The UK's leading Christians have called on the Secretary of State for International Development to take steps to ensure that the world's poorest countries are not forced into new trade agreements that will make them even less able to develop a healthy economy.
The nineteen leaders include a number of Church of England bishops, the head of the Baptist Union of Great Britain the Rev Jonathan Edwards, the President of the Methodist Conference the Rev Dr Martyn Atkins, the General Director of the Evangelical Alliance the Rev Joel Edwards, and the General Secretary of the United Reformed Church Rev Dr David Cornick.
They argue that current negotiations over a series of Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) - designed to determine future trade relations between Europe and Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP) - are set to seriously short-change the developing countries by offering what are essentially free trade agreements between unequal partners.
"These negotiations," argue the leaders, "should result in trade agreements that help to bring about justice for some of the world's poorest countries, but we are concerned that they currently threaten to undermine recent progress towards making poverty history."
The Christian leaders' call, spelt out in a letter sent to Douglas Alexander and printed in The Times today, suggests that the EPAs "offer little flexibility to ACP countries, force them to open up their markets to unfair competition with the EU, and accept issues they have already rejected in other trade negotiations."
