The Double Aims of Fair Trade

Trade, not aid: this was the slogan launched in Geneva in 1964 by some participants from Southern countries during the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. This slogan is now being used by some persons to promote an alternative model of trade based on more justice in North-South relations.

Fair trade currently has two aims:
To improve the fate of small Southern producers, overlooked by the lack of experience and financial means, by creating outlets that would allow them to commercialise their agricultural or handicraft products to Northern consumers, who are anxious to improve North-South solidarity;
To become a consumer network by increasing public awareness of unfair international trade rules and by undertaking actions with political and economic decision-makers.

In the South: to Improve the Fate of Underprivileged Producers
Fair trade stands on contractual exchanges between Southern producers and Northern fair trade organisations. Southern producers must be organised in groups, based on participation. The improvement of living and working conditions of the local community members, including the expansion of their production area and region, must be their main motivation. Their production means must respect humans and the environment. It is also important that they produce marketable goods for western markets by following their standards, in order for the sales to be guaranteed. Finally, these organisations must adopt a policy of transparency in all their activities.

The legal status of the group is not very important. Most of the time, the members of these groups are producers who belong to ethnic minority or scorned social classes; or otherwise, they live in hard climatic conditions or are dominated by the political system they live in. In some cases, they are handicapped or isolated women. The goods are mostly food products: coffee, tea, spices, honey, jams. Juices or handicraft: material, clothes, pottery, leather objects .

In exchange, the fair trade network is committed to its partners in many points. They pay their partners fair prices, that is, a price that ensures them and their families a decent standard of living according to the work done. This fair price is the primary objective of the fair trade. It is always higher than the market price. The fair trade organisations should purchase using the least number of intermediaries possible. They accept to pay part of the purchases before the delivery to prevent the producers from running into debt to local creditors at very high interest rates. The commitment is also based on a sustainable commercial relation in order to achieve a real impact, not only on the improvement of producers' standards of living, but also on the progress of production (helping investments, advice ).

Finally, the fair trade organisations can also support social or environmental protection projects structured by the co-operative or the production group related to health, literacy, financing, etc.

In the North: to become a Consumer Network

Precise information must be given to the consumers. Staff in fair trade stores - working mostly on voluntary basis- are responsible for explaining the origin of the articles, the conditions in its production, the aim of the fair trade. Most stores organise thematic evenings or special information days. They could even propose solidarity breakfasts with samples of fair products. Frequent contacts are made with the press, radio and television. The different channels have produced numerous explanatory and pedagogical documents of the inequality in North-South trade relations, on the working conditions of the producers, on the industrial process of products. Southern producers participate more frequently in meetings and debates organised by the fair trade organisations, thus allowing an increased follow-up of their activities and their difficulties.

After a few years, the fair trade organisations will go further by launching major opinion campaigns, condemning some practices and claiming new rules. This is how the campaigns on shoes and clothes took place: Clean clothes, made in dignity; Free your clothes; Be a sport, Play the game. These campaigns, often led jointly with other civil society partners (unions, consumer associations, etc.), include petitions that collect a significant number of signatures. These petitions have helped to establish contacts with persons in charge of the clothing trade and have helped to propose a code of ethics. This code guarantees the cleanliness of the products sold, that is, the working conditions in which they were made respect human dignity.

When national or European political authorities debate or make decisions regarding international trade for some products (cocoa, banana, etc.), the fair trade organisations are in a position to express their opinion and present proposals to improve international exchanges.

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A JOURNAL OF SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS CONCERN
Published Quarterly by DR. GERALD J. WANJOHI
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