Behind the scenes at the WTO: the real world of international trade negotiations is the title of a frank new book that exposes the sober realities of international trade.

This book is, says the Preface, “a valuable contribution to the study and understanding of current multilateral politics and North-South relations, as played out in the WTO. It depicts the ‘lopsided playing fields’ on to which the developing countries were thrust by the North after the conclusion of Uruguay Round Agreements and the establishment of the WTO.

“It is a sober and sobering book for all those who believe in a prosperous world economy anchored in rule-based system in which North and South co-operate and equitably share the gains from global economic expansion… In this carefully researched, unique book the authors lift the veil on how decisions are actually taken.”

The Preface is signed by two distinguished development practitioners, Professor Ajit Singh at Cambridge University, and Branislav Gosovic of the South Centre secretariat in Geneva.

The book was produced with the assistance of the South Centre (whose founding chairperson was Mwalimu Julius Nyerere) and a number of development agencies, through extensive interviews with 33 diplomatic missions in Geneva and staff of the World Trade Organisation (WTO ).

The authors are Fatoumata Jawara, an international trade and development analyst from The Gambia; and Aileen Kwa, a trade analyst and author of Power politics in the WTO.

Stolen Fruit: The tropical commodities disaster is an up-to-date investigation by one of the leading authorities on commodity trading, who became a UN consultant on trade relations between African countries and multinational companies, and an adviser to the African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa on trade sanctions against apartheid.

Chapters include: The scale of decline in tropical commodity prices; Controlling supplies and taming markets; and, How tropical commodities are traded.

Peter Robbins has published several other books on related matters, and is now working on establishing market information for tropical agricultural products in rural areas of Africa.

The book “effectively demolishes the myth that international markets serve poor countries well.”

Hungry corporations: Transnational biotech companies colonise the food chain, demonstrates that a handful of companies have gained control over the food chain through the industrialisation of agriculture, the forces of globalisation, and the vertical and horizontal integration of business. Chapters include Hunger; Image control and manipulation; and Opening up the South. By Helena Paul, Ricarda Steinbrecher with Devlin Kuyek and Lucy Michaels.

Juggernaut Politics: Understanding predatory globalization aims to describe not only the globalization of the economy but also the “agents and mechanisms of this global system so that the reader may understand its workings and architecture”. Jacque B Gélinas is a writer and lecturer on issues of developing countries and globalization, and the founder of a publishing house dedicated to publishing on the political and social issues of a sustainable society. For a decade during the 1960s, he worked on popular education and community development in the Bolivian Andes, during which time he collaborated with Paulo Freire and Ivan Illich. He is also the author of Freedom from Debt.

What the market does to people: Privatization, globalization and poverty asks the question: “How is it possible that after fifty years of foreign aid and development assistance, the Third World remains not only basically poor but also subject to every-increasing inequality?” The author explores the privatisation of poverty; and causes and results of poverty on hunger, crime, education, housing and health. He looks critically at efforts to overcome poverty, and argues that poverty is also an issue in developed countries which is not being addressed. David Macarov is Professor Emeritus, and writes on poverty and the work place.

All by ZED Press; Stolen Fruit David Philip, Cape Town.