In March 2011, Marc Edelman attended the 16th Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, where he met with peasant activists from Europe, Asia and the Americas, country delegates, Swiss farmers, and human rights activists. He also traveled to Heidelberg, where he interviewed right-to-food activists and collected documentation at the Food First Information and Action Network.

In October 2011 Edelman traveled to Indonesia, where he interviewed peasant organization and human rights activists and government officials about the origins of Vía Campesina's effort to have the United Nations implement a convention on the rights of peasants. He also spoke on "Experiences with FTAs in the Americas" at a National Meeting on Free Trade Agreements in Indonesia, which generated prominent (if not entirely accurate) coverage in one of Jakarta's main newspapers.

In November Edelman presented a paper on "Linking the Right to Food and Peasants' Rights," in an invited session on "Ethnographic Approaches to Food Activism: Agency, Democracy, and Economy" at the American Anthropological Association convention in Montreal. At the same conference he was also a discussant for a session on "Thinking Through NGOs: How NGO Studies Contribute to Anthropological Theory."

On December 1, Edelman and CUNY doctoral candidate Carwil Bjork-James spoke on peasants' rights in the Columbia Law School seminar on "The Legal and Political Economy of Hunger" run by Prof. Olivier de Schutter, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food.

On December 8, Edelman gave a lecture on "Linking the Right to Food to Peasants' Rights: Vía Campesina's Campaign in the United Nations" in the Seminar on Critical Issues in Agrarian and Development Studies, College of Humanities and Development Studies, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China. While at CAU he also met with undergraduate and graduate students and postdoctoral researchers and led discussions on research methods in development studies and the how-to of publishing in international journals.

In February 2012 Edelman attended meetings of the Advisory Committee to the UN Human Rights Council. While in Geneva he also spoke with country delegates, international lawyers, human rights and peasant activists, and Advisory Committee members. The Advisory Committee recommended that its Final Study on the Advancement of the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (A/HRC/19/75) be considered by the full Human Rights Council. The Study's main recommendations include the adoption of a new international instrument (a declaration or convention) on the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas and the creation of a new mandate for a special rapporteur or an independent expert responsible for monitoring and working to fulfill such rights.

In March 2012 Edelman returned to Geneva for the 19^th session of the Human Rights Council which, among other things, began to discuss the Advisory Committee's Final Study mentioned above. Consideration of a resolution to adopt the Final Study and to recommend it to the General Assembly for further consideration was postponed until the next Council session in June 2012. He also visited farms near Geneva and met with members of UNITERRE, a Swiss agriculturalists organization affiliated with La Vía Campesina.

On left, Africa Mthombeni (Landless Peoples Movement, South Africa) and Henry Saragih (Indonesian Peasants Union and General Coordinator of La Vía Campesina) at the United Nations, Geneva, March 2012.

The Bajo Aguán region of Honduras is currently the site of the most acute agrarian conflict in Central America in the past fifteen years (for background see the 2011 Report of the Inter-American Human Rights Commission and the 2011 Report of the International Verification Mission on the Bajo Aguán). In May, Marc Edelman was invited to two linked events, both held in Tocoa, Colón, Honduras: (1) an International Public Hearing on the Human Rights Situation of the Peasant Communities in the Bajo Aguán; and (2) an International Seminar on the Human Rights Situation of the Peasant Communities in the Bajo Aguán. He was  part of the “presiding committee” of the Public Hearing, presented a paper in the International Seminar on peasants’ rights and the United Nations (titled “Los derechos de los y las campesinas en las Naciones Unidas”), and participated in drafting and translating the final report of the Public Hearing (in English, en español). For a vido on the Hearing, click here

On September 27, 2012, the UN Human Rights Council approved a resolution to establish an intergovernmental working group to finalize a UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas. Edelman published a brief article on this important development on OpenDemocracy.Net.

The post-2007 wave of large-scale land acquisitions-often called "land grabbing"-is one of the most significant rights issues facing small-scale agriculturalists. In October 2012 Edelman spoke at the International Conference on Global Land Grabbing held at Cornell University. For a video of his presentation at the plenary roundtable on "Identifying, Counting and Understanding Land Grabs," click here.