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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | 'OAU's Model Law': lo schema legislativo dell'Unione Africana per salvaguardare le comunitą agricole tradizionali: analisi e qualche commento |
Author: | Sarč, S. |
Year: | 2007 |
Periodical: | Africa: rivista trimestrale di studi e documentazione |
Volume: | 62 |
Issue: | 1 |
Pages: | 78-99 |
Language: | Italian |
Geographic term: | Africa |
Subjects: | intellectual property natural resources seeds African agreements |
External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/25734427 |
Abstract: | The OAU's Model Law for the Protection of the Rights of Local Communities, Farmers and Breeders, and for the Regulation of Access to Biological Resources, is a legislative project adopted by the African Union (AU) to safeguard the livelihoods of rural peoples in Africa. It deals mainly with farmers, who have been cultivating their lands for millennia, having therefore built up a special knowledge to preserve biodiversity and to enhance the quality of agricultural crops. They have been selecting the best seeds and have found adapted technologies to improve the characteristics of their products. Today this is being done by researchers in industrialized countries ('breeders' employed by multinational corporations), who work with raw materials which often originate in the reserve of African biodiversity, a resource for African peoples. The objective of the Model Law is to balance the rights of breeders and farmers (Customary Rights to save, use, exchange and sell seeds) by suggesting appropriate mechanisms. Moreover, the Model Law defends the lifestyle of indigenous peoples (i.e. local rural communities), since it underlines the dignity of the autonomous development of the 'community based' cultural system. The article reflects on the individual/collective rights issue. App., notes, ref., sum. in English and French, text in Italian. [Journal abstract] |