Fair Trade

The Principles

1. Trading relationships can be fair only when human rights are respected.

2. Trade and investment policy should be based on local conditions and fair regulatory standards and decided through democratically accountable processes at both national and international levels.

3. Basic social rights and needs of citizens, including food, security, national, environmental and cultural heritage, public health, social security, public education and the regulation of access to such essential services as water and electricity, take precedence over the financial interests of powerful trading corporations or governments.

4. Developing countries have a right to full participation in trade and consultation with bodies such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Their special situation should be recognised in all trade agreements.

The Issues

1. Current trade agreements do not meet these requirements. Since 1995 the WTO has become the instrument through which powerful corporations have attempted to enforce a worldwide code, designed to enlarge their markets and profits without regard for local rights and needs.

2. WTO meetings are closed to observers, and do not use the WTO provision for majority voting. Agreements can be legally binding without domestic legislation or public debate.

3. Some WTO agreements favour powerful industrialised economies at the expense of developing countries and indigenous people. The Agreement on Agriculture forced developing countries to remove tariffs and subsidies on food, but allowed European countries and the United States to subsidise farmers directly.

4. The Trade in Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement extends patent rights for inventions to all forms of technology, including plants. These rights are usually held by corporations, thus extending monopoly rights.

5. TRIPS makes it more difficult for governments to make exceptions to rules, and to manufacture drugs locally at affordable prices. African countries have had difficulty with access to drugs in the AIDS epidemic.

6. The collective rights of indigenous peoples to plants, culture and their national heritage are undermined when corporations take them over.

7. Some corporations and governments, including the United States and Australia are trying to extend WTO powers to cover public services, investment and government purchasing. This would threaten public health, education systems and the development of local government policies.

Alternatives

1. Australian trade policy should be publicly debated and trade agreements subjected to parliamentary scrutiny before they are signed.

2. Before any new round of agreements, the proposals of developing countries for reviews of existing trade agreements should be supported, and assessments made of their social impacts.

3. International agreements reached through the UN and the International Labour Organisation (ILO) on environment, health and human rights should prevail over trade agreements and should not be challenged or undermined by trade agreements or dispute processes.

4. Trade decision making should not be done behind closed doors. Meetings should be democratic, inclusive and transparent, modelled on UN processes of open meetings and majority decision making with non-government observers allowed.

5. Intellectual property rights should not permit the patenting of life forms, or the patenting of the natural or cultural heritage of indigenous peoples.

6. Essential medicines should be accessible to all at affordable prices.

7. There should be no expansion of the Trade in Services Agreement to include services like health, education and social security, and no reduction in the right of national governments to regulate services in the public interest.