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Latest News
World Fair Trade Day
The Bitter Truth - Panorama
The Panorama programme Chocolate: the Bitter Truth, (Wednesday, 24 March) reported on the continued problem of child labour in West African cocoa farms.
Response from the Fair Trade Organisation:
We welcome any spotlight on child labour and the Fair Trade movement works tirelessly to combat unfair trade which forces children to sacrifice their childhood and education.
Fair Trade prohibits child labour, and our standards and certification processes mean that we will always take action to protect children from, and find solutions to, the worst forms of child labour. Through our partnership with Fairtrade Labelling Organizations, we already had our own investigation underway in Ghana prior to the program’s findings and have now triggered an investigation in Cote d’Ivoire.
We should not forget that child labor is symptomatic of deep poverty in some of the most challenged countries in the world. Fair Trade guarantees a community development premium for producers over and above the world price of commodities like cocoa, supporting investment by producers in education, health, housing and other key social and environmental improvements. This focus on development makes Fair Trade well-placed to support farmers in adopting measures that will help eradicate child labour in the cocoa industry.
Response from Traidcraft.
25 March 2010The programme identified the use of child labour in West African cocoa supply chains. This included Fairtrade-certified producers from the Ivory Coast and Ghana, but it also showed how, when identified by Fairtrade auditors, the issue was dealt with swiftly and compassionately.
Child labour is a serious and urgent issue in West Africa (it is estimated that up to 800,000 children are trafficked each year in the region) and it is inconceivable that Fairtrade cocoa producers could escape being affected by these issues.
Enforced child labour is an infringement of the UN Convention on the Rights of a Child.
The Fairtrade system explicitly prohibits child labour and when it is found by Fairtrade auditors, actions are taken to tackle the situation. Fairtrade is also part of the longer term solution to child labour.
The guaranteed minimum price, extra premium payments for investment in communities, and the democratic organisation of producers, all help to alleviate poverty and address the kind of issues which result in children being forced to work.
That is why so many of our Fairtrade producers proudly tell us how, because of their improved livelihoods, they are now able to send their children to school.
So it was encouraging to see in the programme how Fairtrade producer group Kuapa Kokoo – whom many of you will recognise as being the supplier of cocoa to Divine chocolate – handled the discovery of child labour by a Fairtrade auditor in an effective and appropriate manner.
Running a large co-operative of 45,000 cocoa farmers to such high standards is a credit to the work of the farmers and to Divine chocolate. But we must also recognise that there is much more work for Fairtrade to do to help address the serious issue of child labour across the whole of that region.
The practical nature of Fairtrade means that at the very least we can support Fairtrade cocoa producers by encouraging more sales of their products.
Panorama also raised some challenges like ‘Do we as consumers pay enough for our chocolate?’ As Fairtrade consumers these are familiar concerns to us and it’s encouraging to see these questions being posed. This type of debate can help to engender greater support for Fairtrade and the work we are all doing to fight poverty.
Let's Clean Up Fashion
Extract taken from the Guardian.co.uk. Written by Rebecca Smithers & Huma Querishi
The report, Let's Clean Up Fashion: the state of pay behind the UK high street, published by sweatshop campaigning group, 'Labour Behind the Label, criticised UK retailers for having "no coherent strategy" to ensure that hundreds of thousands of workers receive a decent wage.
A "living" wage is the accepted term for pay and conditions above the legal requirement of a basic minimum wage which enable workers to properly feed, clothe, house and educate their families - but anti-poverty groups say garment-exporting countries are setting their minimum wage significantly below a living wage, in order to help attract British retailers' push for cheap fashion.
The report said: "No brand or retailer is paying its workers a living wage, or has yet put together a systematic programme of work that is likely to raise wages to acceptable levels in the near future. A number of brands have started working on projects that fulfil many, if not all, of our recommendations, while others have done nothing beyond vague paper commitments.
"The scandalous truth is that the majority of workers in the global fashion industry rarely earn more than two dollars a day in an industry worth more than £36bn a year in the UK alone. Many have to work excessive hours just to get this meagre amount and have no possibility to earn wages needed to properly feed, clothe, house and educate their families."
The report surveyed 25 major high street brands and graded them between zero and five for their commitment to a living wage principle (with zero signifying no principle in place).
Supermarkets offering cheap clothing brands also scored particularly low grades.
Drowning in Plastic
Way out in the Pacific Ocean, in an area once known as the doldrums, an enormous, accidental monument to modern society has formed. Invisible to satellites, poorly understood by scientists and perhaps twice the size of France, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is not a solid mass, as is sometimes imagined, but a kind of marine soup whose main ingredient is floating plastic debris.
It was discovered in 1997 by a Californian sailor, surfer, volunteer environmentalist and early retired furniture restorer named Charles Moore, who was heading home with his crew from a sailing race in Hawaii, at the helm of a 50ft catamaran that he had built himself. For the hell of it, he decided to turn on the engine and take a shortcut across the edge of the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre a region that seafarers have long avoided. It is a perennial high pressure zone, an immense slowly spiralling vortext of warm equatorial air that pulls in winds and turns them gently until the expire. Several major sea currents also converge in the gyre and bring with them most of the flotsam from the Pacific coasts of Southeast Asia, North America, Canada and Mexico. Fifty years ago nearly all the flosam was biodegradable. These days it is 90 per cent plastic.
'It took us a week to get across and there was always some plastic thing bobbing by', says Moore, who speaks in a jaded sardonic drawl that occassionally flares up into heartfelt oratory. 'Bottle caps, toothbrushes, syrofoam cups, deteregent bottles, pieces of polystyrene packaging and plastic bags. Half of it was just little chips that we couldn't identify. It wasn't a revelation so much as a gradual sinking feeling that something was terribly wrong here. Two years later I went back with a fine mesh net, and that was the real mind- boggling discovery'.
Floating beneath the surface of the water to a depth of 10 metres, was a multitude of small plastic flecks and particles, in many colours, swirling like snowflakes or fish food. A awful thought occurred to Moore and he started measuring the weight of plastic in the water to compared to that of plankton. Plastic won, and it wasn't even close. 'We found six times more plastic than plankton, and this was just colossal' he says.' No one had any idea this was happening, or what it might mean for marine ecosystems, or even where all this stuff was oming from.
The world's navies and commercial shipping fleets make a signifant contributed, he discovered, throwing some 639,000 plastic containers overboard every day, along with their other litter but 80% of marine plastic is intially discarded on land, and the Uniited Nations Envrionemtal Programme agrees. The wind blows the plastic rubbish out littered streets and into rivers, streams and storm drains and then rides the tides and currents out to sea. Litter dropped by people at the beach is also a major source.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch has now been tentatively mapped into an east and west section and the combined weigth of plastic there is estimated at three million tons and increasing steadily.
Extracts taken from an article written by Richard Grant for the Saturday Telegraph 25th April 2009.
Nkuku join WFTO (IFAT)
We are thrilled to announce we are now a fully fledged member of WFTO, World Fair Trade Organisation (IFAT).
The WFTO is a global authority on Fair Trade.
Membership of the WFTO is limited to organizations that demonstrate a 100% Fair Trade commitment and apply its 10 Principles of Fair Trade. WFTO members who are monitored against these Principles are listed in the FT100 index of world-leading Fair Trade brands, businesses and organisations. Not just the pioneers of the movement but the innovators of the market.
The WFTO represents Fair Traders from grassroots through to the G8 and is the authentic voice of Fair Trade, having driven the movement for 20 years. It is the only global network whose members represent the Fair Trade chain from production to sale.
Aid for Trade: Is the EU helping small producers to trade their way out of poverty?
Brussels, 10 September 2009.
The Fair Trade Advocacy Office (FTAO) and the Interchurch Organization for Development Cooperation (ICCO) have issued a new publication entitled ‘Aid for Trade: Is the EU helping small producers to trade their way out of poverty?’
KEY CONCLUSIONS
Aid for Trade needs to support growth that is pro-poorTo help reduce poverty, growth must be pro-poor. This means growth must benefit the poorest sections of society proportionally more than it benefits the better off. Aid for Trade should focus on developing local, national, and regional markets, first, rather than furthe! r enhancing export-oriented growth.
Supporting small producers is key
Small producers are an important part of local communities and can play a key role to significantly reduce poverty while contributing to sustainable development. Small producers experience numerous supply side constraints and there are many pro-poor policy measures and interventions that can help them overcome these difficulties. These range from support to developing and strengthening producer organisations, access to pre-financing and micro-financing, access to information to monitor changes in processing and consumer demands, to access to cost effective transport and improved technology.
A role of small producers in policy making is essential
Small producers need to be included in the bottom-up design of policies, projects and programmes to make sure that these are effective and pro-poor, meaning that they benefit the poorest proportionally more than they benefit the ! better off.
There is a lack of consistent focus on ! small producers by the European Commission (EC) and key European Union Member States
EC and EU Member States policy and communication documents on Aid for Trade recognise the importance of growth being pro-poor and of supporting small producers. Still, there is not always a consistent implementation of the focus on small producers across policies and projects. This is shown in the publication through an analysis of the past allocation of Aid for Trade funding, where it shows that only some few, small and sporadic commitments and projects are specifically targeted at small producers.
The new publication is available under: http://www.fairtrade-advocacy.org/images/aid_for_trade_publication_ftao.pdf
The Fair Trade Advocacy Office (FTAO) speaks out for Fair Trade and trade justice with the aim to improve trading conditions for the ! benefit of small and marginalised producers and poor workers in developing countries. Based in Brussels, the office coordinates the advocacy activities of the four main Fair Trade Networks: Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International FLO, World Fair Trade Organisation WFTO, Network of European Worldshops NEWS! and European Fair Trade Association EFTA. These four networks bring together over 1.5 million Fair Trade producers from more than 60 countries, 20 labelling initiatives, hundreds of specialized Fair Trade importers, 3000 worldshops and more than 100,000 volunteers.
The Interchurch Organization fo! r Development Cooperation (ICCO) grants financial support and ! advice to local organisations and networks promoting fair economic development.
Contact: Hilary Jeune. Policy Officer Fair Trade Advocacy Office. Village Partenaire - Bureau 9a Rue Fernand Bernierstraat 15 - 1060 Brussels (BE). Tel: +32 (0) 2 217 36 17. Email : jeune@fairtrade-advocacy.org
