The Fight to Make Poverty History: Unfair World Trade Rules Imposed by Wealthy Nations Force the World's Poorest People Further into Poverty

The Vancouver Sun (British Columbia)
April 14, 2005 Thursday
Final Edition

This week, 10 million people in 70 countries will take to the streets to protest unfair trade rules. The Global Week of Action is the largest mobilization for trade justice the world has seen.

Campaigners and people living in poverty will join forces to demand changes to the trade rules that force the world's poorest people further into poverty and deny them the right to defend themselves.
 
For Oxfam, the week is about building solidarity with poor farmers, who make up most of the billion people living on less than a dollar a day.

Oxfam's new report on trade, Kicking Down the Door, describes the inhuman scam that keeps trade from becoming the solution to global poverty.

First, IMF and World Bank loan conditions force countries to drastically open their markets to imported rice, wheat, corn and other staples. Then WTO rules permit Europe and the United States to dump their subsidized surpluses there. And the same WTO and IMF rules and conditions prohibit poor countries from raising tariffs to defend themselves.

The result: more hunger, more poverty. Rather than encouraging food production for local consumption and letting people work their way out of poverty, trade rules do the opposite. And now rich countries are insisting on further tariff cuts at the WTO for all but the poorest.

Rice is the world's most vital crop, providing livelihoods for two billion people -- one-third of humanity. Fully half of the world's people rely on rice for food. Yet under the WTO negotiations, India and China, together home to 820 million rice farmers, are among 13 developing countries that could be forced to slash their rice tariffs.

Meanwhile, rich countries continue to provide heavy subsidies: Japan, the U.S. and the EU combined provided more than $20 billion to their rice producers in 2002. The U.S. is the world's third-largest rice exporter even when its rice costs more than twice as much to grow as in Thailand or Vietnam, and survives only because the government foots the bill -- in 2003, for 72 per cent of the cost.

Open markets make for a great sermon. But no country that is rich today ever practised what they preach. None of them opened up to cheap food imports before their farmers were competitive. Abruptly lowering tariffs on food in a country where most people are poor farmers is a recipe for disaster.

Our desire to export must not come at the cost of undermining efforts to fight hunger and poverty in the developing world. As Nelson Mandela stated at the launch of the Make Poverty History Campaign, "Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings. Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. It is the protection of a fundamental human right, the right to dignity and a decent life. While poverty persists, there is not true freedom."

The millions of poor farmers who will demonstrate this week know only too well that making trade fair is essential if we are to ever make progress in the fight to make poverty history.

Miriam Palacios is the B.C. program coordinator for Oxfam Canada. Edited.
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