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WTO-SPECIAL: Failure to Reach Agreement Would Benefit South
By Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES, Dec 16 (IPS) - Social action movements that have been
following the World Trade Organisation (WTO) debates in Hong Kong from a
distance are of the opinion that if the meeting ends without a firm
agreement, it will mainly be of benefit to the countries of the developing
South, which need more time to strengthen
their bargaining position.
"We do not at all believe that it would be a failure to conclude the meeting
without an agreement," activist Jorge Carpio, of the Argentine organisation
Foco (Focus), told IPS. Foco organised debates on poverty and free trade, in
which activists from all around the world took part, parallel to the Fourth
Summit of the Americas held in Mar del Plata, Argentina in November
In Argentina, Foco coordinates the Global Call to Action Against Poverty
(GCAP) in which some 1,500 non-governmental organisations and social action
movements participate worldwide, with the aim of promoting measures against
extreme poverty and hunger.
"It doesn't matter how long the WTO negotiations take. On the contrary: we
need time to recover from the devastation caused by the neoliberal reforms
of the 1990s. If no agreement is reached, we will have some breathing room
in which to recover, re-establish alliances between countries of the South,
and prepare to bargain from a better position," explained Carpio.
At the Sixth WTO Ministerial Conference, running Dec. 13-18 in Hong Kong,
nobody expects spectacular agreements or progress given the irreconcilable
differences between the industrialised North and developing countries. The
most optimistic observers merely hope for approval of a timetable for
continuing the talks in 2006.
>From this viewpoint, Carpio emphasised that the emergence in August 2003 of
the Group of 20 (G20) developing countries as a forum for coordinating
positions on trade issues has contributed greatly to strengthening the
strategy of putting the brakes on agreements and gaining precious time.
The G20, coordinated by Brazil and India, acts within the framework of the
WTO and is demanding that the industrial powers - the United States, the
European Union and Japan - eliminate trade-distorting agricultural
protectionism.
The G20 is currently made of 21 nations: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile,
China, Cuba, Egypt, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan,
Paraguay, the Philippines, South Africa, Tanzania, Thailand, Uruguay,
Venezuela and Zimbabwe.
According to Carpio, other countries, while not actually members of the
group, also feel that they are represented by it.
Meanwhile, civil society organisations are also raising awareness about
issues such as world trade and its impacts on daily life, the economy,
political stability and the environment.
In the last few weeks, Foco held workshops in Buenos Aires, aimed especially
at the unemployed, whose organisations are known as "piqueteros" because of
their main protest strategy of holding roadblocks (piquetes).
The activists have also worked with teachers' unions, educating them about
the impact of free trade on the economies of the South, and offering them
teaching materials they can use to study the links between trade,
unemployment and poverty.
The participants in the workshops which drew piquetero activists began by
talking about their immediate concerns about inflation and the lack of
employment opportunities, and gradually began to relate these facts to a
wider, more global process.
Carpio said that although the issue of trade might appear to be unconnected
with the problems of people who are poor and unemployed, it is not. The
participating activists "recognised that the explosion in unemployment in
Argentina took place in the 1990s, when trade was liberalised to a
record-breaking extent," he noted.
In Argentina, the free-market reforms of the 1990s last decade resulted in a
catastrophic political, social and economic collapse which brought the
government down in 2001 and left a deep-rooted social crisis in its wake.
Poverty reached 54 percent of the population and unemployment soared above
20 percent.
"If there are no trade barriers in our countries, our factories cannot
compete with products imported from developed countries, and people link
that immediately to their own experience and living conditions," Carpio
said. But the process of understanding these connections takes time, he
added.
In November, Foco conducted a series of workshops in Mar del Plata, which
hosted the Summit of the Americas, with the purpose of taking a common
stance in the run-up to the Hong Kong meeting.
Taking part in workshops were Elizabeth Tang, of the Hong Kong People's
Alliance, Steve Hellinger, president of The Development Gap and coordinator
of the Alliance for Responsible Trade, from the United States, Chilean
Claudio Lara, representing Consumers International, and Dave Spooner,
executive secretary of the International Federation of Workers' Education
Associations.
"Trade unions and NGOs are concerned that the WTO negotiations ... will have
a massive impact on employment in the agricultural, industrial, fisheries,
forestry and services sectors," the activists said in a communiqué issued
after the meeting.
The groups concluded that the promises of welfare and full employment in the
WTO's founding charter have never been fulfilled.
"The WTO's trade and investment rules have taken the world in the opposite
direction, and the current negotiations threaten to take us further still,"
the activists warned.
"Increased liberalisation of trade in agricultural products ... was supposed
to bring benefits to all. But the only winners were the global agri-food
TNCs (transnational corporations)," they said.
Furthermore, they emphasised that "if cheap imports flood countries with
weak industrial sectors, these industries will be wiped out, causing higher
unemployment."
The way the negotiations are going, "they are not taking us towards decent
jobs nor development, and they may cause massive unemployment and
destruction of livelihoods, and deprive governments of much-needed income
that now comes from tariffs."
The WTO talks are bogged down and it seems unlikely that an agreement
combining a real reduction of agricultural subsidies in the rich world with
a more moderate freeing up of developing countries' markets, in terms of
services and industrial tariffs, will be reached next year.
Many observers believe that if a minimal agreement about how to move forward
is not achieved, the Hong Kong meeting will have been a failure. But the
representatives of social action movements hold a very different view.
"It would only be a failure for countries that have everything to gain. But
we have everything to lose, and much, much more to gain if we have a little
more time," Carpio asserted.
(END/2005)
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