Working Group on Social Movements and Grassroots Groups
ESCR-Net is committed to ensuring that its activities are grounded in the lived experience of people affected by ESCR violations and include the participation of social movements, grassroots organizations and other groups and individuals directly affected by social injustice.
ESCR-Net's Guiding Principles
According to ESCR-Net’s Governance Document, “social movements and grassroots organizations are critical participants in the Network. Their participation must be supported and encouraged. Since its inception, ESCR-Net has operated – and commits to continue to operate – on the principle that its work should be inclusive and efforts should be made to reach out to social movements, grassroots groups and social justice groups to ensure their participation throughout all structures of the Network...”
In response to these principles, ESCR-Net coordinates a Working Group of Social Movements and Grassroots Groups which is comprised of representatives of organizations of indigenous peoples, fisherfolk, racial and ethnic minorities, peasants and landless agricultural workers, shack dwellers, workers in both informal and unionized sectors and people resisting harmful development and extractive sector projects. See here for a list of the members of the Working Group.
Recent Initiatives
Over time, members of the Working Group have engged in mutual learning activities, solidarity visits and thematic gatherings. In 2010, the Working Group held a meeting and solidarity visit in Brazil to share experiences and generate proposals relating to human rights issues related to land and natural resources. That meeting resulted in a project to confront development-induced displacement, which included a workshop in South Africa, a fact-finding mission on the POSCO-India project and the development of an informational portal, in collaboration with the Displacement Research Action Network at MIT. A series of conversations amongst members also resulted in Land in the Struggle for Justice: Social Movement Strategies to Secure Human Rights, which built on earlier inputs from ESCR-Net members reflected in the earlier publication: Seeding Hope? Land in the international human rights agenda. This collective work around land rights, forced displacement and adequate housing has now become mainstreamed into multiple thematic working groups with social movement leadership, including those focused on women and ESCR, corporate accountability, strategic litigation and economic policy.
More recently, in May of 2014, the Working Group brought together twenty five grassroots leaders in Peru, from sixteen countries, to discuss common challenges and issues of collective interest, including leadership development, managing alliances and the participation of women within social movements.
Looking Forward
The Working Group will continue to facilitate mutual learning and deepen a shared analysis about common challenges and innovative strategies that social movements and grassroots organizations have employed to promote social and economic justice using human rights. Via strengthening human rights protections related to land, housing and livelihoods; promoting the leadership of women; and coordinating efforts to effectively confront the common global forces that drive dispossession, impoverishment and inequality in its multiple forms, ESCR-Net’s Social Movement Working Group is working, in collaboration with many others, to build a global movement to make human rights and social justice a reality for all.
