Civil Society Protest in Geneva Against the WTO Corporate Agenda By Amandine Bach Women in Development Europe (WIDE) |
Hundreds of civil society trade campaigners from around the world gathered on 27-29 July in Geneva during the WTO's General Council meeting. After the so-called July framework was agreed in Geneva last year, campaigners had decided to be in Geneva in July while the negotiations were taking place, to prevent a bad deal from being signed by developing countries. Even if no real move was made in the negotiations this year, the three-day event, organised by the Geneva Peoples' Alliance, offered civil society representatives the opportunity to discuss the main issues at stake in the negotiations. The civil society discussions took place in the context of plenaries on agriculture, NAMA (non-agricultural market access) and GATS (the General Agreement on Trade in Services) and in more specific workshops. While critically analysing the current positions of the different countries in the WTO negotiations, civil society made it clear that a human rights agenda should be at the forefront of the negotiations. On agriculture, while no new proposals that would seriously address the concerns of developing countries were put on the table in the WTO, the farmers' movement, farm workers, and consumer, environmental and other NGOs again raised the point that the WTO and free trade agreements ignore the obvious problems that women and men farmers face worldwide. They claimed that free trade rules have in fact imposed a plague of low prices on agricultural goods in every continent while disregarding the local and regional nature of farming and food systems. One way forward would be to get agriculture out of the WTO, so as to ensure the right of every country to have people's food sovereignty. On GATS, the main focus of the civil society discussions unexpectedly turned out to be mode 4, which allows for the cross-border travel and movement of company workers in the context of the delivery of services. While NGOs have a clear position on benchmarks in GATS, the implications of mode 4 are still an issue and need urgently to be debated. Mode 4 might be a deal-breaker in the run-up to Hong Kong, as some developing countries are asking for more substantial commitments in mode 4 (especially opening it up to include low-skilled workers). However, there was a clear agreement among civil society that the free movement of people should not be determined by global trade regimes. These are matters of fundamental human rights and should be determined and governed under principles and rules established by the UN Human Rights Commission and the International Labour Organization. Different actions took place in front of the WTO every day. WIDE representative Amandine Bach participated also in a Seattle-to-Brussels action staged in front of the EU representation in Geneva during a press conference given by Peter Mandelson, the EU Trade Commissioner. Under the common slogan 'Stop the EU corporate agenda', NGO representatives demanded that the EU halt its aggressive attempts to open up developing country markets for the benefit of European negotiations on industrial tariffs and services. This action aimed at denouncing the EC's development rhetoric and the EU's apparent good will in the negotiations while the EC is actually increasing the pressure on developing countries to speed up the negotiations. The EC's tabling of a 'non-paper' at the WTO at the end of June 2005 to change the modalities in the GATS negotiations, for example by establishing benchmarks for the quality of offers and the prioritisation of some sectors, shows strikingly that the EC's practice is not development-friendly, for it is totally contradictory to the flexibility and the bottom-up approach of GATS. WIDE will keep monitoring the EU position in the run-up to Hong Kong to ensure that no trade agreements will be accepted at the expense of women's and men's rights.
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