Commonwealth secy gen says richest nations still hold the key

Commonwealth Secretary General Don McKinnon said in Dhaka yesterday that the international trading system is unjust.

"To achieve justice, political leaders need to show leadership. While the coalition of developing countries at Cancun has achieved much in shifting the balance of power, still the US, Japan and the EU countries form the most powerful group of countries," said McKinnon in a detailed deliberation at an open session of the CPA conference.

He noted that as long as the US, Europe and Japan continued to subsidise their farmers at the rate of $1 billion a day, while their aid budget is $1 billion a week, developing nations stand no chance of eliminating poverty.

He said while the average European cow receives $2.20 a day in subsidies, no less than 2.8 million human beings live on less than $2 a day. "In other words, for half the world's population the brutal reality is this: 'You'd be better off as a European cow."

McKinnon went on to add that " figures show that one-third of the Commonwealth's 1.8 billion people live on less than one dollar a day, and nearly two-thirds on under two dollars a day."

The Commonwealth secretary general said the onus was on the developed countries, which, he said, have to live up to their commitments and show the sort of leadership that would deliver justice.

"A deal in Geneva which phases out trade-distorting subsidies will reduce the real cost of products to consumers in the developed world and provide developing countries with the means to transform the environment of poverty in which so many global problems are rooted from terrorism, to drug abuse, to illicit migration, to environmental degradation and disease."