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Date Added to
Site: 11th March 2004 |
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Short Summary
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| Title |
An Analysis of the WTO-AOA Review from the Perspective
of Rural Women in Asia |
| Author |
Glipo, A. |
| Publication
Date |
February 2003 |
| Publisher |
International Gender and Trade Network (IGTN)-Asia |
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Short Summary |
How does the World Trade Organization's (WTO)
Agreement on Agriculture (AOA) affect the livelihoods of rural women
in Asia? This paper, prepared on the occasion of the WTO-AOA review
in 2003, analyzes the impact of the new trading rules imposed by the
WTO on Asian peasants. It illustrates the inherent imbalances in the
WTO-AOA's trade liberalisation policies which, among other things,
flood local markets with highly subsidized agricultural imports from
developed countries to the detriment of domestic agriculture. These
trade rules have devastated local agriculture, caused widespread unemployment,
and worsened rural poverty, particularly for women. Displaced from
farming, while still responsible for their families' survival, unskilled
rural women are forced to accept temporary low paying jobs in the
informal sector or to migrate to cities and foreign countries to perform
menial jobs. The paper issues a proposal for action to reverse the
negative impact of trade liberalisation policies. This includes a
call on women's groups to hold national governments accountable to
the concessions they made under the AOA, and to pressure their governments
to reverse the policies which harm small farmers and rural women.
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| Complete Document |
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PostScript Document (pdf) |
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