A digital world that is all of ours…

On World Consumer Rights Day, Consumers International Director General Amanda Long delivered a speech at the G20 Consumer Summit in Berlin - 'Building a Digital World Consumers Can Trust'.

The prize if we can build a digital world that everyone can trust, and where no one is left behind is clear to see.

In Africa, 1 million hand pumps supply 200 million rural water users.  A third of these hand pumps are estimated to be broken at any one time. In Kyuso, Kenya sensors that could detect and report faults quickly led to a 10 fold reduction in problems. Ninety eight per cent of pumps in the area are fully functioning. But that’s not all, sensors also monitor demand which they can link to fairer payments, and usage data can help plan better services. 

In Europe, it is estimated that 10 million people live with dementia. In the UK, doctors are trialling the use of IoT technology to help them pick up signs of changes in behaviour for patients with dementia. Sensors attached to kettles, fridges and even beds can give vital early clues as to how someone is doing – are they making tea as usual? Are they eating food from the fridge? Picking up and acting on these signs can help people stay well and reduce hospital admissions.

These types of stories are why it is so important to work together so we can make full use of the potential of digital technology and achieve these kind of results for everyone. 

It starts with getting more people online. This will bring many benefits for consumers: more choice, convenience and lower prices; an easier say in how services are run; lower barriers to entry for small businesses thus increasing choice. 

For those with access already, there is still much to gain – such as making the most of the potential of digital to expand opportunities for education, entrepreneurship, creation, healthier environments, healthier lifestyles, smoother transport and more efficient energy distribution. But none of this can happen without trust. 

We need trust for a better digital world 

This is the theme of this year’s World Consumer Rights Day and topic of the G20 Consumer Digital Summit that we are co-hosting with vzbv and BMJV as part of the German presidency of the G20 is ‘building a digital world consumers can trust’

But is this accurate? Do we need to improve confidence and build trust to maintain progress on digital? Doesn’t high uptake and enthusiasm for digital technology suggest that people are largely satisfied? Can’t we just carry on the way we have been, fixing problems as we go along? 

Carrying on as we are is of course an option, we could all convince ourselves that mass uptake and satisfaction with service quality is the same as satisfaction with business models, corporate practice and ethics. But that would be to ignore some clear signals coming from consumers about what the digital world can feel like at the receiving end: 

• 60 per cent of mobile users worry about the privacy and security implications of a world of connected IoT devices. [1]
• 71 per cent of people worldwide believe brands with access to their personal data are using it unethically. [2]   
• And in that same survey, that concerns about privacy are consistent across age, gender, country and personality. 

Not properly understanding and addressing these signals would be missing a trick, it would miss the point that despite the enthusiasm and appreciation of what digital interconnectivity can do, it brings both positives and negatives; and, most importantly, it would miss an opportunity to make the system more inclusive and comfortable for everyone.

Paradox of connectivity

The beauty of so much that digital has given us is that it is all connected. The downside of so much that digital is that it is all connected. It’s a paradox of connectivity.

So when everyday things like payments or returning goods mess up, or updates slow down a device, or when uncanny decisions are made about us based on our likes, habits or opinions, when promises about privacy policies feel empty, when it feels impossible to keep your children safe from harm online – all of these things erode our faith in the other amazing things that we do with digital. 

Perhaps part of the problem is that we too often describe the digital world only in terms of numbers – how fast it is, how many connections there are or how much it could grow. 
But we need to also start thinking not just about how much we could grow, but how we can grow, and what we want to grow towards. We can remain inspired and impressed by the speed and innovation of digital technology, but also keep focused on what we as a world want to achieve through digital innovation?

What do we want to achieve through digital innovation?

Answering this question requires listening to the voices of people everywhere - people as consumers, citizens and as representatives of future generations.  

And trust needs to be more than what we call ‘transactional trust’, I.e the nuts and bolts of a transaction between a business and consumer (or consumers and consumers). 

If tech is going to go deeper into people’s lives, it’s no longer enough to say it will bring convenience, or save money. It has to offer more than that, more than just a transaction. Instead, it is way beyond time to think more roundly about consumers and their trust in the whole experience and try to understand what the combined effect of this fast, expansive, powerful and all-seeing digital technology is on people and their communities, their lives and their idea of the future. What does ‘whole experience trust’ look like to people? 

This type of reflection might be regarded as ‘stifling innovation’ or progress, but it’s the opposite - it’s the definition of progress. To progress means to bring people along on the journey, to pay attention to the impact on people, so that we do not leave anyone behind.   Otherwise we risk similar problems of that other current example of the boundary breaking, cross border, disruptive force - globalisation.  Where impact on some ordinary citizens has not been as understood or considered as necessary and some people have ended up feeling left behind and have lost faith in institutions and leaders.  

So who do we trust to build a better digital world?  

It’s up to all of us - consumers should trust their instincts and articulate what kind of digital world they want for themselves and their children.  Businesses should trust their relationships with people and make a stand to behave more responsibly and respond to people’s concerns – to stand out from the crowd.  Governments should trust their citizens to be able to recognise what is fair and right online and find ways to help them get it. 

No single entity can reassure trust.  And in any case, trust in business, government, media and NGOs is in decline in part because people feel these institutions can’t protect them from the negative effects of globalization and technological change.  

We need to face up to some of the complex and big issues of access, ownership, tracking, competition and to work with the fact that we are in flux – and that we don’t have all the answers but that but that we have a better chance of finding them if we work together. 

The recommendations presented at the summit on 15th March are the first time that the role of demand side trust in driving growth in digital has been thought about, and acknowledged on such a major stage. However, they are just the starting point of something bigger. We want to achieve these recommendations and much more beyond in partnership with others, in line with Consumers Internationals’ new commitment to ‘come together for change’.

Only then can we build the #BetterDigitalWorld that we all deserve.

References

1. Mobile Ecosystem Forum, 2016. 

2. Edelman Trust Barometer: Global Report, 2016.

How can consumers make meaningful choices in the digital world?

This week, Amanda Long, Director General of Consumers International spoke at EDPS-BEUC conference on Big Data: Individual Rights and Smart Enforcement [1]in Brussels which brought together issues of competition, consumer protection and data protection.  You can read Amanda’s full speech here. Below is an extract.

Questions of size, power, competition and choice have never been so important to our understanding of consumer protection and empowerment in the digital world.  The reach of so many big internet companies is remarkable: one in two global internet users visit Amazon on a monthly basis[2].  Google has a 71% share of the search market globally, rising to 90% in the European Union[3]. WhatsApp is the top messaging app in 109 countries, or 56% of the world.[4]

Consumers are feeling the direct impact that such large players have on their individual choices: from privacy tools disappearing from app stores[5], or WhatsApp users seeing the service bought out by Facebook, followed by changes to the terms of data sharing [6],  to the impenetrable terms and conditions which people must agree to in order to access digital services[7].  These digital services that quickly link up friends, music, events and travel are convenient and can be great fun but can also feel a bit like a lobster pot - easy to get into but very tricky to get out of.

Many multinational platforms and digital companies have become indispensable to contemporary life, offering high quality, convenient digital interactions. The data monetisation model behind some, where people ‘exchange’ information about themselves for the service with no upfront financial cost, makes for a tantalising offer.   They are the default by which consumers experience and interact with digital - the gateway to the internet if you like: we don’t search, we Google, we don’t make videocalls, we Skype.

The dominance of a small number of firms is significant because people’s choice over whether to engage or not in the digital world is becoming increasingly limited.[8]  If a few large companies effectively become gateways to all the internet has to offer, then we have to ask questions about how their size and dominance impact consumer choice, power and protection?

In the European Union, the prospects of keeping markets competitive and consumers protected are closely tied. It is suggested that competition itself can offer a protection of sorts by creating markets where companies compete for customers on the basis of value, quality and strong consumer credentials. In reality, without a range of options, and without an easy way to move between these options, it is difficult for consumers to sever ties if they are unsatisfied with a particular service. As a result, it becomes very hard to gauge whether people are happy or unhappy with services and the way companies operate. Classic ideas of competition and consumer protection are therefore stretched. 

Looking ahead to the next phase of digital consumption; the internet of things, heavy reliance on a small number of large companies could become even more important.  As well as raising privacy and security issues, the internet of things marks a major change in how we think about consumption, purchase and ownership. This is mostly because of so-called ‘hybrid’ products [9]– where physical products are owned by the customer, yet the presence of software means the device is subject to contract terms and conditions, which could put unexpected limitations on its use or make exiting a contract difficult.

Large established players already marking out territory in the internet of things will have to gather and connect data to as many objects and people as possible to make their connected services thrive. The more data points connected, the more potentially valuable the insights, so drawing in and retaining as many customers as possible will be top of companies’ agenda.  Exercising choice could get harder for consumers, as they lean towards contracting with one company as an easy way of bringing together multiple services. In practice, switching provider by exiting contracts will be time consuming or inconvenient.  Add to this the difficulties in transferring data between suppliers and lock in seems more and more inevitable.

These limitations on choosing between providers are really important for the digital age.  If competition can no longer effectively deliver consumer protection through providing choice, then we need to approach things differently.   In fact there is the real opportunity to forge a positive consumer agenda for the digital age that addresses areas of consumer concern and offers real choice over how to participate.  A complex, integral and dominating set of relationships should not put us off arguing for a fairer and more accountable digital system for consumers.
For example:
-          Data portability and system interoperability – to enable easy transfer between different services, keep different options open, and keep the value of data close to consumer control
-          Smarter use of information, and more transparency on how decisions based on data are made, not just what data is collected.  
-          Innovations that aid consumer understanding and build consumer trust and confidence such as personal data intermediaries. 

The genie is out of the bottle.  Widespread digital technology is here.  There is real potential for consumers to benefit but also a flip side presenting widespread negative consumer outcomes.  It is up to us to work together to ensure that the practices and delivery of large digital companies stand up to the scrutiny and expectations of the people whose lives are so entwined with them.

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[1] http://www.beuc.eu/press-media/news-events/joint-conference-big-data-september-29 

[2] https://www.globalwebindex.net/blog/topic/trends-2016

[3] https://www.statista.com/markets/424/topic/541/search-engines-seo/

[4] https://www.statista.com/statistics/258749/most-popular-global-mobile-messenger-apps/

[5] http://www.computerworld.com/article/2929835/it-industry/disconnect-files-eu-antitrust-complaint-against-google-after-app-ban.html

[6] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-37184651

[7] http://www.forbrukerradet.no/side/250000-words-of-app-terms-and-conditions/

[8] https://openmedia.org/en/internet-access-ruled-essential-daily-life

[9] http://www.consumersinternational.org/media/1657273/connection-and-protection-the-internet-of-things-and-challenges-for-consumer-protection.pdf

Consumers International launches bid for UN recognition of World Consumer Rights Day

This week at the UNCTAD Roundtable on the ‘UNGCP International

Framework for the Protection of Consumers’ I was delighted to announce that Consumers International is calling for World Consumer Rights Day to be formally recognised by the UN as an international day within the UN calendar.

World Consumer Rights Day (WCRD) is a fantastic annual celebration that unites consumers around the world. Now is the time for the UN to recognise this day formally and in doing so deliver even more to raise awareness of consumer rights.

For the last 33 years, consumer organisations around the world have joined together on March 15 to mark World Consumer Rights Day; a day that plays a vital role in raising awareness of consumer rights around the globe. The event is regularly marked in more than 90 countries around the world and a wide mix of consumers, consumer organisations, government consumer agencies and international organisations take part.

Formally recognising World Consumer Rights Day as an International Day as already exists for women, the environment, health, children, amongst many others, could help this important annual moment play an even more powerful role in raising awareness of consumer rights and highlighting inadequate consumer protection.

Given the historic adoption of the revised UN Guidelines for Consumer Protection that was achieved at the end of 2015, which recognised important new protections for consumers, there is now an urgent need to raise awareness of these protections for consumers around the globe.  UN recognition of World Consumer Rights Day can play a crucial part in this. At a time when Consumers International has unprecedented engagement from Consumer Protection Agencies around the world, we have an excellent opportunity to campaign for UN recognition for the most important day in the global consumer rights calendar.

World Consumer Rights Day

It is a truly international event. Previous themes for the day have included campaigns on basic rights, safe food, GMOs, trade, public utilities, healthy diets, financial services, phone rights, energy. The day is used to raise awareness of existing rights and shine a light on areas where there is inadequate consumer protection in place. Celebrated by the majority of countries around the world activities marking the day have included media stunts, public meetings, marches, social media campaigns and the publication of test results, surveys and opinion pieces.

The date itself was chosen to commemorate a Special Message to the US Congress made by President John F Kennedy in 1962 in which he formally addressed the issue of consumer rights. He was the first world leader to do so.

A global challenge

Despite this global celebration, we all know that many consumers still face real challenges in their everyday lives, from a lack of access or poor quality goods and services, as well as unfair practices. There is much more to be done to raise awareness of consumer rights amongst consumers, governments and business.

As President John F Kennedy said in his message to the US Congress in 1962,

'Consumers by definition, include us all. They are the largest economic group, affecting and affected by almost every public and private economic decision. Yet they are the only important group... whose views are often not heard.'

UN recognition for WCRD would be another step towards meeting the challenge that President Kennedy set out more than 50 years ago.

Official UN recognition

Official UN recognition can help to put consumer rights on the map of even more organisations, governments, companies and media outlets. It can help to raise awareness by engaging more people, in more activities, in more countries.

For our Members we expect it will make it more possible for them to get coverage of their activities and secure the participation of senior figures from government or business. It will also help to introduce consumer rights to new groups and help them realise the contribution that consumer rights can make to fairer and stronger economies, poverty reduction, improved health and safety and many other issues that affect people today.  At this time of promoting the UN Sustainable Development Goals there is further justification for the need for UN recognition.

Achieving UN recognition requires the support of Member states at the UN General Assembly. But, with the adoption of the revised UN Guidelines for Consumer Protection – and the urgent need to raise awareness of these protections, alongside the promotion of the UN Sustainable development Goals and the quality of our engagement with national Consumer Protection Agencies, we feel we are in the best possible place to put World Consumer Rights Day on the UN map.

We are asking CI Members to contact their Regional Networker for more information on how to get involved.

UN General Assembly resolution backs consumers’ right to safe vehicles

As a new UN resolution backs consumers’ rights to safe vehicles, Consumers International’s Director General Amanda Long outlines why urgent action to implement and enforce the resolution is vital to help stop the loss of life on our roads.

Consumers now have the weight of a formal United Nations General Assembly resolution behind them in their demand for safer cars. This is incredibly valuable as it provides a moral catalyst to car manufacturers and governments to improve vehicle safety standards throughout the world by 2020.

The resolution, adopted on April 15, is the strongest-ever United Nations commitment on road safety and is a significant milestone in the bid to curb the number of people killed and injured on our roads. The resolution puts consumer organisations in a stronger position to push for immediate action, holding government and manufacturers accountable to the standards.

This resolution comes at the mid-way point in the UN Decade of Action for Road Safety (2011-2020) and supports the ambitious road safety targets now included in the Global Goals for Sustainable Development. It sets a benchmark for safety standards by inviting Member States to adopt policies and measures to implement United Nations vehicle safety regulations or equivalent national standards to ensure that all new motor vehicles, meet applicable minimum regulations for occupant and other road users protection, with seat belts, air bags and active safety systems fitted as standard.

The Global Status Report on Road Safety, 2015 demonstrates the scale of the problem; noting only 40 countries require new vehicles to meet all seven priority safety regulations. ­­­

Image from Global Status Report on Road Safety, 2015

A safer future on the road for consumers

Safer vehicles are urgently needed in low and middle income countries, where consumers suffer from a dangerous double standards approach to safety. It is in these countries where 90% of the road traffic deaths occur, although they have only half of the world’s vehicles.

Major manufacturers continue to produce and sell millions of unsafe cars into weakly regulated low and middle income markets, such as Latin America and India, while simultaneously producing much safer cars for countries with high mandatory safety standards. This is despite costing as little as US $200 to install basic safety features such as air bags and strengthened bodywork.  This can no longer continue, and now the UN has made it clear in its resolution that Member States agree.

Image from Global Status Report on Road Safety, 2015

The right to safety is a fundamental consumer right. Governments should immediately introduce the UN mandated safety regulations and car manufacturers should voluntarily adopt them.

This would mean that consumers could be confident that any new car purchased globally will provide at least a minimum degree of protection. It would also ensure that the most unsafe cars, which score zero stars in NCAP tests (which test new cars for crash worthiness), are no longer being produced and sold to consumers.

Consumers International and its Members will continue to urge governments and producers to improve car safety.  For more information on our Global Car Safety Campaign, visit our website.

Will consumer rights be at the heart of global sustainable development policy?

CI’s Head of Advocacy Justin Macmullan, outlines why the inclusion of consumer rights is fundamental for the future of sustainable development.

In 2015 the UN General Assembly has the task of agreeing a set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that will build on the momentum created by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Like the MDGs, the SDGs will represent a major international agreement and have the potential to influence development policy for years to come.

Good progress has already been made and a zero draft sets out seventeen goals with a number of targets under each.

But there is something missing. Consumer rights are not mentioned. CI believes this is a serious omission and we are campaigning for consumer rights to be put back into sustainable development.

The missing link

 

The zero draft does include a goal on Sustainable Consumption and Production (something CI has long campaigned for and strongly supports), however this is largely about supporting and promoting environmental and ethical consumption and, as important as this is, it doesn’t address the wide range of issues that consumers struggle with.

Apart from sustainable consumption and production, there are also many other goals and targets in the draft that consumer organisations would recognise and support – including poverty eradication, promoting an efficient and equitable economy, water, energy and health to name just a few.

Why consumer rights matter

The consumer perspective is important for two reasons.

Firstly consumer protection is fundamental to the implementation of many of the other goals that have been proposed and “implementation” is important. As we have seen with the Millennium Development Goals, it is one thing to develop a set of ambitious goals but it is another to deliver on them.

However consumer protection is also an important issue in its own right. Any full definition of sustainable development should include consumer protection.

After all, people’s ability to consume, the consumption choices they have available to them and whether they are treated fairly as consumers, fundamentally effects the quality of their lives and the lives of those around them.

To give just three examples of why consumer protection is important:

• The first of the proposed SDGs is to ‘End poverty everywhere'. To achieve this poor and vulnerable people need to be sure that they can spend and save their limited income safely, yet they are often amongst the most exploited in the marketplace.
• The third of the proposed SDGs calls for ‘Attaining healthy lives for all'. This means that consumers need access to healthcare but also protection against unsafe products and services that cause ill health, injury or death.
• The eighth of the proposed SDGs calls for 'Sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth'. It is hard to see how this can be achieved unless consumers are represented and empowered to play their part in the economy.

Similar points can be made in relation to almost every one of the proposed Goals.

Putting consumer rights back into sustainable development

 

For this reason Consumers International is campaigning for implementation of the UN Guidelines for Consumer Protection to be added as a target under the proposed goal relating to ‘inclusive societies and access to justice’ or ‘means of implementation’.

This is a practical and realistic proposal. The UN Guidelines are internationally agreed and they have proved their value over more than 30 years.

Through CI’s State of Consumer Protection report we have also demonstrated that it is possible to measure their implementation (though we look forward to seeing what more can be done in this area with the right resources).

The process of negotiating the SDGs is already well advanced, so please join CI’s call for consumer protection to be included in the SDGs by contacting your Minister for Foreign Affairs.

You can also watch my video message on these goals - feel free to share.

Can consumer protection save the Internet from a trust crisis?

The Internet utopians dreamed of a flourishing consumer democracy where users rated purchases and passed on discoveries.  But CI UK Member Which? is set to use a verified comments model on its website, as wider concerns grow over manipulative marketing methods. Our Digital Editor Vik Iyer investigates.

Websites like Amazon and Trip Advisor get millions of visitors thanks to their pioneering user review models .

The power of these services is now a major factor in our buying decisions. One study has shown 82% of consumers check online user reviews before making a purchase.

But it appears some of that information could have been manipulated by Orwelian  sounding ‘click farms’ which employ people on low pay to ‘upvote’ particular products or services. There is even software that produces phantom reviews.

So can we trust them and what role do consumer organisations play in all this?

Mike Seery, Head of Digital and Chief Technology Officer at Which? said: “The online space is noisier because now users can review products. I think for consumer organisations the bigger picture is actually telling consumers that our work is better because we test products side by side.

“Consumer organisations deliver properly researched objective views. We are providing more than opinions – these are the facts.

“We need to show why we are different and highlight the reliability of information from an established consumer organisation.”

Which? also wants to use a verified comments platform on its website because that can deliver something different – and useful – to its audience.

Reevoo  - the system Which? is using - will enable it to deliver ‘real world’ feedback to its readers and supporter s from people who have purchased and are using  a particular product.

In fact, user review models are already starting to fall foul of consumer protection guidelines, says Edwin Bos,  User Experience VP at Reevoo .

He said: “The model used by the Trip Advisor’s of this world is on the way out – it will happen in the next few years. They might be able to survive in the future but they will have to adapt.

“In France they have regulations which state that consumer reviews have to have evidence that the reviewer has experienced the product. The UK is lagging but it is a matter of time. The US is going after companies that explicitly solicit fake reviews.”

Under the Reevoo model, consumers are asked to provide reviews four to six weeks after they have bought something.

Bos said that he saw consumer organisations as partners rather than competitors.

This is because he believes they offer complementary rather than rival services.

Reevoo reviews come from consumers who might be comparing new products with old products.

Which?  tests products thoroughly, “side by side” but  does not currently have the volume of reviews that user-generated feedback can provide.

But user generated feedback is not the only area of concern over the fast growing ‘blackhat’ marketing industry.

Social media is also being used to create false impressions through the ‘buying’ of likes or follows.

A recent television programme in Britain on the subject generated much discussion in the UK marketing industry.

So far the consumer movement has stayed largely away from monitoring or evaluating social media profiles but, once again, consumer protection regulations may also widen to cover practices in this area too.

The Internet is relatively young – yet it clearly has an extraordinary power to redefine reality. It’s too early to say exactly how consumer organisations will adapt in this new environment, but there remains strong confidence that expert testing and knowledge will continue to have a value in a virtual world struggling to preserve trust.

TPP protest songs: CI takes a pop at secretive trade agreement

Jeremy Malcolm blogs on two new music videos launched today which challenge the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement and aim to raise awareness of  this consumer rights issue.

 

As negotiators for the secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement meet in Bali this week, consumers remain in the dark about how it will affect them. 

Two new music videos that we release today send a strong message to the negotiators – either open up the agreement, or we need to stop the TPP!

The secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement could overturn rules on topics as diverse as intellectual property, food labelling and financial services regulation in twelve countries of the Pacific Rim. 

From today senior officials from those countries are meeting at the APEC meeting in Bali, where they hope to advance the negotiations towards closure this year.

Consumers deserve to be a part of these negotiations.  So until we find out what the officials are planning to agree on our behalf, we need to stop the TPP! 

That is the simple message that Consumers International sends out today with the release of two new shareable music videos to raise public awareness of this impending threat to consumer rights.

The videos could not be more different from each other, either musically or visually, but both brilliantly convey our concerns about this undemocratic treaty under negotiation.

The first is 'No to the TPP' (No Al TPP), a beautiful and stirring bossanova-style song in Spanish by the Grammy Award nominated Chilean musician Ana Tijoux, with an evocative music video directed by Fourd Alzamora.

The second music video is an irresistibly catchy J-pop number called 'Stop the TPP!' (みんなでストップ！TPP) by Japanese musicians Emi Nakada and Citron178.  They released the audio of their original Japanese version earlier in the year, but today CI launches an accompanying animation video as well as an English language vocal version.  We even have a karoke version to which you can sing along!

Emi explains why she made the song: “The subject matter of the TPP is so complicated that people can't easily understand how it affects them.  To alert the people as soon as possible to the risks surrounding the TPP, I wrote lyrics that explain the TPP to everyone in simple terms, while singing happily!  I want you to please use this song as one quick way to simply convey this message to a lot of people!”

Emi collaborated on the track with Citron178 who is a composer of anime (Japanese animation) songs.  This is particularly apt given that the anime fan subculture is one of those threatened by the TPP's rules on intellectual property, which would interfere with the creation of homages such as fan art and “cosplay” (fancy dress) designs.

She writes: “In Japan, not much is known about the effects of the intellectual property chapter of the TPP, but it is likely to regulate the creation of fan fiction.  So in order to send a message to geeks, who like to make secondary creative works like this, I had to make a song in the style of anime songs.”  But the threat of the TPP goes further.  “Once you join the TPP, genetically modified foods come in, food safety is lost, health and life are threatened... The risk of losing everything you need for living is high.  It is no doubt that it is a primary concern for consumers!”

Please share both of these brilliant music videos as widely as you can, to send a strong message that we need to Stop the TPP!  In the words of Ana's song 'No to the TPP':

A treaty is not democratic if it is made behind the people
And your deal is not a deal if it is made secretly and without consensus
We all have the right and we all want to decide
The future and present of our children and how they want to live
No to the TPP

CI strategy direction begins to bear fruit

As CI publishes its Annual Report Summary for 2012, outgoing Director General Helen McCallum reflects on another busy year.

Consumers International has achieved an amazing amount in the past year. Despite the uncertain economic climate, in 2012 we managed to ensure that the consumer voice was heard at some of the most high-level decision-making events.

Our annual report summary highlights some of these achievements, including our actions on World Consumer Rights Day; our role in the revision of the United Nations Guidelines for Consumer Protection; our involvement in the G20/OECD taskforce to create principles for financial consumer protection; our contribution to the development of WHO policy on non-communicable diseases; and our organisation of a first-of-its-kind international gathering looking at the challenges consumers will face in the new digital landscape.

Our new strategy of focusing on a small number of consumer issues for which there is something to be achieved at the international level is working. This is because we are concentrating on areas for which most of our Members have active work programmes and can therefore pool and share ideas: financial services, food, consumer protection, and digital rights.

Our Organisational Empowerment programme is developing services which can bring Members together – either in their own backyard or across the globe – to share information and resources, to learn from the experience of others and to offer or receive mentoring services from those who have more years of experience or have developed an idea which is now transferable somewhere else.

As always, we are seeking additional sources of funding – both to sustain CI itself and to support targeted activity within our four priority areas. Our new Strategic Plan (pdf) is making it easier for us to achieve this.

As always, none of this would be possible without the continued hard work of our membership. My time as Director General will come to an end in December 2013, and I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all of our supporters and partners for your spirit, dedication and commitment to the movement.

The way forward is now established and CI is in a great position to help realise the aim of supporting our Members by providing the benefits you need most and developing a powerful consumer movement equal to the challenges of the 21st Century.

Life and death consumer issues are not a ‘laundry list’

CI Senior Policy Advisor Robin Simpson reports from the UNCTAD Ad Hoc Expert Group Meeting on Consumer Protection discussing the revision of the UN Guidelines for Consumer Protection

To start at the end, CI is pleased with the initial outcome from our meetings on the revision of the UN Guidelines forConsumer Protection (UNGCP). We were broadly content with the outcomes regarding financial services (FS) and e-commerce that have been trailed from the start by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) (the ‘guardians’ of the Guidelines) as the two major issues for incorporation into the UNGCP.

But our position has been consistent that these two issues should not be incorporated to the exclusion of other pressing issues. Neither should they be defined narrowly; they should include, for example, data protection, digital products, and financial remittances.

Inserting only FS and e-commerce would leave the bulk of the Guidelines untouched from 1985 until the next revision in …when? 2030? So we are pleased that the conference also agreed to consider a list of other issues which includes data protection, cross-border trade (still very vague), tourism, collective redress (also called ‘class actions’) integration with other governmental policies, public services including water and energy and the principle of universal service, transport, real estate (housing) access to knowledge, and abusive advertising.

Furthermore, after a pointed intervention from CI, the conference also accepted to look at the idea of a standing commission of the UN to scrutinise the application of the UN Guidelines at national level.

We have volunteered for working groups on FS, e-commerce, ‘other issues’ and the UN Commission. So a good result, right? Still too early to say. We await with interest the UNCTAD report on the meeting and the interpretation of the proceedings by the French presidency which chaired the meeting superbly. 

Despite the diplomatic language, there was an unspoken divide. The richer countries argued for restricting the revision to the two preselected issues. The rest of the delegations pushed back, arguing either for other issues that appeared in the eventual list, or, as we did, for a more comprehensive approach with nothing ruled out at this stage.

Not that the rich countries were entirely in agreement with each other. The US and Germany were poles apart on the inclusion of data protection (Germany) or its exclusion (US). But both wanted the overall scope kept down, with the US, perhaps as a slip of the tongue, describing the list of other issues as a ‘laundry list’ and suggesting that the revision process should concentrate on ‘mainstream’ consumer issues.

We objected to the term ‘laundry list’ which, we said: “belittles the issues involved. Indeed the entire UNGCP could be described as a laundry list. The whole point of the UNGCP is that it is a comprehensive document, which spans the entire horizon of consumer affairs. Instead of seeing the breadth of issues as a problem we should embrace it as a strength.”

We cannot accept that such life and death issues as universal access to water and electricity supplies, for example, are seen as a rather annoying distraction from ‘mainstream issues’ such as FS and e-commerce. For such was the tone of many official delegations – “how can we possibly deal with all these topics?” was a common refrain. In fact, the Guidelines make very brief reference to each sub-sector, and we have demonstrated in our amended version how this can be done. 

We must bear in mind what the Guidelines mean to our Members. They are seen as setting the standard for consumer protection worldwide. Sadly, the tone of too many participants was that this was a chore that had to be disposed of with a minimum of fuss. As we said in debate: “If the breadth of the Guidelines were considered in 1985 the way it was being discussed today, the UNGCP would never have been drafted at all."

A lift for consumer protection in China

CI’s Luke Upchurch on how our newest Supporter organisation is a step in the right direction for consumer protection in China.

Apparently, there are 1.6 million elevators in the China. It’s one of those statistics that brings home the enormity of this nation and the mind-boggling size of its growth.

It was also the subject of a memorable anecdote at the launch of China’s first Research Centre for Policy and Law on Global Consumer Protection. The Centre is the latest organisation to take advantage of our new CI Supporter category of association.

Established by Wuhan University, one of China’s oldest academic institutions, the Centre is one of only a handful in the world dedicated to the study and development of global consumer protection and law. CI was at the inaugural event to present our latest findings on the state of consumer protection and welcome the Centre into the global consumer movement.

The ‘elevator pitch’, put forward by an eminent law professor at the event, began by pointing to the safety regulations for lifts in China: the frequency of effective inspections, the need for certification, the liability of the building’s owners and the statutory rights of anyone injured whilst using the elevator.

Consumer protection in China, the professor argued, needed to adopt a similar framework. It was a thought-provoking example; one of many during this two day event.

For instance Connie Lau, until recently head of the Hong Kong Consumer Council and now adviser to UNCTAD, spoke of the conflict between prudential regulation of financial services and consumer protection – a point picked up by Wuhan’s Professor Zhou who raised the failures of the Chinese regulators to stamp out malpractices.

In the same vain, Ying Yu of the Wuhan Centre pointed to the fact that China had as yet no bank deposit guarantee for consumers in operation, despite being under consideration for many years.

Both of these issues have been recently highlighted in CI’s work on the UN Guidelines for Consumer Protection (the focus of the Wuhan conference).   

Other interventions focused on the remarkable level of internet use in China. Wuhan University’s Professor Qisheng HE pointed out that there are 538 million web users in China – 210 million of which shop online, 187 million are online bank users.

These are staggering figures for a country that – like many others – has few viable avenues for consumers to seek redress in online commerce disputes. There were also revealing presentations on counterfeit consumption, sustainability, data security, as well as much on the UN Guidelines.

From the degree of understanding and analysis on display at the event, it’s clear that some in China have woken up to the need for higher standards of consumer protection – not just to reassure global markets about the quality of its exports, but also as a harbinger of growth in its own domestic consumer economy.

A point further emphasised by recent indications that the authorities are considering allowing China’s consumers to pursue class actions for the first time.

The Wuhan Centre is a milestone on a journey, not only as a means for China to explore international standards in consumer protection, but also for the rest of the world to understand the impact of consumer rights development in a country that boasts one-sixth of the world’s population. What happens here will, and does, affect us all.

Those clever minds in China looking at consumer protection already know the pressing issues at hand. As do most Chinese consumers: product safety, fake goods, sustainability, financial services, digital consumer rights and, above all, effective legislation and enforcement.

The Wuhan Centre, and, by acquiescence, China’s authorities know the benefits an international perspective can bring to this challenge: it is why both the state and China’s consumer rights experts are so keen to get involved in the revision of the UN Guidelines on Consumer Protection – something CI is uniquely placed to offer the Wuhan Centre, along with our other Members, Supporters, and partners in China and across the world.

By becoming a CI Supporter organisation we hope the rest of the global consumer rights movement can help the Wuhan Centre navigate a path of best practice as it seeks to elevate consumer justice and protection for China's 1.35 billion people.  

If you would like to find out more about becoming a Member or Supporter of CI, please visit the Join us section on the CI website.