Working together to end poverty and injustice

Real lives

Coffee

"I'd like to tell people in your place that the drink they are enjoying is the cause of all our problems. We grow it with our sweat and sell it for nothing." Lawrence Seguya, Uganda.

About 25 million people depend on growing coffee but barely any of the money that we pay for a cup of coffee ever reaches them.

• Read more: small-scale coffee farmers cannot  make a decent living

Cotton

"How can we cope with this problem? Cotton prices are too low to keep our children in school, or to buy food and pay for health." Brahima Outtara, Burkina Faso.

The US advocates free trade and open markets in developing countries, but its subsidies are destroying the livelihoods of millions of poor farmers around the world. Artificially cheap US cotton floods the world's markets meaning poor farmers, especially those in sub-Saharan Africa, are priced out of the game.

• Read more: cotton has become a symbol of the inequities of global trade

Medicines

"I want drug companies to make drugs affordable…as people on my income can't afford to buy them. I get depressed and stressed when I think of it. I have no choice, I want to survive. I need these drugs." Isra, Thailand.

Thailand's national HIV and AIDS treatment programme has succeeded in providing cheap drugs to 90 per cent of the people who need them. But a US push for a Free Trade Agreement with Thailand will enforce stricter patent rules. This could increase the price of  AIDS drugs by as much as 90 per cent, putting thousands of lives at risk.

• Read more: the availability of affordable medicines is a matter of life or death