Christian alliance to fight trade exploitation

Christian Century, Jan 25, 2003

An alliance termed a Christian counterpart to a worldwide secular movement against exploitative trade has launched a campaign for "fair" trade practices and human rights. The "Trade for People, not People for Trade" campaign also aims to make ecological concerns essential for trade agreements between countries.

"We accept that trade can bring about good in our world," acknowledged Christoph Stueckelberger, director of Bread for All (Switzerland), a member of the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance (EAA), which is sponsoring the campaign. He spoke at a mid-December news conference in Geneva, where the World Trade Organization, one of the targets of the campaign, is based.

Churches, Stueckelberger said, should not be satisfied with a vision of trade that is "reduced to mere equality of opportunity for all individuals to compete without hindrance. Such equality has only helped those who already have the resources and access to political and economic power to gain more."

The Christian perspective gives an "added value" to the broader secular movement, insisted Musimbi Kanyoro, general secretary of the World YWCA, another EAA member. "What we bring to the table is a great amount of people who are already united, people who are historically connected, who have a variety of perspectives, people in marketing, lawyers, people who are affected [by unfair trade practices], people who make the decisions, the rich and the poor."

The ecumenical campaign is promoting trade rules that recognize people's right to food and to "essential" services, such as water, as well as the regulation of transnational corporations. The alliance brings together more than 85 church denominations and agencies from both rich and poor countries.

"The populations that are victims of the international system aren't always aware of the system that is at work," said Woungly-Massaga Mamia Ebenezer, director of the African Protestant Church of Cameroon, an EAA participant. "They need to know that their condition isn't inevitable."

A key feature of the initiative is a signature petition demanding that international rules governing trade take account of human beings, not just market forces. "Market mechanics are seen in many parts of the world as natural law," said Stueckelberger, a professor of ethics at the University of Basel. "Inequality is seen as a natural law that has always existed and will always exist. The churches say that economic structures are man-made and not natural."--ENI