Trade takes from the poor
Rigged trade rules cost the developing world $700 billion a year, according to the UN.
The three richest people in the world control more wealth than all 600 million people living in the world's poorest countries.
International trade is worth $10 million a minute. But poor countries only account for 0.4% of this trade. Indeed, their share is actually half what it was in 1980.
Nearly half the world's population (2.8 billion people) live on less than $2 per day. And more than 800 million go hungry every day.
Income per person in the poorest countries in Africa has fallen by a quarter in the past 20 years.
The average EU cow is subsidised to the tune of around $800. Ethiopia's total national income, per person per year, is around $100.
‘There is no point to a globalisation that reduces the price of a child’s shoes, but costs the father his job.’ A Filipino participant at the World Commission on the Social Dimensions of Globalisation
Rigged rules
‘Major violations of human rights are carried out under the legal sanction of international trade, negatively impacting the well-being of countless millions of people around the world.’ UN Development Programme
‘We have opened our economy. That’s why we are flat on our back.’ Sam Mpasu, Malawi’s commerce and industry minister
‘The whole world is upside down because it puts economics before the human and social needs of people. We need to have different rules.’ Trinidad Sanchez, director of Comal, a Christian Aid partner in Honduras
Who’s in charge?
The world's 50 poorest countries have less than 3% of the vote at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), an institution which, along with the World Bank, decides how money should be lent to poor countries – and under what conditions.
The US, the UK, Germany, France and Japan have nearly 40 per cent of the vote between them. Only America has the power of veto.
In 2003, Ghana’s government passed laws to protect its struggling rice growers from subsidised imports. The IMF forced it to tear up the law after it had been passed. Now the US provides 40% of Ghana’s rice.
The World Trade Organisation (WTO) is where countries set the rules of global trade. Each member country has an equal vote, but a lot depends on the number of delegates countries can afford to send.
At the WTO summit in Hong Kong in December 2005, the EU had a record-breaking 832 delegates, the US 356, Japan 229. At the other end of the scale, 46 countries had fewer than 10 delegates; Central African Republic had none at all.
The rules of trade are wrong. We know it. And now they know it.
In 1998, UK prime minister Tony Blair said his government remained ‘an unashamed champion of free trade.’
But seven years later…
‘We will not force trade liberalisation on developing countries either through trade negotiations or aid conditionality.’ Department for Trade and Industry, March 2005