Make Trade Fair

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
The Make Trade Fair logo.

Make Trade Fair was a campaign organized by Oxfam International to promote trade justice and fair trade among governments, institutions, and multinational corporations. As of 2022, the website is defunct. It first appears to have gone offline in early 2004.

Objectives

The campaign has focused on the elimination of several trade practices:

  • Dumping, which occurs when highly subsidized, surplus commodities from developed countries such as rice, cotton, corn, and sugar are sold at low prices and farmers from poor countries have difficulty competing. It is believed that this creates an uneven playing field where farmers in developing countries are unable to compete in the market with cheaper foreign produce and crops.[1]
  • Tariffs, where nations enforce high taxes on imported goods, restricting the sales of products from other nations.[2]
  • Unbalanced
    labour rights for women, who often perceive that they earn lower wages than their male counterparts.[3]
  • Stringent
    Gene patents, Chemical patents, and Software patents) from being lowered. Thus, such essential goods are often inaccessible to developing nations.[4]

Key events

Make Trade Fair concerts

In 2002 and 2004, special benefit concerts were held in London to promote the Make Trade Fair campaign. Proceeds from the shows went to aid Oxfam's promotional campaigns. Produced by Emily Eavis, Marianne Troup, and Lily Sobhani, performers from the 2002 "Fairplay" gig include Chris Martin and Jonny Buckland from Coldplay, Noel Gallagher, and Ms. Dynamite, while the 2004 event included Michael Stipe, Razorlight, and The Thrills.[5]

In 2008, the Make Trade Fair support CD The Cake Sale was produced. The 9 songs were performed by

Ollie Cole, Damien Rice and others.[6]

WTO Ministerial Conference of 2005

The Make Trade Fair campaign was active at the

WTO Director General Pascal Lamy.[7]

References

  1. ^ "Rigged Rules - Dumping". Archived from the original on February 9, 2006. Retrieved January 29, 2006.
  2. ^ "Rigged Rules - Market Access". Archived from the original on February 21, 2006. Retrieved January 29, 2006.
  3. ^ "Rigged Rules - Labour Rights". Archived from the original on December 24, 2005. Retrieved January 29, 2006.
  4. ^ "Rigged Rules - Patents". Archived from the original on March 22, 2006. Retrieved January 29, 2006.
  5. ^ "Make Trade Fair Concert 2004". Archived from the original on January 12, 2006. Retrieved January 29, 2006.
  6. ^ "Make Trade Fair CD 2008". Archived from the original on January 21, 2008. Retrieved February 29, 2008.
  7. ^ "WTO summit photos". Archived from the original on July 6, 2009. Retrieved February 18, 2006.

External links