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,
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social, cultural and labour rights, and
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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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