Fair trade

The fair trade movement, also known as the trade justice movement, promotes international labour, environment and social standards for the production of traded goods and services. The movement focuses in particular on exports from the Third and Second Worlds to the First World. Standards may be voluntarily adhered to by importing firms, or enforced by governments through a combination of employment and commercial law. Proposed and practiced fair trade policies vary widely, ranging from the commonly adhered to prohibition of goods made using slave labour to minimum price support schemes such as those for coffee in the 1980s. Non-governmental organizations also play a role in promoting fair trade standards by serving as independent monitors of compliance with fairtrade labelling requirements.

External links

Campaigns

• Oxfam's Make trade fair campaign.
• Yellowikis is collecting contact details of companies and organizations granted Fair Trader status. Help grow the database, visit the Fair trade "to do" list.

Organisations

• IFAT: International Fair Trade Association
• New Consumer: UK Fair Trade Magazine
• Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International (FLO): The coordinator of the Fairtrade labelling system
• Fair Trade Resource Network
• United Students for Fair Trade
• Oxfam - Fair Trade
• One Village
• The Fairtrade Foundation
• Ashbourne Fairtrade Town Initiative
• Traidcraft (fair trade organisation in the UK)
• Ten Thousand Villages
• The Fair Trade Association of Australia and New Zealand
• Interrupcion* integrating economic value and social value

Articles and papers

• "Coffee Markets: New Paradigms in Global Supply and Demand", World Bank, March 2004
• "The State of Sustainable Coffee: A Study of Twelve Major Markets", World Bank, July 2003
• "Coffee & Codes: Overview of codes of conduct and ethical trade initiatives in the coffee sector", SOMO, December 2003
• "The Myth of Fair Trade", Cato Institute, November 1991
• Special Report on "Fair Trade", Guardian (archive of articles)
• "Creating Market Opportunities for Small Enterprises: Experiences of the Fair Trade Movement", International Labour Office, Geneva, 2002
• "Grounds for Complaint?", Adam Smith Institute, 2004
• History of alternative/fair trading, Church Times, 2003