Tariffs and quotas, conditionality and conventions, TRIPS, TRIMS and EPAs.
Making trade sound gripping was never going to be easy. But international trade rules are a mess. They are an absolute scandal, and they are killing people.
Trade rules just aren’t working. Simple.
Act now
What’s it all about?
'We’re campaigning for trade justice, not free trade.'
Our principal aim is to expose the myth that economic liberalisation – that is, forcing poor countries to open up their markets to cheap European goods and privatise their industries – is the foolproof, one-size-fits-all solution to poverty.
As farmers lose their livelihoods (read more), factory workers lose their jobs, and entire countries become dependent on imports (read more), it’s clear free trade comes at a cost.
That’s why we’re campaigning for trade justice, not free trade. And as our campaign gains momentum and the victories stack up, we are as focussed as ever.
There’s still plenty to do. The European Union has been cooking up some potentially disastrous trade deals with Africa, the Caribbean and Pacific countries, in the form of Economic Partnership Agreements, or EPAs.
And the two big institutions that lend money to poor countries, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, continue to push trade policies that harm poor people.
Mass Lobby for Trade Justice, 2 November 2005. A businessman with a chain around a mock-up of EU commissioner Peter Mandelson's neck.
So what does Christian Aid want?
Stop the EU's unfair trade deals
European Union trade deals, known as EPAs, are a threat to millions of livelihoods. Local charities and non-governmental organisations in 76 affected African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) nations have led a sustained campaign of resistance.
Now we need to back them to the hilt, and the UK government must use its influence to make EU trade deals fairer.
Stop paying for poverty
We want the governments of UK, Ireland and other northern donor countries to withhold support for the World Bank until it reforms the way it lends money to poor countries.
The economic policies that governments of poor countries are forced to adopt if they are to receive money from the World Bank are keeping people poor. As long as our governments back this organisation through regular funding, they will be paying for poverty. This has to stop.
The story – and successes – so far...
It’s not like we’ve been pushing at an open door. But the evidence suggests we have won hearts and minds where they matter – among the public, and in government.
So far our campaign has seen:
the largest ever mass lobby of Parliament
225,000 take to the streets of Edinburgh in protest at unfair trade rules
more than 750,000 votes for trade justice
This enormous public pressure has brought about dramatic u-turns from a government that once said it had no reverse gear...
changing from ‘unashamed champions of free trade’ in 1998, to agreeing with us that ‘forcing countries to liberalise through trade agreements is the wrong approach.’
withholding £50 million of funding to the World Bank in September 2006 due to the Bank’s continued enforcement of harsh economic conditions on poor countries in return for loans.