From July 8 to July 10, 2013, the OMC [WTO] held an assembly in Geneva for specialists in fair trade and development to review the organization’s Aid for Trade program. This program is intended, among other things, to help companies in developing countries and in the least-developed countries ”connect to value chains.”
During a round-table discussion, AVSF, the la Plateforme Française du Commerce Equitable (PFCE), and the Ethiquable cooperative (all three of which are sponsored by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its Delegate Ministry in charge of Development, within the framework of the Action Plan for Fair Trade) all made a point of highlighting the importance of having a demanding fair-trade system.
AVSF, PFCE, and Ethiquable pointed out the positive impact that fair trade has on smallholders in the South. Fair trade improves the living conditions of smallholder families and helps to strengthen smallholder organizations, which, thanks to the fair-trade system, become more professionized, gain more control of both international and local markets, and become drivers of both local and national development in their respective countries.
During the discussion, AVSF invited
- countries in both the South and the North to look to the mechanisms and results of fair trade as sources of inspiration when redeploying policies for price regulation, and
- encouraged them to adopt public policies that allow for the development of fair trade – particularly policies that give smallholder organizations easier access to loans and subsidies that they can use as working capital and for making investments, and public-procurement policies for purchasing fair-trade products.
Lire notre positionnement COMPLET sur le commerce équitable [READ OUR COMPLETE STANCE ON FAIR TRADE]
Lire notre tribune : “20 ans après, le commerce équitable sert-il encore à quelque chose ?” [READ OUR COLUMN: “TWENTY YEARS LATER: IS FAIR TRADE STILL RELEVANT?”]
AVSF – Agronomes et Vétérinaires Sans Frontières – is an officially recognized non-profit association that works for international solidarity and that has been engaged in supporting smallholder farming since 1977.
- AVSF supports 140,000 families (nearly 700,000 people) all over the world,
- 75 development projects in 20 different countries (in Africa, Asia, Central and South America, and the Caribbean),
- A team of over 300 employees, 85% of whom are from the countries where the development projects are carried out.
Press contact
Christophe LEBEL, 01 43 94 73 48
