Poverty campaign to focus on trade justice

Every three seconds a person - mostly a child - dies of extreme poverty.

Over one billion people around the world do not have access to clean water and more than 300 million in sub-Saharan Africa live on less than 35c a day, a figure that is expected to rise to 400 million by 2015, according to the World Bank.

More than 90 per cent of the 39 million people worldwide who are infected with HIV/AIDS live in developing countries, where about six million AIDS patients are in need of life-saving medicines but only half a million have access to them, according to the World Health Organisation.

There are currently 121 million primary school-aged children in the world out of school and 140 million children worldwide who have never been to any school at all.

Today, trade rules are so skewed that cows in Europe receive more every day via government subsidies that half the population in Africa has to live on. "This must stop, unconditionally, without excuses, now!", said André Bugeja, the coordinator of the Malta STOPoverty! Campaign, which started at the beginning of the year and is entering into its third phase.

"This worldwide campaign against extreme poverty has been launched because we cannot stand this injustice anymore," Mr Bugeja said. The first two phases were aimed at creating awareness among the public about this everyday tragedy and to lobby governments to act in the best interest of everyone.

This last phase is focusing on trade justice, just before the sixth World Trade Organisation ministerial conference to be held in Hong Kong in December. "Trade has the potential to lift millions of people out of poverty. But under the current global trading system, poor countries are being pushed and squeezed out of international markets and even their own," Mr Bugeja explained.

The United Nations estimates that if trade rules worked for poor countries they could reap benefits of up to $700 billion a year - 14 times what these countries receive in aid per annum and 30 times the amount they pay in debt repayments, he said.

Wealthy countries are being accused of having double standards: while forcing developing countries to open their economies to competition they are protecting their own.

Among the events that form part of the third phase of the STOPoverty! Campaign in Malta are a fund-raising lunch at the Imperial Hotel, in Sliema, on November 27, the profits of which will be used to finance the campaign.

An information stand about the campaign will be set up on campus on November 30 and a half-day seminar on Fair Trade - An Alternative to Current Unjust Trade will be held in collaboration with Kooperattiva Kummerc Gust at St James Cavalier, Valletta on December 3.

White Band Day, an information stand, will be set up in Freedom Square, Valletta on December 10 when a symbolic march from City Gate to the President's Palace takes place at 11 a.m.

After White Band Day, during which white bands will be distributed against a donation of 50c in an act of solidarity with those living in poverty, the Prime Minister will be presented with the signatures collected throughout the three phases of the campaign to show that the Maltese are supporting the project.

"We want Malta to be at the forefront in putting across these ideas during the meeting in Hong Kong," he said.

www.stopovertymalta.org