Voices for Change: the Consumer Right to Representation

World Consumer Rights Day 2002: Voices for Change
of industrial and commercial interests, and
biases against NGOs. However CI has made
well-recognised efforts to support the Codex
Secretariat in developing mechanisms for
increasing consumer involvement in Codex
and in monitoring implementation of these
mechanisms.
Among the lessons learned are those that
“future project(s) should be wider than Codex
and deal with food safety issues more
generally,” the evaluation concludes. “
[They] should still include the international
representation work of CI at Codex, but this
should be part of a broader project dealing
with food safety more holistically.”
Trade: Changing Mechanisms
Markets have been the stage for consumer
protection laws since the Hammurabi Code
decreed trial by ordeal for dishonest wine
sellers some 4000 years ago. Today,
consumers seek protection from global
markets by seeking their say in international
institutions created to dictate contemporary
rules of play.
The difficulties of building CI representation
in an area like international trade where
consumer groups have not traditionally
worked are three-fold, according to CI’s
Global Programmes Manager, Jayanti Durai.
First, consumers are generally unaware of
the implications of trade rules on their lives.
Second, consumer organisations often do not
feel comfortable in engaging in these issues,
as they aren’t used to discussing trade and
economics issues. Third, policy-makers may
not think that consumer organisations have
anything to say or that what they say
is credible.
Most consumer work is based on bringing
research to light to support a particular point.
In trade work, consumer representatives are
expected to be lawyers or economists, or both.
Consumer organisations are nonetheless
growing more aware of trade and are
beginning to be able to assess its impact.
The main difficulty consumer representatives
now face is that governments appear to think
everyone (trade unions, environment, etc.)
is more important than those who trade is
destined for – consumers. CI’s trade
programme has tried to enlist the media
as one way of getting our views heard.
This paves the way for getting governments
to accept the consumers’ point of view
as credible.
There are also multiple difficulties in
building representation at forums where no
mechanisms exist for NGO, or consumer,
input. Without formal mechanisms for
discussion with decision-makers, the
consumer representative has to traipse around
after each decision-maker attempting to be
heard. Lack of formal mechanisms means no
access to the agenda, which presents many
drawbacks: consumer representatives don’t
know when issues are being discussed, have
no idea of the tone or tenor of discussion to be
able to respond appropriately and can’t
transmit information back to the national
level. This makes it complicated to contribute
content-wise. In the end, those who have
influence in this kind of system are those
who are based in Geneva and can “hang out”
with delegations. Not many NGOs have this
opportunity, notes Durai.
CI’s structure as a confederation of member
groups, each with disparate and sometimes
conflicting interests, is another factor to
consider in exercising representation in
international trade forums and issues.
Obviously, trade has benefited some countries
more than others. Given the varying
experiences in trade, building a common
position is difficult. But if we are clear as to
our values – consumer rights – and our
priorities – the most vulnerable – it is possible
to agree on what we need to say, she writes.
The more research CI conducts and the more
all its members engage, the easier it becomes
to explore and discuss differences and to come
up with common positions.
CI can point to some successes in our
representation work. Consumers are now
regularly on government delegations to WTO,
as is the case of the EU and Uganda. And in
October, “CI wrote a little bit of WTO history,”
reports Durai. For the first time, the WTO
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