arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)

Verklaring van het Netwerk van de sociale bewegingen, voorgelezen op de betoging van 13 september in Cancun (dit netwerk functioneert in het kader van het Wereld Sociaal Forum)

DOWN WITH THE WTO AND PERMANENT WARS

We are social movements that have come to Cancun to protest against the WTO:

1. A WTO that, together with the transnational corporations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, is a weapon of mass destruction of the lives of the peoples, biodiversity, cultures, especially those of peasants and indigenous peoples and that reinforces a model that reinforces the exclusion of women in society and makes them the main victims of poverty and violence.
2. A WTO that puts profit over people and their needs and that puts social justice under the laws of the market; that privatizes (STEALS) natural resources (from the peasants and the indigenous) – land, water, seeds – and privatizes public services (health, education…).
3. A WTO that negotiates its agreements in secret and that imposes its rules upon the national constitutions, the institutions of the various countries and that acts without any sort of democratic control.
4. A WTO that through the logic of free trade imposes the survival of the fittest. Its rules lead to permanent wars and reinforce militarism.
5. A WTO that, at last, due to the ever growing opposition raised by its polices in the developing countries, on the indigenous and peasants and the society as a whole, finds itself at a gridlock and in an ever deepening crisis. Its policies increase exclusion and inequalities regarding race, gender and class.

We have come to Cancun, not only to derail the WTO 5th Ministerial Conference, but also in order to gather in our diversity and plurality, to make known our demands and will, and to build, from below, the broadest alliance of the diverse voices in the planet. We have come to struggle.

On the 10th more than 10.000 peasants, indigenous, the youth and many other social movements and unions that have come from Mexico and many other countries in the world, reclaimed the streets of Cancun in order to demand for food sovereignty, that agriculture and food must be taken out of the WTO negotiations and to dismantle the WTO.

Our march was blocked by the steel fences imposed by the Fox government and during the march our comrade Lee Kyung Hae died. We express our solidarity to the Korean delegation and to all his loved ones at the same time that we denounce that the WTO is solely responsible for this tragic event. But we are convinced that the death of Lee is, also, a cry of the excluded and a death sentence to the WTO, because it exposes the social, political and moral crisis caused by its policies. Lee has died in Cancun, but everyday more than 17.000 people die in the whole world victimized by the neoliberal policies promoted by the WTO, the WB and the IMF.

Our struggle does not end today and does not end in Cancun. It is permanent. We need to keep on fighting against the neoliberal policies, the governments that implement them, the international financial institutions and the transnational corporations during their meetings and also in our countries. Building up broad alliances and alternatives, promoting mobilizations that empower our struggle for a world in which the rights to life and to social justice are ensured to men and women and in which the rights of indigenous peoples, youth, peasants, women and workers are above all; a world based upon the respect of nature and biodiversity.

We are not commodities, we are not for sale. Another world is possible!
Down with the WTO! End the wars!
GLOBALIZE THE STRUGGLE, THE SOLIDARITY AND HOPE!

Social Movements Network
Cancun, Mexico – September 2003.