La Via Campesina Issues Global Call Against WTO & Free Trade Agreements

ByMexico Solidarity

As the World Trade Organization (WTO) prepares for its 14th Ministerial Conference in Yaoundé, Cameroon, this March, we must confront the troubling reality of its impact on global trade. Created to facilitate free trade, the WTO has only intensified poverty and inequality worldwide. Its policies have undermined sovereign autonomy, particularly in the Global South , while marginalizing peasant and rural communities in the Global North. The relentless promotion of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) has led to widespread privatization and deregulation, primarily benefiting corporations at the expense of the working class everywhere.

Currently, the WTO is in a quagmire, unable to reach a consensus on critical issues such as public storage and dispute settlement, and is often powerless against hegemonic powers that use trade as a weapon to advance their geopolitical agendas.

La Vía Campesina reiterates that any debate on WTO reform is fundamentally flawed. Founded to promote the interests of a select group of wealthy nations, it maintains its power structures and functions as an inherently unequal space, lacking a genuine commitment to collective prosperity or the defense of peasant rights.

We stand firm in our demand that agricultural and food policies be removed from WTO negotiations. Instead, these vital debates should take place in more legitimate multilateral institutions, such as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) , where the voices of social movements and civil society can influence decisions that affect our collective future.

The WTO must disappear. It’s time to mobilize for a real alternative!

We need to build a global trade framework for food and agriculture based on the principles of food sovereignty . In Cameroon and beyond, La Via Campesina, along with other social movements, will continue to mobilize against the WTO and promote our concrete proposals for an alternative.

We call upon all our members and allies to organize mobilizations, press conferences, and public meetings in their towns, cities, and national capitals between March 26 and 29, 2026 , to express their opposition to free trade agreements that violate our rights and to reiterate our demand to keep agricultural trade negotiations outside the WTO.

We invite people from all over the world to wear something green—be it a hat, a t-shirt, a scarf, or a bandana—and take a photo with a sign that reads #EndWTO . Posting these images on social media will amplify our message and create a visual map of solidarity that can be pinned to a central online panel, illustrating the growing “bandwagon effect” as more groups from diverse locations join in.