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WTO-CANCUN: This ‘Farce’ Should Be Dissolved – Menchu

Diego Cevallos

CANCUN, Mexico, Sep 12 2003 (IPS) - The WTO should be dismantled and replaced by a new global organisation that grants consultative status to non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and not the ”crumbs and empty promises” they are given now, said Nobel Peace laureate Rigoberta Menchú.

The World Trade Organisation ”is a farce”, said the Guatemalan indigenous leader in an IPS interview in the Mexican Caribbean resort city of Cancun, where she is taking part in the parallel forums to the WTO’s Fifth Ministerial Conference.

Menchú, who heads an international social justice foundation bearing her name, made a veiled criticism of the NGOs that have been authorised to participate in the official WTO gathering alongside the 146 member states’ delegations, saying, ”I don’t know who they are, or what they do, or anything.”

She also condemned the civil society activists who engage in violence in protesting the WTO and the neoliberal economic model of globalisation it represents. The violent protesters ”are irresponsible and foolish,” she said.

Q: There are representatives from some 1,000 NGOs attending the official WTO conference. Is this significant? Does it mean there is interest in hearing what they have to say?

A: I don’t have any idea of what type of civil society organisation is participating inside the WTO. I only know that from the other side, on the streets of Cancun, there is dialogue among small cooperatives that engage in fair trade, among groups of peasant farmers, students and women. Nobody inside the WTO is listening to them. If there are some organisations inside the conference, I don’t know who they are.

Q: But there are big NGOs from around the world at the official conference protesting and trying to make their message heard.

A: What I know is that inside the WTO they don’t listen to the civil society organisations or to the peasants who suffer. I don’t think anyone inside the WTO want to hear what I have to say.

I don’t see the trade organisation as having any space for real society, because the NGOs that are supposedly participating there are receiving only crumbs and empty promises.

Q: The WTO Ministerial Conference ends Sunday. What is your prediction for results?

A: Fortunately, I don’t think we are going to see agreements, and that pleases me because that will shake up the WTO, which today has a structure that gives a great deal of power to the rich and to transnational companies.

The WTO must change and be replaced by an organisation similar to the United Nations, where many civil society groups do indeed have a space and where we are given consultative status. Today, if you are not a trade minister, at the WTO you have no opportunity to channel proposals or initiatives for dialogue.

Q: Do you think the WTO is so flawed that it should be dissolved?

A: Yes, I think so, although some of its executives deny it. The major discrepancies existing between the blocs of governments and the impossibility of reaching agreement on basic issues – such as agricultural subsidies (in the industrialised North) – are symptoms that this an organisation in serious crisis.

Q: As for the NGOs and activists, what will be the outcome of their discussions at the close of the ”people’s forums” that are being held in parallel to the WTO conference?

A: There will be a fortification of their efforts, of their agenda, which will lead to increased influence and strength. Only organised civil society will be able to tear down organisations like the WTO, which are a farce.

Q: Does that include the groups that engaged in violent protest here in Cancun, or the South Korean farmers confederation, whose leader Lee Kyang-Hae committed suicide, stabbing himself to death in front of the police barricades?

A: The suicide was a tragedy. If he wanted to carry it out he should not have chosen this as the location, because it only twisted the struggle of the civil society organisations.

As for the violent ones, I believe they are the result of institutionalised violence around the world, where today terrorism is fought with more terrorism. But I think they are irresponsible and foolish, because they are not contributing in any way to the social movement against the prevailing model of globalisation.