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By Matthew Franklin, University of Birmingham & Toby Munnion, Newcastle University Newcastle University are currently engaged in discussions with Adidas regarding a massive sponsorship deal. In what Adidas officials describe as a “first of its kind” the deal is likely … Continue reading
Ellie Davies is mentoring school students as part of Generation Fairtrade, a People & Planet and Fairtrade Foundation project. We think she’s doing such a great job that she should become a motivational speaker!
Ellie and other Generation Fairtrade school mentors at the training event in Oxford.
Who says young people aren’t interested in making the world a better place? Any student activist knows that there are thousands of young people trying to improve life for the world’s poorest. But what about school students? Would they really be interested in campaigning on Fairtrade issues?
The answer is a resounding yes! As part of the Generation Fairtrade project, former People & Planet members are taking on a new volunteer role, and training school students and sixth formers to continue the work that they themselves did while at university.
Although I enjoy public speaking, the idea of speaking to an entire year group of Year 9 pupils – 128 girls! – intimidated me a little bit. A horrible mental image of asking for volunteers being followed by a stony silence haunted me for weeks. Luckily People & Planet had provided lots of chocolate for bribes…
But thankfully, it went really well. The students were incredibly enthusiastic, they all had ideas, they all participated, and when I asked for volunteers to stand at the front, nearly all of them put their hands up! This enthusiasm was shown in the feedback forms, in which over half of them said they would have liked more opportunities to come up to the front and do the interactive activities!
And the best part? Out of the 128 students who attended, almost 80 of them signed up to form their own Fairtrade action group! Many of them had questions, and wanted more information on the various issues surrounding Fairtrade.
The school already has a Fairtrade Steering Group, which is run by the Sixth Formers, so they are on the way already. They are hoping that the Sixth Formers will be the main leaders of the People & Planet group, which is excellent news for the People & Planet network… After all, this is what it’s all about: empowering young people to make changes to the world they live in.
This is only the start.
* Find out more about what schools and colleges are doing for Fairtrade Fortnight.
Danielle Krage is mentoring school students as part of Generation Fairtrade, a People & Planet and Fairtrade Foundation project. She gives us a taste of what it’s like to prepare for the first workshop, and how it went.
So, a lot’s happened since I did my training with People & Planet back in August. I just had to check my diary – was it really August? Time seems to have gone really quickly!
I’m writing this having just given my presentation to 90 year 10s. Honestly, it’s taken a little while to get to this point. I was matched with my school really quickly, but the reality of a very busy school (including an Ofsted Inspection) presented a few challenges on the communication and scheduling front!
Things moved forward faster after meeting the Deputy Head and another interested staff member. The meeting was great for figuring out and pinning down scheduling options, talking through possibilities, and getting a shared agreement about some of the key factors – for example, the importance of it being student led. I left with firm dates for my presentation and follow up session, but also the challenge that all the year groups have a 15 minute assembly. If I wanted to talk to a big group any time soon that was my best option….
This has pretty much been the theme of my experience so far. Being really excited to get going, meet the students, and explore all the fun things we covered in our training. But also having to figure out when to be flexible in light of the specifics of my school. It’s helped that Laura and Juliette have been supportive and understanding of this.
Soooo…..15 minutes…Agggh! What to include? I went through and through the presentation, sorting material into what would make the most attention grabbing and stimulating introduction to Fairtrade on the day, and what I could save for my longer second session. I did this whilst still daydreaming of the school ringing me and telling me that, due to some unforeseen staff training, I could now have the year 10s until first break if I wanted…. – didn’t happen!
Still, you can do a lot in 15 minutes! What I kept reminding myself was that the students would just see what was in front of them, so it was my job to use the time that I did have, as positively as possible.
On the day, I tried to keep it as visual and interactive as I could, using pre-selected parts of the original presentation. And above all, I tried to focus on the tone and atmosphere - smile, enjoy the time I had there, engage fully. Stimulate the students’ interest in the hope that they’d feel inspired to sign up for my second session, when we could explore Fairtrade and campaigning in more depth.
I don’t know how many students have signed up yet, and what other practical factors will be at play (Coming to my workshop will mean missing PE…probably a range of reactions to this one? ) What I do know is that I really enjoyed engaging with the students, and seeing how quickly their body language changed. When I first looked out at them, in their rows and rows of chairs, there was a generally slouched and sleepy air to the room (It was 8:25am on a rainy morning!).
But within minutes they were contributing suggestions, sitting forward, pointing things out on the projections. And as I wrapped up, I noticed that I was hardly having to project my voice anymore, because the students were so attentive. I left really wanting to hear more of their responses, so am looking forward to going back in a couple of weeks to meet them again!
Are you a teacher looking for support to get your school going Fairtrade? If you’d like to work with a Fairtrade School Mentor like Danielle in 2013, then register online today.
Lucy Walker is mentoring school students as part of Generation Fairtrade, a People & Planet and Fairtrade Foundation project. Here she describes her first school visit.
”Two weeks ago I was preparing for my first visit to Venerable Bede School to give my first WearFair campaign workshop to three hundred students, years 7 and 8. I fashioned homemade flashcards with old dividers and went through the presentation to work out what worked well and what didn’t work so well for me.
“I wasn’t expecting the high tech auditorium I was provided with when I arrived, complete with gallery, clicker that didn’t need to be pointed at the screen, almost invisible microphone and hand held mic for ‘chat show effect’. Important advice? Meet the IT guy and make him your best friend – he will be your saviour when the technology fails!
“As the hall filled up the nerves kicked in but the flashcards, signs and chocolate provided me with some form of security blanket. A teacher was telling his form that we were here to have a talk on Fairtrade. One girl at the front piped up that she had done it so many times, that she hated it and that it was so boooooring. I wandered over and said that this was different, more fun, to which I received the classic eye roll!
“The room seemed fit to burst as I was introduced. I was off to a shaky start with the question ‘where are your clothes from?’ eliciting responses including any country (or planet) the room could think of! My saving grace? The Simpsons video! Everyone was suddenly paying attention. The conditions in the video were somehow much more relatable when involving such familiar characters.
“As the room got involved, I relaxed, sitting on the stage so I, and consequently the room, felt more comfortable. The quiz really got everyone thinking about what was fair. After many answers in the range of 100 years to ‘How many years would a worker need to work for to make the same as Kate Moss?’, one joker shouted out 2,500 – how surprised he and everyone else was when he was right!
“The ‘Blame Game’ followed. Warning: careful when promising chocolate to volunteers in a room of 300! Half the room were reaching for the ceiling! I had signs for the different groups and got the room to suggest reasons why one group may blame another. By this point everyone was shouting out. We moved onto Fairtrade and a simplified version of the chocolate game using prices to involve more people– for every pound spent, put up your hand if you think the chocolate company gets over 10p… 20p… etc?
“I finished up with the explanation of how everyone could get involved and had twenty minutes to spare which was great as there were so many questions (including a marriage proposal)! Everyone was interested to hear that this was happening in other schools – to get them all talking would be fantastic.
“I was told that the current supply chain is ‘ridiculous’ and given lots of suggestions as to how I could improve it – from starting a charity recycling uniforms to making a company that gives all its money to the growers to ‘making it like Cuba where everyone’s paid the same – why don’t they just do that?’. These gave a great starting point to what wasn’t possible but also what was – and to be done by them!
“And the girl at the front? Her hand was first up when the room was asked who would be interested in coming back for the next workshop.”
Are you a teacher looking for support to get your school going Fairtrade? If you’d like to work with a Fairtrade School Mentor like Lucy, then register your interest online today.
People & Planet student Alice Swift with Birmingham Sustainability Task Force
Yesterday (on Thursday 1st November 2012) the University of Birmingham committed to affiliation to the Worker Rights Consortium. This places Birmingham amongst the first 10 universities in the UK to take a firm stand on garment sweatshops in their supply chain.
Affiliation to the WRC will help to guarantee effective monitoring of conditions in garment factories across the world. With the cooperation of affiliate universities abuses of workers’ rights can be dealt with effectively, ensuring none of clothes purchased through the university are produced in sweatshop conditions. At the University of Birmingham, we would like to praise the management for taking a strong stance on ethical procurement. We have run this campaign for the past 3 years, and hope that this decision will send a powerful message to other universities that workers’ rights in supply chains matter.
It is also important for student campaigners to be aware that however difficult it may seem it is possible to make significant gains for workers of the university regardless where in the world that they may be. For everyone who has helped Birmingham People & Planet with this campaign over the last 3 years, the decision which has now been made demonstrates that the time and effort which you all gave can achieve real victories, which will make vital differences for those working in garment factories for the university.
Birmingham People & Planet group take action on sweatshops
I would also encourage everyone who has spent a long time campaigning on the WRC, or even those new to it, that winning significant goals can happen quicker than expected.
Matt Franklin – Birmingham P&P and Buy Right Steering Group
"Welcome to the Land of Possibility", at the entrance to the occupation in St James Park, Toronto. Photo: Jori Jansen.
Characterised as a ‘democratic awakening’, the movement has challenged the narrative spun by the financial sector and governments that presented the economic crisis as the result of some mysterious mathematical failure in the financial market, a couple of greedy individuals and/or some irresponsible governments. Occupy, in turn, recast the crisis as the result of a system that persistently allows a few to accumulate wealth over the back of many. Rather than asking ‘how can we manage this system better in order to continue Business As Usual?’, they ask ‘how can we change social relations and tackling existing inequalities?’.
Answers to this question will shape the movement’s priorities for 2012. But of course there are as many answers as people involved: engaging a bigger percentage of ‘the 99%’; scrutinising current social problems and possible alternatives through educational activities; articulating demands against the powerful few in politics and business; creating autonomous institutions, like social centres, activist collectives, alternative media, credit unions and co-operatives in which different values and lifestyles can take shape.
For many, it’s the means of the movement that constitute the ends. Occupy tries to be a ‘movement’ in the very sense of the word: a reflexive experiment in communication, decision-making and collaboration in which new ideas, plans and solutions are continuously generated and another world is prefigured. When I celebrated New Year’s Eve with OWSI was surprised by how many times I heard people expressing the word ‘hope’. That night, people tore down the police fences put up around Zucotti Park after the eviction on the 14th of November. As people danced on the fences piled up in centre of the square, the night felt epic and revolutionary. At 2am this came to a sudden end when the police decided to assert their authority and evacuate the square with a force of hundreds.
Police try hard to ignore a breakdancing protestor after they forcefully evacuated the square. Photo by Jori Jansen
2012 will be a new phase. In the midst of Burns’ Night festivities, Occupy Edinburgh packed up their tents at St. Andrews square after more than 3 months of occupying. But, ‘you can’t evict an idea’, the Occupy Edinburgh blog states. 5 days later, a new camp was pitched on the Meadows. At the same time, public brainstorm meetings are underway to roll out ‘Phase Two’. Ideas are floating around for flashmobs and ‘roaming occupations’ around the city focused on public engagement and education. OWS is taking a similar path by occupying Zucotti Park every day with ‘culture and ideas’. Eric Light, involved with organising these events: ‘It is with food, music, humor, games, political theatre, creative activities, think tanks and so on that we can continue to inspire and involve others’. OWS is simultaneously working on ‘pop-up’ occupations on squares all over New York. Occupy Glasgow, as well, decided to disband their camps in December and focus on outreach and direct action. The same course, in fact, has been chosen by many Occupy’s globally. But in London, Occupy LSX is still camping at St. Paul’s cathedral while fighting eviction before court. Their ‘Tent City University’ outside of St. Paul’s is a hub of activity. On the 30th of January, LSX’s ‘Bank of Ideas’ was forcefully evicted. Housed in an abandoned office block in Hackney, it was open to the public ‘for the non-monetary trade of ideas to help solve the pressing economic, social and environmental problems of our time’.
As the movement is running the risk of fragmentation, global action is in the pipeline. On the 25th of January, Adbusters called out for a ‘showdown’ this May in Chicago where the G8 and the NATO are holding a simultaneous summit. ‘With a bit of luck’, they wish to pull together the ‘biggest multinational occupation of a summit meeting the world has ever seen’. Here, the movement is set to depart from its current course and make more explicit political demands: a ‘Robin Hood Tax’ (on the financial sector), a binding climate change accord and a three-strikes-and-you’re-out-law for ‘corporate criminals’ are suggested in the Adbusters’ call-out. Other demands will be proposed through General Assemblies and a ‘global internet brainstorm’. If these demands are not met, Adbusters writes that together they ‘…will shut down stock exchanges, campuses, corporate headquarters and cities across the globe.’
Adbusters' call-out for coming May.
Occupy thus plans to resort to more drastic tactics in 2012. American Politics professor Jason Adams has argued that occupying time would indeed be a better strategy than occupying space, since our economic system is foremost a matter of time, of delivering goods and services ‘in time’ and of ever-increasing production speed for lower labour costs and higher profits. Instead of a ‘disruption of space’, as the occupations were, a general strike is a ‘barricade in time’, Adams writes, following Paul Virilio. Then, Occupy might be able to lift the economic crisis from an issue dealt with only in closed-off international summits to a street-level emergency. An emergency demanding responses far more democratic than the current wave of austerity measures imposed in Europe, the US and other countries. Then, rather than going from bad to worse, things could change for the better.
Wikipedia still lists 2818 Occupy groupings on all continents, while some wither away and others spring up as you’re reading. Whether Occupy will indeed occupy 2012, we’ll have to wait and see. Or, better, we could join the dialogue, the decision-making and the action and help move this movement towards its open ends – as, in the end, we too are the 99%.
A Fairer Education in Africa
Education is not a finite resource like drugs or energy, it’s self-perpetuating. It’s also empowering; enabling people to take control of their lives and have more say in how things are run. Education programmes are popular with charities and governments, but as with a lot of development, there’s devil in the detail.
Particular devils that are widely overlooked are the obstacles that girls face in getting to and staying in school. Money is increasingly there for building schools and improving teaching, but not enough attention is being paid to how gender remains a major factor in determining who actually gets access to it.
One organisation dedicated to rebalancing these injustices is Pathways Togo (www.pathwaystogo.org). Since its founding in 2010, Pathways Togo has been building more and more support for girls and young women to get a high school and university education through scholarships, mentoring and workshops.
The young women who have earned scholarships with Pathways Togo have overcome many of the obstacles typical of girls struggling to get an education in rural Africa. High on the list is pressure to marry young through arranged and often polygamous marriages. Furthermore early pregnancies, lack of access to sanitary products, and personal safety and health issues make attending school and studying at home impossible for many girls. Domestic duties also limit girls’ time to attend schools; many are expected to do childcare and work in family farms and businesses.
Paying for school is also a serious challenge for many students. Where boys remain priorities in families, girls will often have to depend on brewing and selling alcohol, moving away from home, and selling street food in order to support themselves and continue their education.
Others have had more support from within their communities, with many families investing a great deal in their children’s education. One young woman had narrowly escaped an arranged marriage at age 11, and with support from her sister had been able to earn enough money to continue through school, earn a scholarship from Pathways Togo and eventually progress to university.
Many of the young women Pathways Togo has worked with have felt that the presence of strong female role models has made a great difference to their lives and those around them. While these are undoubtedly signs of progress, the work still to be done is vast.
The support of volunteers who can raise funds for scholarships, and help provide training and workshops for girls and young women is what keep organisations like Pathways Togo doing what they do. Governments and international organistions are investing heavily in education, but without this crucial work to address the gender gap in education, more education investment risks exacerbating the gender gap in wider society.
On October 5th, Jubilee Scotland hosted a People’s Debt Tribunal at the Scottish Parliament, which saw Lidy Nacpil, representing Freedom from Debt Coalition Philippines and Jubilee South make the case for the cancellation of debt owed by the Philippines to the World Bank. Here an attendee of the Tribunal shares her thoughts.
‘ Debt cancellation is a call not for charity but for justice’ – Lidy Nacpil.
‘We have a very fruitful partnership with the Phillipines’, says the Worldbank. ‘The Worldbank owes us for its damaging loans’, counters Filipino campaigner Lidy Nacpil. Jubilee Scotland is campaigning for the Scottish government to set up an international debt arbitration tribunal where creditors and debtors can meet. Thorough debt audits could help solve the debt crisis that is currently keeping developing countries in a poverty trap.
Debtors meet creditors, by Emma Boyd
Third world debt seems to have disappeared from the public mind along with Jubilee 2000, Bono and Geldof. In 1998 and 2005, two initiatives pledged the one-off cancellation of the debts of 40 of the poorest countries. But, according to Jubilee Scotland, this remedy is ‘in many ways merely a sticking plaster’, offering too little too slowly: Many countries, like the Phillipines, are excluded and debt is only cancelled to what is considered a ‘sustainable’ level, based on the country’s export earnings, while ignoring its domestic spending needs. Besides, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank demanded austerity measures in turn for debt cancellation like cuts on public spending and the privatisation of basic services, which many of the 40 countries have as yet not been able to meet.
This means that in 2008, the world’s poorest 48 countries still had debts totalling US$168 billion, and the 128 poorest together owed a dazzling total of US $3.7 trillion to multilateral bodies, individual countries, private companies, banks and individuals. Over the course of 2008 alone, the developing countries paid $602 billion towards servicing these debts. This year’s figures will be even higher, as the economic crisis has led developing countries to take up more loans. As a result, despite the aid rhetoric and the Millennium Development Goals, money keeps flowing from the Global South to the North instead of vice versa.
Many of the debts still stem from the 1960s and 1970s, when banks and gouvernments in the North were eager to lend the huge amounts of money made from the rising oil prices to developing countries. Looking for Cold War allies, lending parties closed their eyes on corrupt or oppressive regimes and most of the money did not go into responsible hands and into development. In the 1970s and 1980s, the oil crisis led interest rates on the loans to soar. Additionally, falling commodity prices left countries with less hard currency to service the debts. The knock-on impact on exchange rates means that debts, which are most often counted in foreign currency, have skyrocketed in real terms for the affected countries. The debt total of US$3.7 trillion is the result.
Already since the early 1990s, campaigning organizations have called for an arbitration forum of some sort where historical cases of illegitimate or unfair debt can be lodged and solved, as well as unpayable debt relieved. With the 2010 Arbitration (Scotland) Act and the newly set up Scottish Arbitration Centre, Scotland would be a suitable host for such a tribunal. To demonstrate this, Jubilee Scotland organised a mock debt tribunal in Holyrood on the 5th of October. Here, the Phillipines and the Worldbank met. Or, better said, Lidy Nacpil met “John Smith”, an actor who played, scarily realistically, a Worldbank representative quoting solely from the Bank’s official documents. In the debt tribunal, the legal principle of ex aequo et bono (“from equity and conscience”) was applied, according to which an arbitrator or tribunal has the power to move away from the law as laid down and to consider the case in the light of arguments of natural justice such as fairness and equity.
Lidy presented her country’s case: The New Economics Foundation has calculated that the Philippines need at least 63% debt cancellation in order for the government to meet the basic needs of its citizens, such as health, education and infrastructure, without taxing those living below the ‘ethical poverty line’ of $3 a day. According to a recent study, 107 countries are burdened with an ‘unpayable debt’ like the Phillipines.
Former president Marcos, who governed the country from 1965 to 1985, left the Phillipines with more than half of its current foreign debt. Although democratically elected, Marcos turned the Phillipines into a dictatorship with martial law in 1972. When he fled the country in 1985, the country’s debt had gone from US$1 billion to of US$28 billion, most of it either stolen by Marcos or invested in failed or useless projects. The Bataan nuclear power plant is notorious in this regard. It was built by the US company Westinghouse on an earthquake fault-line at the foot of a volcano and has therefore remained unused. Westinghouse got paid generously nevertheless as the US gouvernment credit agency took over the standing debt. In 2007, the Filipino government finally completed paying off the $1.5 billion for the plant’s construction, more than 30 years after it began. As Marcos’ regime devastated the country’s economy, subsequent governments had to continue taking on loans to pay off the old ones.
During the fourteen-year dictatorship, the Worldbank granted five loans to Marcus. Now, the Phillipines still owe the Worldbank around US $3 billion out of a total foreign debt of US $47,5 billion. The original loans from the Worldbank have long since been repaid, but because the interest has compounded, 80% of the debt is still owed. If nothing changes, Filipino taxpayers will continue to pay for the illegitimate debts of Marcos until 2025, 39 years after he was overthrown. While ‘Smith’ glorified the loans as an investment in pro-poor development, Lidy Nacpil said there is little evidence that the Worldbank has had any positive impact at all. ‘Debt cancellation is a call not for charity but for justice’, Nacpil concluded.
Of course, one could argue that debt cancellation would create poor incentives by making future borrowers hope that they will have their debts waivered too. Also, developing countries are dependent on loans and if creditors would stop this flow of money due to lack of trust in return, the result could be disastrous, especially now in times of economic downturn. This, however, would relieve Northern countries of responsibility too easily. As we have seen, a major part of the third world debt is the result of the self-interested and reckless lending of first world creditors during the Cold War. Fillipino people are currently forced to pay off a loan that was not taken up in their name and went to support an undemocratic dictator. The Worldbank could have reasonably foreseen this and should thus assume responsibility. Besides, one could argue that the Fillipino people themselves never had a contractual arrangement with the World Bank.
The envisioned debt tribunal is just one step in creating a fairer lending system. Future loans should be given responsibly, on fair terms, and in a transparent way that is open to scrutiny by parliaments, media and citizens. Any loans given on unjust terms should be considered the responsibility of the creditor and thus eligible for cancellation in future. Jubilee’s mock tribunal demonstrated that debt arbitration can be done fairly and effectively. Or would it take a Bono to convince the Scottish gouvernment?
“Human rights are rights inherent to all human beings, whatever our nationality, place of residence, sex, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, language, or any other status. We are all equally entitled to our human rights without discrimination. These rights are all interrelated, interdependent and indivisible” – UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
Examine the Principles of Fair Trade and it quickly becomes apparent the intention of Fair Trade is to EMPOWER disadvantaged producers and their communities. The principles reflect business practices free from exploitation; are based on respect for universal human rights, women’s rights, child rights, minority and migrant rights, rights of the disabled, and labour rights; embrace gender equality; and incorporate environmentally sound practices. However, the fact remains that for many of our producers their rights are not well known; the Universal Declaration of Human Rights remains an abstract idea, an international convention far from their immediate reality.
When our producers are unaware of their rights, there is opportunity for exploitation. In the field of International Development, programs and projects are often designed to target root causes. One increasingly popular approach is a Rights-Based Approach (RBA) which recognizes poverty as injustice and includes marginalization, discrimination, and exploitation as central causes.
As Fair Trade supporters and advocates, it is nice to believe that we are leading the way in making ethical consumer choices a reality in the global marketplace. Admittedly, many of our producers reside in countries which are not well known for upholding those rights. However, unless we support our producers with knowledge of their rights, we fail to follow the principles of Fair Trade. Look at this from the perspective of our producers:
Fair Trade is a partnership, not a charity. As set out in our shared Principles, Fair Trade importers, wholesalers, buyers, and retailers are required to provide for the development of producer groups in order that they are empowered, self-sufficient trade partners capable of conducting international trade in ways which are beneficial to them and their community free from any form of exploitation. To integrate a Rights-Based Approach is to strengthen our trade partners not only in trade relations, but in their quality of life; to enjoy the freedoms internationally recognized as inherent to all human beings. Taking a closer look at our Shared Principles we see that our principles are based on UN Human Rights Declarations and Conventions, and the ILO Conventions. For a comprehensive analysis read Journey for Fair Trade: Human Rights Framework.
Saturday, December 10, 2011 is Human Rights Day
(http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Pages/WelcomePage.aspx).
This year, let’s make it a point as a global Fair Trade movement, to not only join the celebration, but integrate a Rights-Based Approach into Fair Trade; Join together in an effort to raise awareness of Universal Human Rights with our trade partners and their communities!
Here is an idea for Fair Traders regardless of where you reside – empower your trade partners directly: the United Nations has translated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights into 131 languages. Download and print a copy in the language of your trade partner, take an extra step to creatively decorate it, and mail it to them. What a great way to personalize your trade relationship:
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/UDHR/Pages/SearchByLang.aspx.
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) has been translated into 58 languages and is available from UNICEF on their child-friendly page. UNICEF has made the CRC available in an easy to read English poster which is quite colorful and attractive. If you have trade partners whose first language is not English, download a copy and take the extra step to print it out in their language on a poster size paper, decorate and laminate it, and mail it to them! What a terrific way to let them know you support and care for their children:
http://www.unicef.org/magic/briefing/uncorc.html
To advocate for a Rights-Based Approach to Fair Trade it is vitally important that Fair Traders know what the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) is and how it works, particularly when it impacts 51% of the global population, yet women are often considered to be in the minority. To see how this convention works to empower women, read Journey for Fair Trade: Understanding CEDAW. The national UNIFEM offices have translations of CEDAW in printed locally available – they have a budget for printed materials, so don’t hesitate to make a request!
For those who have trade partners in developing nations, I encourage you to do some online research of Women’s Rights Organizations, to include Rights-Based Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) in their country and put them in touch with your trade partner. Contact the UNIFEM national office if you need a referral to a local NGO which conducts workshops in women’s rights. It is important that as Fair Traders we unite with the Rights-Based Organizations in their efforts to make change happen and put an end to gender inequality and social http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/text/econvention.htm
To integrate a Rights-Based Approach to Fair Trade begins by raising awareness of the rights we are all entitled to enjoy; the rights which form the very foundation of our Shared Principles. Take a stand for human rights and begin raising awareness with a celebration on Human Rights Day, December 10th, 2011. For ideas and information read Journey for Fair Trade: Fair Trade Celebrates Human Rights Day.
Mitch Teberg, MA
WFTO Associate Member
Sustainable Development / Fair Trade / Women’s Rights and Gender
Researcher / Trainer / Consultant
Why I’m supporting November 30th strikers
I don’t have a pension. I don’t work in a sector where I’m likely to get one any time soon. And I wholeheartedly support everybody planning to take strike action on November 30th.
People in the public sector are being attacked on so many fronts. Over the last year, thousands of workers, mostly women, have lots their jobs or had their hours dramatically cut. The young have been hit hard – cut out of college education by the scrapping of EMA, outpriced from university education and now unemployed in the millions.
Those who are in jobs have seen the greatest insult – government pension plans will force everyone in the public sector to work longer, pay more and receive less. Can it possibly be right that a PE teacher will still be out teaching rugby at the age of 66? In net terms, public sector workers will lose the equivalent of a day’s wages every month. Nothing about this is fair.
Tory politicians have said that taxpayers don’t want our money spent on public sector pensions. Well, I do. In fact, I only want my taxes spent on fair pensions, job creation, free education and decent healthcare. Instead, the government is haemorrhaging cash on illegal wars and dirty deals.
For these reasons, I fully support anybody who chooses to go on strike in November.