During the week the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) launched a book called Making Trade Work For People. The launch takes the form of one-day seminar that brings together regional and international experts-including the book’s principal author-to deliberate on its findings and its lessons for the Caribbean.

Making Trade Work For People is an important and timely publication. It begins by questioning the prevailing wisdom that trade liberalisation is always and automatically good for everyone. Liberalised trade, it asserts, is not an end it itself. It must always be subject to the test of how far it leads to higher economic growth in each country of a kind that contributes to human development.

Human development, we are reminded, is a process of expanding people’s choices: by providing the population as a whole with increased access to goods and services through higher income; by enabling them to live long and productive lives; and by improving education.

The book shows that that the global trade architecture now being constructed, based on the WTO, is often at odds with human development, especially in developing countries. WTO rules need to be shaped in ways that are specifically adapted to the needs of these countries and of vulnerable groups in the population: women, peasant farmers, the unemployed and underemployed.

These are simple, but powerful propositions with far-reaching implications. The book’s appearance early this year is said to have caused quite a stir in Washington and in Geneva, site of the WTO Secretariat. Pressure on the UNDP to defer or cancel its publication eventually resulted in a compromise: beside the UNDP name, the book’s cover bears the logo of four prestigious international foundations that funded the work, like the Rockefeller Foundation and the Wallace Global Fund.

Attempts to suppress the book’s message, however, will be not only counter-productive but futile. They are contradicted by the vast amount of scholarly work and consultation that went into its preparation. A seven-member Eminent Persons Group provided guidance, a Peer Review Group of 10 provided intellectual advice, and a 45-member Group of Expert Reviewers and Advisers commented on the contributions. The list of names is a veritable Who’s Who in international trade, governance and human development. A Brainstorming Meeting held in New York in October 2000 provided more feedback. And nine regional consultations attended by approximately 400 people were held prior to the Doha Ministerial Meeting of the WTO in November 2001.

What the book shows is that the concerns about the course taken by global trade negotiations, expressed on the streets of Seattle and other cities and by many governments, are based on solid theoretical and empirical evidence. Its 19 chapters cover the entire range of subjects of global trade negotiations, from governance to government procurement, from commodities to competition, from Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) to Trade-Related Investment Measures (TRIMS). The language style, buttressed by a technical glossary of terms, makes the analysis accessible to non-specialist.