The word peasantry is commonly used in a non-pejorative sense as a collective noun for the rural population in the poor and developing countries of the world. Via Campesina, an organization claiming to represent the rights of about 200 million farm-workers around the world, self-defines as an "International Peasant's Movement" . The United Nations and its Human Rights Council prominently uses the term "peasant" in a non-pejorative sense, as in the UN "Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas" adopted in 2018. In general English-language literature, the use of the word "peasant" has steadily declined since about 1970.