Development & Aid, Economy & Trade, Global, Global Geopolitics, Headlines

DEVELOPMENT: NGOs Want Bigger Role in a Stronger UNCTAD

Mario Osava

SAO PAULO, Jun 18 2004 (IPS) - Civil society representatives said they are frustrated and concerned about the path of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), a critical assessment that contrasts with the rosy evaluation made by the leaders of the U.N. body, which concluded its eleventh ministerial sessions here Friday.

”We were expecting an UNCTAD that would show more leadership,” but during this conference the most important outcomes came from the parallel events involving other institutions, said Yara Pietricovsky, coordinator of the Brazilian Network for the Integration of Peoples and one of the organisers of the UNCTAD Civil Society Forum.

There were numerous meetings during the week-long UNCTAD XI that were related to World Trade Organisation negotiations and to the trade accord being hammered out between the European Union and Mercosur (Southern Common Market), which comprises Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.

Ministerial meetings of the Group of 20 (G20) developing countries that are fighting subsidies and distortions in agricultural markets, on the one hand, and of the P5 (Five Interested Parties), on the other, attempted to kick-start WTO negotiations on farm trade, creating a positive outlook for the future, said host Celso Amorim, Brazil’s foreign minister.

The P5 ”parties” are key players in the agricultural debate: Australia (representing the Cairns Group), Brazil, and India – leaders in the anti-subsidies effort – and the European Union and United States, leaders in paying out subsidies to their farmers.

Paulo Nehru Tannassee, a trade unionist with the World Confederation of Labour, says UNCTAD is not paying enough attention to job creation or to the Millennium Development Goals, established by the U.N. General Assembly in 2000, which do not include specific targets for new jobs.

Magaly Pazello, researcher for DAWN (Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era), said the negative part of the ”Sao Paulo Consensus”, the final declaration of UNCTAD XI, is ”the narrow view that continues to treat women like objects and not subjects of policies.”

This is a common failing of international forums, she said. They recognise women as victims of globalisation, but not the active role they should have in overcoming inequality, poverty and other social ills.

Women face cultural and institutional barriers that require public policies that have not been included in international resolutions or implemented by governments, and which are essential if women are to be true agents of change, Pazello told IPS.

Trade liberalisation divides production into various stages that take place in different countries, and women are given the ”most mechanical jobs”, such as assembling computers, she said.

Furthermore, policies for increasing farm exports favour the major producers and undermine family farm operations, and with them, women peasants, said Pazello.

But the non-governmental organisations (NGOs) taking part in the Civil Society Forum did name several positive points in the final document and in the UNCTAD XI resolutions, such as the defence of ”spaces for national policies” of developing countries, of family farming and of special treatment for the least-developed countries, said Meena Raman, an activist with Friends of the Earth.

The decision to create a task force to study mechanisms for recuperating and stabilising commodity prices is ”promising”, said Alexandra Stricknen, with the Institute for Agricultural and Trade Policy.

Another proposal that won applause is to set up a fund that would help countries that rely on exports of just one or two commodities to diversify. But the success of that initiative depends on ”countries that have money”, given that UNCTAD has none, said the institution’s secretary-general, Rubens Ricupero.

”Sao Paulo was another lost opportunity,” lamented Aftab Alam Khan, head of the food rights campaign for ActionAid International. The UNCTAD XI declaration does not adequately respond to the matter of deeply impoverished peasant farmers, or the regulation of transnational corporations, he said.

But ActionAid and 13 more NGOs were pleased with the decision taken during the UNCTAD meeting to reactivate the Global System of Trade Preferences (GSTP) aimed specifically at boosting trade within the developing South.

A big concern of the NGOs and social movements participating in the Civil Society Forum, which was linked to UNCTAD, was the question: Who will succeed Ricupero at the helm?

Activists want someone who will strengthen the U.N. body, based on the original mandate to promote development of poor countries, intensify South-South cooperation, and create a research department with a capacity similar to other multilateral institutions, like the WTO, International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan promised to seek a new UNCTAD leader who would promote those aspirations, and even asked the Civil Society Forum to suggest names.

UNCTAD’s advances ”are fragile” in the global context of militarisation and the U.S. war on terrorism, which activist Pietricovsky said is causing reversals of the achievements made by the major U.N. summits of the past decade.

She says the democratisation of international institutions is essential. ”We want coherence with human rights, ethics and deeper democracy,” and not the ”reverse coherence” with the market, the IMF and WTO.