A shortage of paediatric testing kits and specialised medical staff in Zambia is causing delays in rolling out antiretroviral (ARV) drugs for children infected with HIV/AIDS. Despite the National AIDS Council (NAC) having enough ARV medication to treat about 19,000 children, only about 5,000 are able to access the drugs.

Three African first ladies, Azeb Mesfin of Ethiopia, Jeanette Kagame of Rwanda, and Maureen Mwanawasa of Zambia, have called for new and further-reaching approaches to combating HIV/Aids on the continent.

The Mozambican Red Cross will begin training hundreds of volunteer workers to manage antiretroviral therapy (ART) for people in their care living with HIV/AIDS. "This training is extremely important and will improve the work of our carers," Paula Macava, the Red Cross Mozambique coordinator of the HIV/AIDS programme, told IRIN.

After the traumas of war and forced exile, HIV is an additional hardship for many refugees living in the small huts of clay and straw in a camp at Molangue, Central African Republic (CAR), near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

An estimated 10,000 educators in South Africa are expected to die of HIV/AIDS within the next two years if there is no plan to quickly give anti-retroviral drugs to all needy educators, according to opposition reports. The ANC government is again criticised for not taking the AIDS pandemic seriously.

The Rift Valley Fever, a virus that has killed nearly 80 people in Kenya, has spread to the Somali border town of Doble, where thousands of refugees fleeing conflict are assembled, officials said on Friday (12 January 2007).

Fresh violence erupted on Monday (15 January 2007) in northwestern Central African Republic (CAR) where 50,000 civilians displaced by previous fighting are surviving on wild foods including roots, officials said. Government troops engaged rebel forces that attacked Paoua town, in Ouham-Penda Province, in the early hours of Monday morning, presidential spokesman, Cyriaque Gondu said in the capital Bangui.

To coincide with this week’s special issue on Zimbabwe, we bring you both a podcast and video recorded at The House of Hunger poetry slam, which was organised by the Pamberi Trust in Zimbabwe in 2006. These multimedia productions showcase young artists performing inspirational works on such topics as women’s empowerment, child soldiers and corporate power. They demonstrate that at a time when freedom of expression is stifled, artists are still finding a voice.

Please note two poems are in Shona language, and you can find the translation on the Pambazuka News website at

Brought to you in partnership with the Pamberi Trust with music kindly provided by Thulani Promotions

As the planting season draws to a close, the Malawian government has pronounced its subsidised fertiliser programme a success, but some small-scale farmers claim they have yet to benefit.

Dr. Seth Owusu Agyei, Director of Kintampo Health Research Centre (KHRC) in the Brong Ahafo Region has stated that he is very hopeful that by the year 2011, the centre would have come out with a malaria vaccine RTS,S, which is currently going through clinical trials, for use in Ghana and across Africa to control malaria.

A prospective cohort study has found that HIV-positive Kenyan mothers who breastfed their babies had faster declines in CD4 cell count and body mass index than those who formula-fed. However, breastfeeding had no effect on viral load or overall mortality among the mothers after two years.

Women who received single dose nevirapine at the time of childbirth had better outcomes from nevirapine-based triple combination therapy if they started antiretroviral therapy more than six months after delivery, US researchers report in the January 11th edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.

I appreciate Jagjit Plahe’s article ‘Sacrificing the Right to Food on the Altar of Free Trade, (http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/39046) published by Pambazuka News. However, the otherwise excellent analysis is somewhat muddled because, as stated in Note 1, “The terms food security and the right to food are used interchangeably in this paper.” Perhaps Ms. Plahe could consult my book, Freedom from Want: The Human Right to Adequate Food, published in 2005, and in particular its chapter on trade. I have also explored the relationships between the right to food and food security.

The importance of the distinction can be illustrated by reference to the first paragraph, where Plahe speaks of “developing countries having to negotiate the right to food within the World Trade Organisation.” Actually, the right to food is well established in international law, and explained authoritatively in General Comment 12 by the UN’s Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. There is still room for interpretation, of course, but the right really is not up for negotiations at the WTO.

Plahe says that the developing countries’ options to address food security are seriously limited by their obligations under the Agreement on Agriculture. However, as I see it, many national governments are quite willing to sacrifice their people’s food security for what they see as other sorts of gains they might obtain by opening their trade doors. There is nothing in the Agreement that forces them to do that in a way that sacrifices their own people’s food security. Indeed, there is nothing that requires these countries to be members of the WTO. They can opt out. They have chosen to “buy in” to the stories that richer countries tell them about the benefits of trade, not fully appreciating the ways in which trade systematically benefits the rich more than the poor, steadily widening the gap between them. I wouldn’t blame this on the WTO or the Agreement on Agriculture. The poor countries need to make their own analyses, and stand up for what will work for them.

Plahe’s conclusion says, “How, when and if states can regulate trade to uphold the right to food will be determined by international trade rules, and not by international human rights standards.” That may somehow be true in terms of the economic and political pressures that are applied, but there is nothing in international law that makes it so. Indeed, the dominant view is that human rights standards prevail over international trade rules. The poor countries should insist that human rights always prevail over trade rules.

Babacar Ndao writes that rich countries are not concerned with the development agenda, but are interested in an agenda that aims to pursue their own interests. This means “...maintaining large subsidies and high tariffs to suit large multi-national agribusinesses, whilst doing very little for their own producers.”

Poor global governance, the result of unequal relations, must be regulated by the institutions created to do so. This is not happening at the moment. And failure to do so may lead to terrible consequences and upheaval across the board.

Internationally, the technical infrastructure paid for by the wealthy has distanced itself from electoral politics. Further, unelected multinationals and international financial institutions dictate the direction of the world. Nationally, public institutions which should regulate unequal relations have been progressively weakened and/or suppressed by the technostructures.
Locally, market demands and globalisation are destroying families and communities.

States must regain sovereignty

Rich countries have discarded the development agenda to pursue an agenda that suits them: maintaining large subsidies and high tariffs to suit large multi-national agribusinesses, whilst doing very little for their own producers. The rich countries have pressured developing countries to open their markets, then dumped surplus production on them with no regard for the development costs. The subsidy regime and the compulsion to open markets are fundamentally incompatible and unjust. Indeed they are tragic for African countries.

The loss of sovereignty for African states unable to refuse these conditions constitutes the principal cause of the agricultural crisis in Africa. Readjustment policies of the Bretton Woods institutions (World Bank, IMF), and the rules of the WTO such as EPA agreements constitute the most significant aspects of this situation.

Two constants have marked the history of West African agriculture:
- a deficit of sovereignty for several countries unable to define development policies required to improve their situation
- the terms of trade have continued to decline to the detriment of African economies.

African decision makers have been disempowered from freely following policies and programmes to which their people aspire, as a result of being forced to accept technical assistance within the framework of bilateral aid and the conditionalities attached to assistance within the multilateral framework.

Africa is the only continent in the world where the amount of agricultural and food production has decreased as the population has increased. If these trends continue, Africa will not achieve the MDG objective of halving poverty and hunger by 2015. The situation may yet get worse.

It is widely recognised that if Africa is to develop substantially, it is essential that it is able to control food production and fight poverty, since agriculture accounts for the employment of 70% of the population and represents 30% of GDP.

In addition to being an important source of foreign currency for African states, agriculture ensures essential functions such as:

- the right to have sufficient, healthy and high-quality food
- the right to a decent income
- the right to a healthy environment

However, despite its importance, for several decades there has been a crisis in agriculture caused by the unjust requirements of the Agreement on Agriculture (AsA) at the heart of the WTO. The increase of poverty combined with an exponential demographic increase (3% per year) weakens the index of poverty which varies between 72% and 88% in the rural areas and between 44% and 59% in the urban areas.

Taking into consideration the weakness of agricultural revenue, very few rural households are able to earn enough to meet their food needs for seven months of the year and many others are not able to earn enough to cover their basic needs for even four months of the year.

The economic and social consequences

The policies of adjustment, notably those connected with the liberalisation of the trade in agricultural products cause significant damage to African economies. Their introduction has marked increases in hunger, poverty, inequality, unemployment and the degradation of natural resources. They have relegated all strands of agriculture into an advanced process of decline.

The crisis and the poverty consequently generated has produced a constantly precarious and deteriorating quality of life entailing the crumbling of values. This deteriorating quality of life challenges the continued existence of the traditional societal model. On the other hand, the disruption of some of the ethical and cultural norms is prompting new strategies of survival and organisation. However, some have become the victims of the changes in cultural norms whilst others are exposed to well-known serious, social threats such as: theft, attack and criminality; begging and child labour; educational and health threats; emigration and exodus. These and so many other features are explained in large part by the increase of poverty and the deterioration of living conditions caused by politics of realignment.

The most serious danger is the exclusion of women who are primarily engaged in agricultural work. In reality, women are the last refuge and bulwark against a descent into total food insecurity. The result of subjecting the sector completely to market forces is that there is no longer the slightest security.

Illustrative of this is the situation in Casamance, in the south of Senegal, where it is the women who grow rice, and where a peace process has been initiated in a region which had been in a state of war for more than 25 years.

Before 1970 these families had never known hunger and were proud of this fact. But the liberalisation of the rice sector has meant these families can no longer survive financially. There was no longer any (financial) incentive to grow rice. Food insecurity and conflicts over land are the likely reasons for the discontent generally felt in this southern region.

The situation is precarious: Africa’s share of world trade has decreased from four per cent to one percent. This situation finds its causes in several phenomena: the limitations of national markets; the restrictions of intra-regional trade (lack of infrastructure and tax barriers) and the difficulties of access to the markets of developing countries. Bearing in mind the highly unfair competition of imported products since the opening of African markets, additional elements are the steep decline in the price of food-processing and agricultural products, and increasing difficulties in the distribution and sale of local products in the domestic markets.

Solutions and means for managing the situation

Overcoming poverty begins by ceasing to generate it. Agricultural development is no longer popular with donor countries - international development aid has fallen by a third from the 1984 level - so it is essential to invest massively in the rural economy.

These elements, which act as the fundamental basis of world agriculture and which constitute the basis of the breakdown of world agriculture, show that the solutions to the globalisation of agriculture inevitably require the reform of the liberalised system at the root of the current situation. This also necessarily requires mobilisation on an international scale to find the means of achieving feasible solutions to this crisis.

Worldwide trade requires interdependent and complementary mechanisms of control and regulation. This issue is real because in a completely liberalised market, without any regulation, a remunerative price is not assured.

It is important, for those of our countries who are at the same stage of development, that our markets should have protected spaces. We must promote the emergence and development of such markets by ensuring them the opportunity of protection from external markets but at the same time ensuring open internal markets.

International aid conditionalities of institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank, EPA agreements, commercially driven agreements such as the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), and bilateral agreements constitute restrictions on agriculture which are as serious or perhaps worse than the WTO. The quest for a peaceful and just world must bring ethics to international relations, especially within leading institutions and assure good global governance.

It is urgent to consolidate rural development. More than 80% of the world poor live in rural areas, and the promotion of agricultural growth is an essential element in all strategies which aim to help lift them out of poverty. It is most important that investments, and not just the minimum, are made in the infrastructure and in rural markets in order to promote agricultural growth.

• Babacar Ndao is with the Network of Farmers' Organizations and Agricultural Producers of West Africa (ROPPA) of West Africa. ROPPA brings together rural organisations of 12 West African countries – Senegal, Gambia, Guinea-Conakry, Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone, Mali, Togo, Benin, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire and Niger.

• This article was translated by Translated by Naomi Robertson. Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

The right to food vs international trade commitments. That’s the balance that developing countries have to strike in a globalised world. Increasingly it’s the food security of their populations that is being sacrificed, with developing countries having to negotiate the right to food within the World Trade Organisation, says Jagjit Plahe. “How, when and if states can regulate trade to uphold the right to food will be determined by international trade rules, and not by international human rights standards,” she states.

One of the underlying reasons for the collapse of the Doha Development round in July 2006 was the failure of developed nations to address the issue of food security in the agricultural negotiations. In a context where a worldwide backlash has developed against the WTO, this article examines the broad implications of the WTO Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) on the right to food.

It is argued that the Agreement fails to recognise key factors which affect food insecure countries’ capacity to improve their situation, and in fact establishes conditions which perpetuate food insecurity.

Food Security [1] in a Human Rights Framework

Food security is a “multifaceted concept, variously defined and interpreted” (FAO, 2003a, p. 3). The World Bank (1986) for example, defines food security as: “access by all people at all times to sufficient food, in terms of quality, quantity, and diversity for an active and healthy life without risk of loss of that access.”

The United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights goes a step further and defines food security in the context of the human right to food. The right to food covers both the availability and the accessibility of food. According to the Committee the availability of food constitutes the “quantity and quality sufficient to satisfy the dietary needs of individuals” and therefore “refers to the possibility of feeding oneself directly from production land or other natural resources, or from well-functioning distribution, processing and market systems that can provide more food from the site of production to where it is needed” (UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 1999). Importantly, the definition focuses on the role of the state to ensure food security. As Zhang notes:

“International human rights law imposes upon States obligations to respect, protect and fulfil this right, like any other basic human right. Thus, to ensure food security is in fact the implementation of obligations under international human rights law” (2004, p. 567).

The Food and Agricultural Organisation (2003b) estimates that 842 million people in the world are undernourished, of whom 798 million people are from the third world. Developing countries therefore have a mammoth task at hand to address food insecurity. These countries however also have the responsibility to uphold their obligations under international trade law. Currently, 15 out of the 20 countries which are chronically food insecure (where over 35 percent of the population is food insecure) are members of the WTO. Similarly, 24 out of 28 food insecure countries where between 20 to 34% of the population is food insecure, are also members of the WTO. These states have to undertake a precarious balancing act between their various obligations under international law. Their options to address food security are seriously limited by their obligations under the AoA.

The notion of food security in the WTO’s AoA

The raison d’etre of the AoA is to liberalise global trade in agriculture. The AoA’s stated long-term objective is “to provide for substantial progressive reductions on agricultural support and protection sustained over an agreed period of time, resulting in correcting and preventing restrictions and distortions in world agricultural markets” (WTO, 1995). The neo-classical assumption behind this objective is that the market will address problems of food security [2]. These assumptions are well stated in various WTO documents.

The 1986 GATT Punta del Este Declaration for example, which set out the negotiation objectives of the Uruguay Round, starts off by asserting that GATT contracting parties are:“Determined to develop a more open, viable and durable multilateral trading system” and that they are “convinced that such action would promote growth and development” (GATT, 1986).

Supporters of the AoA argue that liberalised trade in agriculture will enhance food security since global resources will be allocated more efficiently. Using the theories of comparative advantage and factor endowments [3], they argue “that the differences in productivity and opportunity costs of production between countries” are the main reasons why countries should engage in international trade (FAO, 2003a, p. 13). They contend that free market conditions will create win-win situations for all, and “those [countries] that gain from trade [can] fully compensate those that lose, and still be better off: the total gain will be better than the total loss” (FAO, 2003a, p. 14).

One of the objectives of the Punte Del Este Declaration clearly reflects this view, stating that negotiations will “bring about further liberalization and expansion of world trade to the benefit of all countries, especially less-developed contracting parties” (GATT, 1986).

In supporting free market conditions, the AoA seeks to reduce the role of the state in agricultural production and trade. This has both direct and indirect implications for food security, particularly in developing countries where agriculture plays such a vital role in the national economy. Agriculture accounts for over 50 percent of total employment in the third world. In food insecure countries however, the role of agriculture is far more critical, comprising 30 percent of GDP and employing nearly two thirds of the work force (FAO, 2003b, p. 16).

The AoA therefore has extremely profound and far-reaching implications for developing countries. These implications have brought to the fore an intense and bitterly divisive debate on the roles and responsibilities of the state in a globalising era. As well as being ideological, the debate is also based on some very specific structural problems with the AoA, which have had the effect of allowing developed countries not only to continue to protect their agricultural sectors, but ironically, to increase their protection. Critics of the AoA therefore argue that far from achieving food security, the AoA has had the opposite effect (Murphy, 2002; Oxfam 2005; IATP, 2005; Bernal 2003; Stevens, Greenhill, Kennan and Devereux, 2000). This is not only due to the simplistic ideological assumptions which underpin the agreement, but also because the agreement legitimises and perpetuates an imbalance in world agricultural trade which prevents developing countries’ agricultural sectors from growing in the way that is necessary for improved food security.

The food security implications of the AoA

Given the human rights definition of the right to food, nation states have an obligation to protect the livelihoods of small farmers, enabling them to produce food for their local community and ensuring that they gain a fair share in the commodity chain if they are engaged in production for the export market. Also, the state should have the right to protect the livelihoods of small farmers who suffer from cheap agricultural imports. The AoA however curtails the freedom of nation states to protect food security. The following section examines food security implications of the AoA.

Flawed Assumptions

The neo classical model, which underpins the AoA assumes that all countries will be better off under free trade. The model however ignores several key elements of the economics of international agriculture. Firstly, it does not address the reality of declining terms of trade (the ratio of export prices to the ratio of import prices) for primary products. Countries that are chronically food insecure primarily export raw materials which increasingly face declining terms of trade in the world market [4]; the products they export fetch a much lower price in the world market relative to the price of their imports. Moreover, unprocessed commodities like sugar, tea, coffee and cocoa beans for example, constitute a very small portion of the overall price of chocolates, sweet biscuits, processed tea and coffee. In many cases, farmers engaged in the production of primary products for export are simply price takers and have not shared in the big gains which have taken place in global markets (MacEwan, 1999 p. 53).

Secondly the model assumes that “buyers and sellers in different markets meet each other as independent agents, in which no single buyer or seller has a monopoly” (Kanji and Barrientos, 2002, p. 19) and that a reduction in trade barriers will lead to more opportunities for all potential buyers and sellers.

Freer trade does not automatically lead to market access. The integration of producers and exporters in developing countries is carefully “managed” by lead firms (Humphrey and Schmitz, 2001). These lead firms are often huge multinational corporations based in the OECD countries, and they wield immense power over agricultural commodity chains. The liberalisation of agricultural markets does not benefit all agents in commodity chains equally, especially those that are locked in at the production stage. The existing literature on the governance of commodity chains in the current era of globalisation does not point to “equal gains for all”. In fact, some coffee, cocoa, horticultural and fruit farmers from developing countries in Latin America and Africa, have steadily become poorer, or have lost their livelihoods altogether, because of the concentration in agents further downstream – branded merchandisers, international traders and supermarkets – and due to structural adjustment and deregulation of agriculture in their own countries (Gwynne, 1999; Dolan et al, 1999; Fold 2001; Ponte, 2001; Ponte, 2002).

Thirdly, the model assumes that the global market is competitive. However the reality is that agriculture is the most highly protected sector in international trade, with the OECD countries subsidising their domestic production by US$ 1 billion a day. High subsidies in rich countries - which have led to dumping in the world market - threaten small farmers in poor countries and hamper their exports.

The AoA does not discourage dumping

Dumping is defined as the sale of products in the global market at less than the cost of production. Dumped agricultural produce in world markets leads to the widespread displacement of farmers from their own markets in the developing world, because they cannot compete with highly subsidised products (Bernal, 2003, IATP, 2005). These farmers lose their livelihoods and become food insecure. Also, farmers in developing countries who are engaged in production for the export market suffer from severely depressed prices, due to the high levels of dumping in the world market.

Various studies outline the complex implications of domestic and export subsidies in OECD countries (Beierle, 2002; Matthews 2000; Matthews, 2001; OECD 2001a; OECD 2001b, Murphy, 2002; Diaz-Bonilla, Robinson, Thomas and Yanoma, 2002; Oxfam 2002; Oxfam, 2005).

One of the main implications of the AoA for food security is that it has not curtailed the high levels of trade distorting protection given to agricultural producers in the OECD countries and therefore it has not curbed dumping in international markets. This is because the baseline periods chosen under the AoA (1986-88 which was the time from when agricultural support had to be reduced) was a time when “trade distorting” domestic and export support was historically high in the OECD countries (Beierle, 2002, p. 33).[5]

Also, there were no reductions in commitments for domestic subsidies, which are deemed to be “minimally trade distorting” under the AoA, a term which remains undefined. As the OECD contends, “it is virtually impossible for domestic support measures to be fully de-linked from production and trade and therefore nondistortionary” (2001, pp. 63, 64).

The EU alone spends US$ 120 billion a year on domestic support (Beierle, p. 30). The high subsidies allow the EU and the US to dump agricultural produce in world markets. According to Oxfam (2002, p. 17), half of the world’s maize is exported by the US alone. However, the US export prices are one-fifth below the cost of production. Similarly, the EU is the largest exporter of white sugar, and the EU export price of sugar is one-quarter of the actual production cost. Approximately 60 percent of domestic agricultural support in OECD countries is exempt from domestic support commitments under the AoA (Oxfam, 2002, p. 18). The three major users of domestic support - the EU, the US and Japan - have met their AoA requirements despite the fact that domestic support has in fact increased in these countries since 1995, when the AoA came into effect.

The proposed changes - under the Doha Round of negotiations - to the domestic support pillar do not address the flawed structure of the AoA or the simplistic assumptions of the neo-liberal model on which the AoA is based. The categories of domestic support (trade distorting and non-trade distorting) are still maintained, despite the fact that domestic support has actually increased in the post-Uruguay round era. With these categories still in place, it is quite unlikely that the proposed changes will have any far-reaching implications in terms of dumping. Ironically, one of the main ways in which developing countries can protect their own markets from dumped products is through the use of tariffs. However, they no longer have the automatic right to use tariffs to address dumping: while AoA rules make room for dumping, they prevent developing countries’ use of tariffs.

Curtailed use of Tariffs

Tariffs are the most viable tool available to developing countries to protect their markets from price volatility and from sudden increases in imports. The market access rules of the WTO require all members to reduce both tariff and non-tariff barriers. In the current round of negotiations, developing countries have argued for special safeguard mechanisms (SSMs) as well as provisions for special products (that would be exempt from reduction commitments). While this approach has not been rejected out-right by the OECD countries, the fact is that developing countries no longer have the freedom to pursue policies to protect food security. In order to uphold their human rights obligations developing countries now have to negotiate this right within the WTO.

Conclusion

In the current era of globalisation, developing countries are struggling to uphold both their internationally recognised human rights and international trade obligations. In terms of food security, the WTO’s AoA does not acknowledge nation states’ food security obligations or needs. A state can no longer automatically take measures to protect the right to food, but must negotiate for this right at the WTO. How, when and if states can regulate trade to uphold the right to food will be determined by international trade rules, and not by international human rights standards. The right to food should be fundamental. However, in this era of liberalised trade, it has been compromised.

• Jagjit Plahe is an activist and academic currently based at Monash University in Melbourne where she coordinates that International Trade Policy Unit. She is in the process of completing her doctoral thesis which is on the Political Economy of the WTO’s TRIPS Agreement and the Indian Rice Value Chain. Formerly, Jagjit worked with EcoNews Africa based in Nairobi where she was actively involved in initiating the Debt Cancellation movement. While at EcoNews, also authored a book entitled “Multilateral Agreement on Investment: National Sovereignty for Sale?”

• Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

Notes

[1] The terms food security and the right to food are used interchangeably in this paper.
[2] The AoA only addresses the effects of trade liberalisation on net-food importing countries, and the issue of food aid. Article 16 of the AoA calls on developed country Members to take action as is provided in the framework of the “Decision on Measures Concerning the Possible Negative Effects of the Reform Programme on Least-Developed and net Food-Importing Developing Countries.
[3] Factor Endowments or Heckscher-Ohlin (HO) is the leading theory in terms of what determines a given country’s trade pattern (Gionea, 2003, p. 54). The theory was first developed by Swedish economic historian Eli Heckscher and later by his student Bertil Ohlin. According to Ohlin, “Commodities requiring for their production much of [abundant factors of production] and little of [scarce factors] are exported in exchange of goods that call for factors in the opposite proportions. Thus indirectly, factors in abundant supply are exported and factors in scanty supply are imported (Ohlin, 1933, p. 92).
[4] Importantly, the AoA does not address tariff escalation (where higher levels of tariffs are applied to higher levels of production) in the OECD countries, which actually discourages developing countries from investing in value added activities.
[5] In addition, the formula to reduce trade-distorting support was calculated on an aggregated basis, rather than a commodity-by-commodity basis. This allows developed countries to continue to provide much higher support to sensitive commodities, and still stay within the AoA limits Mathews (2001, p. 82).

References:

Beierle, T. C. (2002) “From Uruguay to Doha: Agricultural Trade Negotiations at the World Trade Organization”, Discussion Paper 02-13, Resources for the Future, Washington D. C.

Bernal, L. E. (2003) “The WTO Agriculture Negotiations and Developing Countries”, A background paper on the occasion of the 5th WTO Ministerial Conference in Cancun, Mexico 10-14 September 2003, Caritas, CIDSE.

Diaz-Bonilla, E. Robinson, S. Thomas, M. and Yanoma, Y. (2002), “WTO, Agriculture and Developing Countries: A Survey of Issues”, International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington D. C.

Dolan, C. Humphrey, J. and Harris-Pascal, C. (1999) “Horticulture Commodity Chains: The Impact of the UK Market on the African Fresh Vegetable Industry”, IDS Working Paper 96, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, Sussex.

FAO, (2003a) “Trade Reforms and Food Security: Conceptualising the Linkages”, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome.

FAO, (2003b) “The State of Food Insecurity in the World, 2003, Monitoring Progress towards the World Food Summit and Millennium Development Goals”, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome.

Fold, N. (2001) “Restructuring of the European Chocolate Industry and its Impacts on Cocoa Production in West Africa”, Journal of Economic Geography, 1(4): 405-420.

GATT, (1986) “Punta Del Este Declaration, Ministerial Declaration of 20 September 1986”, General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, Geneva.

Gionea, J. (2003) International Trade and Investment: An Asia Pacific Perspective, McGraw-Hill, Australia.

G20, (2003) “G20, History” available at:

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