Trade Justice
Trade is a vital tool in achieving poverty reduction and attaining all of the MDGs and has the potential to enable millions of people to lift themselves out of poverty. Justice in trade is key in the fight against poverty.
At a personal level, trade offers an important means of income generation and generates money for food, clothes and medicines, amongst other things. At the national level, the income generated through trade can be used to develop infrastructure and industry and to deliver health, education, water and sanitation services. Rules related to intellectual property rights are negotiated within trade agreements and directly affect the access of poor people to ARVs and other drugs.
Talks at the World Trade Organisation have stalled but developing countries remain under immense pressure to sign up to regional trade agreements that pose a major threat to development and poverty reduction. For example, the European Union (EU) is negotiating Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with its ex-colonies in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP). These are essentially reciprocal Free Trade Agreements between an economic giant and some of the poorest countries in the world. EPAs will require ACP countries to undertake liberalisation commitments far beyond what has been expected of them at the WTO. The EU is also using EPAs to force negotiations on the so-called ‘Singapore issues’ of competition policy, investment and government procurement; issues rejected by developing countries at the WTO for years.
Micah Challenge calls on G8 nations to:
- Push for Article 24 of the GATT to be changed at the WTO, to incorporate special and differential treatment for developing country in regional trade agreements and allow for non-reciprocity between countries at very different levels of development.
- Stop forcing developing countries to liberalise through regional trade agreements and allow developing countries the flexibility to choose their own trade policies according to their development needs.
The UK Government must also significantly increase its efforts to influence other EU member states to produce public positions on EPAs which are at least in line with its own position. The Government should continue to raise its objections to EPAs with the European Council and the EC, and to push for a revision of the EC’s negotiating mandate and should hold the EC to account for a transparent, comprehensive, consultative and inclusive review of EPAs that covers structure, process and substance of the negotiations, including both trade and development aspects.
