International trade

Trade underscores the mutual dependence of people on each other, and may thereby contribute to ensuring peaceful coexistence between peoples and nations. However, trade can also serve to create and maintain inequality, and entail unworthy conditions, poverty, violence and conflict. It therefore ought to be a goal that global trade should contribute to a more equitable distribution of the world’s resources.

Norway in the WTO

Global trade rules have an enormous impact on the world’s poor. A more equitable system of trade is required. Norwegian Church Aid believes that the World Trade Organization (WTO) as a multilateral trade forum is best suited to reform international trade regulations, because the developing countries in the WTO are capable of restricting the freedom of the most powerful and strongest nations.

In 2001, the Organization initiated negotiations on how the rules of trade could be made more equitable. Norwegian Church Aid holds it to be of key importance that Norway actively contributes to leading these negotiations towards a treaty which gives prominence to the eradication of poverty and the economic and social development of poor countries.

Unjust subsidies must be removed

Every day, rich countries spend the equivalent of several billion NOK on subsidies towards their own agricultural sectors. Direct and indirect export subsidies from rich countries exert a pressure on global prices for agricultural products, and result in dumping of the produce from rich countries onto the markets of poor countries.

In this manner, rich taxpayers finance a trade that squeezes poor producers out of their own local markets as well as the international market.
The policy of “we subsidise – you liberalise” results in an enormous pressure on small farmers in developing countries, and women emerge as the main losers. Norwegian Church Aid focused on the problem of dumping during the Sugar Campaign in 2005.

Norwegian Church Aid takes the view that such export subsidies must be removed as soon as possible. Norway can work actively to this end in the WTO. It is also essential that trade-distorting subsidies are reduced considerably, so that commodities can be traded on fair terms in the world market. This is a matter of fairness, not charity.

Rich countries must open their markets

More equitable trade rules and removal of export subsidies could provide developing countries with far greater opportunities to participate in global wealth. The key issue, however, is that rich countries open their markets such as to ensure that the purchasing power of rich consumers mainly benefits poor producers. Norway could work for this end in the WTO, regionally as well as bilaterally.

A need for political degrees of freedom

At the same time, poor countries must be secured a possibility to protect their own agriculture against cheap imports. In the WTO, Norway must work actively to ensure that poor countries, including the middle-income countries, retain sufficient political space to be able to protect their own small farmers, and thereby also the living conditions and food security for the poorest segments.

In addition, the least developed countries must be granted the possibility and the flexibility to protect nascent and vulnerable industries in the establishment phase. These same instruments were used by the rich countries, which are now attempting to kick away the ladder to prevent poorer countries from climbing it.

Patent injustice

Norwegian Church Aid believes that new agreements on immaterial property rights (TRIPS) are beneficial from a poverty perspective only in as much as they serve to prevent theft of biological resources. Placing restrictions on the rights of small farmers to use and sell seeds and plants that have been patented is therefore unacceptable.

Norway must also support the rights of developing countries to make use of the WTO’s TRIPS flexibility for enforced licensing of generic drugs. Access to low-price generic drugs is crucial for countries affected by the HIV and AIDS epidemic, to enable them to provide treatment to a large number of people.

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