英语论文网

o reach a level of US$3,000bn by the late 1990s. The devastating human consequences of SAPs have since led to their abandonment, although their replacement with Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) in 1999 has resulted in policies little different from SAPs. Even today, the IMF promotes an expansion of private-sector healthcare delivery in poor countries, with the same market-led approach to development leaving little scope for ambitious public health programs.

 

Unfair Trade Rules

 

Unfair trade rules also negatively influence health outcomes in poorer countries by exacerbating conditions of poverty and food insecurity. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) members meet to set the rules of world trade, almost always in favour of the rich countries, to the detriment of the poor. Whilst more economically powerful countries continue to subsidize their agro-export corporate farmers, the same countries insist that developing nations reduce their own subsidies and lower tariffs and quotas on the import of foreign goods.

 

Similar to the requirements of market liberalisation under structural adjustment policies, the WTO's Agreement on Agriculture commits member countries to remove tariffs and subsidies for farmers and food exporters. The current terms of trade, however, remain grossly unjust. While Southern countries are expected to do away with agricultural subsidies, remove trade barriers and open their markets to foreign goods, farmers in the North continue to be supported by huge government handouts. In 2005, for example, the US subsidised its agricultural products to the tune of US$19bn. These heavily subsidized products flooded the Asian rice markets, the African cotton markets and the Latin American soya markets, undermining local markets, and driving millions of Third World farmers and peasants into bankruptcy. As India's Trade Minister said at the Doha world trade talks in 2005; 'Indian farmers can compete with US farmers but not with the US Treasury.'

 

A major consequence of massive subsidies in the North is the overproduction of agricultural commodities, leading to the ‘dumping' of food at below production costs in developing countries. Subsidies in the United States, for example, have allowed US businesses to sell wheat on international markets at 43 percent below the cost of production, rice by 35 percent and cotton by over 60 percent. The effect of such dumping on farmers in the South can be devastating; not only are millions of smallholder farmers displaced from their livelihoods, but billions of dollars are lost each year in agricultural income for developing countries.

 

Agricultural and rural investment has also dramatically declined in poor countries over recent decades. According to the World Bank, agricultural productivity per worker has fallen by about 12 percent in Africa since the early 1980s, while yields of the most important staple food grains have not increased over the same period - a situation repeated across the developing world. Follow本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。