Posted by WTO Watch Qld on October 5, 2002 at 20:32:19:
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"It (the WTO) has a principle on special and differential treatment
but no effect has been given to it. I regard the WTO as having no soul.
Trade liberalisation has affected our banana industry adversely,
that is what trade liberalisation and globalization has meant for us.
Something is wrong."
"We have set a renewable energy target of 20%, but the World Bank is pressing us to privatise our water,
electricity, telephone services. On one hand we have to privatise, but when we attempt to put our policy of renewable energy in action,
the multinationals frustrate every effort we make as they are only interested in the rate of return."
The representative from St Lucia, speaking for the small island states at the WSSD
1) COMING EVENTS
2) GATS UPDATE
a) 'Fact Sheet' circulated by the Minister for Trade to all Members of Parliament
b) The Alliance to Expose GATS responds to the Ministers 'fact sheet.'
3) WATER UPDATE
International Civil Society Water Statement from WSSD
4) REPORT FROM WSSD
5) CALLS TO ACTION
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1) COMING EVENTS
a) Media Release: Australia to host WTO Meeting in November
Australia would host an informal meeting of trade ministers later this year in Sydney to discuss the Doha round of multilateral tradenegotiations, Trade Minister Mark Vaile confirmed today. "The Doha round is vitally important for the global trading system and for Australia's trade interests," Mr Vaile said. "I am determined that Australia takes every opportunity to ensure the round moves ahead and concludes on schedule.
"The Mini-Ministerial meeting of World Trade Organisation (WTO) Trade Ministers will be held in Sydney on 14-15 November. "The meeting will bring together trade ministers from some 25 countries to discuss progress made in Geneva since last November's Doha meeting, and how we can ensure the next WTO Ministerial meeting, to be held in Mexico in September 2003, is successful."
Mr Vaile said that over the last few weeks he had held detailed discussions about the Sydney meeting with the Mexican Minister for the Economy, Luis Derbez, who will chair the 5th Ministerial meeting next year. "I have now spoken to many trade ministers who have indicated their support for the proposal and confirmed their attendance for the Sydney meeting." Aside from the major industrialised countries, such as the EU and the United States, I have been in contact with my colleagues in developed and developing countries across a wide range of regions and interests. "
The meeting will help build understanding across the range of key issues, including development issues as well as market access and the preparations for the next Ministerial meeting." Mr Vaile said that the hosting of this meeting, the first to be held since the launch of the Doha round, was an important confirmation ofAustralia's standing in and commitment to the multilateral trading system and his determination to ensure that Australia continued to play astrong leading role in the Doha round. "This is all about this Government's commitment to drive the trade agenda forward," Mr Vaile said.
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b) A very full and interesting programme of workshops and other activities has been organised to coincide with this meeting. Details in the next bulletin.
There will be at least two buses going from Brisbane to Sydney for this mini ministerial meeting of the WTO.
A coach is being organised by the Socialist Alliance Queensland to take protestors to Sydney for the WTO negotiations in November. Just return transfers with no accommodation booked or use of coach during the time in Sydney. At this stage departure is planned for 7am on Tuesday 12th November from Brisbane Transit Centre. The return coach will leave central Sydney at 7pm on Friday 15th November. Cost for return trip $85 subject to selling all seats on coach. If you want to find out more about joining please email Ashley Lavelle at a.lavelle@mailbox.gu.edu.au You can also phone Ashley on 0421 563 921 (mobile phone) or Marcel on 38312644
Student Unions have also organised a bus to Sydney..no details at present...will keep you posted.
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c) Invitation
Social Movements Meeting in Preparation for the 5th Ministerial
of the World Trade Organization/Cancun 2002
November 15-16, 2002, Mexico City
Considering that:
* The WTO is turning into a new "corporate" world consitution...
* It is the over-arching keystone of the neoliberal global economic
architecture, which also includes regional initiatives like NAFTA,
FTAA, Plan Puebla Panama, Plan Colombia, G7, CAP, APEC, etc..
* The "free" trade system being imposed via the WTO is undecutting
the livelihoods of peasant and family farmers, workers, indigenous
peoples and those of African ancestry, women, the landless, urban
dwellers, fisherfolk and the poor and middle classes worldwide...
* The Cancun Ministerial is the most important meeting to date for
the WTO, because of the fundamental topics to be addressed
(agriculture, intellectual property, services, investment) and the
new issues being proposed, which amount to a neoliberal and free
trade vision for those sectors which are of vital importance for our
economies and our sovereignties...
* The worldwide movement against neoliberal globalization has been
building through meetings and protests at key points from Seattle to
Prague, Gottemburg, Bangkok, Genoa, Quebec, Quito, Porto Alegre and
so many others...
...The Mexican and international organizations who are issuing this
invitation, believe that the upcoming meeting of the WTO in 2003 in
Cancun, Mexico, represents a key crossroads which may determine the
future of the neoliberal model, of globalization itself, and of our
peoples.
Therefore we call for an urgent meeting to discuss social movement
strategies with regard to the WTO. This meeting will take place in
Mexico City on November 15 and 16, 2002.
Operational Secretariat, Vía Campesina, Honduras: viacam@gbm.hm
UNORCA: seminarios02@unorca.org.mx; cejecutiva@unorca.org.mx
UNTA-CLOC México: unta@prodigy.net.mx
Ceccam, Mexico: omc@ceccam.org.mx
Food First, USA: rosset@foodfirst.org
Mexico City, September 13, 2002
(ED: There are more details available about this meeting. The full text available on request. )
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2) GATS UPDATE
The Minister for Trade has become aware of increasing disquiet in the community about the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). In late June this year, the Minister circulated to all federal and state members of Parliament the following 'fact sheet.' (See (a) below)
The Alliance to Expose GATS has replied to the 'fact sheet' and the Alliance's response has been circulated to all federal and Qld members of Parliament. (see (b) below.
a) fact sheet
The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) establishes a framework of rules for international trade in services.
THE GATS CANNOT AND DOES NOT:
Force World Trade Organization (WTO) members to open up service sectors to foreign competition or to provide foreign suppliers with the same treatment as domestic suppliers
Remove the right of WTO members to regulate and make new regulations on the supply of services. The GATS treaty explicitly affirms a member’s "right to regulate"
Undermine the prerogatives of WTO members to determine which services should be delivered by the public sector and which services should b e provided on a commercial basis by the private sector.
Services exports - in areas such as telecommunications, finance, tourism and education - are very important to the Australian economy. Services exports accounted for 20% of Australia’s total exports, or $31.2 billion in 2001. Four out over every five workers are employed in services industries, many of which have an export focus. Since the mid-1980s, Australia’s services exports have grown more rapidly than agriculture, mining and manufacturing exports.
The GATS helps our service providers by creating a more open, predictable and transparent international trading environment. This is of critical interest to our services exporters in areas such as education, tourism, financial services, telecommunications, and legal services and other professional services sectors.
An open services trade environment is important to our $17.1 billion a year tourism industry, as well as smaller export sectors such as legal services ($200 million a year) and environmental services (approaching $300 million a year and forecast to become a multi-billion dollar export sector). An efficient, competitive services sector can also have major benefits for other sectors of the economy - particularly in agriculture and manufacturing - which rely on competitively-priced inputs.
However, the nature and extent of these commitments under the GATS are strictly a matter of choice for member governments. Member governments can choose not to make commitments in a particular sector. They can also structure their commitments so that they can discriminate between foreign and domestic suppliers or limit the degree of market access.
For example, Australia has made no commitments on audiovisual services and has made extremely limited commitments on health services (relating only to podiatry and chiropody services). On education, we have made commitments only in relation to private secondary and tertiary education, and English language teaching services. In the caser of secondary and tertiary education, we have structured our commitments so that we continue to have the ability to discriminate between foreign and domestic institutions (eg, in relation to subsidies).
Australia will, of course, receive requests from other WTO members for new market openings in the current GATS negotiations. We will need to respond formally to these requests with "initial offers" by 31 March 2003. The government will consult widely with interested parties in formulating its response.
However, the Government has made very clear that its ability to regulate in areas such as health and education will be preserved, and that issues related to the maintenance of Australia’s cultural diversity will be taken fully into account.
Foreign Affairs and Trade Contact us on: services.negotiations@dfat.gov.au, fax 02 6261 3514
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b) Response to the Minister for Trades 'fact sheet' by the Alliance to Expose GATS
Alliance to Expose GATS
PO Box 578, Ashgrove, Qld, 4060.
The Alliance’s demands are endorsed by: Australian Coalition for Economic Justice, Australian Pensioners and Superannuants League, Community and Public Sector Union, Doctors Reform Society, Friends of the Earth (Qld), National Civic Council, Prisoners Legal Service, Queensland Council of Unions, Queensland Nurses Union, Quest 2025, Retired Members (AMWU Qld), WTO Watch Qld
The Alliance to Expose GATS (AEG) is a network of community groups conducting public education on trade policy, with a particular focus on the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS).
In July,2002, the Minister for Trade circulated a "Fact Sheet" about the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS).
This is a response to that document.
1) The government ‘fact’ sheet claims that "Australia… has made extremely limited commitments on health services (relating only to podiatry and chiropody services)"
The Federal Government and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s (DFAT) continual assertion that podiatry and chiropody services are the only specific commitment Australia has made on health services is incorrect. Dental services and health insurance are already included in specific commitments. Outrageously, the Australian government and DFAT do not believe Australia’s current specific commitments to ‘liberalise’ dental services and health insurance to be health service commitments. The great deception is that any commitment not included in ‘Health Related and Social Services’ section is not considered to be a health service.
Australia has already made extensive commitments under GATS and interpretation of health service commitments is complicated as issues of direct or indirect relevance to health are covered under GATS under various sub-headings. This includes not only Health Related and Social Services but also Business Services (for some health professions, data processing, research and development), Educational and Training Services, Environmental Services and Financial Services.
Dental services are found in the GATS in the ‘Business’ section under ‘Professional Services’ rather than within ‘Health Related and Social Services’. Likewise medical, nursing and mid-wifery services not carried out in a hospital setting are also classified under ‘Professional Services’ in the ‘Business’ section. If the government had committed general practice or home birthing services would they still insist Australia has not made significant health service commitments? Health insurance is covered in section 7. ‘Financial Services’, A. ‘Insurance and insurance-related services’ (81291 Accident and health insurance). Australia has made extensive commitments in this broad area and alarmingly, protection of public health insurance such as Medicare is undefined.
Australia has committed to liberalise dental services with no limitations on market access and national treatment for cross-border supply, consumption abroad and commercial presence. The ramifications to present and future public dental programs are wide-ranging. Australian government regulation of dental care and subsidies to public dental services can be challenged. Under market access rules the government cannot limit, for example, the number of service suppliers, service operations or people working in the sector whether in the form of numerical quotas, monopolies, exclusive service suppliers or the requirements of an economic needs test. Similarly under national treatment rules, governments are not allowed to discriminate between government and overseas service providers. Public health concerns (and this includes dental care!) are lost to market forces. It is scandalous that Australia may have already signed away the chance of ever extending Medicare to cover dental services.
2) The government document claims that "The GATS cannot and does not: remove the right of WTO members to regulate and make new regulations on the supply of services and that the GATS treaty explicitly affirms a member’s ‘right to regulate’."
a) The affirmation of the right to regulate occurs in the GATS treaty preamble and has limited legal effect. The preamble does not provide enforceable rights or obligations but provides a context in which the rights and obligations of the GATS should be interpreted. The affirmation of the right to regulate is only one of several objectives in the preamble and may have some interpretative value in a dispute but does not provide legal cover for regulations that would otherwise be inconsistent with the substantive provisions of the main text of the treaty and a member’s specific commitments.
The Appellate Body of the WTO has repeatedly quoted the Vienna Convention that "a treaty interpreter must begin with, and focus upon, the text of the particular provision to be interpreted. It is in the words constituting that provision, read in the context, that the object and purpose of the state parties to the treaty must first be sought."
b) The flexibility of future governments to regulate is compromised, because commitments, once made, are difficult to reverse.
c) The WTO’s Council for Trade in Services has set up a number of working parties including one on domestic regulation, and one on GATS Rules (which includes subsidies, safeguards and government procurement). It quite extraordinary that governments are forging ahead with new commitments before the rules are even finalised.
The working party on domestic regulation is developing disciplines to ensure that measures relating to qualifications requirements and procedures, licensing requirements and technical standards (extremely broad and all-encompassing areas) are ‘least trade restrictive.’ In other words, any past or future domestic regulation at any level of government (local, state or federal) in any of these areas will have to be ‘least trade restrictive.’ The term ‘least trade restrictive’ is not defined in the GATS text. In a GATS annex on telecommunications, ‘least trade restrictive’ and ‘not more burdensome’ have been defined as ‘pro-competitive.’ If such changes to the rules are adopted, the ability of governments to regulate in the public interest will be severely constrained.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade submitted a paper to the CTS last year supporting the development of a 'necessity test' for domestic regulation..
Does the government still support this position?
.Governments retain their freedom to regulate only to the extent that the regulations they adopt are compatible with the GATS. Any regulation which does not comply with the GATS is open to challenge and subject to a ruling by the Dispute Resolution Panel.
3) The document claims that the GATS does not force World Trade Organisation (WTO) members to open up service sectors to foreign competition or to provide foreign suppliers with the same treatment as domestic suppliers
We have never claimed that the GATS ‘forces’ countries to open up service sectors to foreign competition. However the reality is that countries will come under increasing pressure to do just that. The GATS mandates that negotiations be on- going to ‘achieve progressively higher levels of liberalisation.’
The corporate lobby is in no doubt about its aims: "The WTO negotiations on services should be used to achieve a contestable, competitive market in every services sector in every WTO member country. " Global Services Network, Statement on WTO negotiations on Services, Nov 1999, p1
Recently the European Union Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy visited Canberra and was quoted in the Australian Financial Review of 17/7/02. "Mr Lamy said the EU wanted Australia to lift restrictions on foreign ownership of Telstra and the sensitive water distribution industry in return for any concessions from Europe on barriers to agricultural trade. " (p1)
There is likely to be increasing pressure on Australia to trade off services for gains in other areas.
GATS negotiations take place behind closed doors, and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has refused to release detailed information about the GATS requests Australia has submitted to other countries, and the requests received from other countries. At present, there is no public accountability.
We request that this information be made public.
There are some GATS obligations which apply to all service sectors (Most Favoured Nation Treatment and Transparency.) Other GATS obligations (Market Access and National Treatment) apply only to those sectors governments have chosen to list. National Treatment (Article XVII) means that once foreign companies have been permitted to enter a country, they must be treated in the same way as domestic ones. The WTO explains that "the key requirement is to abstain from measures which are liable to modify, in law or in fact, the conditions of competition in favour of a Member’s own service industry". Thus the test for non-discrimination is whether any measure puts a foreign supplier at a disadvantage.
So where commitments have been made, the WTO does force countries to provide foreign suppliers with the same treatment as domestic suppliers.
4) The government document claims that the GATS does not undermine the prerogatives of WTO members to determine which services should be delivered by the public sector and which services should be provided on a commercial basis by the private sector.
Whilst the current agreement does acknowledge a role for public services, the definition of public services in the agreement is ambiguous. Public services are excluded unless they are provided on a commercial basis or in competition with other service suppliers. The government of British Colombia has done extensive work on this issue and has concluded that the number of public services excluded by this definition is very small.
The GATS government authority exclusion is, at best, unclear and subject to conflicting interpretations. At worst, if narrowly interpreted by dispute panels, the exclusion is of little or no practical effect.
If public services are not excluded, then they are subject to Most Favoured Nation and Transparency obligations.
Why has the European Union requested that Australia make commitments in postal and water services when they are publicly provided services in this country and on that basis should be excluded from the GATS?
The GATS already covers subsidies in effect as part of the Most Favoured Nation obligation (applying to all services ) and National treatment (applying to those sectors in which commitments have been made). The working party on Subsidies promises to develop further rules on subsidies to avoid ‘trade distortive effects.’ The working party has suggested that government funding be defined as a subsidy, and then, in committed sectors, the national treatment and market access requirements of the GATS would apply. Transnational corporations could then argue for equal access to government funding. This would inevitably lead to privatisation of publicly funded services.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade says that it is unlikely that these proposals will be accepted. But, given the power and influence of the international services sector, can we be sure of that? The US Coalition of Service Industries has lobbied the US government to use the GATS negotiations to ‘encourage more privatisation and to promote competitive regulatory reform.’ (CSI submission to US trade representatives 1998)
The Alliance to Expose GATS is calling for a Senate Inquiry into the GATS and its implications for Australia.
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3) WATER UPDATE
International Civil Society Water Statement from WSSD
1. Water is life. As a result the right to water is not negotiable.
Access to water and sanitation are basic human rights. Everyone
should have secure access to sufficient safe water and sanitation to
meet their basic human needs, including water for productive use to
sustain livelihoods. Access is a key component of any effective
strategy for alleviating poverty. It is also essential that
governments integrate water issues with issues such as health,
forestry, agriculture, local food security and sound ecosystem
management. In addition the empowerment of women, youth, indigenous
peoples and other marginalised communities must be a key focus.
2. Water is a social and ecological necessity and as such must be
held in the public domain, and adequate clean water must be ensured
to maintain healthy ecosystems. The economic costs associated with
delivery should not limit people's right to water and sanitation.
Mechansims such as cross-subsidisation, free lifeline services and
the rising block tariff should be used to ensure access.
3. We reject the commodification and privatisation, in all its forms,
of water services and sanitation, and water resources. As a public
good, water and sanitation must remain in the public sector and all
governments must commit to public sector delivery of water services.
This includes ensuring adequate financial resources are made
available, and adequate local capacity is built. Governments
currently dedicate only two percent of national budgets to water
services. Only six percent of Official Development Assistance is
directed to water. Both must increase dramatically and must
prioritise services to the poor. People must mobilise to increase
the pressure on their governments and to create international
solidarity to advance water issues.
4. Water is a public good. Properly resourced systems and
institutions must be established and mandated through legislation
that ensure extensive civil society and labour involvment in the
design, planning, provision and monitoring of water and sanitation
services. Capacity-building and education programmes must accompany
all of these processes. All water services information must fall
within the public domain.
5. We recognise that in many countries the struggle against
oppression and the struggle for access to water often go
hand-in-hand. Water must not be used as a tool for oppression.
Nations should have sovereignty over their own land, and over the
water under that land, and they should have a right to manage it,
subject to international law.
6. Water catchment boundaries and political boundaries do not always
coincide, necessitating regional co-operation for transboundary
issues. Political boundaries should not hinder access to water.
Sustainable water management is not compatible with occupation and
apartheid.
7. We respect the integrity of ecosystems as the basis for all life -
both human and natural. Surface water ecosystems and groundwater
resources must be re-established and maintained, and pollution must
be prevented. We recognise that dams and badly managed irrigation
schemes often have a negative impact on communities and ecosystems.
There should be a prioritization of small scale sustainable
approaches to water and energy planning and management, such as
rainwater harvesting and de-salinisation, above large scale
infrastructure development. Governments, bilateral donors and IFIs
should implement and incorporate the World Commission of Dams
recommendation into all activties.
8. We reject NEPAD and the plans for water in NEPAD as not being
sustainable. It is structural adjustment by Africa for Africa. In
particular we reject the privatisation of water and the hydropower
focus. We commit ourselves to building a mass movement for the
reconstruction and sustainable development of Africa.
9. We also call on other global, regional and bilateral trade
negotiations to protect the Right to Water and to cease attempts to
commodify and extend corporate control over water. We therefore call
for water and water services to be kept out of GATS and the WTO, and
for multi-lateral environmental agreements to have precedence over
global and regional trade agreements.
10. We believe that environmental considerations and human rights are
inextricably intertwined and that by taking care of the environment
we safeguard our physical, cultural and spiritual needs for our
children of tomorrow and the earth that they will live on.
For more info contact Liane Greeff - liane@kingsley.co.za
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4) REPORT FROM WSSD
http://www.fpif.org/outside/commentary/2002/0209postwssd.html 9.
By Patrick Bond
September 9, 2002
Editor: John Gershman, Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC)
WSSD Both Attacks and Abets "Global Apartheid"
Officials of the United Nations and the host South African government
looking hard in the mirror this weekend will have to judge the World Summit
on Sustainable Development (WSSD) a failure. The only remarkable step
forward for human and environmental progress taken in the ultra-bourgeois
Johannesburg suburb of Sandton was the widespread adoption of the idea of
"global apartheid," at President Thabo Mbeki's suggestion.
Anyone contemplating this phrase immediately identifies not a natural
condition of rational economic relationships, but instead a structured
system of oppression. How else do the globe's winners advance, if not
because of the economic and political chains holding down the poor, the
women, the people with darker skins?
The chains of global apartheid are unaccountable institutions, which came
under intense criticism over the past two weeks: the World Trade
Organization (WTO), World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and
multinational corporations. Because of the power these undemocratic
institutions wield, most WSSD plans to address poverty and ecological
degradation will actually amplify the world's problems.
Vandana Shiva described the outcome simply: "What happened in Johannesburg
amounts to a privatization of the Earth, an auction house in which the
rights of the poor were given away." Friends of the Earth cited backsliding
on the Convention on Biological Diversity. Complained the NGO Energy and
Climate Caucus, "The agreement on energy is an outright disaster, with the
dropping of all targets and timetables." The Gaia Foundation called the
final summit document "an incredibly weak agreement." Australian Green Party
senator Bob Brown concluded, "like ostriches, the wealthy nations have stuck
their heads into the sand and have let down the next generation in an
appalling way." Even the establishment NGO Oxfam called the WSSD "a triumph
for greed and self-interest, a tragedy for the poor and environment."
In the five key fields of water, energy, healthcare, agriculture, and
biodiversity, the Geneva-based WTO considers essential state services to be,
simply, typical commodities. Pushed hardest by the European Union and U.S.,
the WTO's General Agreement on Trade in Services aims to open up South
African and all Third World markets for penetration by privatizing firms.
Those firms' record in South Africa and elsewhere has been abysmal, and in
the case of the Paris-based Suez water company, which runs Johannesburg's
system, the ongoing refusal to install humane sanitation systems is already
contributing to dangerously high counts of the deadly E.Coli bacteria, even
in the Sandton water table. And in its main South African pilot project,
Nkonkobe, Suez was thrown out by the mayor last year for failing to serve
the poor: the hated bucket system--in which excrement is physically
collected in unsanitary small pails by municipal workers each morning--is
still in place eight years after Suez took over the town's water provision.
Yet the WSSD continued to promote Public-Private (or "Type 2") Partnerships
as a privatized replacement for intergovernmental agreements and actions.
Meaningful environmental agreements have been scarce since the 1992 Earth
Summit in Rio, and global elites appear to have given up on each other.
Veteran bureaucrat Kofi Annan, who since Rio has permitted an unprecedented
transnational corporate takeover of the United Nations through the so-called
Global Compact, advanced the argument that if poor countries are more open
to trade of this sort, the poor will benefit.
This is a misperception also advanced strongly in Pretoria, especially by
trade and industry minister Alec Erwin. In May, the main official in South
Africa's environment ministry and local manager of the WSSD, Chippy Olver,
confirmed to me that removing European agricultural subsidies was South
Africa's main goal for the WSSD. Aside from yet another non-binding
political declaration to lower subsidies, no progress can be reported.
But what if a breakthrough had occurred? Would the strategy of allowing
further corporate domination of our economies, for the sake of free trade,
eventually trickle benefits down to the poor? Critics argue that, to the
contrary, increasing globalization is the core reason for growing poverty,
inequality, and environmental damage.
We can illustrate with an example that many of us enjoy every morning: a cup
of coffee. When South Africa became free in 1994, the world market price of
coffee was $1.82 a pound. Today, it's just $0.47, for the simple reason that
all Third World countries have been pushed by the WTO, IMF, and World Bank
to export more, particularly so as to repay debt often inherited from
previous dictatorial regimes.
The coffee price at the supermarket has not come down, however, nor have the
profits enjoyed by the main packagers and distributors--Proctor&Gamble,
Philip Morris, Sara Lee, and Nestle--which control 40% of the world market.
These middle-men rake off 85% of the $55 billion in annual world sales.
Misery for coffee workers has increased, with a recent International
Migration Organization study recording that 70% of Guatamalan coffee sector
workers intend to migrate to the U.S.--illegally--because of the price
crash.
Competition amongst the lowest-paid people in the world is intensifying. At
the very bottom, Vietnam raised its share of world coffee output from 1.2%
to 12.3% during the 1990s. Huge areas of tropical forest required by
humanity and nature for the sake of biodiversity have been sacrificed so
wretched Third World countries can export coffee and similar products,
mainly so as to service foreign debt.
The Third World's tendency to overproduce, thus flooding markets and driving
down prices of cash crops and minerals, is the main structural feature of
world trade. Repaying the debt is the main catalyst. The WTO, IMF, and World
Bank are the guiding forces. Multinational corporations are the main
beneficiaries. Low-income people and the environment are the victims. This
is global apartheid.
Ending European and U.S. agricultural subsidies will do nothing substantial
to change the structural features of global apartheid, unfortunately. Last
week, even Bank economist Branko Milanovic admitted that 1990s trade
liberalization by countries with incomes of less than $5,000 per person per
year (including South Africa) increased internal inequality. According to
Milanovic, "at very low average income level, it is the rich who benefit
from openness. It seems that openness makes income distribution worse before
making it better."
On the civil society front, the WSSD's other important feature was the
global-local linkage of protests against privatization and services
disconnections, landlessness, and many other neoliberal development policies
that Pretoria has adopted since 1994, partly at the behest of the World
Bank. August 31 was the major day for protest. In contrast to the smaller
(5,000-person) rally addressed by Mbeki, the unprecedented 7-mile march of
20,000 local and international activists from the impoverished Alexandra
township to Sandton, against both the WSSD and government, showed the depth
of popular anger.
Total disrespect was shown by workers, the unemployed, and the rural poor
for Mbeki's envoy, minister Essop Pahad, who was denied by acclaim the
opportunity to address the protest rally. The same sentiment emerged against
U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell at the Summit's final session on
Wednesday, led by progressive U.S. NGOs and joined by delegates from most
countries: "Bush, Shame, Bush, Shame!" The hearty heckling of Powell comes
on the eve of a U.S. attack against Iraq, and reflects frustration at
countless other infringements of international agreements on environment and
development.
Both locally in South Africa and globally, critics say, the ruling elites
remain intent not on breaking the chains of global apartheid, but on
polishing them.
(Patrick Bond Go to http://www.mertonai.org/amina/ ================================================================ Terrie Templeton WTO Watch Qld gumbus@powerup.com.au
Witwatersrand and author of Against Global Apartheid: South Africa meets the
World Bank, IMF and International Finance (University of Cape Town Press,
2001) and Unsustainable South Africa: Environment, Development and Social
Protest (Africa World Press, 2002).)
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5) CALL TO ACTION
This is an appeal (ED: from Amnesty International) for your signature to try and save the life of a 30
year-old Nigerian woman Amina Lawal who faces the death sentence. She has
been sentenced to death by stoning by a Regional Court in Katsina State,
Nigeria for having a child outside marriage. Her sentence was announced on
23 March 2002.
http://www.mertonai.org/amina/> and click on 'sign our letter' to support the outcry against this sentence. Please also show your
support by forwarding this link.
Yours Adjoa Owusu http://www.adjoa.co.uk