DEVELOPMENT: New Offensive against WTO and Globalisation

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Jun 8 2000 (IPS) - The leaders of the often-tumultuous protests during the last two years against the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and neoliberal economic policies in general are to gather in this Swiss city to assess the possibility of launching a new international protest campaign.

Neoliberal globalisation affects all sectors of the world, and people are tired of a system that is spinning further out of their control, said Juan Tortosa, one of the organisers of the conference to begin June 22.

People perceive a power that they do not know how to manage and which is disconcerting, and this has triggered a strong opposition to continuing in this direction, Tortosa maintained.

The conclusion of the four-day meeting of activists will coincide with the beginning of the special United Nations (UN) General Assembly Social Summit Review, also in Geneva, to evaluate the international community’s compliance with commitments on poverty, unemployment and social exclusion signed in Copenhagen in 1995.

At the earlier alternative conference, associations, collectives and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are to debate formulas to expand and improve the coordination of social movements at the international level, Tortosa said.

The initiative is inspired on what the organisers say were successful anti-globalisation protests in May in Washington DC during the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank assembly meetings.

Another favourable precedent, the leaders assert, was the third WTO ministerial conference, held last December in the US city of Seattle, which was overrun by hostile demonstrators and ended as a political fiasco, without one multilateral trade agreement signed.

The different groups behind those protests “would find each other on the streets when the time came to protest against the WTO, IMF or the World Bank,” Tortosa stated. But they have not yet had the opportunity or the time to discuss what the various groups have in common, what separates them, and what each has to offer the others, he said.

This has served as the primary motive behind calling this meeting of the diverse groups and social sectors from all continents that “fight neoliberal globalisation.”

The second objective will be drafting an international calendar of demonstrations, which potentially includes the convocation of a world day of protest against neoliberal policies, Tortosa announced.

Other proposals on the agenda are related to creating alliances between organisations of similar interests, as well as drafting broader agreements on specific issues.

The idea to call the Geneva meeting arose from the group of associations that signed the “Bangkok Appeal to the people of the world” last February during the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) meeting, held in the Thai capital.

The document known as the Bangkok Appeal is based on the premise that “the events of Seattle have changed the balance of forces” at the global level.

The manifesto interprets the world panorama as being divided between the social movements opposed to globalisation and the leaders of the Group of Seven wealthiest countries, governments, corporations and international economic institutions that “drive the globalisation project.”

The organisations that signed the Appeal called on all social movements, from the industrialised North to the developing South, “to fight for the cancellation of all debt of developing countries which in the judgment of civil society is illegitimate, immoral or unpayable and to end the IMF’s structural adjustment policies in indebted nations.”

They also appealed for further demonstrations to postpone any new negotiations for expanding the power or the jurisdiction of the WTO.

Tortosa, who heads the Swiss committee of the Bangkok Appeal, commented that this document is the first step in uniting social groups that are united in their criticism of the globalisation process. The next step, he said, will be to establish a structured movement.

The alternative conference will close June 25 with a demonstration that will cross Geneva, following the same route as another march, two years ago, to protest the second WTO ministerial conference being held in the city at the time.

The 1998 anti-WTO protests ended with surprising violence that resulted in the destruction of buildings and vehicles, and marked the beginning of similar incidents targeting the global trade body since.

Tortosa rejected the idea that such violence would occur during the demonstrations planned as part of this conference. The goal, he said, is to always take firm action that is well organised and non-violent. “More is achieved through non-violence than with violence,” he pointed out.

The ones who continually resort to violence are the police, he affirmed. In general, the anti-globalisation groups that have engaged in violence have been very few and are outside the mainstream of the movement.

The anti-neoliberalism movement is not limited to denouncing the damage the process causes, said Tortosa, it will also present solutions that will be discussed during theme-based seminars during the conference June 22 to 25.

For now, there exist only partial ideas for a central project that is still a bit unclear, Tortosa explained. Before, the model was simple because the socialist bloc stood in opposition to capitalism. But that counterforce no longer exists, nor is it what the current movement wants. We must create a model that allows a range of ideas to converge, he said.