Campaigns
Oxfam's Make Trade Fair Campaign
While politicians and bureaucrats argue and bicker over new trade agreements, Fair Trade is providing a crucial lifeline for thousands of poor and destitute farmers. There is a glut of certified Fair Trade commodities today.
Oxfam International launched a major MakeTradeFair campaign in the spring of 2001. The goals of this campaign are to expose and change the severe inequities that exist in the international trading system: limited access to markets in the north for producers in the developing countries via tariffs and duties; and obscene subsidies for farmers in the "north" that allows them to dump their commodities on the world market driving down the prices poor farmers in the South receive for their produce not only in the international markets but in their local markets. Many developing countries have been forced to open their doors to these cheap subsidized commodities like rice, maize, corn and milk products.
This campaign lasted six years and it focused on several key issues such as Fair Trade, access to cheap drugs and the effects of subsidies and dumpimg all of which expose the problems in international trade. Many of the problems and issues addressed in this campaign have been related to issues addressed by the Fair Trade movement for the past several decades.
Fair Trade may not be the magic bullet for all the problems in international trade, but it is the only FAIR game in town.