TRADE: NGOs Take Their Own Message to Davos

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Stefania Bianchi

BRUSSELS, Jan 20 2004 (IPS) - Leading non-governmental organisations and trade unions will be closely monitoring the World Economic Forum, opening in Davos Wednesday, to ensure that they can make their own message clear in what threatens to be a mini trade ministerial.

Up to 30 trade and economy ministers from some 20 countries will gather in the Swiss alpine village in an attempt to reinvigorate the stalled World Trade Organisation (WTO) negotiations – on the sidelines of the main event.

However, Pascal Lamy, the European Union’s (EU) Commissioner for Trade, will be absent from the meeting.

“Partnering for Prosperity and Security” is this year’s theme for the World Economic Forum (WEF), which runs from Jan. 21 to 25, drawing thousands of participants, including national leaders, corporate executives, financiers and economists.

The WEF organizers consider the event an opportunity to reflect on the world’s troubles: the aftermath of the war in Iraq, the war on terror, the shaky recovery in the global economy, transatlantic tensions over trade and security, global warming, corporate governance and many others.

But many non-governmental organisations (NGOs) fear that other important issues will be sidelined in order to revive the trade talks.

Two years of foundering – practically since November 2001 when the Doha Development Round was launched by the WTO ministers in the Qatari capital – have seriously compromised the fate of the talks involving the organisation’s 147 member states.

Talks in the Mexican beach resort Cancun broke down last September mainly over the estimated 350 billion dollars a year rich countries spend on farm subsidies, and on the new issues EU wants to take in. These include trade and competition policy, trade facilitation, and transparency in government procurement.

Pat Cox, President of the European Parliament, told media representatives in Brussels Tuesday that the EU must not miss the Davos opportunity to push for multilateralism.

“We must place effective multilateralism firmly at the top of the Davos agenda,” he said in a statement. “We must learn the lessons of last year’s Iraq crisis – that countries ravaged by tyranny and war can only be successfully rebuilt through the UN and with the active support of the entire international community.”

However, Friends of the Earth International (FoEI), a leading grassroots environmental group, warns that the forum could pose a threat to democracy by hosting discussions vital to the whole world behind closed doors.

FoEI says that the WEF, which paved the way for the creation of the WTO, will host a selection of WTO members for closed-door meetings aimed at trying to kick start the trade negotiations.

In an effort to diffuse criticism about its secrecy, the WEF started in 2003 its own ‘Open Forum’ which will run in parallel to its traditional closed-door meetings.

FoEI says that it will be keeping a close watch on the Davos event from the independent gathering ‘Public Eye on Davos’, which will provide a critical analysis of the WEF corporate driven globalisation agenda.

Tony Juniper, vice-chair of FoEI, says that while the WEF claims to act in the public interest, “behind the closed doors and the WEF’s public relations gloss there is a different reality”.

“Prosperity for the WEF means prosperity for the huge multinational corporations who write the rules of world trade û rules that help them, but often hurt the global environment and the poorest people. It is deeply worrying and quite wrong for world trade policy to be decided in secret and while dissenters are excluded,” he said in a statement Monday.

The Brussels-based International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), which represents more than 151 million workers in 233 affiliated organisations around the world, says that the WEF is taking place at a “critical time”.

“Public concerns continue to grow over the negative impacts of an approach to globalisation based on deregulation and trade liberalisation, as typified by the failed WTO Ministerial Conference at Cancun and by the latest cases of corporate corruption,” Barbara Kwateng, spokesperson for the ICFTU told IPS.

The ICFTU delegation will also call on world leaders and business chiefs to take strong measures to tackle corporate corruption, aid developing countries and boost the world economy, as warning signs of a looming international economic crisis mount.

ICFTU General Secretary Guy Ryder, who will lead the 20-strong delegation, said in a statement Tuesday: “We will use the Davos forum to call the attention of top executives and government leaders to the serious and deepening fault-lines in the global economy, and to set out the case for fundamental change.”

Union leaders will point to heightened international tensions, fragility in the global economy and the disclosure of dramatic new corporate scandals, which weaken the prospects for sustainable world economic growth, leaving hundreds of millions of the world’s poor with no opportunity to escape poverty and improve their lives.

The ICFTU says that global economic deregulation is undermining social standards and leading to a “race to the bottom”. This in turn, it believes, undermines the position of other developing countries, particularly those striving to ensure that labour and environmental standards are respected.

“While many well-known multinationals have publicly stated their commitment to social responsibility, too few have matched their actions to their rhetoric,” said Philip Jennings, General Secretary of Union Network International.

The International Federation Terre des Hommes, a network of 10 organisations working for the rights of the child, will also attend the Davos event to highlight the effects of globalisation on children.

The NGO says to reverse the distress of millions of children all over the world, the Convention on the Rights of the Child needs to be fully implemented by all countries, and that it is necessary to enter into dialogue without compromise or violence.

“States have the primary responsibility to guarantee the rights to education and health through quality public services available to all. At the time of privatisation of crucial services for future generations, it should be emphasised that the involvement of civil society is essential to build a real democracy,” Bernard Boëton, Head of the Child Rights Department of the Terre des Hommes Foundation in Lausanne, Switzerland, said in a statement Monday.