Under the motto: "Helping people help themselves" people should help themselves out of poverty.


Fair trade and assistance for people in need, action is good - fair trade is better. Coffee, tea, cocoa, sugar, rice, bananas, exotic fruits as well as our clothes are produced almost exclusively in the Third World countries, in Africa, Asia and South America. They came after long transport routes in our stores and belong to our daily consumption naturally. Globalization makes it possible.

Unfortunately it is not naturally that these products are produced under the same fair conditions in their production countries, as we accustomed to the industrialized countries.

The payment of the producers is primary bad; the social and environmental standards are low and the employments uncertain. While consumers in the rich countries continue on demanding cheap products, small farmers in developing countries are pushed into poverty because of their economic dependence.

Non-profit, fair trade organizations are seeking to fair conditions by paying higher and reliable wages to the producers for their commodities independent of the world prices. The plantation workers enjoy a steady employment with the statutory minimum wage, labour standards, protection against contamination with dangerous chemicals and a minimum level of health care. Moreover, sustainable economic activity is promoted as soon as women and children protected from exploitation and forced labour.

But unfortunately, the proportions of fair trade products with these minimum requirements are still very small. This is not surprising because of the industrialized countries continue to benefit from these conditions. The principle of free trade sponsored by WTO favours the industrialized countries, by creating the same rules for unequal partners.

A fair world trade, however, has to give chances of poor countries and award more autonomy. In addition, social, economic and environmental standards as well as binding rules for corporations in international law laid down and practiced. Until this happens, you must fairly traded products promoted by the state and its possible expansion, since fairly traded products can be otherwise priced with derision prices comparable products in our supermarkets not keep up.

 Claims:

A first step would be to fair trade products from VAT and to liberate these products as from the organic cultivation of the Third World, and thus to declare.

The industrialized nations dominate world trade, developing countries must finally equal footing in decisions fixing the rules involved.

The industrialized nations preach the liberalization of trade, but even this practice is often only when it suits them. For developing harmful subsidies of developed countries must be abolished.

The strong dependency of the "South" from the "North" (loans, technical know-how, investment, etc.) must be greater knowledge and technology ended, as well as debt relief pushed further.

The ecological and social reversal principle must apply in the world, in the imported products have their own standards in those countries.

The WTO law and the WTO's dispute settlement body are regarded as the first steps towards global governance. Our idea of the concept of "global governance" is another:

instead of the maxim of trade liberalization, we want a world-wide contract law, environmental and social standards write.