Feminists at the WTO: entering the master's house?

(Photo: Kristin Sampson, IGTN)

"The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house" (Audre Lorde)

Banúlacht's decision to send a representative to the WTO was not taken lightly. As a feminist organisation we had to consider the possibility that engaging with the process and participating in the ministerial meeting as an NGO actually legitimates, rather than challenges, the WTO. On the other hand, as an organisation working on women's economic rights, the WTO ministerial is hardly something we could ignore.

Banúlacht participated at the WTO ministerial meeting as a representative of Women in Development Europe (WIDE), which is a member of the International Gender and Trade Network (IGTN). Each network had a sizeable presence at the WTO, with representatives from all the major regions of the world. Both networks engaged in following the negotiations. WIDE Director, Meagen Baldwin, was a gender adviser on the EU delegation (one of four NGOs in an advisory capacity), and was involved in daily or twice daily briefings at the NGO centre. The IGTN held daily briefings, with inputs and analysis from IGTN analysts and from officials and NGOs on national delegations. Outside of the main venue for official negotiations, WIDE and the IGTN also held workshops and participated in alternative events, including various marches and protests, as well as discussions, panels and other events.

However, unlike feminist engagement in UN spaces (CSW, CEDAW and even UNCTAD, the UN Convention on Trade and Development) where a gender perspective is integral to the processes, feminist analysis is an outsider position in the WTO. The WTO is explicitly about trade liberalisation and nothing else, there is no room for human rights and gender justice arguments within its discussions. Such arguments contest easy understandings and challenge neoliberalism, and would introduce cracks into the WTO logic that trade liberalisation is always good for development. So there is a kind of political screen around the WTO negotiations which it is virtually impossible for WIDE’s, the IGTN’s and other feminist analyses of gender and trade, or critiques from a human rights, labour or environmental perspective to penetrate: we are forced to leave many of our tools outside the master's door.


Women create a 'Junk WTO' tapestry as part of the alternative events held by NGOs in parallel with the WTO ministerial
(Photo: Kristin Sampson, IGTN)

Inside the official spaces at WTO meetings, WIDE and the IGTN don’t focus on mainstreaming gender into trade policy so much as act as trade policy advocates articulating positions in solidarity with countries of the South from a justice and human rights persepctive, aiming to highlight a gender focus in statements, declarations, press releases and on websites.

And to a degree, participating in this way can legitimate the WTO process, in the sense that in order to engage at this level, as insiders, organisations have to use the language of WTO discourse, and focus their policy advocacy at the micro level of technical discussions based on documents produced by the WTO. For Banúlacht, for example, it means deviating from our policy of using the term 'countries of the South', because the WTO documents are phrased in terms of 'developing countries'and 'least developed countries'-the master's language, the master's tools.

But only to a degree, perhaps, because feminist organisations, justice based groups, environmental NGOs, development agencies not only move between the NGO spaces and the official spaces inside the convention centre where the ministerial is held, but can also move between the official spaces and the alternative speaces, swapping colour-coded identity badges for NGO banners. In those spaces the focus is on the bigger picture and the discussions focus not on the minutiae of technical wording, but on the lived experience and detail of people's lives. In those spaces the lived experience, the local and the personal, become political and international through exchange, debate and protest.

And the presence of women farmers, women activists and epecially migrant women in all the alternative venues and in all the protests and demonstrations powerfully illustrated that although the WTO may not think there's any connection between gender equality and trade, women living with the impacts of trade liberalisation have no doubt that it does.


For more reports on the alternative events see earlier reports entitled 'A Walk through Victoria Park' and 'The Elasticity of NGO Women's Time'.

Everything but Development? Reports on key outcomes for countries of the South


Sinagbayan Political Theater Group performing 'FETAD!' (see report entitled 'A Walk through Victoria Park')

Brief report by Banúlacht, followed by an index of reports by the International Gender and Trade Network

What was at stake at the WTO?
· Doha Development Agenda versus global roadmap for trade liberalization
· Development paradigm versus market paradigm
· Flexibility, policy/decision making space of developing countries versus mandatory liberalization and the creation of a “one size fits all” paradigm

The “development package” was used as peacemaker; however, the deal extracted substantial concessions from developing countries in a number of areas:

Increases in aid for trade
A huge proportion of this will be provided as loans. It is a bribe for trade liberalisation because the aid is conditional on implementing the liberalisation, and ‘developing countries’ will be forced to liberalise before they have built up their supply capacity needed to engage in trade.

Non-Agricultural Market Access
Issue: In order for countries of the South to move from specialising in the export of agricultural products and other raw materials, they need to be able develop industries in processed goods. There is more profit to be made in producing a dining table and chairs than in selling timber, and in, say, canned fruit juices than unprocessed fruit. All the industrialised countries have historically used measures, such as import tariffs, to support domestic producers in the face of competition from cheaper imported goods (import substitution). Countries of the South need to have the freedom to impose high tariffs on imports, so that domestic producers are not driven out of business by cheaper imports (more on this on the website). The aim of the WTO is to eliminate these measures, which are seen as ‘trade-distorting’, and one issue at Hong Kong was what type of formula would be adopted for the reduction of tariffs. The formula that was agreed is the ‘Swiss formula’ which cuts higher tariffs proportionately more than lower tariffs, rather than cutting all tariffs at the same rate, ‘developing countries’ tend to impose higher tariffs (to protect local production and as a key source of revenue) so the Swiss formula penalises them disproportionately and deprives them of a key protectionist measure. While the announcement that 97% of tariff lines will be duty free and 3% will be at levels that the US determines sounds good. 3% translates into 300 lines, including all the important products of interest to LDCs, such as textiles.

(Photo: Kirstin Sampson, IGTN)





Services
Trade in services is determined by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Services (GATS). Until now, the GATS has operated on a request-offer system, whereby, Ireland, for example, requests that Ghana open up its banking sector to Irish banks, and Ghana has the option to consider the request or not. The industrialised countries were not satisfied with the rate at which the services sectors in ‘developing countries’ were opening up to foreign service providers. Under the new ‘plurilateral’ approach, if a ‘developing country’ receives a number of requests to open up a sector, then they will have to enter negotiations. This undermines the rights of countries of the South according to their own national needs to choose which service sectors to open and to what extent, and which to develop within their own countries.

Agriculture
The main benefit for the South was the agreement of a date for the final phasing out of export subsidies by developed countries in agriculture by 2013. There are no disciplines on trade distorting domestic support., so the structure of subsidisation by the EU and the US remains intact. This will allow for dumping to continue unabated. The EU can continue to use domestic support to the tune of $55 billion after 2013, by using the so called green box exemption for certain products. With cotton, the WTO calls for elimination of export subsidies by 2006, but does not deal with domestic subsidies under which the majority of trade distorting supports are reported.

Trade is complex and some ‘developing countries’ are aggressive players in trade, what this report focuses on is the impact of the WTO agreement on countries’ capacity to determine their trade policy and resist unbridled liberalisation. See article by Walden Bello on the Focus on the Global South website for more on the role of India and Brazil.


For detailed analysis by the International Gender and Trade Network, see the following links:

Reflection on the Hong Kong WTO Ministerial – Maria Pia Hernandez, IGTN Geneva
Available at

For additional commentary by IGTN on the progression of the Ministerial negotiations and IGTN activities in Hong Kong, please see the articles below, all available on www.igtn.org.

Updates on Ministerial:

WTO Still Standing - Development on Shaky Ground – January 3, 2006

Women’s Lives at Stake: Development Lost in Latest Draft – December 18, 2005

Draft ministerial text negates development – December 17, 2005

Developing Countries Resist the Expansion and Consolidation of Market Access in NAMA and Service – December 16, 2005

Developing Countries Challenge Worst of Draft Ministerial Text – December 15, 2005

WOMEN AT THE WTO DEMAND: NO SELL-OUT ON REAL DEVELOPMENT!!! – December 14, 2005


Note on language
While Banúlacht's policy is to use the term ‘countries of the South’, for purposes of clarity in this report, I use the terms ‘developed’, ‘developing’ and ‘least developed countries’. This is because the distinction between the two categories was crucial at these talks. The ‘Development Round’ was opened at the Doha ministerial, where the Doha Development Declaration was agreed: the distinction between the broad category of ‘developing countries’ and the 50 countries that the UN defines as ‘least developed countries’ (LDCs) is not made in the Doha Development Declaration. In the lead in to the Hong Kong ministerial, the terminology of ‘advanced developing countries’ was increasingly being used to describe the likes of India, Brazil and South Africa, which are major exporters, on the one hand, and distinguish them from the ‘LDCs’, for example Ethiopia, Mozambique, Rwanda, Tanzania and Timor Leste. This leaves countries such as Kenya, Ghana, Vietnam, Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Guatemala, ‘developing countries’ which have more capacity than the ‘LDCs’ to engage in trade, but are not included in the Development Package, in a grey area.

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)