| Open letter to Mr. Nicolas Sarkozy, French Minister of the Interior: Minister, allow me to repeat for you the essence of a conversation I had recently with Mr. François Traoré, president of the new Confédération Paysanne du Faso (Farming Confederation of Faso). After the projection of our film, "Coton africain: la menace vient du Nord", at FESPACO, the Pan African Festival of Cinema at Ouagadougou, we met over a drink. In this film, a young man talks about the benefit that the production of cotton brings to his village. He finishes his intervention by saying: “Thanks to the cotton we youth no longer need to run off in search of adventure.” Mr. François Traoré had just returned from Paris, where he had taken part in the “Alternative Summit” which took place simultaneously to the Franco-African Summit. We had the opportunity to talk about your effort, Minister, to control immigration into France, including your recent trip to Mali. At Bamako you met members of the government. This is normal. However, as far as we know, you did not take time to meet the organisations of Malian Country Dwellers. This is a shame! Because the leaders of these organisations would have been able to tell you that the Malian farmers, just as the farmers of Burkina Faso and many other countries, love their village, their family, their country. They only ask one thing: to be able to live with dignity from the fruit of their work. They do not want to leave their village. They want to have the means to look after their families and to raise and educate their children in a fitting manner. To do this, they need, as do all African producers, a decent price for their agricultural products. But we are far from that. The principal reason: the way that the countries of the North (especially the USA and the European Union, as well as Thailand with its rice) dump their agricultural products on the African markets and the pressure they make on the countries of the South to let these products enter their markets free of tax. Do you know that in France wheat producers receive more in the way of direct European Community aid than from the sale of their product? This allows them to export their wheat, especially to Africa, cheaper than the cost of production. And the corn producers of Mali and Burkina Faso can no longer sell their corn and make a profit. The populations of the towns increasingly eat bread, pasta and imported rice: they no longer need the farm products of their own farmers. Long-term poverty is on the increase. In these conditions what can the poor farmers of the poor countries hope for? What can they dream for? Only to leave their village and its poverty for the town or for the countries of the North, which they believe will offer them a better life. Yes, the rich countries are sowing misery and death in the countries of the South with their dumping. How many more African children must die in the landing gear of the planes that link Africa to Europe before governments take the necessary measures? These measures: outlaw export dumping and allow each country, in the North as in the South, to protect its agriculture with import taxes. Then the farmers of the North as well as those of the South will be able to live off their work. At the last Franco-African summit, President Jacques Chirac, began to recognise the unreasonable effects of the European Union Common Agricultural Policy on African countries. So then, Minister, allow me to make a suggestion: stop running across France and the world to stop the flow of immigration towards Europe. Rather, with your prime minister, go and find your Ministers of Agriculture and Trade and together make a solemn declaration recognising that the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) agreements are no good, and that all they do is drive hundreds of millions of farmers in the poor countries into poverty. Not only is this situation intolerable, but it is also a threat to world peace. In these conditions, it is useless to hope to control the immigration flow towards the rich countries. So in the WTO negotiations, France should ask for the recognition of agricultural exemptions in the same way that it has already asked for the recognition of cultural exemptions: agricultural products, like cultural products, can not be treated as simple pieces of merchandise. Hoping that you will take note of this letter, I remain, Minister, Yours respectfully, Maurice Oudet Koudougou, 15th March 2003. |
View from the South