Earl Moxam, Contributor
JAMAICA AND other Caribbean countries are being advised to seek international assistance in conducting complex trade negotiations. This suggestion was made in the face of growing evidence that some sectors of Caribbean societies are suffering the consequences of unfair trade practices.
Ritu Sharma, executive director of the Washington-based Women's Edge Coalition, is advocating the establishment of a 'Lawyers without Borders' association of legal experts to provide such assistance.
"When Jamaica only has three or four negotiators and the United States has 150 negotiators, that is not a level playing field, and countries like Jamaica need some assistance from lawyers to advise them and coach them how to negotiate in the best interests of their own country," according to Sharma.
At a seminar in Kingston last week, Ms. Sharma presented the findings of a recent study which looked specifically at the impact of trade liberalisation on the Jamaican economy.
The study, conducted by Women's Edge and CAFRA (Association for Feminist Research and Action), found that in Jamaica the process of trade liberalisation had caused women to suffer a net loss of 12,400 jobs in the agriculture and services sectors over the period 1993-2001, contrasted with a net gain of 45,500 jobs for men.
'Trade has hit Jamaica's agriculture pretty hard, particularly poultry farmers and dairy farmers. The importation of powdered milk has wiped out the local dairy industry and the importation of chicken parts has almost wiped out the poultry industry,' Sharma told The Sunday Gleaner in a subsequent interview.
UPSHOT
The upshot of these losses, she said, was that women displaced from these activities, "either go into the informal sector, like higglering or becoming a hairdresser or anything they can find, but it's not better than what they were doing before."
Nelcia Robinson, CAFRA's Co-ordinator, said that in such circumstances, some women turn to even less desirable activities, including prostitution, in order to survive and provide materially for their family.
She pointed to the Windward Islands where the fallout from the collapse of the banana industry had been particularly devastating for women.
"We have found that when women have lost their jobs in agriculture or in the services sector, a number of them go into prostitution and this is manifested much more in the young ones," she said, often with the knowledge of the parents.
Working in the banana industry, particularly for the women, she said, "was like having a job in the civil service or in a store and women depended on that weekly earning as the banana boat came each week." With the loss of that job, however, she said many mothers suddenly found they were "unable to send children to school, unable to pay the mortgage; vehicles were being taken back as the payments on them were not being met. They couldn't buy books for their children and many of the older ones had to drop out of school. The health situation also deteriorated for women and suddenly they were having more cases of high blood pressure and malnutrition."
Given these experiences, the Women's Edge Coalition is urging the Jamaican Government to seek the most advantageous conditions for entry into the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).
Ms. Sharma wants Jamaica and the United States to engage in a Trade Impact Review (TIR), looking specifically at how Jamaica will be affected by the FTAA, with the data gathered being disaggregated by gender.
Already, she said, there were projections that, while 50,000 new jobs will be created for men under the FTAA, women stand to lose a further 12,000 jobs over the period 2005-2009.
But all is not lost. According to Ms. Sharma, some influential figures in Washington may be willing to listen to reason on the issue of trade liberalisation and the impact on developing countries.
