From Asia to Africa: Women Organize for Land, Food Sovereignty and the Sustainability of Life

In Mozambique and Nepal, rural women’s mobilizations connected the struggle for land and food sovereignty with resistance to patriarchal power, corporate control and debt exploitation. Their demands affirm women’s right to decide over the resources, work and policies that shape their lives.

Women’s struggles for food sovereignty are inseparable from the struggle to transform the relations of power that organize our economies and societies. Women produce food, sustain communities and preserve agricultural knowledge, yet their work remains undervalued, while their access to land, resources and political decision-making continues to be restricted.

Mobilizations in Mozambique and Nepal around October 16, the International Day of Action for People’s Food Sovereignty and Against Transnational Corporations, brought these contradictions into the streets. Across two continents, rural women and peasants asserted their collective power to defend their livelihoods and build alternatives grounded in equality, solidarity and the sustainability of life.

Mozambique: Land Rights Are Central to Women’s Autonomy

In Matutuíne District, Maputo Province, rural women marked the International Day of Rural Women on October 15 with a march celebrating their achievements and demanding recognition of their work and rights.

Fórum Mulher highlighted women’s contributions to food security, local economies and community life, alongside the persistent barriers they face in accessing land, productive resources, financing and decision-making spaces.

From a feminist perspective, these barriers are political: they concern who owns and controls resources, whose work is recognized, and who has the power to make decisions. Women’s responsibility for sustaining life must be accompanied by the rights and material conditions necessary to exercise autonomy.

The tenth anniversary of the Kilimanjaro Initiative brought renewed attention to the demand of rural women farmers across Africa that 30% of land titles be allocated to women. This demand challenges unequal control over land and affirms women’s position as rights holders and political actors.

Fórum Mulher reaffirmed its commitment to rural women’s dignity, autonomy and active participation in building communities. Securing women’s land rights is fundamental to this struggle, together with access to the resources and collective power needed to make those rights effective.

Nepal: Confronting Debt, Corporate Power and the Exploitation of Women

On October 16, 2026, the World March of Women National Coordination Body in Nepal, in close collaboration with La Via Campesina Nepal, organized a march and public demonstration in Mandan Deupur Municipality, Kavre District.

More than 250 local peasants and rural women took to the streets with placards, banners, flags and posters, demanding food sovereignty, climate justice and an end to the debt trap.

Their demands exposed how economic policies reach into women’s everyday lives. Conditions that weaken public welfare and state support for peasants increase the pressures on households and communities, where women’s paid and unpaid work sustains daily survival.

Participants called for an end to predatory debt conditions imposed by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. They also demanded strict regulation of private microfinance lenders and an end to coercive loan recovery practices targeting rural women and smallholders. These demands challenge the use of debt as a means of extracting wealth and exercising control over women’s lives and livelihoods.

The mobilization defended peasant-led seed exchange systems, women’s access to land, agroecological farming and guaranteed fair prices for local produce. Together, these demands affirm food producers’ right to shape agricultural systems and resist the dominance of transnational agribusinesses.

Participants also called for investment in local irrigation, sustainable farming infrastructure and climate adaptation funds managed by food producers rather than international creditors. This places control over climate responses in the hands of the communities whose lives and work are directly affected.

Building Feminist Alternatives Across Continents

The mobilizations in Mozambique and Nepal show how feminist struggles connect land, food, debt, public services and climate justice. Patriarchal inequalities and an economic system organized around profit reinforce one another, concentrating resources and power while relying on women’s undervalued work.

From Asia to Africa, rural women are advancing these alternatives through collective action. Within the World March of Women’s internationalist struggle, their organizing strengthens a shared political commitment: to build economies that sustain life, defend territories, and place people’s needs above corporate profit.