Le Monde diplomatique
January 2000
FIXING OR NIXING THE WTO
After the WTO fiasco at Seattle, many neoliberal commentators set
about rewriting history. They said, somewhat improbably, that the US had
emerged victorious and Europe and the countries of the South had lost out,
Europe because it had not managed to table new rules and the South because it
had failed to get more markets opened in the North. In fact, despite suitable
noises from President Clinton, the failure of the trade talks shows the
limits of Washington's power in the WTO, where for the first time delegates
from the South turned the consensus rule to their advantage. As for the
Fifteen and the European Commission, it is true that they had wanted to
extend the agenda, but only in order to deregulate more areas for the benefit
of their own multinationals. The true victors at Seattle are the citizens'
movements. They have struck a blow against the proposal to
use trade as a means of general deconstruction of all collectives and
governments of the South, of whatever persuasion, that have now staked a
claim to full partnership in the future. This is the birth of world public
opinion. What we need now is national and international recognition of the
peoples' elected representatives. - B. C.
by SUSAN GEORGE*
The civic movement's success in Seattle is a mystery only to those who had no
part in it. Throughout 1999, thanks primarily to the Internet, tens of
thousands of people opposed to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) united in
a great national and international effort of organisation. Anyone could have
a front seat, anyone could take part in the advance on Seattle. All you
needed was a computer and a rough knowledge of English.
The main rallying point was the StopWTORound distribution list. This put
people in touch with the whole movement and enabled them to get their names
on other more specialised lists. Among the most useful were those of the
Corporate European Observatory in Amsterdam - unbeatable on the links
between lobbies of transnational firms and United States or European trade
negotiators - and the Third World Network and its director, Martin Khor,
with its detailed information on the positions of Southern governments and
everything that was brewing at the WTO's Geneva headquarters. A number of
institutions published regular information bulletins: the International
Centre for Sustainable Trade and Development (ICSTD) in Geneva, the
Institute of Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) in Minneapolis, and Focus
on the Global South in Bangkok. Many enthusiasts from various countries,
like retired Canadian trucker Bob Olson, located and circulated vital items
of information from all over the web.
Add to this the frequent Internet updates on national anti-WTO movements in
Europe, Australia, Canada, the US and India, and the slightly less frequent
updates from Africa, Latin America and Asia, and you begin to have some idea
of the volume of information available and the work of thousands of
militants-turned-experts - conferences, symposiums and seminars, leaflets and
articles, interviews and press releases.
Army of equals
In France outstanding work was done by the Association pour la taxation des
transactions financi?es pour l'aide aux citoyens (Attac), whose international
meetings in June 1999 - including a high-profile WTO element - were attended
by delegations from 80 countries (1), and by Coordination pour le contr?e
citoyen de l'OMC (CCC-OMC), which covers 95 organisations including the
Conf??ation paysanne, Droits Devant!, the F??ation des finances CGT, and the
FSU, and has the political support of the Greens, the Ligue communiste
r?olutionnaire (LCR) and the Communist Party.
In the international division of work prior to Seattle, Friends of the
Earth in London had undertaken to gather signatures from 1,500
organisations in 89 countries calling for a moratorium on the trade
negotiations and a complete review of the operation of the WTO with full
citizen participation. Mike Dolan of Public Citizen, an organisation founded
by Ralph Nader in Washington DC, had been busy on the ground in Seattle
since the spring of 1999, locating and booking the venues that would be
needed to accommodate a huge number of meetings. In San Francisco, the
International Forum on Globalisation was putting the finishing touches to
its 26-27 November teach-in, at which speakers from all the continents took
it in turns in turns to address an enthusiastic audience of 2,500 crammed
into the Bennaroya Symphony Hall.
For months thousands of people had followed training courses in non-
violent protest organised by the Direct Action Network (Dan) (a collective of
environmental and political activists). In the run-up to the WTO meeting, the
Dan repository at 420 East Denny Avenue, Seattle, had become the focus for
an army of equals. Separate teams had been formed to take charge in each of
the 13 sectors surrounding the conference centre. Their members, all
prepared to be arrested, were in place at 7 a.m. on the first day and
blocked the opening session. Artists had set to work well in advance on huge
puppets and models that lent a festive air to an otherwise deeply political
event. Students from dozens of universities, including nearby Washington
State University, returned in force to the American political scene,
concerned by the damage to the environment and the exploitation of third
world workers and children (as a result inter alia of a campaign against
sweat shops called Clean Clothes).
Even more surprising, in the light of recent US history, was the Sweeney-
Greenie alliance named after John Sweeney, the leader of the powerful trade
union group AFL-CIO, and the Greens. Ever since the Vietnam war, trade
unionists and environmentalists had been on opposite sides of the political
fence. For organised labour, ecology was synonymous with leftist policies and
unemployment. They sank their differences, however, and made common cause
against the WTO. For the first time pacifists and human rights campaigners,
too, were disturbed by the harmful consequences of globalisation and joined
in the anti-WTO movement. And Via Campesina, a network representing peasant
movements in 65 countries, also had a date in Seattle. This coalition of the
century was completed by many foreign delegations, the two largest being
those from France and Canada.
In short, everyone was ready except the police, who looked like something out
of Star Wars and acted in a way that was quite over the top. There is
evidence, often backed up by photos or videos, of police provocation,
coercion and collusion with "anarchist elements" that were in fact simply
hooligans and wreckers.
Whole districts and blocks of buildings, old people and children, were
attacked with pepper and other (as yet unidentified) gases. Five hundred and
eighty people were arrested, and many of them were roughed up and kept in
solitary confinement for more than 48 hours in defiance of the American
constitution.
Millennium Round stillborn
Thanks to Washington's intransigence on agriculture and Europe's wish to add
a raft of new items (investment, competition policy, environment, public
contracts, etc) to the agenda; thanks to the revolt of representatives of
the South, outraged at being excluded from the negotiations (see article by
Agnes Sinai); and finally thanks to the protest movement, the Millennium
Round was stillborn. However, the WTO still has a remit, under the decisions
taken at the Marrakesh ministerial conference in 1994, to resume at any time
discussions on agriculture and services, including health, education, and
"environmental and cultural services", whatever that may mean. The Trips
agreement on intellectual property is also to be reopened, including the
patenting of living organisms.
The instant people got back from Seattle, they all had their two
pennyworth to say on the theme "things will never be the same again". And it
is true. It was a defining moment, a beginning, but we must build on it
without delay because the forces of neoliberalism, humiliated and determined
to get their own back, will lose no time in regrouping. In other words, the
popular movement may have gained time and scored a fine victory, but it has
not yet got the moratorium and review it was seeking. The European Commission
is anxious to resume negotiations "between responsible people" who have not
budged an inch on the principle of free trade and commerce in the service of
the transnationals. They will meet again, if possible behind closed doors,
and will make sure opponents of out and out globalisation do not get another
media platform like Seattle.
The basic strategy vis-?vis governments, the European Commission, the WTO
itself and the transnationals must be to maintain vigilance, keep up the
mobilisation and pressure, and mount an offensive of counter-proposals with
the ultimate objective of building genuine international democracy.
This will call for a sustained collective effort, for discussion and
action. It cannot be planned in every detail at this time.
It should nevertheless be possible to agree on some principles at once. Trade
must have no place in areas such as health, education and culture in the
broadest sense of the term. The case of hormone-fed beef is a perfect
illustration of the WTO's refusal to exercise due precaution. So, if there is
any doubt as to the harmlessness of a product, the burden of proof must in
future lie with the exporter. No living organism must be patentable and any
country must be free to manufacture and distribute basic medicaments in its
own territory. Food safety and the integrity of peasant communities
are more important than trade.
The proceedings of the WTO body for the settlement of disputes must be
subject to recognised principles of international law: human rights,
multilateral agreements on the environment, the basic conventions of the
International Labour Organisation (ILO). There must be an end to the WTO's
refusal to discriminate on the basis of processes and methods of production
(PMPs): we must be free to give preference to products that have not been
made by children or semi-slaves.
The question is how to break the sterile North-South deadlock on the
social and environmental clauses? With a jealous eye to the only halfway
effective bargaining counter they have - low wages and cheap, pollution-
generating production methods - some Southern governments see the
introduction of rules in these areas as a disguised form of protection. One
idea worth exploring might be to devise a system for rewarding the countries
that make the greatest efforts in the areas of labour and the environment,
instead of penalising them as we do now. No-one is suggesting that the same
wages should be paid everywhere or that Laos should be treated in the same
way as Luxembourg.
Thanks to World Bank and United Nations Development Programme statistics, we
know a great deal about levels of material and human development worldwide.
Suppose the ILO and the United Nations Environment Programme were to
classify all countries at a given level of development - including the most
advanced - according to the respect they show for labour law and for nature.
The best, at each level, would be granted tariff preferences or even
exemption from customs duties, while the products of the others would be
taxed according to their classification. Such a system would allow a review
of the hallowed most-favoured-nation clause, which in fact
favours nothing but a rush to the abyss.
Free marketeers, from The Economist to Alain Madelin, the French
neoliberal deputy, generally accuse opponents of the WTO of being 1.
ignorant; 2. unrepresentative; 3. against the poor; and 4. against rules and
in favour of anarchy and the law of the jungle. In fact, it is precisely
because they know what they are talking about that the NGOs and citizens'
movements are against the WTO. Seattle has shown that the popular movement
represents many things and many people. It is touching to see the sudden
neoliberal concern with the fate of the poor in the South - not always well
represented by their governments - but very few people have so far been
discovered who enjoy working for a pittance in degrading conditions, who do
not mind being unable to send their children to school or living in an
environment that has been laid waste.
The popular movement is all for rules, but not the rules of the WTO in its
present form. That is why, in the words of the militants, we shall have to
"fix it or nix it".
* President of the Globalisation Observatory, Paris, vice-president of
Attac and author of The Lugano Report, Pluto Press, London, 1999.
1) See the Attac collection, "Contre la dictature des march?", La
Dispute/Syllepse/VO Editions, Paris, 1999, 158 pp., FF 35.
Translated by Barbara Wilson
