One Life

Why campaign on trade?

• Rich countries spend $1 billion a day subsidising their farmers. They produce too much, and the extra produce is dumped on developing countries at vastly reduced prices. This means poor farmers can’t compete – or make a living
• If Africa, Asia and Latin America increased their share of world exports by just one per cent, they would earn enough money to lift 128 million people out of poverty

Instead of robbing half the world of a proper living, trade could help millions of poor farmers and workers in developing countries beat poverty, and change their lives for good.

But this will not happen unless countries change the way they trade.

So we’re campaigning hard to make sure they do.

How we're doing it

Oxfam’s Make Trade Fair campaign presses decision-makers and governments for new trade rules – fair rules to make a real and positive difference in the fight against poverty.

Building up pressure means showing enough people care. So we have a global petition for justice in trade – Big Noise – which helps us to lobby for change.

We’re also working with other campaigning organisations to drive home the message – and getting high-profile celebrities to draw attention to the breath-taking potential of trade, too.

Success

Make Trade Fair has generated amazing publicity, mobilising public opinion on rigged trade rules around the world.

More than 20 million people have signed the Big Noise petition so far, providing the kind of backing that gives us extra clout in the places that count.

For instance, we have successfully lobbied the World Trade Organisation (WTO) – the body that sets trade rules – to stop subsidising and dumping cheap exports on developing countries, which they have promised to do by 2013.

What now

Oxfam and Make Trade Fair continues to campaign with the world's poorest people, wherever we see their ability to trade under threat.

There is still much to be done – and there is also a new threat.

At the WTO, poor countries have so far managed to stand firm – and most importantly, together, during trade talks.

But this solidarity is now being undermined by increasing pressure from rich countries to negotiate deals on their own, or in much smaller groups, with the US and European Union.

Make Trade Fair is working to ensure these new deals are fair for poor countries.