Today marks day three of HungerFREE at the United Nations. In the morning, many members of the New York nonprofit community came to our forum, called a Field of Ones Own – A Forum on Women’s Rights to Land and Natural Resources. The event was held at the Church Centre at the United Nations, and featured an amazing speech by Cledeneuza Maria Bezerra Oliveria from the Brazilian Amazon. She talked about the plight of landless women, whom had for decades eked a living by harvesting wild palm oil nuts, called babassu nuts, from neighboring trees. Then, big corporations and rich land speculators came in, purchasing enormous swaths of land, and preventing the nuts from being harvested. Suddenly, an estimated 400,000 nut gatherers had no way to make a living. Many are still going hungry. Among them are five of Cledeneuza’s children, who are “trying very hard to find jobs, but there aren’t many opportunities out there.”
Cledeneuza herself has been gathering the nuts since she was nine.
The audience was incredibly moved by her story, which was told with brave intensity. Cledeneuza told us that she is hoping that Brazil will soon pass the Babassu Free Law, which would make the palms once again accessible to these very deserving families.
“These nuts are our only wealth,” she said. Let us hope justice quickly prevails.
