Kenya played host to the MC10, and the Government had to deliver to the Empire what it was obliged to under duress of the imperial system. Unless the South gets together in solidarity with the people of the world in active RESISTANCE against the Empire and the WTO, this war machine will destroy not only the global South but also the global North.
By Yash Tandon
The World Trade
Organisation (WTO) ran its Tenth Ministerial Conference (WTO MC10) from 15th to
19th December in Nairobi. Every day from early morning till late evening I sat
in Tent Number 6 – the main tent of the NGOs at the conference site. The Tent
was organised and run by activists from a network called OWINFS – Our World Is
Not For Sale. SEATINI (Southern and Eastern African Trade Information and
Negotiations Institute) is a member of OWINFS.
In Tent Number
6, the sheer hurry-flurry of activism was exhilarating, infectious… and a bit
confusing. Snippets of trade-chat could be heard:
• Who is following the Ag text?
• I heard that fishing is moving away
from plurilaterals.
• They'll discuss Part II of the
Declaration this afternoon. Is anybody monitoring it?
• Australia and Canada are not happy
with US formulation of export credits…
• Really?
• Who has got the photos?
• And the wall charts? We’ve to rush to
the Conference Centre before the delegates arrive.
• Okay, hurry up! I’ve got the charts.
Anybody with a camera?
• Let’s go…. Move! Endelea, haraka!
• Aree, kya baat hai! (Wow, that's great!)
This was the
everyday tamasha, the hullabaloo, in Tent Number 6.
OWINFS is a
network with a common perspective in broad terms. But there are deep and
fundamental differences among the members on objectives, strategy and tactics.
Three Major Divides of the Membership of OWINFS
Whilst sharing a
common platform, the OWINFS divides into roughly three groups on trade and the
WTO.
A: Reform the
WTO
B: Resist the
WTO
C: Dump the WTO
The first group
(the “reformists”) argues that the WTO is a reality; you have to deal with it.
And the way to deal with it is to help its disadvantaged member countries to
better argue their case in the main negotiating chambers of the WTO. This can
be done in many ways, but the best would be to arm them with appropriate
technical and moral arguments defending their case, and showing to the world at
large (through, among others, the media) the unfairness of the global trading
system. The countries of the South, for example, have a right to “Special and
Differential” treatment in the WTO - they are not required to follow the
stringent conditions of free trade that are required of the developed
countries. Global civil society should continue to demand of the WTO that it
upholds this principle even if the developed countries ignore it. The WTO
should be reformed so that it honors the principles of free and fair trade.
The second group
(the “Resisters”) agrees that the WTO is a reality. However, its advocates
differ with the reformists in some fundamental ways. They argue that the WTO is
essentially a “war machine” of the Empire (the US, Europe and Japan) to extract
maximum benefits for their countries and corporations. “Free Trade” is a
fiction; it has never existed in history. Fair trade, though it has a nice ring
about it, is an illusion. For twelve years, for example, the four countries of
Africa (Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali) have been arguing that the US’s
illegal subsidies to its cotton producers have resulted in price drop globally
and has led to literally millions in their countries facing massive
unemployment and starvation. Of course, to no avail – the US would rather that
people in Africa die than deny American cotton producers subsidies. The WTO,
this group argues, is not a development organisation; it is a trade body. Trade
in the capitalist epoch is war; the WTO is a weapon of war against the South
and against the workers and peasants in the West. The Empire must be challenged
and resisted. Resistance, not reform, is the way forward.
The third group
(the “Dumpers”) argues that the WTO is crafted by its founders as an
exploitative system. Nothing good can come out of it. It has to be dumped. All
the activists can do is to march in the streets (preferably peacefully)
protesting against its very existence. The sooner the WTO perishes the better
for the world’s exploited peasants and workers. The capitalist system is
inherently unreformable; it has to be overthrown, and with it its main
institutions of governance – namely, the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO. One
of its most active members, La Via Campesina, for example, issued a statement
on the eve of the MC10 demanding an “End to the WTO; peasants believe that the
WTO cannot be reformed or turned around”. [i]
Despite these
differences, Tent Number Six provided a remarkable sense of solidarity.
Specifically, the NGOs assembled there agreed that there were two
non-negotiable issues: One was that the Doha Development Agenda (DDA) had to be
“reaffirmed”; and the second was that the inclusion of ‘new’ issues must be
rejected. [ii]
An Analysis of the Outcome of the MC10
The outcome of
MC10 – the Nairobi Declaration - was pronounced by the WTO Secretariat,
understandably of course, as a success. Its Director-General Roberto Azevêdo
hailed it as the “most significant outcome on agriculture” in the
organization’s 20-year history. [iii]The mainstream media – especially in the
West – also described MC10 as a success. By contrast, most NGOs described it as
a failure for the South and for the people of the world. For example, Oxfam
America argued that the text on agriculture “does not offer significant
improvement over the status quo and could even be a step backwards”. [iv]
The most
contentious issue in the Nairobi Declaration is the text on the future of the
DDA - paragraph 30 of the Nairobi Declaration. It reads: “We recognize that
many Members reaffirm the Doha Development Agenda, and the Declarations and
Decisions adopted at Doha and at the Ministerial Conferences held since then,
and reaffirm their full commitment to conclude the DDA on that basis. Other
Members do not reaffirm the Doha mandates, as they believe new approaches are
necessary to achieve meaningful outcomes in multilateral negotiations. Members
have different views on how to address the negotiations. We acknowledge the
strong legal structure of this Organization.” [v]
This “on-the-one-hand,
on-the-other- hand” formulation would provide a field day for legal experts and
negotiators at the WTO in Geneva. My own view is that the matter will get stuck
in the sands of time, and the Empire will move towards other instruments such
as the TTIP, TPP, other regional agreements, and the so-called plurilaterals to
pursue their agendas. [vi] I also think that it is wasted energy for the global
civil society to get stuck on the technicalities of this paragraph – energy
that could be better spent in mobilising the people at the grassroots to RESIST
the Empire and the WTO diktat and to formulate and fight for their own agendas.
Some Conclusions:
If it were not
for the enormous harm that the WTO – and its ideology of neoliberalism and
fictitious “free trade” - has inflicted on the people of the world, it would
justifiably be described as a “theatre of the absurd”. Why? For two reasons:
One: the MC10
was a farce from the beginning to the end. In my blog of December 9, 2015,
(before the start of the MC10) I had more or less predicted the outcome “The
Nairobi Declaration (if such is the outcome of the MC10) will be a negotiated
text. What does that mean? Like in all previous MCs, it means, effectively,
that the powerful get what they want and the weak surrender under the threat of
sanctions… It takes collective efforts of the Global South, and the solidarity
voices of the people of the world to beat Empire - as in Seattle in 1999, and
Cancun, 2003. In between the powerful and the weak are countries like BRICS
(Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) that do have some – but limited
- negotiating leverage, provided they act in concert. Opposed to BRICS and the
Global South is the Empire - a term that is not admissible in diplomatic –
including WTO - discourse. But the Empire exists; it is an existential
reality….” [vii]
In that piece I
drew out seven possible outcome scenarios and ranked them in order from good to
bad – that is, from the perspective of Africa and the Global South. Based on
these, I drew the following conclusions. It is worth repeating these from the
hindsight of the outcome of MC10.
1. The WTO was created by the Empire and
controlled and coordinated by it - like a war machine. There are differences
among its constituent members (for example between the US and the EU), but on
the DDA they are united – they are bent on killing it.
2. The WTO political game is played with
complete lack of any democratic or moral scruples. The Empire speaks of
democracy and good governance, ad infinitum, but there is not a morsel of it
within the WTO system of global economic governance. And the Empire gets away
with total impunity.
3. The WTO ideology of ‘free trade’ is a
pure fiction. Nothing like that ever existed in history, not even during its
‘high point’ of 19th century English mercantile system.
4. The WTO is not neutral. Its DG -
Azevêdo - is not neutral. He is a ‘free market’ fundamentalist and works for
the Empire.
5. The Chairperson of MC10, Kenya’s
Ambassador Amina Mohamed, is officially neutral. As the Chair she has to be.
But she will be under huge pressure from the Empire, Azevêdo, and the WTO
Secretariat to produce an outcome favourable to the Empire.
I had suggested
- more in desperation than hope - that “It is time Africa sits up and gets
counted. It must resist the WTO's culture of terror and impunity for the
Empire”. Well, Kenya played host to the MC10, and the Government had to deliver
to the Empire what it was obliged to under duress of the imperial system.
The second
reason the MC10 is a “theatre of the absurd” is because the consequences of the
Nairobi Declaration are going to be dire not only for Africa but, ironically,
also for the Empire, especially Europe. In the press release issued by members
of the African civil society at the MC10 (even before the outcome text came
out), they warned: “The Green Room process excludes Africa. Africa is being marginalized on the very soil of Africa. A likely outcome of this
non-transparent process would be to devastate Africa’s economy and Policy
Space. This will create massive unemployment in Africa, especially youth and
women. It will disposess millions of people of their livelihoods and become
internal refugees in Africa, and easily half a million people potential
refugees heading for Europe no matter what the obstacles.” (See Appendix)
The Empire is an
empire of the absurd – a tragic-comic farce. Unless the South gets together in
solidarity with the people of the world in active RESISTANCE against the Empire
and the WTO, this war machine will destroy not only the global South but also
the global North.
My final
conclusion: Speaking as a member of the global civil society, it is important
that we learn from the experience of WTO MC10. The reformists are harboring a
dangerous illusion. Activism is important, but without a correct revolutionary
theory, activism is more commotion (tamasha) than movement. It creates an
illusion of “being involved” but actually going nowhere.
Appendix:
AFRICAN PRESS RELEASE AT THE CONCLUSION OF THE TENTH MINISTERIAL CONFERENCE OF
THE WTO IN NAIROBI ON 19 DECEMBER, 2015
Media Message: A Second Scramble for Africa
1. The Green Room process excludes Africa.
Africa is being marginalized on the very soil of Africa.
2. A likely outcome of this
non-transparent process would devastate Africa’s economy and Policy Space.
3. This will create massive unemployment
in Africa, especially youth and women. It will disposes millions people of
their livelihoods and become internal refugees in Africa, and easily half a
million people potential refugees heading for Europe no matter what the
obstacles.
4. Africa will work in solidarity with
India to protest against an outcome that violates the food sovereignty and
livelihoods of our people. Global South will not be divided and conquered.
5. Africa should walk out of this
conference; it has nothing for Africa that our governments can offer to our
people.
6. We denounce any effort by the
industrialized countries to blame Africa and the developing countries if this
Conference fails. The blame lies squarely with the developed countries who have
designed an asymmetrical, unjust system of global trade governance.
7. We appeal to our solidarity movements
in other parts of the world to support the struggles of the people of Africa
and Policy Space for our Governments.
8. This statement
was drafted by the following as an urgent intervention in a fast-moving
unfolding process from which Africa was excluded. We had to take a stand, and
we hope that many more will join us to support this statement.
About The Author:
Yash Tandon is
from Uganda and has worked at many different levels as an academic, a teacher,
a political thinker, a rural development worker, a civil society activist, and
an institution builder. He was involved in the democratic struggles in Uganda
and was member of the interim Uganda Parliament (1979-80). In 1997 he founded
the Southern and Eastern Trade information and Negotiations Institute (SEATINI)
of which he is still the Chairman. It is an NGO which seeks to build African
capacity to negotiate, among others, on trade, investment and intellectual
property issues. From 2005 to 2009, he was the Executive Director of the
Geneva-based South Centre which is an inter-governmental think-tank of the
South. He and his wife now live in Oxford, UK.
END NOTES
[i]http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php/actions-and-events-mainmenu-26/10-years-of-wto-is-enough-mainmenu-35/1538-la-via-campesina-demands-an-end-to-the-wto-peasants-believe-that-the-wto-cannot-be-reformed-or-turned-around
[ii] For a more
detailed analysis of this, see: “Africa Draws Red Lines on the Sands of the WTO
Ministerial”, http://yashtandon.com/category/blog/)
[iii]
https://www.wto.org/english/news_e/news15_e/mc10_19dec15_e.htm
[iv]
cid:75A60A7A-1E05-4E25-BC59-B8B52529E864]Oxfam America Comments on Food Aid
Disciplines.
[v]
WT/MIN(15)/W/33/Rev.3 19 December 2015
[vi] For an
analysis of the TTIP, TPP, etc. see my “Dangers of WTO MC 10: New Round + TTIP
+ TPP + EPA”, 20 October, 2015, http://yashtandon.com/category/blog/ A
plurilateral agreement is a one entered into by the WTO members on a voluntary
basis; it does not bind those not party to it. The Agreement on Government
Procurement is one such plurilateral agreement. The problem is that
plurilaterals have a tendency, over time, to become multi-laterals.
[vii] See: “Resisting
WTO's Culture of Terror and Impunity”, http://yashtandon.com/category/blog/
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