presented by GABRIELA and AMIHAN
in the Peoples' Assembly Session: Women Say NO to WTO!
November 29, 1999
Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.
Stop
Trading Off Peoples' Lives and Future!
Take
Agriculture Out of WTO!
Junk WTO! Women
Say NO to Imperialist Globalization!
In Seattle,the stage is set for another trading event that will barter the
lives and future of women, men and children in exchange for super profits
for monopoly capital. The Millennium Round of negotiations of the World Trade Organization (WTO) will definitely be dominated by the
US, Japan, Germany and the rest of the Group of 7. Majority of
their people and the rest of the world will once more be shoved into economic and political maelstrom.
We, the
impoverished producers of Asia, await with much apprehension the outcome of the 3rd WTO Ministerial Meeting, one of which main agenda is a review of the Agreement on Agriculture (AOA). And not without enough basis.
Most of our governments are gearing to further open up our
markets for agricultural products and our lands and other resources to
corporate plunder. The same formula that is whittling away whatever
control we still have on our products and resources.
No doubt
the dominant players in the game, the US, Japan and EU will again battle to squeeze out more concessions despite the astonishing arrayof concessions already gained in the previous rounds.
No doubt
governments of developing countries, will beg for more favors, promise more bargains and make more compromises to keep them on board ship.
In the end, among the major losers in this trading game are the poor producers: the
peasants, farmers, agricultural workers, the women and thechildren without whose labor there could be no products to be traded, without whose labor there could be no trade in agriculture
to speak of.
In the end, the gainers are the national ruling elite, made up of the big landowners and big business, and the transnational corporations (TNCs)whose monopoly control of the land, trade and production
technology already assures them of the lion's share of the region's productive output. Once more, monopoly capital gets the loot.
We, who
toil daily under the scorching sun to produce 91% of the world's rice, barely have enough rice to eat. We, who work in the
plantations of bananas, pineapples, rubber and palm oil, barely have enough
cash to send our children to school and buy medicine when we get sick.
Official data tell it all. Asia is home to rich natural resources and strong
human power. It is home to an unparalleled ecological heritage, yet it remains the home of 70% of the world's poor.
We
therefore re-state in the strongest terms: We have never benefited from
our governments' commitments to the AOA and the rest of the
WTO agreements.
The market
access provision of the AOA, which provides for tariff reduction, is eschewed to the advantage of industrialized countries which
start off with high tariff rate bases and therefore end up still being
able to protect their local markets. The developing countries are left with
their local markets wide open for imports thus displacing
their local products.
But
developing countries have to sell and trade, say our governments which are still keeping blind to the fact that all of
globalization's promises have failed. "Equal playing field" under
imperialist globalization is a lot of nonsense. There can be no free trade nor fair trade in a world system dominated by monopoly capital.
Our
governments continue to offer us as sacrificial lambs to the so-called 'global competitiveness'. Intensification of exploitation of our
labor and the natural resources are resorted to in order to
produce products at the cheapest price possible. Men, women and
children are made to work almost as slaves on mere pittance. Family labor is mobilized in exchange for compensation fit for paupers.
Another
anomaly is the domestic support provision of the AOA which
mandates a reduction of production subsidies for the
farmers. Various estimates point, that even with a 20% subsidy reduction,
governments of developed countries can still can afford to provide billions
of subsidies to their farmers in various forms without them being declared WTO illegal.
One the
other hand, we from the developing countries have to fend for ourselves. Our cash-strapped and debt-burdened governments are only too happy to take away our already low subsidies. With little or no support from government, and with high production inputs, our local
products cannot compete with the cheap, highly subsidized imported products
that flood markets.
The WTO has
spelled disaster on us and our natural resources. Large
tracts of lands devoted for the production of staple food are converted
for the cultivation of products for trade. Worse, our lands
and forests are taken away from us to pave the way for conversion to golf
courses and other tourism resorts, grandiose mal-development projects like dams, mining and logging concessions and so-called industrial centers. We are left landless and ruined.
Of great
concern is our food security, our capacity to produce our own food
and its accessibility to every one. We can never subscribe
to the idea peddled by most of our governments that food security is
simply the availability of food and that we are better off importing
cheap food from other countries.
These
products have been flooding the local market, competing with
locally produced ones which have become relatively more
expensive because of higher production cost due to withdrawal of subsidies and lower tariff for the imported ones. Imported products continue to
threaten, if not already putting an end to, the viability of local
products. Worse, with the trade of even our staple food like rice and corn, in the hands of cartels, price manipulation resulting into steep increases
in the prices of these commodities, have been resorted to. Heavier pressure
is created on our already very tight food budget.
Our health suffers from all the chemicals introduced in agricultural production and the pollutants from mining and industrial operations that poison our lands, air, seas, rivers and other bodies of water.
For us, WTO means greater exploitation of our labor and resources,
further ruin of our sources of livelihood and steady
deterioration of our already meager income. These further translate to hunger, malnutrition and worsening of our life situations.
For us
women, the squeeze is even tighter. As our meager family income is
further reduced, our husbands are forced to depart our
villages in search of jobs. Many do not return, leaving us women on our own to keep the rest of the family alive. Our working hours are doubled or tripled to augment our income and find food for the children.
Hundreds of
thousands of us are likewise forced to leave for the urban areas and even other countries in the hope of finding jobs.
Many end up being victimized by labor and sex traffickers. And some of
us have prostituted ourselves as unwilling commodities in the sex
trade.
To make
matters worse, the collusion among the imperialist powers, the
local ruling elite and the state, that they dominate, goes
beyond the economic sphere. To stifle peoples' opposition and to
protect monopoly capital business interests, the state unleashes its military and paramilitary forces against the women, men and communities
resisting globalization. Militarist aggression is the imperialists'
and the state's answer to legitimate peoples' demands.
We,
therefore, affirm our commitment to
resist and fight imperialist globalization and its newest conduit - the WTO. Let their trading begin. But let us fight to have our lives and our future spared.
Take Agriculture out of WTO! Junk WTO! Strengthen international
solidarity and advance the peoples'
struggle against imperialism! [Initiated by AMIHAN, GABRIELA, KMP and BAYAN]
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