Development Lost in WTO Ministerial Text

(Photo: Women's Camp, Victoria Park, Hong Kong)


1. IGTN Statement 18th December

2. Women's Edge Anlaysis of Outcomes

IGTN Analysis of Draft text 18th December

The latest draft Ministerial Declaration (18 December 2005 – Ref 05-6190) will ensure that the global trading system works for the development of corporate profits and shareholder earnings – not developing country economies and their people. The text has clearly been written by the most powerful countries for the promotion of their corporate interests and will only exacerbate the existing inequalities between countries, between people, and between men and women. Developed and developing countries are not equal trading partners and this revised text has proven this once again. The most developing countries will go away with is a handful of protective commitments in Agriculture (eg. para 5 on effective cuts in trade distorting domestic supports and para 7 on the designation and treatment of Special Products and Special Safeguard Mechanisms) and NAMA (eg. para 15 reference to para 8 of NAMA Framework and para 17 on non-linear mark-up approach), but are being penalized with Annex C’s expansive escalation in services liberalization.

Overall, the balance between Special and Differential Treatment and Market Access remains skewed in favor of market access formulas and modalities favorable to the developed countries. Developing countries are once again being asked to trade away their citizen’s livelihoods, food security, jobs, education and health and the policy space to address ensure these fundamental human rights in exchange for meager concession.

Services: The inclusion of Annex C that aims to “expand(ing) the sectoral and modal coverage of commitments and improving their quality” will undermine whatever gains were had from protective measures in Agriculture and NAMA. Annex C (para 27) creates plurilateral negotiations on a sectoral and modal basis and provides an almost immediate deadline for completing final draft schedules by October 31, 2006. This is an escalation in services liberalization and therefore privatization which will threaten many women’s livelihoods and lives. Access to essential services like water, education, health is crucial to women’s development and cannot be guaranteed when profit maximization is the bottom line.

NAMA: The agreement on the use of the Swiss formula (para 14) for the elimination of tariffs in Non-Agricultural Market Access (NAMA), despite the open language on the number of coefficients, paves the way for rapid de-industrialization leading to higher levels of unemployment and dramatic loss in tariff revenues—on which many governments depend.

LDC Development Package: LDC’s have been offered a hollow development package which will allow developed countries to limit duty free quota free treatment to only 97% of LDC goods and thereby deny market access to the very products which are of specific export interest to LDCs (Annex F(36)(a)(ii)) and which could improve the livelihoods of millions of farmers-over 60% of whom are women-and workers. Furthermore, aid-for-trade offers are not backed up with money in the bank, could be given in the form of loans (plunging LDCs deeper into debt), and will likely be restricted to the sole purpose of trade facilitation and not broader social and economic development projects which can be crucial to the realization of women’s economic and social development and equality.

Agriculture: 2013 is too late for the ending of developed country export subsidies (para 6). In a world where life expectancies in least developed countries average 50 years, the world cannot wait! If the commitment to Special and Differential Treatment for developing countries is too be honored, developing countries cannot be lumped together with developed countries in the third band for the reduction of domestic supports (para 5). Cotton is a crucial issue and while export subsidies for cotton will be eliminated and duty and quota free access granted to LDC cotton – domestic support reductions remains bracketed (para 11). Furthermore cotton will only be addressed within the context of full agricultural negotiations (para 11).

IGTN urges developing countries to REJECT the TEXT!


WTO Meeting in Hong Kong: What's in it for Women?

Last month, the countries of the World Trade Organization (WTO) met in Hong Kong from December 13-18, 2005 to revitalize and push forward the ‘Doha round’ of trade talks. Their challenge was to ensure that the needs of developing countries were kept at the core of the negotiating agenda, as was promised at the beginning of the round in 2001. After Hong Kong, most issues remain unresolved, and negotiations will continue through 2006.

WTO member countries did come to agreement on certain issues that will have implications for poor women around the world. For example, developed country governments agreed to eliminate farm export subsidies by 2013 and cotton export subsidies by the end of 2006. Export subsidies, which are not commonly used, are specifically designed to encourage the export of certain goods. Many governments, however, provide other forms of domestic support, such as direct payments to farmers, and the reduction of these subsidies has not yet been addressed by WTO members. Agricultural subsidies have been widely criticized internationally because they can artificially lower the prices of farm exports from rich nations, making it difficult for farmers from developing nations to compete. Ending subsidies could affect women’s lives, both as producers and as consumers of food. Women, in fact, produce 60 to 80 percent of the food grown in poor nations, but tend to be small or subsistence farmers who usually do not export their goods.

The United States and other developed country governments also agreed to improve duty- and quota-free access for exports from least developed countries (LDCs). By 2008, they will grant such access for 97 percent of products, or tariff lines. As a result, some women exporters in LDCs will be better able to compete in the U.S. market, because the majority of products will not face the discrimination of tariffs or quota limitations. Many LDCs already have duty-free access to the U.S. market under other preference programs, and, while the new proposal would increase market access opportunities for LDCs, certain products, such as textiles and apparel, will likely remain subject to customs duties.

Developed countries also committed to higher amounts of ‘aid for trade’ in Hong Kong, with the United States committing to increase its annual trade capacity building assistance (TCBA) from $1.3 billion in 2005 to $2.7 billion by 2010. Trade Capacity Building Assistance is international assistance given to poor or transitional countries to help them participate in global trade and can include the training of trade negotiators and help to small businesses on how to export their goods. The international community has come to realize that without such assistance, trade liberalization alone will not necessarily bring about economic development. While it is important that increased TCBA does not come at the expense of reductions in other forms of development assistance, in the future, Trade Capacity Building Assistance could be used to directly help poor women in developing countries take advantage of the opportunities that trade has to offer.

Looking ahead, the current Doha round is expected to conclude at the end of the year. Yet there is much more to be done in order to make this round a true ‘development round,’ as it was initially billed. WTO member countries could go much further this year in creating real economic opportunities for women, who are the majority of the world’s poor. For example, greater reform of international agricultural markets and increased market access for textiles and apparel could improve women’s livelihoods. Apart from being the majority of the world’s agricultural labour force, women account for the majority of textile and apparel workers in many developing countries. The latter is especially true in Asia, where, according to the International Labour Organization, women account for 89 percent of the textile and apparel sector in Cambodia, 80 percent in Bangladesh, and 82 percent in Sri Lanka. If the promise of the Doha round is to be fulfilled, it is important that women like them see more of the benefits of trade.

See Women's Edge Coalition website: www.womensedge.org

Women's NGOs'Press Release on Draft WTO text

(photo: 'Mad Cow Disease'by sculptor Jens Galschiot, from website of Art in Defence of Humanism (AIDOH))

With the release of the December 18, 2005 Draft Ministerial Text, it has become to clear to International Gender and Trade Network (IGTN) that development has been lost in this round. The latest draft Ministerial Declaration (18 December 2005 – Ref 05-6190) will ensure that the global trading system works for the development of corporate profits and shareholder earnings – not developing country economies and their people. The text has clearly been written by the most powerful countries for the promotion of their corporate interests and will only exacerbate the existing inequalities between countries, between people, and between men and women. Developed and developing countries are not equal trading partners and this revised text has proven this once again. The most developing countries will go away with is a handful of protective commitments in Agriculture (eg. para 5 on effective cuts in trade distorting domestic supports and para 7 on the designation and treatment of Special Products and Special Safeguard Mechanisms) and NAMA (eg. para 15 reference to para 8 of NAMA Framework and para 17 on non-linear mark-up approach), but are being penalized with Annex C’s expansive escalation in services liberalization.

Overall, the balance between Special and Differential Treatment and Market Access remains skewed in favor of market access formulas and modalities favorable to the developed countries. Developing countries are once again being asked to trade away their citizen’s livelihoods, food security, jobs, education and health and the policy space to address ensure these fundamental human rights in exchange for meager concession.

Comments from IGTN:

“This is not a development round it is a development round up! The US, EU and their allies have corralled developing countries and forced open their markets in services, industrial goods, and agriculture. Millions of women, workers, farmers, and indigenous groups will lose their livelihoods and lives.” Naty Bernardino, IGTN Asia, December 18, 2005

“The developing world can see through this “development” round. This text is nothing more than another request for Africa to mortgage her future to subsidize the economic genocidal intentions of the WEST!” Liepollo Lebohang Pheko, Gender and Trade Network Africa, December 18, 2005

“The US has shown its true intentions by offering a paltry “development package” in exchange for major concessions from developing countries on market access. Corporate profits have taken priority over the lives and livelihoods of women and men, in the developing countries, and in the US.” Kristin Sampson, U.S. Gender and Trade Network, December 18, 2005

“The battle of Hong Kong between two paradigms – market access first or development first – is lost for the global South, the poor, and for the small and vulnerable in economies all over the world. The EU has proved to be the driving force behind rapid, deeper and mandatory liberalization. The struggle about space for political decision making, protection and regulation of domestic markets has been decided in favor of corporate interests putting aside human rights, basic needs citizens’ entitlements, and social, gender and environmental justice.” Christa Wichterich, IGTN Europe/Women in Development Europe (WIIDE), December 18, 2005

Beijing+10 Meets WTO+10 1: Workshop on Trade and Women’s Rights

December 15, 2005, Hong Kong

This workshop brought together women’s groups, trade activists and social movements in a discussion on the broad understanding of the link between women’s rights, gender equality and trade regulations and the use of the BPFA as a tool for assessment and advocacy.

Some 10 years after two significant events took place—the 1995 UN 4th World Conference on Women in Beijing, China, and the inception of the World Trade Organization—women gathered in Victoria Park in Hong Kong to assess the collision between the two—one committing to rights, the other to trade. The event, “Beijing+10 Meets WTO+10,” convened during the 6th WTO Ministerial meeting, included some 100 participants and attendees from Bangladesh, Brazil, Cambodia, China, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Japan, Philippines, South Africa, Taiwan, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Uzbekistan and other countries, working on issues related to unions, human rights, environment, Dalit women, young women, trafficking, violence against women, health, education and the rights of workers—migrant, sex, domestic, home-based, agricultural—and included representatives from the various IGTN regional chapters.

Gigi Francisco from IGTN-Asia laid the context for the event: that women have come to Hong Kong to remind trade negotiators that while they are meeting to expand liberalization, the perspectives of the world’s women on trade are linked to their perspectives on women’s rights and development. While officials claim the WTO and its ‘Doha Development Round’ will advance a global agreement on trade for development, women contend—from life experience—that this trade model is advancing at the expense of women’s rights, lives and livelihoods. Several women throughout the event provided examples and analysis of how the WTO and trade liberalization are devastating women’s lives and hindering governments implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action.

A speaker from the Tamil Nadu Women’s Collective in India expressed that the WTO and especially its Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) have disrupted the progress made in Beijing. In India, transnational corporations (TNCs) benefiting from WTO aggression have contributed to massive displacement of agricultural workers—the majority women—as TNCs buy out workers’ land, produce pesticides and genetically-modified seed (e.g. Monsanto) and privatize water (e.g. Coca-Cola).

Migrant worker’s voices were particularly represented: it was pointed out that most of the migrant women who had attended Sunday’s march, were using their only day off in the week and that many experience exploitative conditions as domestic workers in Hong Kong. This issue has arisen over and over in discussion here: the flow of care labour through ‘care chains” and the care ‘drain’ from the South as women migrate to work as carers of an aging population in indistrialised countries, often leaving their own children behind in the care of grandparents, older siblings or neighbours. In the world of WTO-speke, these women are service providers engaging in the global market place, exchanging a commodity for income, and the families who receive their remittances back home, are therefore seen as net beneficiaries of free trade. The cost to women in terms of the stressful nature of this low paid work is not considered relevant. The Philippines government has a policy to send 1,000,000 migrants a year overseas: 76% of migrants from the Philippines are women. The IGFTN workshop called on the WTO to see these women as social beings, not merely as workers.

In Latin America, the WTO and free trade agreements have contributed to water privatization in many countries. Additionally approximately 70% of the region’s seeds are owned by Monsanto – seeds that once were exclusively locally owned and produced. Crops that had once been exported are now being imported at lower costs, further displacing workers and shattering the local economy and ecology. The economic model in Latin American countries under the free trade regime is based on the use of cheap natural resources and cheap, often female, labour. Trade rules make it more expensive to export finished products (that have a higher mark-up) than to export raw materials, thus trapping countries of the South in low value production and export.

Many speakers asserted that under the WTO, rights are associated with property holders and WTO agreements place land in the hands of wealthy men and the transnational corporations. This has contributed to the erosion of women’s rights, notably women’s right to self-sufficiency and self-determination. The example of rural South Africa was given, where women who used to feed themselves and their families by growing their own food are now forced to travel long distances for food, which is usually genetically modified. As a result of the WTO agreement on Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs), women are also being forced to buy back their own traditional knowledge at a high price. TRIPs also creates higher prices for medicines, and with health care increasingly privatized, these higher costs are placing women’s health and livelihoods under assault.

A speaker from the International Movement Against the Discrimination of Races (IMADR) brought a thought-provoking critique into the meeting: she began with the origin of human rights as rights of male, white, property owners. Using the analogy of the ‘untouchables’ she described the layers and layers of untouchability of those who fall outside legal and nationality based constructions of citizenship, and the exclusion of those without documents, illegal migrant workers, sex workers and asylum seekers. (Women have brought universalism into crisis by introducing difference through the recognition of people as affective and emotional and having bodies.) What used to be the unacceptable face of capitalism is now acceptable: the citizen is now a consumer. But with globalization, women can only trade competitively by undervaluing themselves. She challenged what she dscribed as the homogenization of women in the BPfA and CEDAW-women carry markers of caste, community and social arrangements and the phenomenon of the feminization of labour has to been seen as intersecting with the ethnicisation of labour.

Speakers stressed that in spite of the Beijing Platform for Action, women’s work has become increasingly informalized all over the world over the last ten years. The Non-Agricultural Market Access (NAMA) agreement wipes out women’s home-based industries, leading to greater displacement of local producers. Trade liberalization has led to increased migration, with women making up 76% of people employed abroad, the majority working as domestic workers or in the services or entertainment industries. A representative from the Taiwan Collective of Sex Workers & Supporters rallied the crowd to make the link between the WTO and sex workers rights, highlighting that when farmers lose their jobs as a result of WTO policies, their daughters often resort to sex work to help the family survive. Often these migrant sex workers face the additional threat of the repressive immigration laws of many governments, the United States especially.

Participants also made clear that lack of access to essential services has also been detrimental to women, who depend on them most. In the Philippines for example, liberalization has led to the privatization of services such as water, which has caused prices to escalate and the incidence of contamination to increase. As a member from the Women’s Committee of the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions stated, the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) affects not only the provision of government services but the subcontracting of government services to private firms that are exploiting human rights, especially those of women workers. This attack on public services across the world by the WTO is exacerbated when services essential to women’s well-being are further limited by increased militarism and military spending and decreased public spending on social, education and health services.

Women’s voices clearly articulated that the WTO has compromised the achievement of the Beijing Platform for Action and other women’s rights commitments. This precedence of WTO commitments over human rights commitments is leading to massive displacement and migration, greater erosion of human rights, increased inequality and greater corporate control of vital resources and services. Many women echoed that the accomplishments of Beijing were the result of many women’s voices participating and being heard. In stark contrast is the WTO women have no role and no voice.

Each speaker concluded by leading the group in a chant from her home country. As the Beijing+10 event drew to a close, the voices of these inspiring women hung in the air…“No Compromise, No Surrender”, “Make Trade Fair!” and in several languages “The Women United Will Never Be Defeated!”

Adapted from a report written by Nadia Johnson, USGTN & Women’s Environment & Development Organization (WEDO)

Workshop sponsored by IGTN and the Migrants Forum in Asia, Asian Migrants Center, Hong Kong Women’s Coalition for Equal Opportunities, International Movement against the Discrimination of Races (IMADR), Thai Labour Campaign, HomeNet Southeast Asia, World Dignity Forum, and the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions. (Chinese translation will be provided)

The Elasticity of WIDE Women's Time:

Reading the newspapers and watching television, it would be easy to have the impression that all that happens at the WTO is that governments hold negotiations inside and NGOs protest outside and that the two are kept apart by police in riot gear, deploying pepper spray and water cannons. In fact, it's all a lot more complex, multi-layered and interconnected than that. There are around 2,000 NGO representatives here, and we engage and interact with the WTO negotiation process, and the negotiators with the NGOs, in a wide range of different ways and most of us in a number of ways at different times.

In the WTO context, NGOs include all those who are not government representatives, so not only Banulacht, Comhlamh and the Third World Network, for example, but also representatives of farmers, industry, agribusiness, employers, Transnational Corporations (e.g. Microsoft, Monsanto, Novartis), banks, etc. many government delegations include NGOs (the Irish delegation, for example includes IBEC, the IFA, ICMSA as well as Oxfam, Trocaire, Comhlamh and ICTU). At the Hong Kong Exhibition and Convention Centre, NGOs and delegates enter the same door, but beyond that, we have separate escalators to take us through our separate security checks and into our separate spaces. NGOs cannot pass over to the delegate side, but delegates can come to the NGO side. During each day, while the negotiations take place, there are parallel briefings, seminars and press conferences on the NGO side, where delegates come to report back to civil society on the state of the negotiations, update us on the positionings of the different country blocs and sometimes seek information from the NGOs. A number of NGOs produce daily briefings which are circulated in the NGO centre (and also on web sites, see earlier report dated Friday 16th).

And while all of that is going on inside the Exhibition and Convention Centre, in different venues, such as the Association of Boys and Girls Clubs (10 minutes walk away) and Victoria Park (25 minutes walk) every kind of strategy meeting, workshop, seminar and book launch is taking place. In the marquees set up in Victoria Park there have been tapestry making workshops, tribunals, political theatre, and by contrast with the formal surroundings of the Exhibition and Convention Centre, there are placards, T-shirts and posters everywhere with the message ‘Junk the WTO’.

One of the frustrations of participating in an event like this is trying to prioritise the use of your time and decide which events to attend. Do you stay in the convention centre and go to all the press briefings so as not to miss any developments, or do you go a strategy meeting of alternative NGOs who are planning an action like the water action (rattling coins in empty water bttles and chanting against the privatisation of water), or the creation of a huge empty box wrapped as a Christmas present, representing the empty Development Package being offered to the South? Do you participate in the women's march or go the workshop on women and services? Do you spend an hour reading briefings so as to be up to date on the state of negotations, or do you write your report for the web-site? Do you spend a day at the Women's Forum on the WTO or do you join your NGO colleagues to meet the Minister for Agriculture at her hotel? Do you stay for dinner with your delegation or go back to your hotel for an interview with community radio?

You can try to do everything, and spend your day running around from hotel to the Convention Centre, over to Hong Kong Boys' and Girls' Club, where some event happen, across to the Victoria Park where the activist tents are and the marches converge, back to the Convention Centre again. And you arrive late for everything and have to leave early to get to something else. Since I am not part of the government delegation on this occasion (because I am representing WIDE-Women in Development Europe) I don't have access to the Head of Delegation meetings where the negotiations happen (except the all-important negotiations that take place in the private select 'Green Rooms'). This give me a bit freedom, and what I have tried to do is to spend at least part of each day in Victoria Park and part in the Convention Centre.

Here's a flavour of the kinds of parallel events that are happening in all sorts of venues in Hong Kong in parallel to the WTO negotiations (women's events in bold):


Speak-out on Human Rights & Trade (Asia Pacifc Research Network (APRN), International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), Rights and Democracy)

Global Ecumenical Women's Forum on Life-Promoting Trade (Ecumenical Organizations in HK, World Council of Churches (WCC), Christian Conference of Asia (CCA), HK Women Christian Council (HKWCC), ACISCA, HK Christian Institute (HKCI))

Asian Women's Village Exhibits

Asia Pacific Forum for Women, Law and Development (APWLD)

One Txt, One Msg, One World--TXT Power, Mobileactive Forum on Trade and War

International League of People's Struggle (ILPS), Resist!, Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN, New Patriotic Alliance), United Filipinos in HK (UNIFIL-HK)

Cultural Jamming, Poetry Reading, etc

International League of People's Struggle (ILPS), Resist!, Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN, New Patriotic Alliance)

Rice Festival Activities during the People's Camp for Food Sovereignty

Pesticide Action Network Asia Pacific Save Our Rice Campaign

People's Workshop on Agreement on Agriculture (AoA)

Asia Pacific Forum for Women, law and Development (APWLD), Asian Peasants Coalition (APC), APWN, AMIHAN (Philippine Peasant Women Federation)
Sharing: Women & Peace; Peace Negotiations, ILPS Peace Commission, GABRIELA

People's Camp on Food Sovereignty: Rural People's Tribunal on Agreement on Agriculture (AoA)

International Rural Peoples’ Tribunal: Intensify Resistance against Imperialist Globalization! Junk WTO!

International Caucus on Mining and WTO

WTO/Globalization: Endangering the World for Children

Women's Tribunal on the Impact of WTO on the World's Women
APWLD, AMIHAN, GABRIELA, APWN

Meeting "Building a Global Campaign to take Water out of FTAs (Water-Warriors)

Women's March (HKCTU Women, GABRIELA, APWLD)

Asian Workshop on TRIPS: Defending Farmer's Rights against Corporate Control in Food and Agriculture (NPOL, APC, PANAP)

Game Over WTO Children's Picnic

Asian Women's Press Briefing

Forum/Speak-out on Globalization, WTO and Forced Migration

"Onward With People's Struggles, No to WTO!" Closing March/Rally

Getting information on the Hong Kong Ministerial

Here at the ministerial meeting, the NGO centre in the venue where the ministerial is taking place is a market place of information: each morning you arrive to find table after table of information briefings and flyers, new publications, posters and leaflets on everything from fisheries in India, the entry of China to the global economy, migrant workers' rights, the flow of care-migration of health professionals from South Africa to flyers on the meetings that are taking place in venues around HOng Kong on trade issues and information about the various daily marches and demonstrations.

Many of the briefings are also available on the websites of organisations that are particualrly active here.

For those wishing to have a range of NGO perspectives on the WTO Hong Kong Ministerial Meeting, and to read in more detail about the progress of the negotiations here at the WTO, the following are useful websites:

Third World Network
www.twnside.org

Bridges Daily Updates by the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development
www.ictsd.org

Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch
www.gtwinfo.org

Or try the Our World is Not for Sale Network website.

For contrasting (to say the least) perspectives on the negotiations, see the diary of WTO Director, Pascal Lamy, on the WTO website (www.wto.org: click on Lamy's photo on the home page and follow the links to the diary) and Conall O'Caoimh's reports on the Comhlamh website (www.comhlamh.org).

For some great cartoons explaining some of the major issues of concern at Hong Kong, see Oxfam's website: www.oxfam.ie. Go to WTO and click on 'issues'

WIDE Statement for the WTO Ministerial Meeting December 2005
WHOSE DEVELOPMENT IS IT ANYWAY?A gender perspective on the EU’s position in the WTO negotiations

(photo: Women's WTO tapestry)

Banulacht is the Irish Platform of WIDE (Network Women in Development Europe) and Maeve Taylor is attending the WTO Ministerial as a representative of WIDE. The following is a statement prepared by WIDE for the Ministerial.

WIDE is deeply concerned about the European Commission’s insistence on pushing for the establishment of trade rules that threaten the livelihoods of poor women and men in the South and that perpetuate gender inequality, unfair gender relations as well as structural inequalities between women and men and within and between countries and regions. The EU is aggressively pursuing new markets, while offering little in return to developing countries. Of particular concern is the EU’s continued insistence on pushing for progress on nonagricultural market access (NAMA) and services negotiations in the name of the Doha Development Round whose objective is stated to be that of putting ‘development at the heart of the WTO’ (Doha Declaration 2001). As a European network promoting gender equality and social justice, WIDE joins other social movements and NGOs in the EU in challenging the assumption that increased trade and opening of markets will yield equitable development.

From a gender perspective, we are deeply concerned about the ways in which neo-liberalism, founded on the promotion of a radical ‘free-trade’ regime, economic globalisation and market liberalisation has both exacerbated already profound inequalities and led to the creation of new inequalities. It has led to the feminisation of precarious employment, (poor working conditions, low wages, unsustainable perspectives) intensified exploitation of women’s unpaid work in the caring economy and has undermined the livelihood strategies of poor women, including migrant women, in all areas of the world.

WIDE appeals for a rethinking of the structural inequities on which these policies are based. We question the concept of progressive trade liberalisation as a “one-size-fits-all” recipe for development. We cannot afford the prioritisation of market access over development goals, nor the false division between social and economic policies. WIDE contests the current neo liberal economic regime which promotes EU’s self-interest at the expense of women and men in the South. WIDE does not support the “aid for trade” policies promoted by the EU alongside the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. These policies promote the making of loans only in order to fund the adjustments required to facilitate trade liberalisation. As feminists and economic and social justice advocates, we believe that Official Development Assistance should not be linked with conditionalities. We also strongly oppose the approaches that aim to ‘add women in’ to the liberalisation process as ‘beneficiaries’ without questioning underlying structural inequities.

The time has come to change EU trade policies. They must be constrained and bound by existing international agreements that promote human rights and women’s rights, ecological sustainability, human dignity and they must aim to end poverty and promote well-being. EU trade policies can no longer be dictated by the interests of EU corporations. Current WTO negotiations should not undermine EU commitments to implement the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action agreed at the Fourth World Conference on Women or the realisation of gender equality and women’s human rights as enshrined in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

WIDE calls therefore on EU trade ministers, Member of the European Parliament and the European Commission to:

Ensure access to essential services for women and men. The EU should stop pushing in the General Agreement on Trade in Services negotiations its proposal for “Complementary Approaches” which by setting quantitative as well as qualitative targets is a paradigm shift from the concept of flexibility to an approach of coercion within the GATS. Nor should the EU push for the Bolkestein Directive within the EU.Essential services such as water, education, health should be excluded from the GATS negotiations.

Recognise and guarantee government’s policy space and flexibilities by halting the NAMA negotiations and drop reciprocity demands in the EPA negotiations.Governments should have the right to use policy tools, including trade measures that preserve government’s policy space to:
- Develop fair and sustainable economies that contribute to women’s empowerment;
- Protect and promote employment, social welfare, health for women and men and
the environment;
- Promote sustainable conservation and the sustainable management of all resources.

Ensure people’s food sovereignty. The EU should respect the right of developing countries to develop and implement agricultural policies that guarantee food security and strengthen domestic agricultural markets, most particularly those where smallscale farmers trade their products. We therefore call on the EU to remove agriculture from the WTO.

Ensure that Official Development Assistance is not linked to any conditionality.

Complete systematic public impact assessments of the development, social, environmental and gender impact of trade negotiations before proceeding to the next phases of negotiations. Such assessment should involve civil society and more specifically women’s organisations from both Europe and countries of the South, which the EU is targeting. Rather than being considered simply as flanking measures, which has been EU practice with other impact assessments, these assessments should inform and also influence EU policy changes.

Celebrating its 20th anniversary WIDE is a European women’s network whose main activities are lobbying, advocacy and awareness raising; networking and capacity building on global trade agenda, macro-economic policy, gender and development policy and women’s human rights.

WIDE is a member of the Seattle to Brussels Network, the International Gender and Trade Network and the Our World Is Not For Sale Network.

Visit the WIDE website: www.wide-network.org
For further information, please contact:
Meagen Baldwin, Executive Director, meagen@wide-network.org
Amandine Bach, GATS and WTO Project Coordinator, amandine@wide-network.org
Barbara Specht, Information Officer, barbara@wide-network.org

A walk through Victoria Park, Hong Kong

(photo of Sinagbayan preformers from Independent Media Center, Philippines)

A Chinese dragon made of waste paper; a placard of suited men painting bar codes on giant vegetables; a sculpture of a grossly sleek and oversized cow hanging in one side of a scales outweighing all the people on the other; a performance in dance and song of the struggle of traditional people in the Phillipines against ‘free’ trade; a memorial service for a Korean activist who self-immolated at the WTO meeting in Cancun; sculpted figures of emaciated men, chained together at the ankles, some wearing brand new trainers on their feet; a tribunal indicting the WTO for crimes against rural people….colour, creativity and the voices and stories of ordinary people: the contrast with the formal setting of the meeting rooms of the World Trade Organisation is stark. But the themes addressed by the activists who meet each day in marquees and around outdoor podiums in Victoria Park in Hong Kong are the same as those being discussed in the enormous Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre on the waterfront overlooking the harbour: the erosion of national sovereignty under ‘free’ trade rules; threats to food security and food sovereignty caused by dumping of subsidised products in countries of the South; the unfair trade rules that prevent poor countries using the trade protection measures that all the industrialized countries have used to develop their nascent industries. And the anger and frustration of the countries of the South is heard loud in both spaces. Inside the Convention Centre, negotiations over issues concerning people’s lives can sometimes get stuck over the fine semantic differences between ‘shall’ and ‘should’. In Victoria Park, people tell their stories, and dare use words like solidarity, power, capital, imperialism and justice. Inside the negotiations where delegates are hammering out what they are calling a 'Development Package', the word ‘gender’ is never heard, outside, women’s organizations representing rural women, indigenous women, Dalit women, migrant women, are everywhere.

In the open air SINAGBAYAN (Art in the Service of the People) group from the Philippines perform a piece of political theatre called FETAD! (Call to War) based on the struggle of the Ifugaos indigenous people with the WTO in the form of Hay Mana Haat, the evil god of the underworld. As their leaflet explains, globalisation destroys their livelihoods and way of life through (1) liberalization of agricultural imports which destroys their agriculture based livelihood, (2) the entry of GMO seeds which increases the cost of their agricultural production; and (3) severe indebtedness leading to the loss of their land to the big landlords and the transnational corporations. The drama shows the Ifugaos people's struggles against the incursion of cheap foreign imports into their livelihoods, with the people becomeing entangled in trade agreements (see photo), but ends with the Ifugaos driving the WTO out and reclaiming their land.

While in a meeting with NGOs, Peter Mandelson, the EU trade commissioner talks about the democracy and fairness and development centredness of the WTO, in the marquee in Victoria Park the First International Rural People’s Tribunal has just begun. The indictment is read: the WTO is charged with widespread and systematic violations of human rights, mass deaths, plunder of resources and destruction of livelihoods, trampling on human and women’s rights; undermining social justice, massive dislocation and poverty, hunger and landlessness, infringement of national sovereignty, complete disregard for people’s right to life, liberty, dignity, freedom from want, undermining world peace.



Protestors highlight the issues of transnational corporations patenting life-forms (see report on WTO and Beijing+10 for more on this issue)

Women at the WTO demand: no sell-out on real development!!!International Gender and Trade Statement to the WTO Ministerial, Hong Kong, 14 December 2005
Intense pressure is being exerted on developing countries to prove that they are engaged in serious negotiations here at the WTO Ministerial. Yet it is the developing countries themselves, specifically those associated with the G20, that insist that now is the time for serious and real negotiations. The WTO Secretariat confirms this, noting the very positive attitude shown by delegates from developing countries. However, the US Trade Representative claims that some big developing countries are simply posturing while the EU announced an extra 1 billion euro aid package followed by Japan who pledged 10 billion dollars for trade-related aid. From all indications, it seems likely that an agreement will emerge around the Development Package in the middle of the week.

But what is this package and at what cost will it be gained? From the perspective of the developed countries, the core of the development package is the set of commitments to Least Developed Countries only that Annex F (Special and Differential Treatment) contains. From the perspective of developing countries, SDT encompasses a much broader set of flexibilities for a wider range of developing countries, including mechanisms such as Special Products and a Special Safeguard Mechanism in the Agreement on Agriculture which have been sidelined in the current discussion on development. In exchange for these circumscribed promises on SDT, developing countries are being pressured to give further concessions for market access in agriculture, services and NAMA.

IGTN strongly supports the proposal submitted by the G33 on Special Products and a Special Safeguard Mechanism. We call upon the G33 to stand firm in its negotiating position and enhance its demands in order to guarantee that SPs become a concrete and effective mechanism to defend small farmers, particularly women, as well as to guarantee and implement the principles of food sovereignty, livelihood security and rural development. SPs and SSM are defensive tools that developing countries need to use because of systemic threats of free trade, but particularly in the face of dumping of artificially competitive subsidised exports of the EU and the US.

In regard to Annex C on services, IGTN opposes the push for rapid, deeper and mandatory liberalisation which will threaten women’s rights as enshrined in the Beijing Platform for Action and CEDAW, as well as the livelihoods of poor women and men in the South. Proposals for plurilateral and sectoral negotiations, and quantitative or qualitative targets contradict the flexibility of the GATS agreement that developing countries agreed to in 1994. Countries should have the right to regulate and oppose liberalisation of sectors - especially energy, education, water and health sectors, where women play an important role as service providers, care workers and beneficiaries – and have the space to implement their development policies. Development needs should take priority over corporate interests.

The balance sheet shows a bad development deal albeit with promises of a pot of money attached! Negotiators from developing countries must remain vigilant in their pursuit of a deal that will protect food security, livelihoods, jobs and sustainable development. No deal is better than a bad deal!

Adopted on 14 December 2005, Hong Kong

Co-signatories:
Asian Migrant Center
Berne Declaration
Center of Concern
Kaisampalad, Inc.
MODE
PNLC
WIDE
Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO)


This statement is open to signatories. If your organisation wants to sign on, please send an email to: amandine@wide-network.org or call: 67394389

On Tuesday, 13th December, the Sixth Ministerial Meeting of the WTO opened in Hong Kong. At the opening ceremony, in an action to raise awareness of the profound differences between the major powers (EU and US) and the countries of the South, a group of about 30 NGOs stood up during WTO Director Pascal Lamy’s speech holding placards and shouting slogans protesting at the negative impacts of trade liberalization in the South. It's a symbolic gesture, tolerated by the organisers, but no less important for that. Symbolism counts: at the Doha Ministerial meeting, NGOs lined up outside the opening ceremony with tape over their mouths. Both gestures underlined the sense here at the Honk Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre that WTO, the development NGOs, the powerful blocs, the corporate lobbyists are all speaking different languages. And in particular, the while the word ‘development’ exists in all of them, in this babble of voices, the word has a different meaning in each.

For the WTO it means incorporation into the world economy through opening of economies through trade liberalization. For counties of the South, it means the freedom and flexibility to determine their own economic policies, through using protective measures, such as tariffs, to protect developing industries from cheaper imports, as all the industrialized countries have done when their industrial base was developing. The EU and the US make the assumption that cheaper imports from the North benefits the consumer in the South by making goods cheaper, and so making their income stretch further. As Martin Khor of the Third World Network puts it-if this were so, we’d be all for lowering trade barriers. But opening up economies of the South in this way has resulted in job losses and decimation of local businesses which cannot compete, especially with heavily subsidized products from the North. So since the consumer is also a worker, she now has no income to spend on these cheaper goods.

For Banulacht, WIDE and the IGTN, any meaning of development has to have gender justice at its heart. But here at the WTO, gender is not taken seriously. We believe that it is critical that:
• No agreements are made at the WTO that contravene international human rights agreements including the principles and frameworks for action of the Beijing Platform for Action.
• In order for the WTO to achieve the objective of a Development Round, issues of concern to developing countries must be prioritised and these issues dealt with on the basis of the ‘less than full reciprocity’ principle. Countries of the South (developing countries) must have the policy space and flexibility to:
o Develop fair and sustainable economies that contribute to women’s empowerment
o Protect and promote employment, social welfare, health for women and men and the environment
o Promote sustainable conservation and the sustainable management of all resources
• The EU should exclude essential services such as water, education, health from the GATS negotiations.
• The EU should respect the right of developing countries to develop and implement agricultural policies that guarantee food security and strengthen domestic agricultural markets, most particularly those where small-scale farmers, who are mostly women, trade their products.

Women take to the streets. WTO Ministerial Meeting Hong Kong December 2005

(photo from www.isiswomen.org)

Between 3,000 and 4,000 people took part in a rally in Hong Kong on Sunday 11th December to protest against the trade liberalization agenda of the WTO. The event was a carnival of protest, with the overwhelming majority being women migrant workers from other Asian countries who work in the domestic and care sectors in Hong Kong. Women are often portrayed as the great beneficiaries of free trade, as trade has opened up new forms of employment in some countries. On Sunday, women in Hong Kong took to the streets to highlight the fact that this work is generally low paid, unstable employment and that the kinds of work where women have often specialized in the informal sectors, such as market trading, and in subsistence agriculture become increasingly vulnerable when economies are opening up to trade.


(Photo: Kristin Sampson, IGTN)
WIDE shares these concerns, from WIDE’s statement ‘Whose Development is it Anyway?’: From a gender perspective, we are deeply concerned about the ways in which neo-liberalism, founded on the promotion of a radical ‘free-trade’ regime, economic globalisation and market liberalisation has both exacerbated already profound inequalities and led to the creation of new inequalities. It has led to the feminisation of precarious employment, (poor working conditions, low wages, unsustainable perspectives) intensified exploitation of women’s unpaid work in the caring economy and has undermined the livelihood strategies of poor women, including migrant women, in all areas of the world. WIDE appeals for a rethinking of the structural inequities on which these policies are based. We question the concept of progressive trade liberalisation as a “one-size-fits-all” recipe for development. We cannot afford the prioritisation of market access over development goals, or the false division between social and economic policies. WIDE contests the current neo liberal economic regime which promotes EU’s self-interest at the expense of women and men in the South. (read the full statement on WIDE’s website www.wide.net.org)


(Photo shows WIDE representatives: Maeve Taylor (Ireland), Meagen Baldwin and Amandine Bach (WIDE Secretariat, Brussels), Christa Wichterich (Germany), Sirra Ndow (Gambia) and Lebohang Pehko (IGTN-South Africa))

This WTO ministerial has been billed as a development round: when even the IMF and the World Bank accept that gender equality is central to sustainable development (much as we may disagree with the interpretation of sustainable development of those institutions) it is the charter of the WTO, signed in the same year as the Beijing Platform for Action, and by many of the same countries, makes no mention of gender equality. At the WTO Ministerial WIDE representatives, including Maeve Taylor from Banulacht, as well as members of the International Gender and Trade Network (IGTN), and organizations such as WEDO will be working to highlight gender issues in the international trade regime. While the negotiations are ongoing, a range of side events are also taking place: WIDE has organized a round table entitled EU Trade Policy: Implications for Gender Equality, Environment and Development.

The IGTN holds daily briefings on the negotiations, and has planned a number of events, including two seminars, Beijing+10 meets WTO+10: Poverty Alleviation and Women’s Rights in the Rubric if Trade Liberalization and The Right(s) Approach for Gender Equality, Environment and Development: recapturing Policy Coherence Around Trade. There will also be a workshop on Economic Literacy and Popular Education: how to build a lasting base for organizing and leadership development sponsored by the IGTN and WEDO, at which Banulacht will be represented.

On Thursday 1st December a debate was held in the Dáil on the World Trade Organisation, in advance of the WTO Ministerial Meeting in Hong Kong. This is only the second time that trade has been debated in the Dáil since Ireland joined the WTO. Both debates have been the result of lobbying by Trade Matters, the Irish NGO coalition on trade. Trade Matters prepared a Briefing Paper, entitled 'An Agenda for Trade Justice', which was circulated to many TDs in advance of the debate. This paper is available on Banúlacht's website. Banúlacht also circulated our briefing paper and a lobby letter to the members of relevant committees and to a number of other TDs, especially women TDs (both the briefing paper and the letter are on the website). Twenty-two TDs spoke in total, about half of whom addressed the concerns of developing countries. Of those, five deputies made reference to the link between gender equality, development and human rights. One TD, Brendan Howlin, made direct reference to Banúlacht's gender and trade briefing paper, which may be Banúlacht's first ever mention in the Dáil. However, as Michael D Higgins pointed out in his speech, development issues are only ever debated in the Dáil on a Thursday, when most TDs have gone home, and only ever in the form of statements, rather than a true debate.

On Thursday December 1st, for only the second time since Ireland joined the WTO, there will be a debate on trade in the Dáil. Banúlacht has written a letter to a select group of TDs and ministers to urge them to participate in the debate and raise concerns about the negative impact of trade policy on women in the South and on the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action.

Gender and Trade (November 2005)
2005 has presented women's organisation, other NGOs and activist groups with a number of key opportunities to highlight international agreements on women's human rights, make connections between women's activism in Ireland and the South, and challenge governments on their implementation of commitments to gender equality and women's empowerment....