Article The Right to Seeds and Legal Mobilization for the Protection of Peasant Seed Systems in Mali Mohamed Coulibaly, Priscilla Claeys, and Anne Berson* Abstract This article discusses the right to seeds and legal mobilization for the protection of peasant seed systems in Mali. It centres on the ongoing ‘Seed, Norms and Peasants’ process (‘Semences, Normes et Paysans’, SNP), the goal of which is to achieve the recognition of peasant seed systems in the law. Through the lens of human rights practice, the article explores how peasant organizations and allied NGOs have: a) converged around a shared political agenda despite initial disagreement on the role of certified seeds; b) framed the right to seeds as a collective right, grounded in cus- tomary regimes for the governance of land and natural resources; and c) engaged in dialogue with the state to push for legal reform. It further discusses processes of le- gal transfers and seed aid that have ushered the development of a commercial seed sector in Mali and locates peasant seed systems within the political economy of seeds in the country. Keywords: agroecology; food sovereignty; legal mobilization; farmers’ rights; right to seeds; rights of peasants Introduction In the last decade, seeds have moved from representing a core element of the right to food (UN General Assembly 2009) to being recognized as a standalone human right in the re- cently adopted UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP) (UN General Assembly 2018). For a long time, farmers’ rights to save, use, exchange and sell farm-saved seeds were mostly considered from the perspective of biodiversity protection and environmental law, although an abundance of human rights * Mohamed Coulibaly is Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Legal and Political Sciences (USJP) of Bamako, Mali. Priscilla Claeys is Associate Professor at the Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience (CAWR), Coventry University, UK. Anne Berson is Coordinator of the West Africa programmes of BEDE (Biodiversite ´,E ´ changes et Diffusion d’Expe ´ riences). V C The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com Journal of Human Rights Practice, 12, 2020, 479–500 doi: 10.1093/jhuman/huaa039 Advance Access Publication Date: 4 February 2021 Article Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jhrp/article/12/3/479/6028894 by guest on 12 September 2022