URFIG - Info d'Afrique

NO INVESTMENT NEGOTIATIONS AT THE WTO

African Civil Society Declaration (Accra, May 16, 2003)

We, members of civil society organizations from Africa, adding our voice to those from many other developing and developed countries, explicitly reject the launch of negotiations on investment and the other Singapore Issues at the Ministerial Conference in Cancun this September.

We have gathered from a broad spectrum of civil society groups, including groups working on development, environment, faith-based, social, labor, human rights, food security, gender, and youth and students, rural and indigenous community issues. We have met over three days in Accra, in the wake of similar gatherings in Geneva and Brasilia, and in the shadow of extreme imperial unilateralism and expansionism expressed in the escalation of military globalisation and have reached the following conclusions.

Previous attempts to negotiate a multilateral agreement on investment, including the failed Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), have been rejected by civil society around the world as focused on investor protections and for failing to address poverty reduction, gender equity, sustainable development, and corporate accountability and liability.

Discussions to date within the WTO's Working Group on the Relationship between Trade and Investment indicate that some WTO Members such as the EU, US and Japan are similarly focused on granting greater rights to transnational investors to hold themselves above national decisions on development priorities, macroeconomic policy, environmental directives, and implementation of international human rights law and norms.

Most, if not all, developed countries have made use of policy tools, such as performance requirements, to ensure that incoming investment would help to develop infant industries, enhance export capacities, and promote inward technology transfers, and yet many developed countries now seek to "kick away the development ladder" by denying developing countries the right to use similar policies.  This stands to undermine the developmental efforts of African and other developing countries .

Existing international investor protection rules in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and hundreds of bilateral investment agreements, as well as in provisions in contracts and loan agreements, are being used to challenge and seek compensation for governmental actions that are essential to achieving a just and sustainable future.  This is a problem that Affects both developing and developed countries.  The filing of new claims by corporate investors in international arbitration is increasing at an alarming rate.

While the threats to regulatory prerogatives of governments – and thereby the development agenda countries of Africa and the global South – is clear, there is little if any empirical evidence that adopting the types of investor protection rules being discussed at the WTO and negotiated in the Free Trade Area of the Americas and elsewhere will lead to any increase in the amount or quality of investment flows.

Africa is at the sharp end of these threats to sovereign development. The extension and imposition of investment rules that subvert sovereign oversight and regulation of inflows and outflows of capital will exacerbate the financial imbalances suffered by African countries attendant on the introduction of Structural Adjustment Policies. Similar policies have been the driving force behind 'emerging market' financial crashes of the type witnessed in Asia in 1998. A WTO Investment Agreement, with its insistence on investor liberation and protection, and its regulation and narrowing of governmental policy autonomy, all but guarantees new levels of economic and social catastrophe in Africa, which will make the Asian crises, seem benign.

This is why African civil society organisations and governments have been at the forefront of resistance to Investment and other new issues - particularly Government Procurement; Competition Policy and Trade Facilitation - at the WTO since the Singapore ministerial in 1996. The position of African governments will continue to be of vital importance in determining the agreement or otherwise on investment and other Singapore issues at the WTO.  Since a decision to proceed with Singapore issues at Cancun can only be taken on the basis of explicit consensus, African countries collectively and individually, have the means to uphold the interest of their people by blocking the launch of negotiations on these issues.

We reiterate that the WTO is the wrong forum for global investment talks. Investment is not a trade issue.  Besides, the imbalance and abuse of power in the WTO which has always been used against the interest of African and other developing countries will ensure that the investment agreement likely to emerge in the WTO will be negative to the interests of the developing countries while promoting the interests of the major developed economies and their big companies.  These imbalances and abuses explain why the WTO is in the midst of a crisis, as it is not making progress on issues of fundamental importance to developing countries and many other constituencies. Thus adding the Singapore issues (investment, competition, transparency in government procurement and trade facilitation) to an already crowded agenda will prevent the WTO from undertaking the reforms and rebalancing necessary.

Finally, WTO negotiations on investment and the other Singapore issues would result in rules that developing countries in particular do not need and cannot afford.

Therefore, we call upon the Members of the World Trade Organization to:

·            Explicitly reject the launch of negotiations on investment and the other Singapore Issues at the Ministerial Conference in Cancun this September,

·           Reject the NAFTA/MAI type investment agreement, and proposals for similar agreements as contained in the Cotonou ACP-EU Economic Partnership Agreement, as well as the US- African Growth and Opportunity Act.

We call on African governments to

·           Offer decisive united leadership in the definitive defeat of the attempt to launch the Singapore issues at Cancun,

·           Actively promote participation of domestic citizens and their civil organisations as the only viable process for sustainable and equitable national and continental development and regional integration,

·            Strengthen their efforts to formulate and promote appropriate national, regional and continental development strategies as an effective engagement with and challenge to the currently dominant trade regime and institutions,

·            Approach investment primarily as the mobilisation of domestic resources to enhance the productive capacities of African economic actors, the human and environmental welfare of Africa, and the economic and social opportunities of African citizens'.

We call on African civil society organisations to join the campaign against investment and other Singapore issues at the WTO.

Signatories:

CECIDE, P O Box 1634, Conakry, Guinea

CCITAD, P O Box 10210, Kano, Nigeria

GENTA, Johannesburg, South Africa

MWANZA,  Tanzania

Ghana Agricultural Workers Union, Accra

Oxfam Senegal

ADEETels, Dakar, Senegal

AIDC, Mowbray, South Africa

RODI-Kenya, Ruiru

GRAMPITC, N'Djamena, Chad

FEEC, Cheikh Anta Diop University, Dakar, Senegal

ISODEC, Accra, Ghana

Oxfam GB

SALID, Yaounde, Cameroon

Association for Local Development in Rabat, Morocco

CEDA, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso

Intermon/Oxfam, Chad

Institute of Economic Affairs, Nairobi, Kenya

Kenya Human Rights Commission

Third World Network - Africa

Third World Network - Malaysia

ECONEWS AFRICA, Nairobi, Kenya

ENDA Syspro II, Dakar, Senegal

LEAT, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

ILRIG, Cape Town, South Africa

Novib, Netherlands