arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

Report from the Coalition of Civil Society groups in Doha

The coalition of civil society groups in Doha laud the courage and determination shown by developing countries in defending the trade system from an imposition of the US? and EU?s corporate agenda on the developing world. The troika of the US, EU and the WTO?s Director-General mounted enormous pressure to massively extend the tentacles of the WTO into new areas of the global economy such as investment. They failed.

The lessons of the Seattle debacle in 1999 were ignored. The negotiations process in Geneva was untransparent and deeply unfair to the majority of WTO members. The inequities continued in Doha. The much criticised "Green Rooms" used in Seattle were used again, and the powerful role of unelected facilitators of informal groups resulted in them being characterized as "Green Men". Civil society representatives in Doha exposed unethical negotiating practices by some governments of the rich world, such as linking aid budgets and trade preferences to the trade positions of developing countries, and targeting individual developing country negotiators. The approach of the major trading nations in the rich world was arrogant, as if they could agree an agenda and then impose it on the rest of the world.

In Doha, trade deals continued to be negotiated on the basis of commercially-oriented deal making and an ideological commitment to trade liberalisation, rather than a full assessment of the impacts of past policies on the poor, the environment and human rights. As a result, the trade system has lost the confidence of many of its members and the wider public. There needs to be a far-reaching an independent review to ensure that the WTO embodies internal democracy towards its members, real engagement with civil society and accountability, through its member governments, to the wider public in their societies. We look forward to the leadership of the Director-General Designate to establish the independence, accountability and legitimacy of the WTO Secretariat.

The tragedy of Doha was that the proposals for fairer WTO rules, repeatedly made by developing countries since 1999, still have not been fully considered, let alone agreed and implemented. As the Minister of Trade and Industry of Tanzania, Mr. Iddi Simba said this week, the problems of unfair trade are costing people their lives. Most at risk are the millions of people, especially women and children, without basic rights and opportunities. This Ministerial conference in Doha should have started to redress the deep imbalances in trade rules. But the much-hyped ?Development Round? is empty of development. The Doha Ministerial has failed the world?s poor.

The WTO member governments have again failed to address the deep concerns about the impact of trade rules on the poorest people and the environment. Most of the positive proposals from civil society have not been considered. These include protection of the rights to development, promotion of local economies, food security, social, cultural and labour rights, and protection of the environment. These proposals recognize that the competence of the WTO must be limited to trade, and that conflicts between trade and other international agreements must be resolved outside the WTO system. Reform of the global system must also include regulation of the main actors in the global economy, the multinational corporations.

Civil society is calling for the start of a process that would lead to proper regulation of the global economy, based on UN agreed standards, to be taken forward in fora taking place this year, such as UN Financing for Development, the Food Summit and the Earth Summit + 10. But the attention of civil society groups in Doha, and the hundreds of thousands of people who mobilized in major actions in over 35 countries, will remain firmly on the WTO. We and the thousands of our civil society partners who could not attend this meeting, will renew our public awareness raising and mobilisation during the ongoing and new negotiations. We continue to do so until trade rules serve the aims of sustainable development, poverty reduction and human rights.