World Fair Trade Organization
| World Fair Trade Organization (WFTO) |
|
|---|---|
| purpose | Small producers make it possible to use fair trade to improve their livelihoods and their communities |
| Seat | Culemborg , the Netherlands |
| founding | 1989
|
| president | Rudi Dalvai (2012) |
| Members | 386 organizations (2012) |
| Branch | five regional offices (Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America, North America and the Pacific region) |
| Website | www.wfto.com |
The World Fair Trade Organization (WFTO) (formerly the International Federation for Alternative Trade , IFAT ; German International Federation for Alternative Trade ) is a global network of fair trade organizations from over 70 countries. The members are producer cooperatives and associations, export companies, importers, retailers, national and regional fair trade networks and financial institutions that belong to the fair trade movement. The WFTO therefore represents the entire retail chain, from the product to the sale.
The aim of the organization is to improve the social situation of disadvantaged producers, to promote cooperation between fair trade organizations and to work for greater justice in world trade .
history
After numerous small initiatives had imported and distributed fair trade products from developing countries up until the 1980s, associations and umbrella organizations for fair trade emerged in the late 1980s. You should coordinate the efforts of the individual initiatives and give them a common voice. After the European Fair Trade Association (EFTA, 1987) and the Dutch organization Max-Havelaar (1988), the first initiative of the Fairtrade Labeling Organizations International (FLO), this also included the International Federation for Alternative Trade ( IFAT ) in 1989 . It initially had 30 members, most of them wholesalers and retailers.
As the number of organizations involved in fair trade increased, it became increasingly difficult to act on a trust basis in the 1970s and 1980s. Customers increasingly feared greenwashing . The pressure resulted in the IFAT to define principles and guidelines and in 1999 to a three-stage monitoring process for registered members, consisting of a self -assessment , an examination of the WFTO members among themselves ( peer review ) and an external verification duration.
In 2003 IFAT changed its name to the International Fair Trade Association , and six years later to the World Fair Trade Organization (WFTO).
The organization's monitoring process was associated with a number of problems: In the event that an organization fails to complete a self-assessment or completes it incompletely, it did not contain any defined sanctions. According to Davenport and Low (2013), resources were often insufficient to monitor compliance with the process and, for example, to carry out the peer review by other WFTO members.
In order to remedy these weaknesses, to reach a wider customer base outside of the world shops and in view of the success of the FLO's Fairtrade product label , the WFTO decided to introduce a quality label itself . Companies that acted as a whole according to the principles of the WFTO should be able to use this to mark their products. In 2013, a more extensive guarantee system was defined on the basis of the monitoring process, with criteria and sanctions that could be checked more easily. The first member companies of the WFTO completed the certification process.
The membership structure of the organization has changed significantly since it was founded. The majority of the almost 400 members now come from southern countries.
activities
The core activities of the organization include:
- The market development of fair trade
- Building confidence in fair trade
- Provision of networking opportunities
- Public statement on fair trade
- Regional cooperation with producers
The WFTO develops principles, a company standard and label for market development and confidence building among customers.
In contrast to the FLO, the organization mainly deals with handicrafts and other handcrafted products and foods that are produced in small quantities. The WFTO focuses on standards and certification of companies as a whole, which must act in accordance with the WFTO principles in all matters. This clearly distinguishes the WFTO from the FLO, under whose umbrella mainly larger-scale foods such as coffee, tea, tropical fruits are traded and certified as products and whose seal takers can also manufacture or market products that are not fairly traded. The proportion of handicraft products and food produced in small quantities is relatively low; in 2011 it was a maximum of 10% of sales in fair trade.
According to Davenport and Low (2013), the organization's successes have been in defining the principles of fair trade and in working with the other member associations of FINE to raise awareness of fair trade in politics. In addition, the WFTO offers its members little added value. After the financial crisis in 2008, the turnover of WFTO members and also the number of WFTO members decreased, at the same time the WFTO was stretched to its limits in 2011.
organization
The WFTO differentiates between provisional and registered members. Registered members must have gone through the three-stage monitoring process. Only they have full rights and are allowed to use the WFTO log in business transactions.
Members in Asia, Europe and Latin America have come together to form regional representative bodies:
- COFTA (Africa)
- The Cooperation for Fair Trade in Africa (COFTA) is a network of African producer organizations that work with disadvantaged small producers.
- WFTO Asia (Asia)
- WFTO Asia , the Asian agency, works in 15 countries and comprises 90 organizations. Member countries mainly represent the poorest part of the continent: Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Korea, Laos, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, East Timor and Vietnam. They take on different roles in fair trade, including producers, cooperatives, traders, NGOs, and faith-based organizations.
- WFTO Europe (Europe)
- WFTO Europe , formerly IFAT Europe , is the European representative body and consists of around 80 members, including fair trade organizations and networks and supporting organizations.
- The Network of European World Shops, engl. Network of European Worldshops , abbreviated NEWS! , an association of all European world shops and co-founder of the umbrella organization FINE , was integrated into WFTO Europe in 2009.
- WFTO LA (Latin America)
- WFTO LA - Associacion Latino Americana de Commercio Justo - consists of more than 50 members from 13 Latin American countries. The seat is in Areguá , Paraguay.
There are also regional offices in these four regions and also for the Pacific region (North America and the Pacific region), to which New Zealand, Australia, Japan and Canada belong and for which there is no separate regional association.
Since its inception, there has been a trend in the WFTO to regionalize and strengthen southern producer networks. While the number of members rose steadily after the foundation and more than tenfold, it decreased in individual years after the financial crisis in 2008.
Standards and certification
Ten principles
The WFTO standard comprises ten principles. All affiliates must follow these principles. For each principle, the standard defines a number of criteria to be complied with for the various organizations - producers, trade organizations or other non-trade organizations. The WFTO guarantee system is intended to ensure compliance with the criteria through self-assessment, visits to other WFTO organizations and external audits.
The ten principles are:
- creating opportunities for economically disadvantaged producers
- Transparency and accountability
- Partnership trading practices
- Payment of fair prices
- Exclusion from exploitative child labor and forced labor
- Gender equality, freedom of assembly, no discrimination
- ensuring good working conditions
- Support in building skills and knowledge ("Capacity Building")
- Public and educational work for fair trade
- environmental Protection
The organization itself does not define any minimum prices for individual products. The criteria require members to have a transparent, verifiable process that reveals costs and profit margins and that the trading partners agree on. Market prices and Fairtrade minimum prices must be taken into account. Producers should receive a price that enables a "sustainable livelihood". Workers must receive at least the local minimum wage or market wage, whichever is higher. The aim is to achieve a wage that covers the cost of living.
WFTO label
WFTO members who have themselves checked by the WFTO's independent monitoring system have been able to label their products with the "WFTO Guaranteed Fair Trade" label since 2013. Companies that use this label meet the ten principles for fair trade.
The so-called "WFTO Guarantee System" was developed, among other things, because the widespread Fairtrade certification system of FLO International is only defined for individual products and only includes producers of so-called commodity products (raw materials, especially large-scale food). In the arts and crafts, on the other hand, product standards are technically difficult to define and implement due to their diversity and complexity. The WFTO system is intended to offer an alternative here by certifying the fair trade companies themselves. In contrast to the Fairtrade seal of FLO International , the WFTO label is not a pure product seal . Instead, it is intended to honor organizations whose core business is fair trade. If it passes the periodic reviews, the company can use the label on all of its products.
In 2013 ten organizations went through the certification process as part of a pilot project:
- Pachacuti (GB)
- People Tree (GB and Japan)
- Ayni (Bolivia)
- El Puente (Germany)
- Kumbeswar Technical college (Nepal)
- ATS (Nepal)
- Selyn (Sri Lanka)
- Creative Handicrafts (India)
- Thanapara Swallows (Bangladesh)
- Smolart (Kenya)
Gradually, all members should go through this process. You then have the option of receiving the WFTO label.
See also
literature
- Ellen Davenport and William Low: The World Fair Trade Organization . In: Business Regulation and Non-State Actors: Whose Standards? Whose Development? 2013, chap. 21 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ WFTO (Ed.): Annual Report 2012 . Our Mission ( wfto.com [PDF]).
- ^ A b Davenport and Low: The World Fair Trade Organization. 2013, pp. 289-290.
- ^ Davenport and Low: The World Fair Trade Organization. 2013, pp. 291–292.
- ↑ World Fair Trade Organization (Ed.): WFTO Guarantee System Handbook . February 2014, 1 Introduction ( HTML table of contents ).
- ^ Davenport and Low: The World Fair Trade Organization. 2013, p. 288.
- ^ Davenport and Low: The World Fair Trade Organization. 2013, pp. 292–293.
- ↑ World Fair Trade Organization, Fairtrade International and FLO-CERT (ed.): Fair Trade Glossary . June 28, 2011 ( PDF ).
- ^ WFTO Structure. World Fair Trade Organization, October 10, 2013, accessed May 23, 2014 .
- ↑ World Fair Trade Organization (Ed.): Annual Report 2009 . S. 10 ( PDF ).
- ^ Davenport and Low: The World Fair Trade Organization. 2013, pp. 295-297.
- ↑ World Fair Trade Organization (Ed.): WFTO Guarantee System Handbook . February 2014, 6 WFTO Fair Trade Standard (3.6) - ( PDF ).
- ↑ World Fair Trade Organization (Ed.): WFTO Guarantee System Handbook . February 2014, 6 WFTO Fair Trade Standard, Principle 4 ( HTML table of contents ).