WTO fails again:
the first time was farce, the second time is tragedy
Report from the Coalition of Civil Society groups in Doha
The coalition of civil society groups in Doha laud the courage
and determination shown by developing countries in defending
the trade system from an imposition of the US' and EU's
corporate agenda on the developing world. The troika of the
US, EU and the WTO's Director-General mounted enormous
pressure to massively extend the tentacles of the WTO into new
areas of the global economy such as investment. They failed.
The lessons of the Seattle debacle in 1999 were ignored. The
negotiations process in Geneva was untransparent and deeply
unfair to the majority of WTO members. The inequities
continued in Doha. The much criticised "Green Rooms" used in
Seattle were used again, and the powerful role of unelected
facilitators of informal groups resulted in them being
characterized as "Green Men". Civil society representatives in
Doha exposed unethical negotiating practices by some
governments of the rich world, such as linking aid budgets and
trade preferences to the trade positions of developing
countries, and targeting individual developing country
negotiators. The approach of the major trading nations in the
rich world was arrogant, as if they could agree an agenda and
then impose it on the rest of the world.
In Doha, trade deals continued to be negotiated on the basis
of commercially-oriented deal making and an ideological
commitment to trade liberalisation, rather than a full
assessment of the impacts of past policies on the poor, the
environment and human rights. As a result, the trade system
has lost the confidence of many of its members and the wider
public. There needs to be a far-reaching an independent review
to ensure that the WTO embodies internal democracy towards its
members, real engagement with civil society and
accountability, through its member governments, to the wider
public in their societies. We look forward to the leadership
of the Director-General Designate to establish the
independence, accountability and legitimacy of the WTO
Secretariat.
The tragedy of Doha was that the proposals for fairer WTO
rules, repeatedly made by developing countries since 1999,
still have not been fully considered, let alone agreed and
implemented. As the Minister of Trade and Industry of
Tanzania, Mr. Iddi Simba said this week, the problems of
unfair trade are costing people their lives. Most at risk are
the millions of people, especially women and children, without
basic rights and opportunities. This Ministerial conference in
Doha should have started to redress the deep imbalances in
trade rules. But the much-hyped 'Development Round' is empty
of development. The Doha Ministerial has failed the world's
poor.
The WTO member governments have again failed to address the
deep concerns about the impact of trade rules on the poorest
people and the environment. Most of the positive proposals
from civil society have not been considered. These include
protection of the rights to development, promotion of local
economies, food security, social, cultural and labour rights,
and protection of the environment. These proposals recognize
that the competence of the WTO must be limited to trade, and
that conflicts between trade and other international
agreements must be resolved outside the WTO system. Reform of
the global system must also include regulation of the main
actors in the global economy, the multinational corporations.
Civil society is calling for the start of a process that would
lead to proper regulation of the global economy, based on UN
agreed standards, to be taken forward in fora taking place
this year, such as UN Financing for Development, the Food
Summit and the Earth Summit + 10. But the attention of civil
society groups in Doha, and the hundreds of thousands of
people who mobilized in major actions in over 35 countries,
will remain firmly on the WTO. We and the thousands of our
civil society partners who could not attend this meeting, will
renew our public awareness raising and mobilisation during the
ongoing and new negotiations. We continue to do so until trade
rules serve the aims of sustainable development, poverty
reduction and human rights.
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