DOHA,
Qatar-The World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial
meeting in Doha, Qatar is ignoring the worsening
plight of one billion farmers and their families,
according to the British-based Oxfam, a social
activist organization.
"Perhaps
one billion people depend on farm commodities for a
livelihood," said Celine Charveriat, a commodities
specialist Oxfam. "And there has been a massive,
massive decline in their prices recently."
Charveriat who has been prowling the halls of
the Sheraton Convention Center talking up the issue,
said commodities have dropped more than 40 per
cent in the last five years.
"I am continually amazed at the sheer hypocrisy
of the WTO to ignore the impact on these low-waged
laborers, and their families."About 70 per
cent of the labor force in developing countries
is involved in commodities and often it is their
only source of income," she said. She pointed
out that developed countries want the market to
determine the prices, but not when it comes to
their own interests.
"The United
States, for instance fights so-called dumping.
That isn't letting the market set the
price. And NAFTA (North American Free Trade Association)
won't allow Mexico to set coffee prices. That's
complete hypocrisy.
"If they are
supposed to let the market set the price, why
do they subsidize agriculture exports?
These subsidies lower the market prices of commodities.
Charveriat said
that the original General Agreements on Tariffs
and Trade called for mechanisms to stabilize
commodity prices. "We are waiting for 50 years
for that, but if something hits home to developing
countries, like TRIPS (patent rights issues), they
put it on the agenda right away."
She said developing
countries don't bring up the problem themselves "because they know that
they would meet such resistance [so] it wouldn't
be worthwhile." Among the items Charveriat
chats up at the WTO meeting, she said, are the
200 retail stores Oxfam has throughout Britain
where profits from commodities sales go to the
producing farmers.
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