Proposal Paper for the 21 century: Fair Trade

The proposals of the Thematic Workshop on Fair Trade of the Alliance for a Responsible, Plural and United World are the provisional result of two years of collective international and cross-cultural debate on this issue. They are based on the experiences, discussions, and innovations that took place in this field, and on an understanding of the stakes involved. Fair Trade is defined as a set of socio-economic practices forming alternatives to conventional international trade, the rules of which are universally unfair to the countries of the South, in particular to their rural producers. These practices have established relations between producers and consumers that are based on equity, partnership, trust, and shared interest. They comply with specific criteria and pursue objectives in various directions: to obtain fairer conditions for groups of marginalized producers, and to develop practices and rules for international trade with consumers’ support.