Posted by WTO Watch Qld on November 25, 2001 at 12:26:51:
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
We must find new lands from where we can easily obtain raw materials and at the same time exploit the cheap slave labour
that is obtainable from the natives of the colonies. The colonies would also provide a dumping ground
for the surplus goods produced in our factories. Cecil Rhodes, founder of Rhodesia as quoted in the Ecologist 22, no 4 (1992)
1) COMING EVENTS
2) CALLS TO ACTION
3) FOCUS ON THE DOHA MINISTERIAL
a) WTO= World Take Over
b) Doha Outcomes
c) WTO Fails Again
1) COMING EVENTS
PUBLIC MEETING FOR PEACE
Ithaca Room City Hall Brisbane
7pm Tuesday November 27 2001
AFTER AFGHANISTAN - WHAT NEXT?
Should we support an unending war? Are we prepared to be involved in overt and covert military operations in many,as yet unnamed, places?
WHO OR WHAT IS OUR ENEMY?
Speakers: Adrian D'Hage, Brigadier ADF (retired) awarded the Military Cross in Vietnam
"...as a soldier of about 37 years, I can say with some authority that war should be an absolute last resort....It is time for a change of policy. ...Engage these desperate communities. ...Start a dialogue. Find out 'why'." (SMH 28.9.01)
Dr Sue Wareham, President, Medical Association for the Prevention of War (Aust)
"The lasting answers to terrorism will be the upholding of international law, and a commitment to global co-operation (with the UN as the best starting point for this) and real justice for all people." (Canberra Times 19.10.01)
Ross Daniels, Human Rights Lecturer
A member of the Afghani community
Music by Jumping Fences
The meeting is to chaired by Sandy McCutcheon
For information please contact Joan Shears ph 3371 3640 jshears@powerup.com.au
RALLY FOR PEACE AND NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT
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2) CALLS TO ACTION
Australia's Gene Technology Regulator seeks to protect the health and
safety of people and the environment by identifying risks posed by or
as a result of gene technology and managing those risks.
The regulator has received an application for a licence to undertake
certain activities with a genetically modified organism (GMO),
including a controlled and limited release of a GMO into the
environment. The genetically modified organism is a kind of cotton.
The genetically modified cotton has been modified by the introduction
of genes from common bacteria. The aim of the genetic modification is
to increase the cotton's resistance to insect pests. Some of the
cotton has also been modified to make it resistant to a herbicide.
INVITATION TO COMMENT
The regulator has made an initial assessment of the application and
has prepared a risk assessment and risk management plan in respect of
the activities proposed to be authorised by a licence from the
regulator.
The regulator invites written submissions in relation to the risk
assessment and risk management plan.
Copies of the risk assessment and risk management plan, as well as
summary information, can be obtained from the Office of the Gene
Technology Regulator on-line at the address below. copies of the
licence application are also available from the Office of the Gene
Technology Regulator. Please quote application number DIR 005/2001.
Submissions should be forwarded to the Regulator by close of business
on 24 December 2001.
OFFICE OF THE GENE TECHNOLOGY REGULATOR
MDP 54, PO Box 100
WODEN ACT 2600
Telephone: 1800 181 030
Facsimile: (02) 6271 4202
http://www.otgtr.gov.au
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I am the Community Health Representative on the National Registration Authority for Agricultural & Veterinary Chemicals Community Consultative Committee (CCC).
Currently I have the triazine herbicide atrazine on the agenda for the next CCC meeting in December 2001.
Atrazine is banned in some countries because it has been found in drinking water and represents a human health hazard. We know of some cases where atrazine and/or other triazine herbicides have been found in drinking water in Australia e.g. Adelaide and I am interested to know if there are other documented cases as well. I am also interested in tank water contamination as in the Wynyard area of Tasmania.
I can be contacted at PO Box 96 Margate Qld 4019 or by email at asehaqld@powerup.com.au
Dorothy M. Bowes
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3) FOCUS WTO Doha Ministerial
a) "We Take Over"
By Devinder Sharma
The day the World Trade Organisation (WTO) came into existence, on
January 1, 1995, the Indian Express had carried a pocket cartoon on
its front page. It showed two people walking amidst high rise
buildings with huge billboards for popular multinational brands like
Pepsi Cola, Coke, Philips, and McDonalds. The cartoon depicted one of
the person walking down the street, asking: "What does WTO stand for?"
The other man replied: "We Take Over".
The 'explicit' way the QUAD countries -- the United States, the
European Union, Canada and Japan -- bludgeoned their way into gains on
virtually every issue on the agenda at the fourth WTO Ministerial,
which ended at Doha recently, the world is certainly up for sale. The
greatest tragedy of Doha is that the world's richest economies, which
invariably swear in the name of democracy, used all 'undemocratic'
norms and arms to force a 'consensus' down the throat of developing
countries. In the bargain, the autocratic process of takeover of the
global economy puts at risk millions of people, especially women and
children, without basic rights and opportunities, and hoping against
hope.
Such was the urgency to bypass the WTO rules, repeatedly made since
1999, that the developed countries were not even remotely concerned at
considering, let alone agreeing and first implementing these before
launching a new round. Pushing aggressively on new issues on
investment, competition policy, government procurement and trade
facilitation, the agenda was redefined, even if in a limited way for
now, to ensure that the economic takeover of the developing world is
complete in the years to come. To achieve this, the QUAD group
followed in earnest the principle of 'divide-and-rule', something that
the colonial masters had so successfully used and abused. After all,
it was not long ago that the Sun never set on the British Empire. No
wonder, the economic re-colonisation through the WTO paradigm ensures
that the Sun never sets on the multinational companies !
Ever since the Uruguay Round was launched, developing countries have
become accustomed to arm-twisting and high-handedness that comes in
the name of trade and investment. Doha Ministerial was no exception.
But what surprised the world, including civil society, was the
defiant and valiant stand taken by India. In fact, India's
Commerce Minister, Mr Murlisaran Maran, would have alone led to the
failure of the Doha Ministerial if it was not for the last minute
'intervention' from the Prime Minister's Office in New Delhi. That was
clever politics and not trade and economics. On the other hand, it was
purely Mr Maran's strong conviction that the 'WTO is a necessary
evil', that he fought like a true soldier. He defied the global
community by refusing to submit to unjust demands and pressures only
to relent at the final nerve-rattling moment and that too under strict
orders from his General.
For the other developing countries, which could muster enough
political courage to stand up to 'undemocratic' pressures, it was
difficult to hold on to the final whistle. One by one they deserted
India. Among these were Egypt, Malaysia, Tanzania and finally
Pakistan. Interestingly, the US Commerce Secretary, Grant Aldonis,
reportedly offered to lower the restrictions on the import of bed
sheets and pillowcases from Pakistan in return for its signing the
draft text. In addition, he also indicated US willingness to lift a
1998 quota on cotton yarn, even though the WTO had in April ruled that
the US quota on Pakistan's cotton yarn exports was illegal.
As to why no concessions were made on textile trade, (ED; of major interest to developing country exporters) the Wall Street
Journal reports that in a recent letter to US President George
Bush, 31 members of the Congress, including four Republicans, had
stated that "the U.S. should make no further concessions in textiles
and apparel in future trade agreements". As for America's antidumping
rules, which protect domestic industries -- such as steel -- from
foreign products, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, was
quoted as saying: "Why would we agree to this? What do we gain?" This
is true not only for textiles. In fact, everything that has been
negotiated and renegotiated at the successive WTO meetings, without
exception, has been to the advantage of the rich trading countries.
For the developing countries, all the WTO leaves behind are promises
and promises galore.
Much is being made out about the 'concessions' wrested by developing
countries on agriculture and medicines for public health. In fact, Mr
Maran too defends 'the decision to yield some ground on environment to
gain substantially in agriculture'. What has been incorporated now in
the final agreed text is nothing new but a mere reiteration of what
has been spelled in the Agreement on Agriculture. By agreeing to "a
phase out of agricultural subsidies", and to "take into account the
development needs, including food security and rural development" is
like dangling a carrot before the developing countries. In reality,
agricultural subsidies in the QUAD countries are on an upswing. The
richest trading block -- Organisation for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD) -- provide a phenomenal support of US $ One billion
a day for agriculture. The US, under its new Farm Bill that is pending
before Congress, has already promised its farmers an additional US $
170 billion in the next ten years.
Developing countries, and also the civil society groups espousing the
cause of the farming communities in the South, are behaving like an
ostrich by refusing to read the writing on the wall. The mere mention
of 'food security' is no safeguard against heavily subsidised food
imports given the fact that developing countries, including India,
have opened up their trade barriers by lifting the quantitative
restrictions whereas the massive subsidies in the west keeping on
mounting. Unless the removal of quantitative restrictions is linked to
the removal of agricultural subsidies in the west, food security in
developing countries cannot be ensured.
Equally damaging is the 'landmark' declaration on TRIPs and Public
Health. To think that the decision to allow the production of cheaper
generic drugs to meet any health crisis, is 'historic', is to ignore
the ground realities. It is here that even the civil society groups
have fumbled. The sordid episode of the HIV/AIDS drugs that were
requisitioned by South Africa from India and which resulted in the
drug companies filing a court case against TRIPs infringement, is in
reality a wrong case study. Why the Indian drug company was able to
supply cheap generic version of the medicine was because India still
does not have in place the new patent regime, on the lines of TRIPs.
Once the patent laws are amended to conform to the TRIPs Agreement,
Indian companies will be forbidden from producing any cheaper version
of generic drugs. And once the production of generic drugs stops,
where from will cheaper drugs be procured?
And still, we are being unabashedly told that international trade can
play a major role in the promotion of economic development and the
alleviation of poverty. We are being told that the WTO recognises the
need for all our peoples to benefit from the increased opportunities
and welfare gains that the multilateral trading system generates. What
it does not tells us is that global trade is being aggressively
pursued by the rich industrialised countries to garner more economic
benefits from the poor and marginalised societies. The new trade
paradigm will eventually further the economic divide between the North
and the South. It will not only usurp democratic traditions in the
name of trade and sustainable development as Doha has conclusively
shown but lead to denial of human rights as well as economic and
political freedom. Perhaps the underprivileged part of the world has
to learn from what independent India's first Prime Minister,
Jawaharlal Nehru, once said: "Freedom is in peril, defend it with all
your might". #
(Devinder Sharma is a New Delhi-based food and trade policy analyst.
His contact address is: dsharma@ndf.vsnl.net.in )
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b) Wednesday November 21, 2001
The Guardian
I have a cartoon in my Brussels office of two international trade delegates who have landed on the moon. One is saying to the other: "Thank heavens, our negotiations are finally safe from the threat of democracy." Arriving in Doha as a Green party MEP and a member of the European Parliament's official delegation to the world trade talks, I was convinced that the World Trade Organisation secretariat had that cartoon in mind when it settled on Qatar as the venue.
Imagine a lunar landscape, empty but for a forest of new steel and glass buildings, cocooned in eerie isolation from the rest of the world, and you get a sense of what it was like. And the absence of democracy was a leitmotif running through the entire meeting from November 9-13.
Developing countries were already furious before they arrived because the negotiating text drawn up in Geneva was weighted entirely in the interests of the rich north. But that was nothing compared to the ruthlessness of the negotiation tactics employed against them.
Immense pressure was exerted on the poorer countries by the powerful trading nations, who threatened to withdraw aid and debt relief, among other things, in order to get their way. It was these backroom bruisings that finally forced developing country delegates into resentful acquiescence. At one point, two countries - one from Latin America, the other from Africa - were threatened with the removal of agreed access to richer country markets. And Uganda was even asked by a senior US official to remove its ambassador to the WTO from Geneva because he disagreed with the US on key policy areas.
Richard Bernal, one of Jamaica's official delegates, told how his government had come under pressure to fall into line. He complained: "We are made to feel that we are holding up the rescue of the global economy if we don't agree to a new trade round here."
The EU, Britain and the WTO are congratulating themselves on getting a new round of talks, but the reality is that we now have a global trade race, with the poor countries arm-twisted and bullied into the starting blocks. None of the developing countries' main demands were even addressed in Doha. They wanted a fairer trade system, to be allowed to protect their domestic farmers, and to analyse the adverse effects of the previous Uruguay round of talks in order to inform future trade deals. They were simply ignored.
Far from this being - as the EU's trade commissioner, Pascal Lamy, and others have called it, with breathtaking hypocrisy - a "development round", it is a disaster for the world's poor. Take agriculture. The EU fought tooth and nail to protect its right to dump subsidised farm products in poorer countries. This, they know full well, has a devastating effect on southern farmers, who simply cannot compete against cheaper imports. Northern governments have increased agricultural subsidies, instead of cutting them, to almost $350bn (£244bn) a year. As Tanzania's trade minister, Iddi Simba, said: "The wrong policy on agriculture might lose elections in France, but it loses lives in Africa".
Our environment secretary, Margaret Beckett, may have hailed Doha as good for British consumers, giving them more "choice and power", but for poor farmers in the south, the agreement spells more of the same poverty, as their markets continue to be undermined by cheaper produce from the north.
Or industrial tariffs. Many developing countries called for a study to examine the effects of tariff reductions on local industries and jobs, before being required to open their markets further. Local industries, they say, have already collapsed in most African and least developed countries as a result of previous tariff cuts. It seemed a fair and sensible proposal, but such is the nature of talks like this that every proposal becomes a bargaining chip. The fact that lives are at stake means nothing. Their request was ignored, and negotiations are to start immediately.
The results could be devastating, leading to massive job losses - and the poverty that goes with it. In Senegal, for example, a previous commitment to open their markets by cutting industrial tariffs by almost half has led to the loss of one-third of all manufacturing jobs. The same story is repeated throughout the poorer countries.
So what does the future hold for poor countries? As a result of the brave new trade round launched in Doha, it seems inevitable that they will experience even more inequality in the future, not less; that their markets will become progressively dominated by northern corporations rather than by stronger local or national producers, and that poverty and insecurity will rise.
Past experience does not bode well. More than 80 countries now have per capita incomes lower than a decade ago and, as the United Nations development programme points out, it is often those countries which are highly "integrated" into the global economy that are becoming more marginal.
In spite of the fact that exports from sub-Saharan Africa, for example, have reached nearly 30% of GDP (compared to just 19% for the leading industrialised countries of the OECD), the number of people living in poverty there continues to grow. Even the IMF admits that "in recent decades, nearly one-fifth of the world population has regressed - arguably one of the greatest economic failures of the 20th century". Yet another trade round, on the same terms as the past ones, is only likely to make matters worse.
Caroline Lucas
Wednesday November 21, 2001
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c) WTO fails again:
the first time was farce, the second time is tragedy
Report from the Coalition of Civil Society groups in Doha
The coalition of civil society groups in Doha laud the courage
and determination shown by developing countries in defending
the trade system from an imposition of the US' and EU's
corporate agenda on the developing world. The troika of the
US, EU and the WTO's Director-General mounted enormous
pressure to massively extend the tentacles of the WTO into new
areas of the global economy such as investment. They failed.
The lessons of the Seattle debacle in 1999 were ignored. The
negotiations process in Geneva was untransparent and deeply
unfair to the majority of WTO members. The inequities
continued in Doha. The much criticised "Green Rooms" used in
Seattle were used again, and the powerful role of unelected
facilitators of informal groups resulted in them being
characterized as "Green Men". Civil society representatives in
Doha exposed unethical negotiating practices by some
governments of the rich world, such as linking aid budgets and
trade preferences to the trade positions of developing
countries, and targeting individual developing country
negotiators. The approach of the major trading nations in the
rich world was arrogant, as if they could agree an agenda and
then impose it on the rest of the world.
In Doha, trade deals continued to be negotiated on the basis
of commercially-oriented deal making and an ideological
commitment to trade liberalisation, rather than a full
assessment of the impacts of past policies on the poor, the
environment and human rights. As a result, the trade system
has lost the confidence of many of its members and the wider
public. There needs to be a far-reaching an independent review
to ensure that the WTO embodies internal democracy towards its
members, real engagement with civil society and
accountability, through its member governments, to the wider
public in their societies. We look forward to the leadership
of the Director-General Designate to establish the
independence, accountability and legitimacy of the WTO
Secretariat.
The tragedy of Doha was that the proposals for fairer WTO
rules, repeatedly made by developing countries since 1999,
still have not been fully considered, let alone agreed and
implemented. As the Minister of Trade and Industry of
Tanzania, Mr. Iddi Simba said this week, the problems of
unfair trade are costing people their lives. Most at risk are
the millions of people, especially women and children, without
basic rights and opportunities. This Ministerial conference in
Doha should have started to redress the deep imbalances in
trade rules. But the much-hyped 'Development Round' is empty
of development. The Doha Ministerial has failed the world's
poor.
The WTO member governments have again failed to address the
deep concerns about the impact of trade rules on the poorest
people and the environment. Most of the positive proposals
from civil society have not been considered. These include
protection of the rights to development, promotion of local
economies, food security, social, cultural and labour rights,
and protection of the environment. These proposals recognize
that the competence of the WTO must be limited to trade, and
that conflicts between trade and other international
agreements must be resolved outside the WTO system. Reform of
the global system must also include regulation of the main
actors in the global economy, the multinational corporations.
Civil society is calling for the start of a process that would
lead to proper regulation of the global economy, based on UN
agreed standards, to be taken forward in fora taking place
this year, such as UN Financing for Development, the Food
Summit and the Earth Summit + 10. But the attention of civil
society groups in Doha, and the hundreds of thousands of
people who mobilized in major actions in over 35 countries,
will remain firmly on the WTO. We and the thousands of our
civil society partners who could not attend this meeting, will
renew our public awareness raising and mobilisation during the
ongoing and new negotiations. We continue to do so until trade
rules serve the aims of sustainable development, poverty
reduction and human rights.
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Terrie Temoleton WTO Watch Qld gumbus@powerup.com.au