On Wednesday 27 June, the town of Ghent (Belgium) was awarded the inaugural “Fair and Ethical Trade City Award” launched end 2017 by the European Commission and the International Trade Centre (ITC), a joint WTO and UNCTAD agency.
Ghent is thus recognised for its commitment to fair and ethical initiatives such as the organisation of events to promote fair and ethical trade and procurement, including the Fair Fashion Fest and the international Ecoprocura conference.
Ghent is also rewarded for its long term strategy: after becoming Belgium’s first “fair trade town” in 2005, it recently committed to buying only fair trade products or other sustainables by 2024. Overall, 92% of Ghent’s inhabitants are aware of fair and ethical trade and 43% buy these products regularly.
Four of the candidate towns were awarded special mentions for their achievements: Saarbrücken (Germany) for its public procurement policy that respects ILO conventions; Dortmund (Germany) for its awareness-raising events and its kindergarten fair trade certification scheme across more than 100 local schools; Madrid (Spain) for its network of partner cities across Latin America; and Lyons (France) for its monitoring and evaluation system to measure progress towards sustainability goals, as well as its own fair and sustainable label adopted by over 230 businesses and organisations.
The above towns, as well as Victoria-Gasteiz (Spain) and Malmö (Sweden) will automatically become members of the new European network for fair and ethical trade. (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)