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About CUTS
Curtain Raiser
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Consumer
Unity & Trust Society (CUTS) is organising a Partnership Conclave to celebrate
its 20th Anniversary on 12-15 March 2003 at New Delhi.
The theme is “Governance and Its Relationship with Poverty Reduction”.
This e-bulletin, containing information about the Conclave, will
be sent out on a monthly basis. We will appreciate comments and suggestions for making
this event memorable.
About CUTS
A non-profit, non-governmental research and advocacy group, with
headquarters in Jaipur, India, pursuing “Economic equity and social justice within and across
borders”.
It has four Programme Centres in India; two at Jaipur, one each at
Chittorgarh, and Calcutta; the Africa Resource Centre in Lusaka, Zambia; one
sub-centre
in Nairobi, Kenya; and a representative office in London, UK. A team of over 75
spread across these centres puts in efforts to address concerns of a common man.
The organisation is engaged in issues relating to:
consumer protection; international trade, investment and competition; sustainable consumption and rural
development, in particular on women’s empowerment. It is accredited to the
UNCTAD, UNEP, UNCSD, and is affiliated with several national, regional and international
organisations such as Consumers International, International Centre for Trade and Sustainable
Development, South Asia Watch on Trade, Economics & Environment,
Environment
Liaison Centre International, CIVICUS, and Consumer Co-ordination Council, India.
For
more: www.cuts-international.org
Curtain
Raiser
The
anniversary event has been planned as a platform for civil society
representatives, policy makers, media, academia, and other stakeholders
from all over the world to present their work on “ Rights-based
approaches on critical issues of governance” through:
Keynote addresses and case
study sessions will look into issues of governance and its
with relationship poverty reduction under the following group.
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Economic
policy and legal issues,
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Consumer-citizen
action and legal issues, and
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People’s
empowerment.
In each of these sessions, there will be presentation of cases under the
sub-themes and groups, from all over the world, in particular Asia and
Sub-Saharan Africa. For more: www.cuts.org/CUTS-Anniversary.htm The
following are example of cases on economic policy and legal issues under
all categories of intervention, such as people’s participation, state
intervention and international cooperation to be presented. People’s
participation
Vietnam
has been under a communist rule for long, where laws were not the order
but the local commissariat provided dispute settlement. As Vietnam
starting liberalisation, laws began to be enacted.
However the
poor rural folk were quite ignorant as to how to use the laws to
protect their rights, fight corruption, and navigate complex judicial system,
until Mr. Pham The Hanh came onto the scene designing and running legal
literacy programmes. The dedication of Mr. Hanh
has now shown the way to ordinary citizens to get redress easily. State intervention
Bhutan, a small country, with very little production base imports 90
percent of its goods from India. Being a small market, the Indian companies would appoint only one
distributor.
Realising that such a monopoly could lead to consumer exploitation,
Bhutan asked all Indian companies to appoint parallel distributors.
Hindustan Lever Ltd resisted the order, until their distributor was
threatened. HLL gave in, and appointed another dealer. Lo and behold, the competition
ensured that HLL’s goods started moving into the market much more than before. Now both HLL
and its consumers are happy.
International cooperation
Realising the portentous potential of ozone depletion on
ecosystems and people due to use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), the international community entered into
an international agreement: the Montreal Protocol.
This accord, through a proper transfer of financial resources and
technology to the South will phase-out ozone depleting substances over a fixed time
period.
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