Edna Maguigad

Edna has been involved in realizing farmer’s rights in Southeast Asia for the last two years. As a Policy Officer with SEARICE, Edna is tasked in developing and leading the implementation of projects on climate change and farmer’s rights as it relates to agricultural biodiversity in the local, national, and international level. She sees the biggest challenge in holding corporations accountable to human rights is in the area of GMO contamination and geo-engineering. This area is very technical in nature and their impact on right to food, right to health, and impact on livelihood and biodiversity is very difficult to establish and costly for ordinary consumers and small farmers. SEARICE is currently undertaking advocacy work on big seed companies such as Monsanto, Dupont and Syngenta. She was part of the Philippine delegation in international negotiations at the United Nations Convention on Biodiversity and International Treaty on Genetic Resources on Food and Agriculture. Edna hopes to deepen her understanding of human rights framework and its linkage with corporate accountability as well as to gain information on recent developments in ASEAN and AICHR in promoting the rights of farmers.