ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the role the World Fair Trade Organization 1 (WFTO) plays in the fair trade movement and how it contributes to international development by regulating the ‘ethical’ production and consumption of handicrafts and food. The international fair trade movement as a whole is distinctive among global social movements in that it straddles the for-profit and the not-for-profit worlds, and encompasses a wide range of organizational forms from small cooperatives, small businesses and village associations, to Public Listed Companies controlled by non-governmental organizations (NGOs), such as Cafedirect and Divine Chocolate in the United Kingdom (UK), with annual sales in the millions. Fair trade combines elements of business with the characteristics of campaigning NGOs (Unerman and O'Dwyer 2004), international development NGOs (Ebrahim 2003) and social welfare NGOs; it is both a ‘business and campaign’ (Zadek and Tiffen 1996).
