WTO

I mentioned roosting chickens in an earlier blog, I’m not obsessed with them honestly but chickens have come up again during my time in Geneva. Ghana used to have a buoyant poultry industry but subsidised poultry from the EU has decimated the Ghanaian poultry industry.

Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali are collectively known as the ‘cotton 4’ because they are cotton producing countries in West Africa and have been trying to the get the US to reduce their cotton subsidies for almost a decade.

The WTO ministerial conference officially opened this afternoon at 3pm (2pm UK time) and as delegates from around the world were entering into the open plenary session, they were welcomed by singing trade campaigners from the Our World is Not for Sale (OWINFS) network

I need to apologise for ‘dissing’ my badge yesterday because today it proved to be a really useful friend. It got me and 30 other trade campaigners from around the world, into the ministerial conference where we were able to stand just outside of the door to the hall where the opening plenary was held.

Today I have been attending briefings in preparation for the ministerial conference which starts at 3pm tomorrow afternoon. I walked to the WTO building to pick up my badge which will allow me access to the ministerial as well as the NGO centre.

The day started with the news that three members of the Korean delegation were being detained at the airport. Yoon Geum Sum, from the Korean Women Peasant Association, La Via Campesina told us how the three members were stripped naked and searched. She said: "This is a violation of human rights and a criminalisation of social movements." I've just heard that they have already been sent on a flight back home.

I arrived in Geneva at 5pm this evening (having left my home in London at 6am) and I had to quickly drop my luggage off at the hotel, work out the tram system and then get myself to a meeting with other trade campaigners from around the world. I arrived at the meeting, just as the pizza did, so not bad timing I thought.

Farmers, unions, fisherfolk and other civil society groups from around the world will be converging in Geneva for the WTO Ministerial at the end of the month. But ten years after Seattle, the struggle against the WTO has been globalised and Geneva will not be the only focus for WTO protest. Instead, activists around the world are organising protests and events in their own towns and cities to show the strength of global resistance.