CaixaForum Madrid will be hosting an exhibition on free trade entitled "Comercio Justo. un producto, una historia" until August 28th. It will be accompanied by some interesting film screenings of related documentaries. Each starts at 7 pm. I am accompanying each with a link to its trailer. You can read the official press release, in Spanish, here.
22 de junio, China blue
29 de junio, En el mundo a cada rato
6 de julio, La pesadilla de Darwin
13 de julio, Oro negro
El comercio justo:
El comercio justo beneficia tanto a productores como a consumidores. A los pequeños productores de zonas empobrecidas, les ofrece la posibilidad de vivir dignamente de su trabajo. A los consumidores, les proporciona productos de calidad y la garantía del respeto a los derechos de los trabajadores y al medio ambiente. Comercio justo significa:
- Salarios y condiciones de trabajo dignos. - Igualdad entre hombres y mujeres. - Ausencia de explotación infantil. - Respeto al medio ambiente y apuesta por la producción ecológica. - Beneficios destinados a mejoras sociales de las comunidades locales.
El comercio justo apoya a miles de familias campesinas de los países en desarrollo, a la vez que da a conocer al público de los países ricos la realidad, muchas veces desigual, del comercio internacional.
Kit Kat has gone fair trade-with the certification label to prove it. Here is an article by Rebecca Smithers of The Guardian explaining the move.
The UK's best-selling chocolate biscuit bar, Kit Kat, is to receive ethical certification through the Fairtrade quality mark, it will be announced today.
After lengthy talks between the UK arm of the Swiss food giant Nestlé and the Fairtrade Foundation, the familiar blue and green logo will appear on the wrappers of Kit Kats in the UK and Ireland from January. Initially the certification will only apply to the larger four-finger Kit Kats but it will be extended to the smaller bars.
The move represents a major coup for Fairtrade, which earlier this year certified Cadbury's Dairy Milk, and means chocolate is now a mainstream Fairtrade product alongside bananas, tea and coffee.
It follows the October launch of Nestlé's global Cocoa Plan, a £65m investment programme over the next 10 years to tackle the key economic, social and environmental issues facing cocoa farming communities. Farmers living and working in Ivory Coast, the world's largest cocoa producing country, will be the main beneficiaries.
As well as the Fairtrade price (or market price if higher) for the cocoa, farmers' groups receive extra Fairtrade premium payments to invest in long-term community and business projects of their own choice, such as education and healthcare. The sugar in the product will also be Fairtrade certified, sourced from Belize.
I would normally get fair trade products for certain key items, such as coffee and bananas that are personally important to me (I used to live in several countries in Central America). How can we get grocery stores, particularly for example Sultan Center, to incorporate more fair trade products on their shelves. Anybody have thoughts?
I have been anti-Chiquita for a long time, especially after having lived in Central America. Chiquita has a long, sordid history of short-changing small banana republics and is currently a major player in the displacement of small farmers in many banana-exporting countries, which has led to banana trade wars between the United States and the European Union in ongoing WTO disputes. I'll be happy to share a paper I wrote in graduate school on the topic for a class I took on game theory upon request. Al-Jazeera's in-depth reports continue to surprise me in their scope.
sustainable urbanization - livable cities - international politics - fair trade - ethical and inclusive globalization - international development and cooperation - economic, social and cultural rights - slum housing rights - equal access for all to the arts
The Eternal UN Declaration of Human Rights
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Jeremy Waldron assesses the Universal Declaration of Human Rights' enduring
relevance to establishing the ethics of global responsibility.
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