ECONOMY: Citizen Groups to Protest Davos Forum Elitism

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Jan 25 2000 (IPS) - The anti-globalisation movement, which intensified last December in the US city of Seattle, climbs this week to an altitude of more than 1,500 metres, reaching the Davos winter resort in the Swiss Alps, where the authors of the economic liberalisation process meet once again.

The goal of the protesters from several Swiss and international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) on this occasion is to “overcome the economic model” that has been promoted for the last 30 years by the World Economic Forum, the institution hosting the Davos conference.

The Swiss organisation known as the Berne Declaration, the US- based Friends of the Earth, Pro Nature and the Globalisation Challenge Initiative group have announced several acts of protest, which will culminate with a demonstration this Friday in the alpine town.

Miriam Behrens, world policy director for Pro Nature, stated that the Davos Forum tends to “prioritise growth at the cost of sustainability.”

The Davos Forum is a scenario of meetings between government officials and the transnational business community to negotiate investments and favourable fiscal measures, particularly in developing countries pressed by problems of economic growth.

These contacts take place alongside conferences and technical presentations by the neo-liberal school’s most renowned economists.

The secretary general of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Rubens Ricupero, said this week that, though somewhat exaggerated, “the Davos image is that of a forum of the Earth’s most powerful.”

Among other well-known figures, this year’s forum includes the participation of US president Bill Clinton and British prime minister Tony Blair.

Of the 2,000 Davos conference participants, nearly all are government officials and business executives. The non-governmental organisations will be notably absent, lamented Peter Bosshard, secretary general of the Berne Declaration, a group that promotes more-equitable relations between Switzerland and the countries of the developing South.

Protest organisers plan to create “a true platform that will be set up every year in Davos to give society the chance to speak, because it has been marginalised by globalisation,” explained Jolanda Piniel, the Berne Declaration’s press officer.

The World Economic Forum is “a herd of elephants that crushes the rights of humans and of nature,” added Pro Nature’s Behrens.

Davos has two choices, according to Piniel: either open its doors to representatives of civil society, of landless peasants in Brazil, of miners in South Africe and of the millions of people displaced by hydroelectric dams; or, continue to be an exclusive club for big business.

The announcement of citizen demonstrations in Davos worried the Swiss authorities, who have stepped up security measures and increased the number of police who will cordon off the resort, though it is already nearly-inaccessible due to its mountainous geography.

But concern intensified last week after two pyrotechnic rockets destroyed windows at a building where the principal forum events are held.

The Swiss press attributes the rising NGO tensions to incidents that occurred in Seattle in December during the failed third ministerial conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

But the most serious precedent of violence took place in Geneva in May 1998 during the WTO’s second ministerial conference.

There, for two full days, the Swiss police were unable to control demonstrators as they protested against globalisation and the WTO.

But the group of NGOs planning the protests this week in Davos assured that they have warned their supporters against violence and intend to use peaceful means to reach their goal of creating a more democratic forum that is open to society’s criticisms.