Natural Justice began its involvement in the campaign for livestock keepers’ rights by its participation as a legal advisor to the 2008 Cape Town meeting organized by the LIFE Network (a global network of organizations working with pastoralists and livestock keepers). The aim of the Cape Town meeting was to draft a set of livestock keepers’ rights based on the extensive consultations and discussions previously facilitated by the LIFE Network with its members and partners.

Since the 2008 Cape Town meeting, Natural Justice has worked closely with the LIFE Network and the League for Pastoral Peoples and Endogenous Livestock Development (LPP) in its campaign for the recognition of livestock keepers’ rights. Natural Justice has supported the LIFE Network in its partners’ development of biocultural community protocols in Asia and Africa. Furthermore, Natural Justice has collaborated with the LIFE Network in organizing side events advocating livestock keepers’ rights at the meetings of the Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (CGRFA) and the Working Groups on Article 8(j) and Access and Benefit Sharing.

Natural Justice continues to support pastoral peoples’ and livestock keepers’ organizations both in Asia and Africa. We work in partnership with the LIFE Network and the World Alliance of Mobile Indigenous Peoples (WAMIP) with the aim of affirming livestock keepers’ rights and the role of pastoralists and livestock keepers in developing and conserving animal genetic diversity, as recognized by the 2007 FAO Global Plan of Action for Animal Genetic Resources and Interlaken Declaration.

Despite the growing momentum around livestock keepers’ rights in certain fora, there is a considerable way to go before these rights become a part of the vocabulary of third generation or group rights. Natural Justice aims to engage in a strategic and sustained advocacy of livestock keepers’ rights within various international fora, particularly the FAO.

Read IISD reports and analysis relating to the Food and Agriculture’s Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.