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                                        Why is the WTO such a dirty name?



 

New African,  Nr. 383, UK- IC Publications Limited; London, March 2000, pages 40/41.
 
              Why is the WTO such a dirty name?

For an answer, you must read what Cameron Duodu has written here.

Following the “Battle of Seattle” at the beginning of December last year, which made it impossible for the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to reach any agreement on the rules
that should govern world trade in the new millennium, people all over the world have suddenly been asking, “What is the WTO? Why is the WTO such a dirty name not only in the countries of the South but also in some important pockets of opinion in the North?”
The fact that such questions are being asked at all is one of the main reasons why the WTO is in trouble. It crept up stealthily on an unsuspecting world! And, as in all such situations of stealth, when the world did wake up to what the WTO was about, it directed such hostility towards the WTO in almost geometrical proportion to the manner in which the organisation had tried to outsmart everyone but a few power brokers in North America and Europe. In theory, the WTO is nothing more than the successor organisation to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). I hear you say, Ah? GATT?

What on earth was GATT?

Exactly. Unlike the UN General Assembly, or indeed any of the organs of the UN, or the World Bank or the IMF, GATT was so bland and jargon-ridden in its operations that few people outside the fields of economic and commerce knew what it was about. It was founded in 1947, by the nations that had just defeated Germany and Japan in World War II, to regulate international trade — what type of goods should attract tariffs or customs duties when exported from, and imported into other countries, and what should be exempted.
In other words, GATT was supposed to lay down rules for international “trade” in much the same manner as the UN organs like the WHO (health) and the FAO (food) did in their respective fields. Bits of what the Bretton Woods institutions (the IMF and the World Bank) also did for finance and economics were appended.
Now, few countries in the South were hilly sovereign nations when GATT was created in 1947, the very year in which, by coincidence, one of the giants of the South — India —emerged into independence from British rule.
As soon as the countries of the South gained their independence, they were prompted by their former colonial masters:
“You must sign up with GAtT”. And the excolonies, assuming that GATT was like the glamorous United Nations, signed up. What they did not know was that GATT was only of use to people who had studied international corporate or commercial law, and taught by ...people from the North!
The North wants the South to continue to export raw materials and import finished goods. Even when organisations like the NonAligned Movement became powerful and began to campaign against the existing rules of GATT, there was not much that could be done about changing them. For, the Northern “technocrats” who framed the rules had locked into them elaborate mechanisms for litigation which suited the North more than the South.
 

The Group of 77

The South became known as the “Group of 77”. But they were all in the same boat — if the industrialised nations refused to buy their products, they would become bankrupt.
Worse, the Southern countries competed against each other in selling to the North. For instance, Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Brazil, Malaysia and Indonesia were all cocoa producers. Could they ever agree on how to fight the North together so that they could change their cocoa exports from beans to chocolates, without cuffing the ground from under each other’s feet?
In former times, few people could even get access to information on the rules regarding these areas of potential conflict. But now, the Internet has brought the information right onto everyone s computer screens. So, when it was proposed that GATT should be phased out and given a new, more acceptable face plus a more sexy name, World Trade Organisation, people everywhere began to find out whether indeed it was an organisation created by the whole world or by the few international bullies who create, teach and apply international commercial law.

Secret session

Perhaps it will be useful to go to a secret session of the WTO conference in Seattle in Decernbcr 1999. Our guide is John Vidal of the British daily, The Guardian. His artide, published in the 3 December 1999 issue, begins:

‘ ‘ “Four tables, each 30 yards long. More than 100 ministers, each sit opposite a diplomat or civil servant. A few observers line two walls. It is standing room only in Hall GB. Of those present, 90% are middle-aged men in dark suits.
But to the 100,000 members of the public who are in Seattle to express their misgivings about the WTO, and who have been arrested for marching outside the convention centre in pursuit of accountability and open negotiations, it is like the far side of the moon. I have access to the talks because, in its incompetence, the ‘WTO has issued me with the wrong accreditation. In short, I am a sort of [a] least-developed country. Should anyone ask, I represent either San Serife, a country in the Indian Ocean with infinitely changing geographical position or, preferably, any one of the 30 countries who are WTO members but who are too poor to send even one delegate to the talks. [emphasis added]
The five WTO working groups are where countries meet each day to thrash out some common ground. If the gap between them is too large, then they either enter bilateral agreements with each other or they can be called in by Michael Moore, the WTO director general, to negotiations where he personally bangs heads together... It’s called international diplomacy.
Investment and competition are huge issues, with ramifications for democracy and sovereignty. If the ‘WTO secretariat can get countries to reach any sort of agreement, these issues will be on the new trade agenda and three years from now, after long talks in Geneva, all 134 WTO countries might have to amend their [national] laws to allow, say, foreign companies equal access to their markets [emphasis added].
The non-government groups are deeply worried that this would be a charter for transnational companies to go anywhere they like. They fear that eventually no country will be allowed to protect its own national interests.[emphasis added].
It seems there should be a stirring debate. [But] the delegates look bored.
‘For clarity’s sake,’ [the deputy chair says] ‘the issues on the table refer to paras 12, 25, 26, 32, 33, 51, 52, 41, 56 and a dozen others’. No one butts an eyelid.
‘Some basic political decisions need to be taken,’ he continues. ‘The question is whether member countries are ready to start liberalising and harmonising their investment and competition laws, or whether they should continue to debate as they have for the last three years.’
The floor is open and the EU [European Union] is the first to put its flag up to talk. ‘Our objective is to launch negotiations. We are not, repeat not, interested in a face-saving formula...’
Chair: ‘Your position is clear. Japan?’
Japan: ‘We approach the 21st century. Some countries are concerned about civil society [issues]. I am confident we can resolve those issues, but Japan is opposed to a two-stage approach.
chair ‘Korea?’
Korea: ‘We cannot accept a two-step approach on investment.’
Most rich countries, including Britain, want the new round to include the investment and competition clauses. The poor say repeatedly that they are not ready and it would be unfair because they do not yet have the basic laws in place [emphasis added].
The richest 29 countries in the world [had] tried to get a major investment treaty passed in the ‘multilateral agreement on investment’ (MAI) last year [1998]. They failed, after campaigning led by more than 600 environment and consumer groups around the world. The investment issue was passed to the WTO.
India: ‘Are we ready? No. Clearly and emphatically we do not want to overload the WTO agenda.’
Most delegations have complex trade-offs to agree and a never-ending round of talks. Outside the hall, the teargas and rubber bullets are being used on protesters.

What goes on at the WTO

Without this account from The Guardian, the world would never have known anything at all about what goes on in this body that claims to be the world’s trade organisation and whose rules can literally kill some of us, if not wipe us off the face of the earth.
For instance, South Africa and Thailand, two countries said by the Aids Establishment to have a high incidence of HIV and Aids, are currently being threatened with sanctions by the US government, on the instigation of American drug companies, which want
South Africa and Thailand to stop manufacturing cheap anti-Aids drugs. The US drug companies have “patented” the anti-Aids drugs and want to sell them at high price. So they want South Africa and Thailand to sit idly by and watch their citizens wiped out by Aids.
The WTO also wants to enact international laws patenting trees and other flora and fauna, which countries in the South have utilised from time immemorial. If, in future, a Southern country acquires the technological know-how to put its own flora and fauna to good use, it could be infringing the patent of a company from the North!
(When I was a kid, my father used to take me into the bush whenever I had conjunctivitis, pluck some leaves from a plant, and drop their juice into my eyes. I was always cured. Now, suppose a drug firm from the North has patented this plant. What happens if I decide to set up a factory for the large-scale manufacturing of this herbal medicine?
Companies like Monsanto in the United States have been inventing genetically modified foods, called “terminator”, which are resistant to pests and drought. But GM foods are also deliberately designed to produce sterile seeds which cannot be replanted.
So if a rice or maize farmer in the South were to be enticed to put his farm under such a crop, he would reap a rich harvest - once! For his next crop, he would have to import seeds from Monsanto or whoever. If his country operated an exchange control system, or import licensing, he could stand by and watch the growing season pass by, while bureaucrats tossed his application forms from desk to desk.
That is not the end of the story. Research is going on to map, through the human “genome” project, the entire DNA constitution of the human body. Which company will own the patent and what will the WTO allow itto do with the patent?
So, you see, “The Battle of Seattle” was not fought for nothing. The next round of WTO talks will take place in Geneva, Switzerland, this year. We shall see what happens there.


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