Trading Places

The project was motivated by the observation that a fairer deal on trade is key to the poverty reduction objectives of the MDGs, and that communication has an important role to play in creating the public understanding and awareness needed if trade policy-making is to be more transparent and accountable. Because Panos believes that this challenge centrally involves the media, the organisation brought a team of journalists to the international conference so that they could experience first-hand - and then communicate with their audiences - how rules governing international trade have an impact on people's lives.

Each day, the team of journalists filed stories for their own national newspapers and wrote specially-commissioned features for Panos London. Information and communication technology (ICT) is being used as a tool to share these stories with a broad, global audience. Panos-supported journalists' Hong Kong stories are being showcased on a dedicated page on the Panos website; click here to access the stories, which are free to all media to reproduce (provided that Panos London and the journalist are credited). Short biographies of each journalist are offered on this website, along with links to his or her articles that emerged from participation in Trading Places.

Rights, Trade.

"The Hong Kong world trade summit held by the WTO in December attracted international media attention. Yet how the notoriously technical discussion of global trade policy affects people's lives is often weak in mainstream media coverage in both the global North and the global South." Click here for further details on the WTO conference, which drew ministers responsible for trade from the WTO's 149 member countries. Click here for additional WTO-related resources on the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD) website.