URFIG-supported Document about WTO

NO TO A NEW ROUND IN DOHA

World Forum on the WTO, Draft Final Declaration and Recommendations

(Beirut, 8 November 2001)

Between the 5^th and the 8^th of November 2001, on the eve of the 4^th ministerial meeting of the WTO in Doha, a world forum on globalization and global trade was held in Beirut. The meeting was attended by civil society representatives from 5 continents to take a position on the Doha meeting of the WTO and its agenda. The meeting also discussed new global developments and the atmosphere of militarization and war that is currently dominating all aspects of life on the planet.

After numerous sessions and workshops, the participants declare the following:

The importance of the Doha meeting is in the fact that it will be the first global meeting after the September 11 attacks and after the start of the war on Afghanistan. It is also held for the first time in Arab country, not far from besieged Iraq and from Palestine, where the Palestinian are facing a continuing Israeli occupation.

This new reality should make us cautious against pressures on developing countries to make more concessions. We refuse any use of global trade or its mechanisms as a tool in the current declared war.

Seven years since the creation of the WTO has given us ample time to examine the promises of prosperity, development, opening up of markets to the products of developing nations, and the numerous benefits that the latter would have enjoyed from joining the organization. What really happened was completely the opposite. Economic stagnation spread to include more and more countries. Developing countries faced huge losses in their economies and exchange. Protectionist measures in the countries of the global north remained an obstacle to the products of the South. Agriculture and food security was hit with tremendous losses and damage. The technological divide between north and south became unprecedented, while barriers to the transfer of technology became stronger, and the workforce was barred from free movement.

The implementation of WTO agreements and its mechanisms has shown that it is completely biased in favor of big multinationals and global capital. The WTO does not give any consideration to international justice, nor to the interests of developing countries, not to the people of the global north themselves. It goes completely against development, and peoples’ rights of development, this explains the emergence of a global movement opposed to the existence of the WTO, its role and mechanisms.

The rhetoric of the free market is an ideology biased in favor of global capital. What the WTO seeks is in complete opposition to the principles of social justice, human rights, and international charters. Our criticism of the WTO is based on what humanity had agreed upon decades ago: the UN charters for human rights. The Human Rights declaration of 1986 states, in its first article, that the human right for development requires the complete implementation of the right of self-determination. That includes the complete and unconflicted sovereignty of people over their natural resources and wealth.

The WTO aims to become a trading authority above countries and nations, thus practically eliminating their ability to formulate social, economic, and financial policies that achieve development. The WTO also removes the authority of national legal systems in all areas that fall within its scope. This drains the right for development, and the majority of economic and social right of people and individuals, from their meaning. It deprives people from political, institutional, and legal tools that would allow them to create national development policies and the means to achieve them.

The rules at work in the WTO aim to make trade an absolute and comprehensive principle. They push development, human rights, and the interests of people to the side, where they are readapted to global trade and not the opposite.

The creation of a global organization with such power and authority is a dangerous issue in itself. It becomes more and more ominous in light of the current push to militarize globalization and the unipolar hegemony on the global decision.

Based on the above, the participants in the Word Forum in Beirut, and at the conclusion of their discussions, declare the following positions to the 4^th ministerial meeting in Doha on the 9^th of November 2001:

1)     We refuse a new round of negotiations in the WTO and any inclusion of new issues on the agenda, especially those connected with investment, competition, government procurement, and other issues that will overwhelm the meeting and puts the delegates of developing countries in a position where it is impossible for them to follow negotiations on all those issues at the same time.

2)     We call for the reevaluation of previous agreements in light of the practice of their implementation that showed a great bias against the interests of developing countries. This includes the reevaluation and the correction, or the annulment, of harmful agreements, or those that where signed under pressure or ignorance. Those being factors that eliminate will and corrupt the contract.

3)     We call for the cancellation of agreements on intellectual property that inhibit developing countries from providing adequate health care to their people; that block the transfer of technology, and that protect the interests of supranational organizations and facilitates their pilfering of cultural and genetic heritage of developing countries.

4)     We call for the exclusion of agriculture from the scope of the WTO and the ban on dumping practiced by multinational corporations. This means the lift of agricultural subsidies in industrialized countries, and the opening up of their markets to the agricultural products of developing countries. It also includes the right of developing countries to create national policies to develop and protect their agriculture and farmers. It also means the refusal of any measures that aim to monopolize the production of seeds through patents and genetic modification.

5)     We refuse to basic services (water, health, education, etc.) in trade agreements, since these are connected directly to the well being of people. These should remain under the control of people through their national institutions and not market forces and the purpose of quick gain.

6)     We refuse the inclusion of labor standards in WTO agreements and call for the adherence to the standards of the ILO.

7)     We refuse any transgression of international environmental treaties, and we call for the adherence of trade agreements and practices to the respect of environmental safety and health standards.

8)     We refuse the internal mechanisms of the WTO, especially its conflict resolution process, since they are neither democratic, nor transparent, nor do they provide equal representation in the decision-making process. We call for new mechanisms based on those conditions and the abilities of developing countries.

Global economy and global trade should follow the bases of the consolidation of global justice and equality. They should allow all countries to benefit from economic, scientific, and technological advancement. This way global trade will strengthen peace and global stability and not become an instrument in the creation of conflict and war.

Our world is not for sale and peoples’ lives and well being are not a material for trade.

The global protest movement that succeeded in stopping the meeting in Seattle two years ago, because of the accumulation of the struggle and coordination and solidarity between its components, is now capable of stopping the new round in Doha and in enforcing the respect of peoples’ rights and the rights of developing countries in particular to achieve development, social justice and peace.

Changing the location of WTO meetings from one country to another in order to avoid what happened in Seattle in 1999 will not solve the problem. What we demand is that the WTO changes its mechanisms and content, not the location of its meetings. If the WTO does not do so, then any meeting, wherever it may be, will become another Seattle.