When we want to eliviate poverty, it is important to understand the elements of the equation that may sustain the poverty which we are attempting to fight. Below is a summary of the efforts of an organization called OXFAM. The following was compiled to explain the various elements of their ‘Make Trade Fair’ Campaign.
Subject: Hunger and poverty need more than just quick fixes. With over half of the world living on less and $2 a day, our world is in a crisis. The US gives over 19 billion dollars in aid but any progress this money could potentially make, is stagnated by unfair trade policies that depress world prices for commodities, perpetuate poverty, and “waste” developmental aid and continue corruption.
Oxfams MTF Campaign: Deals with 6 Aspects : We believe that these 6 priorities will make progress, indeed, genuine and long-term progress to alleviating hunger and fighting poverty :
Advocacy
Agriculture
Access to Affordable Medicines
Labor Rights
WTO/DOHA / MDG
FFTA
Free Trade Agreements :
Both NAFTA and now, CAFTA are agreements between North America, including the US and Canada, and Central America and Mexico. Tariffs are reduced and products move more freely between all parties involved. US companies are able to produce goods in Mexico, and consequently take advantage of lower labor and environmental rules and regulations, making production methods cheaper, and then sell them directly to high-paying US consumers.
What does this mean for the international community and for small farmers in Mexico and Central America?
Specifically, these agreements take on an even more devastating effect on the agricultural sectors of the Central America and Mexico. As large US corporate farms move deeper into Central/Mexico, small farmers are pushed out of their land and out of work. Large corporations export agricultural commodities back to the US below the true costs of production- small farmers, having no financial mechanisms from which to reduce their costs of production have to lower their price below profit level to even sell their products at all. Mexican and Central American food security, are now in jeopardy as they as jobs are lost to large corporate farms, and the regions become increasingly dependant upon food production from foreign firms and companies.
Advocacy:
One of our strongest tools available to us, and to any attempt at creating positive global change is educational awareness. We believe that once people are aware of the unfair trade issues that perpetuate poverty both in the US and abroad we will achieve great power in politics and policy.
Agriculture:
Subsidies are dragging down world prices and hurting farmers both in the US and Abroad. Subsidies are payments given by the US to farmers to encourage production or consumption of a certain good. Because payments are based on plantings, large farms (often the post profitable already) receive the majority of government payments. In 2001, the top 10% highest-grossing farms received over 50% of the payments given.
Cotton, sugar, and Milk subsitdies have the most impact on the global markets but coffee, wheat, sugar, rice and peanuts name just a few other commodities that are subsidies to such a degree so that that the livelihoods of farmers both at home and abroad are devastated.
United States trade officials and cotton producers suffered a blow in June 2004 when the World Trade Organization ruled that American cotton subsidies violated international trade rules by depressing world prices and harming farmers in Brazil and elsewhere. A trade appeals court affirmed this ruling in March, but the subsidies have continued. Government payments to American cotton farmers have totaled $16 billion in the last seven years.
Last August, during the World Trade Organization meeting in Geneva, wealthy nations showed signs of willingness to make changes to their practice of supporting generous subsidies. The United States agreed to have talks with four impoverished, cotton-producing West African nations – Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali – about reducing its $2 billion to $4 billion in annual cotton subsidies.
Oxfam America estimates that from 2001 to 2003, the presence of artificially cheap American cotton on the world market caused an estimated $400 million in losses to farmers in these West African nations. American producers account for roughly 40 percent of the world’s cotton exports, giving them considerable influence over prices, according to the International Cotton Advisory Committee, an association of the governments of cotton producing and consuming nations.
Rural areas of the US are the poorest in the entire nation. Small farmers in the US are losing out to big corporations and are not able to compete against the unfairly low prices of large, subsidized farms.
Access to Affordable Medicines:
Under current WTO regulations, patent rights are helping the spread of AIDS and reducing the ability for countries to get medicines for other humanitarian crisis, like Malaria, TB, sleeping sickness, and other diseases and deficiencies.
We are rejecting the ability for patent rights to get in the way of our obligation to help those that are sick. Prior to entering the WTO, countries are required to sign TRIPS, which outlines an restriction to encourage generics. Fair trade policies that put human life first, are the priority of Oxfam as we seek to value human life before corporations and big business. It is a right for generics to be made for the people who need them most.
Labor Rights :
Advocating for fair wages (cutting out of the big middleman profit) for workers both at home and abroad. This is on of the major issues we see with C/NAFTA – a priority to secure the rights of investment owners and businesspersons in these areas ahead workers.
To earn $50 a day, tomatoes pickers in the US have to pick two tons of tomatoes. They rarely make more than $7,500 a day and are exempt from federal labor laws, minum wage obligations, and overtime pay.
The Real Deal : Short Term Aid vs. Long Term Development
Trade justice is a long-term approach! It means the building up of economic infrastructures within these developing countries- it means putting local food on local tables so that these communities are not dependant upon foreign assistance and food dumping by developed nations that have the economic capacity to do so. It means self-sufficiency and prosperity no matter how much sort-term aid is available and given.
Written By:
Katie Ricketts
29 July 2005
CA Make Trade Fair Team