DEVELOPMENT: UNCTAD Prioritises Civil Society and Trade

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Jan 24 2000 (IPS) - The secretary general of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Rubens Ricupero, maintains hope that the agency’s next meeting will unblock international trade negotiations and bring civil society into the globalisation debate.

UNCTAD’s tenth conference, to be held in Bangkok, Thailand, Feb 12 to 19, will establish the path the institution’s secretariat is to follow, as the delegates do ever four years.

But the Brazilian Ricupero hopes this year’s session also becomes an opportunity to revitalise the process of multilateral trade talks, which were left frail by the December fiasco of the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) ministerial conference in Seattle.

UNCTAD’s participation in the process would be completely informal, without interfering in the WTO’s territory, explained Ricupero.

WTO director general, New Zealander Mike Moore, will remain in Bangkok the week of the conference to speak before the plenary session and to establish contacts with participants, who represent the 190 UNCTAD member-states.

Moore will have the opportunity to meet with the heads of state from the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and from many developing countries to hear their opinions on ways out of the bogged-down trade talks.

In the Thai capital, the WTO leader will also meet with the nation’s vice-prime minister Supachai Panitchpakdi, who will succeed Moore as WTO director general in 2002. Panitchpakdi will preside over the UNCTAD X, as the Bangkok conference is known.

After the Seattle failure, Moore initiated measures to reactivate the process, visiting the capitals of the world’s principal trading powers, including Tokyo, Brussels, Washington and New Delhi.

Judging from Moore’s comments following the Seattle conference, and from the mood among diplomats in Geneva, home to the WTO, the stagnation persists and is unlikely to loosen during the next meeting of the WTO general council Feb 7.

Ricupero criticised “the spirit of resignation and complacency” that dominates Geneva and other circles.

This attitude, he said, is the equivalent of saying that “nothing can be done this year because we must wait for the (US presidential) elections” in November.

The Bangkok conference will not provide a way out of the dead-end international trade talks, but may offer the atmosphere and contacts necessary for negotiators to study the situation without stress or deadlines, explained the UNCTAD secretary general.

For the developing world, a way out is through renewing negotiations on pending issues of the Uruguay Round of trade talks and a commitment to progress in areas of interest to poorer countries, such as agriculture, textiles, and staggered tariffs, among others.

Another key aspect of UNCTAD X will be the issue of participation for non-governmental actors in the globalisation debates.

The delegates in Bangkok should discuss whether the conditions are appropriate for establishing a structured and organised dialogue with civil socity, explained Ricupero.

The debate would not solely revolve around trade, as occurred in Seattle, but would include investment, competition, consumer protection, food security and social implications.

Delegates would explore the globalisation issues that cause many people anxiety, such as employment problems, affirmed the UNCTAD chief.

Ricupero proposed that the Thailand meeting be used to evaluate the possibility of forming a kind of “world parliament of globalisation.” This parliament would not interfere or try to impose itself on the national legislative bodies that receive their mandate through elections.

Nor does UNCTAD propose to monopolise this globalisation parliament, which would include a forum of organisations from civil society for discussing development-related issues, he emphasised.

Ricupero’s idea is to choose one or two issues each year to be discussed during the UNCTAD’s second semester session.

In selecting non-governmental organisations to participate in the forum, the degree of activity of each of these institutions in a given year’s issue would be taken into consideration.

If the debate is on foreign debt and development, one of the organisations to be included in the forum might be Britain’s OXFAM, said the UNCTAD secretary general.