We Can All Buy Into A Fairer Future For Poor
Trading rules imposed by rich nations on the Third World are condemning millions of people to economic slavery. But, says Ray Lyons, ordinary people can help by supporting fair trade products.
FAIR TRADE, not aid, is the answer to world poverty, disease, famine and death.
Fair trade should be our main weapon in any war on terror, the terror of hundreds of children dying every day because they lack that most basic commodity of life, clean drinking water.
President George W Bush us the first ever Republican President to visit Africa to dole out “goodies” to some of the world’s poorest people. Provided the money is routed through well-run charities, it will help some of the most desperate people in the world.
It may make him feel better and his Christian conscience may be less burdened. It may even win him some desperately-needed votes among America’s black population, which normally votes Democrat by a margin of 9 to 1.
However, at the end of the day, aid is not the answer to the world’s most pressing problem, the grinding poverty that enslaves a billion people in our fantastically rich world.
The USA has just 6 per cent of the world’s population but uses 50 per cent of its resources. The UK counts for just over 1 per cent of world population but has the world’s fourth largest economy.
The entire continent of Africa has an economy only the same size as ours and it is shrinking as the effect of the HIV/AIDS pandemic takes hold, killing millions of its young men and women. The old are left to look after the orphaned children while the labour force shrinks. 20 years ago, Africa had 6 per cent of the world trade. Today it has only 4 per cent, with twice as many mouths to feed.
During my lifetime, I’ve heard world leaders from President Jimmy Carter to Willy Brandt make pledges to change the way we do things in the West to improve the lot for the world’s poor. Sometimes, naively perhaps, I’ve even believed them and hoped we would see a better future, only to be bitterly disappointed.
I would be as rich as some of those we employ I our world bodies to improve things if I had a £1 for every hefty report and bulging statement of intent that have been issued since I started taking an interest in such matter in the 1960s. the GATT (General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs) came and went, making no difference.
The WTO (World Trade Organization) and its hugely expensive ‘talk shops’ repeatedly fails to grasp the one truly important nettle, to promote world trade. The UN is fill of people with good intentions, but we all know where they lead, if not turned into good actions.
The World Bank may have bailed out Britain’s economy in the late 1970s but it and the IMF (International Monetary Fund) seem only to be able to enforce free market remedies onto corrupt dictatorships. They force cuts on barely functioning health, education and social budgets and demand that the countries open their markets to our subsidized agricultural products and manufactured goods that they can’t afford. The promised reforms and policies at the World Bank and IMF will take time to have an effect.
As for the G8 summit, the leaders of the world’s richest and most powerful nations, well, its last meeting seemed to have just lost the plot, despite Tony Blair’s acknowledged long-term commitment to debt relief and pledge to focus on Africa.
HIDEOUS
Perhaps now that Bush has found his way to Africa and hopefully witnessed at first hand the hideous living conditions of millions of people that our current so-called free trade western policies cause. Of course it is nor free trade at all. The true currency is not money but people’s lives, millions of them.
President Bush may have apologized for his country’s part in the historic slave trade but will he do anything about economic slavery? Hopefully, both is conscience and his humanity have been better formed by his visit. Then, just perhaps the next G8 Summit might produce some useful results. But I’m not holding my breath.
If world leaders and powerful international bodies have failed to make an impact on world poverty then, who can? Quite simply, you and me, and everyone who has a £1 to spend! Fair trade, not free trade, does and can make an impact. When all is said and done, it is us, not governments, who put our hands into our pockets and make the majority of the decisions about what is bought and therefore traded in our world.
We can make the choices that make the difference across the world.
Almost every supermarket now carries a range of fair trade products. Outside of Fair Trade Fortnight, they are not yet strategically placed on the shelves for the customer tro be immediately aware of the option to but fair trade. But at least they are there and their quality and packing are of the highest caliber these days. No one can have the excuses of 20 years that the quality or taste was awful. If it were, no supermarket would stock them.
Many churches have fair trade stalls in the porch or hall, but in my experience most parishioners are blind to its existence, even those with a social conscience. This is one kind of Sunday trading we should all support. Some years ago our parish opened a charity shop where there is a much wider range of fairly-traded products available, and it provides a profit to the parish. Others are doing the same.
I find it verging on the sinful when visiting parishes, presbyteries, Catholic scools or religious houses, all of whom support CAFOD and proclaim the need foe social justice, but still offer only brand name coffee and tea. If those of us who are leaders in our communities aren’t yet onboard and setting an example in these matters, then who woll?
Nearly 20 years ago, it took Bob Geldof and Live Aid to alert the world to the plithg of Africa. Bono, of rock band U2, still travels the world beating the drum for Debt Relief, visiting the Pope and Presidents.
New on the world justice scene, however, is another rock star, Chris Martin of Coldplay. So keen is he to promote the fair trade message that he’s had “Make Trade Fair” painted on his piano where thousands of fans can see it on their world tour concerts. In the Church, we need to be just as active in giving a lead as are our rock and pop stars in proclaiming the moral choice.
In recent years, we’ve all gone learnt to re-use and re-cycle. ‘Organic’, free range’’ and ‘natural’ are replacing the post-war love affair with everything high-tech and modern: battery hens, pig and cow sheds, industrial farming and pesticides. Hopefully, the next big step backwards into the future will be fair trade.
