WTO: Motley crue contingent, very little glamour

…I’m still reeling from this experience and my thoughts are past due…





























































In this line of work, I have to accept the bogus line that trade liberalization is mandatory for human development, for reducing poverty, for promoting democracy. Yet it is estimated that the damage done to African countries by trade liberalization in the past 25 years, amounts to $272 billion USD (Christian Aid). Clearly, there are better alternatives for world trade, like keeping some protection and market regulations, (was not every US President on each bill a bloody market protectionist?), or getting rid of capitalism altogether? In addition, to bite the hand that feeds me, the organization for which I work tries to play by WTO rules and promotes liberalization in order to become a substantial contender with the other Chicago Boys. But I think it becomes just as soulless, misguided and disconnected from the world’s poor majority. Given that many of my political tendencies conflict with colleagues and people in hierarchies of power towards whom I must smile, I fear that all commentary and protest actions could cost me the job. (Hm, I’ll have to let you know if I need a couch to crash on…)

Indeed, the madness of the 6th WTO Ministerial in Hong Kong is indescribable and may contrast with mainstream media stories. For me, the whole process was very rushed, overwhelming and a strange convergence of activists of all kinds (whether it be dogmatic trade ministers, well-off activist tourists [i.e. Tallahassee’s Dubravko], or people who’ve fallen through the ‘cracks’ in the public eye and world trade sphere). I learned the Sunday before the talks hat I was to accompany the organisation, to which I am affiliated, to the flame-throwing debauch of the trade ministerial/circus Although I arrived too late in the week to sort out my security pass, and had to attend laborious, never ending delegation meetings with the development posse, I got a very good idea of how such negotiations take place. ‡US/EU shows up with their agenda and trade interests, does not budge and brings the rest of the world to groveling, due to their threats of sanctions and falling out of favor with ‘the only show in town’, the WTO. The talks leading up to 12-18 Dec meetings clearly demonstrated this. So none of us are surprised, but I’m more vitriolic about WTO’s farcical attempts towards ‘compromise’ –er, coercion in the green room-, civil society ‘consultation’ and NGO accreditation process, and all bloody presented offers.

It’s clear that within the talks, industrialized Northern reps ‘forged consensus’ with up-and-comers India, Brasil, and China, precluding ‘less developed’ or least developed countries (LDCs) from the talks. {Whose bloody terms of development are we using here? Developing to whose standards?}. I had the good fortune to attend several International Centre on Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD) panel discussions, which taught me more than I could learn from any book. I was able to observe my colleagues’ politics, how one manipulates themselves in this ‘talking head’, ‘fridge buzz’ arena, and how I will most likely fail out of this spectacle as I cannot play this deceitful, conniving game.

anonymous excerpts

A few anonymous excerpts, some from people I know, indicating how fukt we are in building global democracy, fairer trade rules and eradicating poverty:

Concerning water privatization:
“water is god-given, but not the pipes”













“slums are a public embarrassment, so by denying them sanitation services there is the hope that slum dwellers will just leave”

Concerning aid:
“There is nothing wrong with the current global trading system, it’s all a supply-side problem…aid that has been ‘given’ has been squandered…so if the Integrated Framework [liberalizing your market and integrating deeper into the global trade regime] improves, it will be better than ‘Aid for Trade.’
“Integrated Framework is optimal, because it’s not just about trade integration, but trade development”
“Aid for Trade is an anti-market approach and LDCs are bought off buy this idea.”
“Aid for Trade will fail because most money will be spent for conferences/seminars/flying business class.”

Concerning international development organizations:
“[The one I work for] is not good at managing trust funds; funds should be given to Chicago Boy bankers, instead.”
“[In this organization] you can afford to be childish.”
“Constructive ambiguity is a good tool of diplomacy.”

Concerning trade:
“In trade we trust; trade for all.”
From G.W. Bush’s speech writer: “…Duty free/quota free [market access] should not be given to LDCs.” –aha! It shows how much US really does consider LDC interests, ha!
“The current GATS architecture is development friendly.”
From US ministers: “nothing came up [concerning agricultural subsidies] so there is nothing to discuss.”

...same neo-liberal extremism...

While I listened to more of the same neo-liberal extremism, in the guise of being ‘moderate’, a global collective (simply against the current unfair, unsustainable trading system) merged, grew and exploded in the streets. I am in love with all these people! Plural perspectives, divergent yet in simpatico opinions, and a bit of craziness filled the entire city of Hong Kong. Thick divisions: you had aristo-technocrats hammering out draft texts inside Convention Centre, NGOs clamouring for a bit of action (potential funding/recognition/accreditation) inside official WTO NGO arena, academic policy makers losing touch with masses inside ICTSD, and throngs of everybody elses cast out in the left field of Victoria Park.

(anti-WTO baby)

For the first couple days...

For the first couple days I sat politely, crossed legged, and tried to tune out the drone of technical jargon, acronyms and W.A.S.P.s. Strangely, delegation meetings were held at a hotel right across from Victoria Park, but participants were completely oblivious to the color, sounds, art and positive vibes right outside the meeting window. I couldn’t bring up to colleagues how I roamed the park during breaks, as the anti-WTO movement was seen as an incoherent, inarticulate joke. I doubt that most Korean or Indonesian farmers, who held copious educational forums about rejecting fisheries in Non-Agricultural Market Access (NAMA) talks and objecting to patents on life, would see their movement in the same way. Who knows better, speaks better about trade policies than those people who directly experience them?

The S. Korean farmers were the strong face of much of the protests; their chants poignant and street blockades contagious. Most days during the week-long WTO meeting were punctuated by evening protests. Hong Kong shut down after 6pm on several days. Police were accommodating at first, until Saturday (clear that there still was no movement), when protestors prevented trade ministers from attending their dinner engagements. Protestors swelled in the streets, sweeping up bystanders, shopkeepers, elderly folks, creating a massive, uh, demonstration, in response to the stagnation around agricultural subsidies, aid for trade, NAMA formulas…The previous Friday night, trade ministers hemmed and hawed until 4am, and still, no movement. Hence, people on the outside, in the very periphery, including Heather Johnson’s ‘crack people’, took to the streets.

(Richard Gere...

thinks Asian children are ideal for the textile and garment industry cos they have small, nimble fingers...)

I was lucky...

I was lucky to have met with an old FSU chum, living in west China, who shared the protest experience with me. We tried to stay away from people who were on missions to get arrested (Chinese prisons aren’t in the cards for me just yet). But the surging collective engulfed you; you couldn’t really avoid the demo. The police were so supportive the first few days because they divided the crowd into factions, according to organization affiliation. Indeed, Empire has mastered crowd control…with its (‘less lethal’) rubber bullets, vile pepper spray, retractable batons, water hoses shooting out poisonous chemicals, tazer-shocking riot shields, helicopters and weapons earned from the arms trade…almost. Despite sectioning off the tens of thousands, a group of about 900 managed to hold strong against the riot pigs. Some may have been Korean farmers (or did they assume that role?), who set small fires and desperately tried to get into the convention centre. Trade ministers were locked in until wee hours; 900 or so protestors refused to give up, until all were arrested by 6am. Those detained are calling for urgent legal assistance!

Unfortunately all this did little good. Global Justice Movement folks ARE on the inside, do know the issues, do have alternatives, but obstinate US/EU continue to serve their steaming bullshite. Not to let the disillusionment about the policy and activist worlds deter me from my own path in finding justice, in some form, but it does seem hopeless, at least at this close range. I can only hope that likeminded people continue to work in these circles, perhaps towards dismantling these institutions of uneven power. Still, the divisions between movement members remain.

On FTAs, IPR, water privatization and tsunami relief donations

...ruminations from previous Economic Journalists' conference...please excuse the flatulent acronyms!

Ok, so the purpose of this conference was to disseminate the horrors of free trade, particularly within free trade agreements (FTAs), to reporters. By stating the holistic, social implications of trade liberalisation, which in effect, pries open protected state services, such as health, education, water/sanitation, LIBRARIES?!, hopefully Asian media will better report the (dis)advantages of governments' entries into FTAs. Moreover, certain investors, like pharmaceutical/agro-business/multinational corporations benefit more from these trade agreements, while smaller, domestic industries become more vulnerable.

Most FTAs are made compatible with the World Trade Organization (WTO) framework, usually under the direction of US/EU. FTAs are very conspicuous political tools, in the best cases, and draconian, death sentences (i.e. to small farmers) in the worst scenarios. More often than not, bilateral free trade agreements (between two countries) exemplify unequal trade relations, as they give an upper hand to one of the signatories. Regional trade agreements are touted as taking into account plural interests, but you still see uneven alliances and divisions, even within a regional bloc of megadiverse countries. I know it’s heavy to debunk all attempts at free trade, but the current pattern is to benefit the already industrialized, powerful North through induced competition. Is cooperativism, on multiple levels, or capping development to some degree completely out of the question?

Within these FTAs, certain provisions are tightened, such as ratcheting up investment standards and strengthening intellectual property regulations. Some of my beef with the intellectual property (IP) system is as follows:

- legitimizes appropriated knowledge from local, indigenous and otherwise off-the-radar communities, which is without ethical consultation, equitable benefit sharing, due recognition, or any other, non-monetary incentives
- monopolizes control over patents to one holder, while most knowledge is built on previous, accumulated knowledges
- makes it harder for developing countries to access the tools needed to reproduce innovations ---(impedes technology transfer and generic medicine production)
- all WTO members and wannabes must adhere to same IPR rules or sui generis (self-generated system), of equal stringency
- does not take into account the masculinized institutions that created IP, nor the very different development strategies of different countries, nor alternative methods for protecting knowledges
- WTO TRIPS (Trade-Related Agreement on Intellectual Property Rights) is not coherent with UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), is not ecologically sustainable, only focuses on short term benefits
-in effect, promotes genetically-modified foods and discourages free sharing of seeds; massive blow to majority farmers
- not to mention, there are too many bloody loopholes (i.e. evergreening strategies), which continue to grant ownership of at least 90% of world’s patents to Northern Multinationals, uh, most in US
- the amount of wealth that is generated by IPR, which goes to US, (from Hollywood movies, music, software, & other copyrights), goes into very few, elitist pockets, is not duly paid to actual artists/creators but corporations, and is very rarely redistributed
- and so forth…

Hence, I’m not sure how best to report that United States FTAs' intellectual property rights (IPR) clauses for data exclusivity prevent Asian countries from producing generic medicines. How do I best synopsize that even US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is worried about all the stringent IPR provisions in all US bilateral FTAs with Asian, Latin American and Middle Eastern countries, because USPTO will be overwhelmed from litigation and enforcing patent protection? It already is understaffed and underresourced. It is interesting to note that even US FTAs are superceding national legislation to become these muscular, beastly trade agreements that pander to US (pharmaceutical) companies. I mean, Ely-Lilly and Pfizer are the architects behind the IPR regulations in the trade agreements, which flies in the face that US FDA or USPTO really want this level of stringency. Phoah! Who knew that these US government agencies, in addition to the generic pharmaceutical industry, are also digging their heels and trying to lasso these FTAs?

...On a side note…when studying services privatization, I learned that most privatization contracts (with big corps like Vivendi, Suez and Florida Power & Light) that were contested or under negotiation by countries before last year, were pushed through after the Boxing Day tsunami, as part of reconstruction package. However, in Thailand, such recovery deals were too expensive and people would not be able to cover costs for a waste/sanitation system, so some foreign utility companies sought compensation for the contract failure. United Utilities is set to gain $88 million GBP, or about 1/3 of all donations made by Brits for tsunami relief! (PSIRU 2005). What a brilliant way to spend relief aid…I will comment about some of difficulties in Sri Lanka’s reconstruction shortly.

Big Boss dancing ecstatically

This photo is from the office holiday soiree, held at a local booty night club, Clancey's. Clancey's pub is notorious for catering to all the tourists, expats and government ministers' sons. These ministers' sons bascially live it up in the city, are associated with violent gangs, and literally get away with murder. There were several cases in the late 90s and beginning of millennium, where ministers' sons, doped up on hard drugs, killed (or their henchmen) clubgoers that insulted them in some minute way or another. Because of their immense wealth, there have been no investigations, so they are free to do as they please around the city. However, many locals tell me that if I go out with good people, who do not necessarily cause trouble or pick fights, I should be fine. Yet if I wanted to go clubbing regularly, I'd have gotten it out of my system in NYC. But adopting a Western-style nightlife is THE thing to do for most middle class locals. I've even been invited to a New Year's bash on the beach, but I'd rather see the country or hole up with my books...Anyway, the big boss is a very kind man, but a bit disconnected from his staff. Moreover, I've offered to housesit for him, while he visits his family in the States for holidays. He has a rabbit that I can play with, and a ludicrously large colonial mansion, complete with an army of servants. Most (except for security) are off while away. This is how development workers' live...secluded behind high walls, perpetuating the divisions between local staff and international folks in positions of authority.

My first residence at Cinnamon Grand Hotel

(the ironies are blinding)

Twin Towers of Colombo

Around Beira Lake, Colombo

THE BOOK WORM HAS TURNED

(from Schnews.org.uk, Issue 524)

One of the many things under threat from planned liberalisation and expansion of international trade in services as negotiated behind closed doors in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) is libraries. ’Globalisation, Information and Libraries’, a new book by Ruth Rikowski, examines the implications for the world’s state-funded libraries of the WTO’s most infamous treaties - GATS (General Agreement on Trade in Services – see SchNEWS 378) and TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights - see SchNEWS 420).

GATS is a set of trade rules whereby WTO member countries must open up their service sectors to the global market. Assurances made by the UK government, the European Commission and the WTO, that all public services such as health, education, water, housing, and libraries are exempt from GATS are in fact bogus. There has been a steady process of commercialisation and private sector involvement in all the above listed public services over the last decade.

So, state-funded libraries in the UK and across the world will be forced, in time, to turn into profit-making enterprises that will open the door to long-term privatisation. Brighton already has its multi million pound PFI library. (See www.roughmusic.org.uk/#four) Although the UK (under the EU) has not so far committed its Library Service to the GATS, this could easily change in future negotiations, succumbing to private companies searching for ripe opportunities.

TRIPS, meanwhile, is about the trading of intellectual rights, including copyright, trade marks, geographical indications, patents, industrial designs and trade secrets. Rikowski shows that TRIPS is not concerned with moral and humane issues in regard to intellectual property, but instead allows corporations to appropriate, patent and then profit from the traditional knowledge of indigenous populations in the poorest developing countries without giving due recompense.

So GATS and TRIPS will continue transforming services and intellectual property rights into internationally tradable commodities, to be sold in the market-place for profit. As Rikowski says, “In Britain today we already have examples of private companies running public library services (e.g. in the London Borough of Haringey), and many examples of public-private partnerships building new libraries. Coupled with the growing pressures on libraries to generate income and operate more like private companies rather than public good providers, the ‘commercialisation by stealth’ of British libraries and information is an everyday reality. When a country signs up its Library Service to GATS it means that foreign corporations must be allowed the right to compete with local authorities and domestic firms for the provision of public library services. This will open up the way for privatisation which could threaten the British public library free at the point of use.”

* The book’s full snappy title is: Globalisation, Information and Libraries: the Implications of the World Trade Organisation’s GATS and TRIPS Agreements (Chandos) or check out www.libr.org/ISC/articles/19-R.Rikowski-1.html

Drunken elephants create havoc

The other day a herd of wild elephants drank fermenting Goda, a kind of moonshine?, at an illegal liquor den in the jungle. When they wandered into human settlements in Galewela district they created havoc and wildlife protection officials had to light firecrackers to chase away the herd. However, the elephants really enjoyed themselves, so they returned to the distillery at dawn on Sat, and ended up destroying crops in Wetakolupotha, Ulpathyaya, Narangasyaya and Meegasyaya villages..heheheeee!!!! -(from Daily Mirror, Tues, 6 Dec).

On Buddhist weddings, Slave Island, meeting the colleagues and post-Multi-Fibre Agreement

Fri, 2 December, 2005
Friday afternoon I finally met the people with whom I will be working, only, because it was Friday the office was slow and many people were on missions or giving training sessions. Moreover, the Trade and Investment cluster, where I will be researching, attended a colleague’s Buddhist wedding about 10km south of Colombo, in Mount Lavinia. Apparently, this area has an enormous resort and according to the astrology, Friday was a good, harmonious day to get married. There were three other weddings that day and about two hours worth of traffic, hence, it took awhile for Yumiko and Riza to return to Colombo and meet me. Eventually, they collected me in a taxi van, which then wound around the bigger, human-made Beira Lake in central Colombo.

It is a short, 10-minute drive to the offices from Cinnamon Grand Hotel, and while there are few green public spaces, in terms of parks, the city is enveloped by lush leafiness. People spill over everywhere! Traffic is intense during the week and people carrying buckets, laundry, market goods and just about anything you can imagine, on their heads, weave in and out of the congestion. Surrounding Beira Lake is a reputable section of the city, called Slave Island, with a posh shopping and dining street, I believe Duplication Rd. Slave Island was carved out by Dutch colonists in 1600s and irrigated with the two Beira Lakes, in order to house their Tamil, Sinhalese, etc slaves. I believe crocodiles still reside in the lake, which had been used to prevent slaves from escaping. Right, so this now lush district is near the office, off Vauxhall Road. While the surrounding area is quite lovely, Colombo has significant criminal activity and I am advised to go to work via a taxi or tuk-tuk, or three-wheel, covered motorized vehicle. Taxis are cheap, about $1-3 for the journey. Riding a bicycle would be suicide, unfortunately. Not to mention, the often 40-degree weather makes it ridiculously hot to ride. However, in other cities around Sri Lanka bicycles are the prominent way to get around and if I get a moment to travel to Galle, on the southern coast, or Kandy, in the centre, I will look into renting a bicycle. Thus, for those of you with the weather conditions and smoothly paved roads, get on a bike!

It is unfortunate to hear the advice of colleagues that (Western) women should not be keen on exploring on their own (yet, it is common to get acquaintances to chaperone you). Of course, there are the typical tourist areas, like the shopping on Galle Face Road, the bizarre Pettah Market, the museums and government offices around Cinnamon Gardens district and the casinos where it is patrolled and safe. Perhaps I’ll visit the museums and Pettah Market, but I’m not keen on the tourist attributes. It won’t make a difference what I do, I will always be a tourist here, one with money to spend (the average monthly income for most people is $50 USD – I’ll make 40 times that). But I can’t help but feel sheltered and isolated. While commuting to the offices and to Negombo I witness the liveliness, brightness, hub of activity all around me, yet I am cornered in a pristine ivory Cinnamon Grand Hotel tower, sort-to-speak. It’s bloody immaculate in here –too much for my cluttered, chaotic brain-- so should I only be content to catch a whiff of activity on quick jaunts? Pea green canals, turquoise Indian Ocean mirror the azul sky, scarlet and orange soil -(I wonder what is the soil consistency and stratigraphy)- sidewalks shoulder the main roads when leaving the city, dusty red and green tuk-tuks zip all around me, saris of every color, and a million eyes fixate on me. Of course, residing in an ivory tower, researching the Cambodian and Laos garment and textile working conditions *QUOI?!*, does not help my paranoia and anxiety, which I usually have while in North America.

Anywho, meeting my colleagues restabilises me in a sense. This Regional Centre originally stemmed from a Asia-Pacific Bureau, in New York, and divided itself in Bangkok, then Kathmandu. With the present conflict in Nepal’s capital, this centre moved to Colombo. The two regional centres concentrate on different projects, with gender mainstreaming built into both. This one in Colombo focuses on poverty, MDGs, pro-poor macro-economic policies, HIV/AIDS, gender, trade and globalisation, and crisis prevention. The two main initiatives (in response to collapse of WTO Ministerial in Cancun) deal with poverty reduction and linking trade with human development. While it is difficult to gauge how effective are the Trade and Investment cluster’s strategies, it generally sends its core programme officers on missions to help train government officials and other development personnel to make more effective, human development-centric policies. It produces different tracking and evaluation reports, organizes training workshops (such as on gender and trade), and hires a network of consultants to work in the region.

I hope to meet my boss ‘Butch’ and others next week, or after WTO 6th Ministerial. I’ll have to be wary of a fellow American research associate, Mac, who seems starved to talk to an American woman. Quite keen to “show me around”, but I can’t be bothered. From the few hours I spent at the offices on Friday afternoon, I learned about some of my upcoming projects, so I will be very busy. Yumiko and Mr. R.A. (formerly a leader of a South Asian farmers’ rights organization) are finishing a tracking report, a sort of one-year-since-the-end-of-the-Multi-Fibre-Agreement (MFA)-in-the-Asian-textile/garment-industry report. (Apparently, it’s not as bad as what many development folks predicted, I mean the shut down of 50 or so factories in Nepal, only resulted in an increased shift to prostitution for Nepalese women! Some women have migrated to other countries to send back remittances, but they also risk trafficking. Still it’s not as bad as in Bangladesh?! Not sure how one is supposed to compare the negative repercussions…I mean, the whole design of the garment industry is pants…[er, crap]!). Right now, I am trying to find out more information about a couple of our case studies’ working conditions. We only have time and interviewing resources to investigate Bangladesh, Cambodia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and (maybe Lao PDR and Nepal). Cambodia is lacking major information about working conditions, hours, wages, unionizing. Not surprisingly, the Ministry of Labor and private sector development in Cambodia tend to gloss over such pertinent information, so I am trying to rely on International Labor Organization (ILO), OXFAM , UNIFEM and previous UNDP Human Development reports (…I can’t use Workers’ Rights Consortium monitoring reports of Nike and Gap factories in Cambodia?). My briefing will only be a few pages, but is due Monday. I am trying to work on it in between attending sessions of the Economic Journalists conference. But it is difficult due to no internet at this resort…

…I will try to post my findings in some way…or provide links to final versions that go to press.

Negombo

...and two fantastic Pakistani economic journalists from the South Asia Centre for Economic Journalists, Ms. Shaista Malik and Mr. Amir Mohammad Khan.

...Negombo resort photos continued

More Excessive Wealth on the Island Still Coping with Tremendous Poverty

Despite some of this obvious hypocrisy and contradiction, I met some wonderful (and some lunatic egocentric) people at this training workshop. We have alot to do in edumacating the media about issues related to social justice and human development, namely that poverty is not a choice, impoverished people are not lazy, incompetant or unskilled, and that the paradigm of (economic) development predicated on tiers of technology, i.e. that agriculture -->garment/textiles --> industry --> services -->militarism -->supreme being --> nirvana, is unacceptable and grossly false! Anyway, below are some pictures of Dr. Saman Kelegama, Director of Institute on Policy Studies in Colombo, at sunrise...