The First Arab Fair Trade Forum

We are gathered here in Amman, Jordan, from the 5th until the 7th of December, under the theme of “Positioning the Arab Region on the World’s Fair Trade Map”. The goal of this forum is for the current Arab fair trade actors to get to know each other, share experiences and develop a solid regional strategy that would allow us to have a say and an influence on an international scale.

Right now there is no real presence of an Arab movement that operates as a solid core in the trading system.
Hence, we have the intention of implementing a strategy that will hopefully reinforce a potential regional coordination.

The first day of the forum mainly consisted in presenting several show cases: Palestine, Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon.
We are actually benefiting from an exchange of expertise, realizing that each experience has a unique background and important challenges. In Palestine for instance, producers encounter unlimited obstacles due to the lack of sales, the pressure in their country, the export complexity etc.
Jordan, on the other hand, chose two specific fields of Fair Trade, Tourism and Handicrafts. As for Fair Trade Egypt, a beautiful variety of handicrafts is being supported and marketed, for almost 11 years now!
Benoit Berger and I have presented the Lebanese show case and set forth our activities in Fair Trade Lebanon. We decided to introduce a facet of the Lebanese reality while mentioning the unfortunate decline of the agriculture sector and its uneven national development strategy.

The aim is to take all of these challenges and turn them into opportunities. How can the Arab network be developed in order to offer more than just a title? How can our weaknesses become a field of experiment and power?

Monday is a crucial day in the establishment of the AFTN (Arab Fair Trade Network) and the finalization of the action plan and responsibilities.