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WTO Ministerials: Doha 2001
WDM's Director Barry Coates and Press Officer Dave Timms report from Doha:
You could be forgiven for believing that the WTO Ministerial meeting held in Doha, Qatar was just a mirage. The BBC's John Simpson 'liberating' Kabul and the absence of the protests that made 1999's Battle in Seattle so photogenic, meant for the most part the media decided the 4th WTO Ministerial was just so much sand and soundbites, and turned their cameras elsewhere.
Press releases, news stories, briefings and reports from Doha
Yet Doha saw plenty of violence and conflict - its just that this time it was inside the negotiating rooms. For much of the six-day meeting the negotiations were on the edge of collapse. At various points France, India, various Caribbean and African countries, Honduras and Ecuador all threatened to scupper the meetings.
Late on November 14, running 24 hours overtime, after 48 hours of continuous negotiations and with several delegations having already caught their flights home, the remaining members of the WTO agreed to launch wide ranging new negotiations including on the environment, industrial tariffs, regional trade agreements, subsidies and agriculture.
The much-hyped development round was on. Except the development bit was missing. Doha was a disaster for the world's poor. Edward Rugumayo, Head of the Ugandan delegation left Doha saying, "The EU has been the major victor, and the United States has also won."
The Declaration marks the start of the first new round of negotiations since the Uruguay Round that set up the WTO began in 1986. That took eight years to complete, yet this massive extension of the WTO is supposed to be done and dusted in just three. This is both reckless and dangerous. The cost of current trade agreements is already being counted in people's lives. Developing countries simply do not have the capacity or the wish to negotiate these new agreements. Namibia has a 'Department of Trade' consisting of just eight people. Only one of these deals with the entire WTO and with all the problems of implementing its 28 constituent agreements. After Doha she has to negotiate nine more, and, if the EU gets its way in two years time there will be four further agreements sitting in her in-tray. Namibia is also one of the thirty countries that are 'non-resident' at the WTO HQ in Geneva - they are too poor to staff an office.
What the world desperately needed in Doha was an opportunity to fix the broken promises from the last round of negotiations. After Seattle developing countries listed over 100 reforms needed to the existing agreements. Even Stephen Byers, then Secretary of State for Trade and Industry said the WTO needed "fundamental and radical reform". Yet the EU and US arrived in Doha both determined to fiercely resist pro-poor change while the EU aggressively pursued other agreements on investment and competition that would only benefit its multinational corporations.
In the final hours it became clear that India was unwilling to let the EU get its way and launch new free trade agreements on investment, government procurement, competition policy and trade facilitation that developing countries had overwhelmingly rejected at every pre-Doha opportunity. The issue was fudged and it was agreed that the final decision on these issues would wait until the next WTO Ministerial in 2003.
Even where it appeared that developing countries managed to secure some gains, the Declaration is so riddled with holes and get-out clauses that these benefits are likely to be illusory.
Agriculture accounts for 14% of the GDP of developing countries and 59% of their employment. The EU went to Doha determined to protect the bloated, inefficient, environmentally damaging Common Agricultural Policy that allows the EU to dump heavily subsidised food into developing county markets. Developing countries (and a few developed ones) fought like demons to launch negotiations with a view to eventually "phasing out" EU export subsidies. They succeeded, only to have the EU insert a spoiling clause to say that nothing in the Declaration 'prejudges' the outcome of the negotiations.
On Services, countries have until June next year to make bids for their multinational companies to have increased access to other countries' markets. This shortly followed by a March 2003 deadline for countries to decide which of their 160 service sectors they going to offer for liberalisation. This breakneck process makes a mockery of the repeated request from developing countries and 262 UK MPs for a proper impact assessment of services liberalisation.
The single bright point for developing countries and NGOs was the clarification of the notorious TRIPS agreement to enable countries to break patent law when faced by public health emergencies such as the AIDS pandemic. Yet developing countries' demands to renegotiate the agreement to protect traditional medicines and guard against bio-piracy by rich countries, were ignored.
People are rightly asking how it is possible for developing countries to have signed up to such an anti-poor Declaration.
Inequality was built into the negotiations from the outset. The G7 countries arrived with a combined delegation almost twice the size of the total for the thirty nine Least Developed Countries. The draft text that went to Doha had already been condemned as biased. Time and time again in the weeks before this meeting, up to ninety developing countries made it clear that launching new agreements on investment, competition and government procurement was not acceptable. They should even have been on the agenda in Doha.
The deeply unfair process before Doha meant that almost the whole of the Ministerial conference was devoted to issues in the interests of rich countries. The concept of a development round was completely sidelined. The poorest countries were forced to spend their time negotiating on investment agreements and intellectual property rights, instead of improving their access to developed countries' markets.
The final hours of negotiations saw a repeat of the medieval tactics of Seattle. Secret talks were held, and some countries were physically locked out of meetings. The unaccountable facilitators of each of the negotiating groups were hand picked by the WTO Secretariat and major industrialised powers. They ran a process where there were no agendas, no minutes and no accountability.
Earlier in the meetings WDM joined with ActionAid, CAFOD, Christian Aid and Save The Children to urge British Government to sign a no-bullying pledge as reports emerged of delegates being threatened with removal of trade preferences, cuts to aid budgets and developing country negotiators being rubbished in personal calls to their capitals by rich country premiers. The pledge went unsigned.
The US and EU repeatedly stated that failure to agree a comprehensive new round was not a problem for them as they could continue their agenda through bilateral trade agreements such as NAFTA. This was never an option for developing countries. Iddi Simba, Trade Minister for Tanzania and chair of the LDC's said "We need the multilateral trade system far more than the rich countries."
In mounting huge pressure for their own agenda, the UK and the EU played Russian Roulette with the global trading system. They pushed the meeting to the brink of collapse in order to start negotiations on investment and competition policy. Developing countries, not just India, but small island states and the very poorest African countries bravely stood up to the bullying and threats of the rich countries. In the end though they had no choice but to sign up.
However what developing countries and campaigners realised is that with coordination and determination we have a chance to halt the agenda of those who want to see the WTO extend corporate rights into every sphere of human and economic activity. Unlike the Uruguay Round this time we are in at the beginning and we know how the rules don't work.
Press releases, news stories, briefings and reports from Doha
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