this knowledge collectively and concretely since the 6th International Meeting in Lima, Peru, in 2006. One year later, at the 7th International Meeting in Vigo, Galícia, these discussions were invigorated following the 1st Nyéléni Global Forum in 2007.

Furthermore, one of the four axis of action is Feminist Economy Based on Sustainability of Life and Food Sovereignty. We recognize care as not only essential to sustain the system, but also as what connects us and the land because we´re inter and ecodependents. As the conflict between the logic of care and the logic of accumulation exacerbates, so do conflicts and wars around the world, through “the appropriation and privatisation of the commons, the destruction of subsistence economies and the commodification of life (e.g. seeds, knowledge, relationships and forms of communication) and allowing the logic of accumulation to permeate new spheres.” You can continue reading the document of this axis here.

In the next days, we´ll navigate stories, feelings, and strategies with comrades who have participated in the 3rd Nyéléni in September 2025. The forum was an important step in a process and now is followed by COP30 in Belém, Brazil, which gives continuity to our encounters, denunciations, and convergence of our struggles to transform the world. Our comrade Mafalda Galdames Castro from Chile was both in the 1st and 3rd Nyéléni, in 2007 and 2025 respectively. She takes us back in time through her memories:

“The 3rd Nyéléni Global Forum has its origins in the 1st World Forum for Food Sovereignty held on the African continent, in the nation of Mali, in the Sikasso region, located 140 kilometers from the capital Bamako, in the town of Selingué, from February 23 to 27, 2007. It was a particularly beautiful location due to its characteristics, in an open space next to a large water reservoir, which bears the same name as the community of Selingué. The camp facilities were built by the community itself: a ramada (or palapa) for assemblies, discussions, and debates; cabins for the delegates’ accommodation; and kitchen and toilet facilities, all austere and rustic given the economic conditions of the area.

However, the affection, warmth, and joy of the organizations that welcomed us, the locals, and the neighbors added value to the days we spent together at this unforgettable event, which marked the beginning of a process full of symbolism and gestures of humility, fraternity, and solidarity from the host organizations of La Via Campesina, the World March of Women, and other international organizations that believed in and contributed financially and human resources to this life project, which is the struggle for food sovereignty for all peoples. This meeting unanimously adopted the name Nyéléni, in honor and as a tribute to the peasant woman so named by her parents, who, as legend has it, contravened the rigid norms and customs of her community and took on the production of food for her family in times of scarcity.

The first declaration, which had the virtue of bringing together global movements that defend the production of healthy and diversified food, stated:
‘Most of us are food producers and we are willing, able, and determined to feed all the peoples of the world. Our heritage as food producers is fundamental to the future of humanity. This is particularly the case for women and indigenous peoples, who are creators of ancestral knowledge about food and agriculture, and who are undervalued. But this heritage and this capacity to produce nutritious, high-quality food in abundance are threatened and undermined by neoliberalism and global capitalism.'”

As Mafalda makes visible, Nyéléni is a struggle planted by a mythical Malian peasant woman who challenged patriarchy and, despite the aridity of the land, was able to cultivate grains such as fonio and samio and feed her entire community. This legend is the seed of the Nyéléni Global Forum, and it´s 1st edition was an important gathering for having a common understanding and reaffirming the importance of food sovereignty guaranteed by the peoples who, historically, feed the world.

Below are pictures from the 1st Nyéléni Global Forum in Mali! To see more photo archives from the movement you can access this Gallery from Capire!

The 2nd Nyéléni Global Forum happened in 2015 in Mali, where agroecology as an alternative was built in dialogue between people with different cultures, languages and ways of living. Our comrade from Brazil, Sarah Luiza de Souza Moreira, shares with us the meaning of this transformative practice:

“For us, from our experiences in our different territories, practicing agroecology means living to ensure real food, in the fields and in the cities, building fairer, more respectful, and more equal relationships between people and between people and nature. Caring for the land, the water, the seeds, the life, and women’s bodies is part of our daily experiences and struggles.”

Stay tuned to our website in the next few days to know more about how the 3rd Nyéléni Global Forum was for the delegates of our movement! Until then, the following texts from Capire are interesting further readings on the topic: Grassroots Agroecology Education: Change in Practice and Peasant Women Nurturing Feminism and Agroecology. And don´t forget to check out the recently published Kandy Declaration!

Systemic Transformation, Now and Forever!