Back Issues

Recommended reading this week

2005-12-08

What is the World Trade Organisation (WTO)? According to the WTO website, it’s “the only global international organisation dealing with the rules of trade between nations. At its heart are the WTO agreements, negotiated and signed by the bulk of the world’s trading nations and ratified in their parliaments. The goal is to help producers of goods and services, exporters, and importers conduct their business.”

Simply put, the WTO ministerial meeting scheduled to take place in Hong Kong 13-18 December is about negotiating the rules of trade between nations. These negotiations are of huge significance. Decisions made impact on the lives of millions of people.

For Africa, the stakes are high, especially in negotiations over agriculture, where currently obscene subsidies to rich country farmers put the squeeze on African producers. Then there are negotiations over trade in services, an increasingly lucrative area of world trade where rich countries want as much access to African economies as possible – regardless of the consequences.

If they haven’t already, decisions made at the WTO level are coming to a country, city, town or village near you. You might have noticed that one day you woke up and a multinational corporation was running your health service. Or perhaps you read in the paper about textile workers losing their jobs because of cheap imports. There are a thousand other examples. The point is that the hand of the WTO is pretty much in everything.

So, what’s going to happen at this WTO meeting? What are the main issues on the negotiating table? Will there be a deal and if so what kind of deal? The articles in Pambazuka News this week set out to answer these questions and provide the background details about what’s going to happen in Hong Kong and why.

- Pambazuka News

EDITORIAL: The Hong Kong WTO meeting will be of “rude battles and fierce negotiations” but Africa must stand firm in the interests of her people, writes Demba Moussa Dembele
COMMENT&ANALYSIS:
- Agriculture is a central issue of the Hong Kong WTO meet, but a deal is unlikely. Raj Patel says even if there was a deal it would have to ignore the demands and needs of agriculturalists in the Global South
- Developing countries engaged in WTO talks are being asked to "chase a black cat down a dark alley blindfolded”. Riaz Tayob warns of the danger of a deal that is an empty gift.
- What's going down on the streets of Hong Kong? Nicola Bullard answers questions from Pambazuka News
- Can't make sense of the WTO? Browse our facts, figures, glossary and background reading for more information.
LETTERS: Mahmood Mamdani sends an open letter to Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni telling him to reconcile with the living and not only the dead; The debate over Pan-Africanism revives
BLOGGING AFRICA: Sokari Ekine reports on Baby Faith, who died on World Aids Day
PAN-AFRICAN POSTCARD:
BOOKS&ARTS: A review of Simao Kikamba's Going Home, the story of a political refugee living in South Africa
GCAP NEWS: White Band Day 3 is on December 10
CONFLICT&EMERGENCIES: News from the watch list areas of DRC, Nigeria and Sudan
HUMAN RIGHTS: International Human Rights Day on December 10 focuses on torture; Statement on trade and human rights ahead of the WTO meeting in Hong Kong
REFUGEES&FORCED MIGRATION: No entry for Darfur refugees in Greece
ELECTIONS&GOVERNANCE: Egyptian elections end in violence; Kibaki faces dilemma in Kenya
WOMEN&GENDER: Africa's push for Reproductive Rights Fund rubs US the wrong way; 16 Days draws to a close
DEVELOPMENT: Why development aid fails to help the poor; News on the WTO
CORRUPTION: Oiling the wheels of corruption in Chad - World Bank style
HEALTH&HIV/AIDS: The vicious cycle of AIDS, poverty, and neoliberalism
ENVIRONMENT: Rich UK company sues Tanzania over water deal
MEDIA: Eritrean journlist gets moment of freedom before being sent back to jail
PLUS: News on advocacy, fundraising, e-newsletters, courses and jobs...

BIRTHDAY GREETINGS TO PAMBAZUKA NEWS: The origins of Pambazuka News can be traced back to December 2000, when the newsletter began as a tiny subscriber list distributing bits and pieces of information. Since then Pambazuka News has grown into a community of 18 000 subscribers! This week we are five years old. Thanks to all our supporters for helping us to survive the dangerous early childhood years.

* The lead editorial from Pambazuka News 231, Smile, Woman of Africa, Smile!, is now available in French. Visit Pambazuka News 231: http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=30542

No fear of failure: Will Africa stand firm in Hong Kong?

2005-12-08

Demba Moussa Dembele

Deadlock. That’s the current state of trade negotiations in the lead up to a crucial World Trade Organisation meeting in Hong Kong from 13-18 December. Expect “rude battles and fierce negotiations” during the meeting, writes Demba Moussa Dembele, as the United States and European Union try their utmost to wrangle a deal that will give them license to loot. In the face of intense pressure, African trade ministers must remember the welfare of their people, stand firm and resist the heavy-handed tactics they will be subjected to, Dembele writes.


In just a few days, Hong Kong will host one of the most important meetings of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). After the failure of the last ministerial meeting in Cancun (Mexico) two years ago, there are fears that history may repeat itself, because so far there is no consensus on some of the key issues to be discussed. The Draft Declaration issued by the Director General on November 26, 2005 and revised on December 2, 2005, has been criticized by several developing countries as being biased in favor of developed countries in many of the issues under negotiation, notably on services and industrial tariffs.

For African and other developing countries the stakes are clear: will this round be a real development round or will it be subverted by developed countries, notably the United States and the European Union (EU), to push for more liberalization and the opening up of developing countries’ economies to multinational corporations? Indeed, the current round of negotiations, called the Doha Development Round (DDR), was supposed to foster development and give more attention to issues of interest to developing countries. In particular, it was supposed to correct the egregious inequities and imbalances of the Uruguay Round Agreement on agriculture which allowed industrial countries to increase their support for their farmers, leading to a dumping of subsidized products on developing countries’ markets and to big distortions in the world prices of agricultural products.

But the Cancun fiasco and the current impasse illustrate the gap between developing and industrial countries regarding the interpretations of the Doha Round. The major sticking points of the negotiations include agricultural subsidies by developed countries, liberalization of the services sector and non-agricultural market access (NAMA).

Over the last two years, African countries have tried to harmonize their positions so as to strengthen their solidarity and defend more effectively their interests. This is especially the case for African least developed countries (LDCs) which joined other LDCs to raise their specific concerns. In their last meeting held in Arusha (Tanzania) on November 24, 2005, African trade ministers issued a statement called the Arusha Development Benchmarks for the 6th WTO Ministerial in Hong Kong, in which they exposed their views on some of the key issues to be discussed in Hong Kong.

Agricultural subsidies

They stressed the inadequacy of the proposals made so far on agricultural subsidies, which are one of the most contentious issues in the current negotiations. As is well known, cotton subsidies are the best illustration of the inequities and injustice inherent in the world trading system. The United States, which controls around 40 percent of the market, spends between $3 and $4 billion annually to support 25,000 farmers. This has had the effect of depressing cotton prices in world markets, hurting some 10 to 11 million African farmers. For African countries, the elimination of agricultural subsidies has become one of the key tests of the sincerity of developed countries to correct the imbalances that characterize the world trading system. In their statement, African trade ministers insist that agricultural subsidies be phased out by the year 2010 and call for the removal of all other structural distortions.

Given the formidable pressure from African and other developing countries on agricultural issues and the fear of another failure, the United States and Europe are maneuvering to shift the blame to developing countries. Both have made superficial concessions recently aimed at ‘meeting’ developing countries’ demands. For instance, on October 10, 2005, the United States issued a proposal indicating that it is ready to slash its agricultural subsidies by 60%. However the proposal is conditional on the EU and Japan agreeing to slash their subsidies by percentages, already rejected by both. In other words, the US proposal leads nowhere. On the other hand, the European Union, while criticizing the US proposal as ‘unrealistic’ and not feasible, has put on the table a proposal of its own, which puts the onus on the US.

Industrial tariffs

African trade ministers insist that obligations of African countries in this area should be commensurate with the continent’s development level and that they should be granted flexibilities and retain policy space. Moreover, any appropriate formula should allow Africa to pursue development objectives, such as industrial policy, employment creation and product diversification.

This position contrasts with developed countries’ push for drastic tariff reduction and rapid liberalization of industrial markets. The satisfaction of these demands would have a devastating impact on African economies. Already, crippled by structural adjustment programs, the remaining African industrial base would be eliminated and industrialization would be put on hold for an indefinite period. With little industrial prospects, Africa would attract ever fewer FDIs, except in the mining and extractive industries, which would reinforce the continent’s specialization in primary products. Industrial impasse will translate into the acceleration of the ‘brain drain’, further clouding Africa’s development prospects. Therefore, African countries should not heed the call for significant tariff concessions. They should retain these tariffs as a development tool.

Trade in services (GATS)

In this area, African trade ministers have rejected the call for rapid liberalization and the introduction of new approaches to the GATS framework. They have reiterated Africa’s right to regulate the services sector, to open up and liberalize fewer sectors in line with its development level and priorities. African resistance in this area is strongly echoed by other developing and emerging countries.

To understand the stakes in the services trade, one must keep in mind that they permeate all aspects of economic, social and cultural development. They range from education to health, from transportation to housing, from banking services to trash collection. Trade in services accounts for more than 25 percent of world trade and is growing rapidly. In several developed countries, services account for about two thirds of economic activity and over half of the world economy.

Therefore, liberalization in trade in services would represent a tremendous opportunity to boost these countries’ economies and pave the way for foreign control of key sectors in developing countries, as already is the case in many African countries. Indeed, a further liberalization in this sector would deal a major blow to African development prospects since this would lead to market delivery of many of these services, making them inaccessible to the overwhelming majority of the population. Moreover, liberalization in services would increase the role and power of foreign investors, thus hampering or severely limiting state-led development strategies. Furthermore, this would reinforce the current division of labor. In light of this, African countries are right in opposing further liberalization and the opening up of their services sector. They must have the right to use them as development tools under the control of national authorities to serve national development objectives.

The African agenda in Hong Kong

In light of the above, for African countries, a successful conclusion of the Hong Kong meeting should mean the satisfaction of the following:

- Removal of structural distortions in agricultural goods markets as a result of industrialized countries’ policies;

- The sovereign right to use industrial tariffs and other instruments to pursue their development objectives, especially to promote industrialization and full employment;

- Non-reciprocal market access and trade liberalization given the asymmetry between African and industrial countries in the world trading system;

- The right to protect their agricultural sector and use other policy tools to enhance the welfare of their citizens, in particular the right to food sovereignty;
- Set a firm deadline and a timetable for the elimination of agricultural subsidies, with transparent and verifiable monitoring mechanisms;

- Set up compensatory mechanisms for the trade losses due to those subsidies;

- Opposition to the imposition of services liberalization and the right to regulate services and liberalize them in line with their development priorities;

- Maximum flexibility in identifying special products (SP);

- Implementation of effective special and differential treatment (SDT) measures;

- Inclusiveness and transparency in the negotiation process.

Conclusion

Given the gap between African and other developing countries’ positions and those of developed countries, the Hong Kong Ministerial will give rise to rude battles and fierce negotiations. African countries will face an uphill battle. Agricultural issues will be the make or break issue in Hong Kong. As things stand now, only concessions by the US and the EU on subsidies and on other areas may break the deadlock and give a chance to the Doha Round.

The efforts of the United States and the European Union to convince world public opinion that they have made all the concessions needed have received the help of several leading multinational corporations. On November 8, 2005, CEOs and Chairmen from a number of these corporations published an editorial in the Financial Times, calling on WTO negotiators to conclude the negotiations “on time”! This elicited a swift response from several NGOs, which published a statement in the November 15, 2005 issue of the same Financial Times.

All this shows that governments of industrial countries and multinational corporations are united in pressuring developing countries into accepting to make concessions to further liberalize their economies to the detriment of their own populations. This campaign aims to intimidate developing countries’ negotiators and implicitly send the message that they would be to blame if the Hong Kong meeting were to fail. Intense pressure, heavy tactics and even physical threat may be applied by the US and the EU to get African and other developing countries’ negotiators to accept what they have refused since Cancun.

However, African trade ministers must stick with their demands and resist the pressures put on them. They must have in mind the fundamental interests of their countries and citizens. They must not fear another failure of the WTO, because Africa has nothing to lose. In reality, another failure of the WTO ministerial will further expose the hypocrisy, lies and injustices of the current trading system and illustrate its illegitimacy.

* Demba Moussa Dembele is Director, African Forum on Alternatives Dakar (Senegal)

* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org

Strong-arming, sweet-talking and belly rolling – but no deal on agriculture in Hong Kong

2005-12-08

Agriculture has always been the make or break issue of the sixth WTO ministerial in Hong Kong and as the meeting approaches it would take a miracle for agreement to be reached. But Raj Patel from the Centre for Civil Society at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal notes in an interview with Pambazuka News that even if a deal was reached it would have to ignore the demands and needs of agriculturalists in the Global South. That’s because “nothing, not one thing, in the detail of the EU and US proposals, promises any substantive change in their policies of subsidising rich farmers in the EU and US, while exploiting poorer ones elsewhere.”


PAMBAZUKA NEWS: The agricultural sector has been an area of focus for you. What are your views on this World Trade Organisation (WTO) ministerial meeting in Hong Kong? Is there any hope at all for an improvement in relation to the agricultural sector?

RAJ PATEL: Since the WTO began in 1995, the agreement on agriculture has been a battlefield, mainly between the European Union and the United States. There have been ministerial meetings in Singapore 1996, Geneva 1998, Seattle 1999, Doha 2001, Cancun 2003 and Hong Kong is the sixth ministerial conference.

At each of these conferences, save perhaps Singapore, the fight over agriculture has caused a great deal of collateral damage, particularly in terms of the demands made of developing countries. By the same token, though, when developing countries have had the opportunity and courage to raise their voices, the advance of WTO-style trade liberalisation has been halted - this happened in Seattle and Cancun in particular.

In Doha, however, the Doha Development Agenda (DDA) was written, and it's a roadmap for trade liberalisation to which many poor countries chose, under duress but with the possibility of aid, to subscribe. The US and EU have been effective in using the DDA as a sop to countries concerned about how trade liberalisation in agriculture will affect their rural populations - usually the poorest people. But the EU vs US agricultural trade spat continues to fester. And in recent weeks, despite a great deal of diplomacy, strong-arming, sweet-talking and belly rolling, the EU and US haven't managed to come to any agreement on agriculture.

As the Hong Kong ministerial approaches, it's unlikely that an agreement will be reached. The important point, though, is this - if an agreement *is* reached, it will have to be one that ignores the demands and needs of agriculturalists in the Global South - because nothing, not one thing, in the detail of the EU and US proposals, promises any substantive change in their policies of subsidising rich farmers in the EU and US, while exploiting poorer ones elsewhere.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: The major sticking area with regards negotiations over agriculture lies in the issue of farm subsidies. The European Union and United States pay billions of dollars of subsidies to their farmers, undermining the ability of farmers in other parts of the world to compete with products from the EU and USA. What progress do you think there will be on this issue? Isn't the focus on subsidies slightly misleading in that it obscures the problems associated with an export based agricultural system that undermines food sovereignty?

RAJ PATEL: Among the reasons that the WTO is unfair is that it allows the EU and US to maintain their agricultural systems and supports in place, while demanding that developing countries remove their protections for agriculture. In the press and in certain NGO circuits, this debate has collapsed into one about subsidies, with strong arguments being made that subsidies are hurting the poor in the Global South. The argument runs like this - the EU and US massively subsidise their farmers. The subsidies encourage farmers to over-produce. The surfeit of agricultural goods needs to be disposed of somewhere, and that somewhere is the Global South. This means that farmers in the Global South are competing against products that have a much lower cost of production precisely because of the subsidies.

This undoubtedly happens in some circumstances. Most recently publicised has been the case of cotton, where the subsidies given to US cotton producers directly affects the output in West Africa, to the tune of $250 million in direct costs, and $1 billion in indirect costs, according to the Cotton Producers Association of Africa.

In the main, however, the subsidies debate is a red herring. The best way to see this is to consider what would happen if the US were, for example, suddenly to make all its subsidies disappear. An increasing number of studies addressing this issue have found that supply wouldn't change in the short or medium term. Indeed, under some scenarios, production would increase, as US farmers struggled to increase output to cover the shortfall in their subsidies. This would have the effect of worsening the situation for farmers in the Global South in the short term, and in the long term, world prices would increase only modestly (3% by 2020, according to one model).

The US recently put on the table an offer to reduce some of its farm supports by 60% in the next five years, in exchange for market access. But the devil lies in the details of these proposals - the US is taking something of a gamble that its exports will win on market access what they lose in direct farm payments. The gamble, however, isn't a fair one - the US still retains the right to expand its 'non-trade-distorting' subsidies, which will nonetheless keep farmers at a competitive advantage, while promising to cut the narrowly defined 'trade-distorting subsidies'. Their effective reduction in subsidies would be around 2%, but the market access they want in return is a reduction of between 50-90%. The chalice is, to switch metaphors, poisoned.

The good news, for those opposed to the WTO’s vision of agriculture at least, is that the EU response to this salvo is constrained. The EU trade Minister, formerly a disgraced UK minister, Peter Mandelson, is a firm believer in the free market. But he is not, however, able to negotiate as he pleases. The EU’s own intra-national politics has put some firm constraints down as to what he is, and is not, allowed to concede. The US is pushing for more than he is able to give – indeed, some French politicians have already argued that he has overstepped his mandate. And this means the very real threat of deadlock at the WTO in Hong Kong – any broad agreement can’t happen without an agreement on agriculture, and it doesn’t look like any agreement on agriculture is forthcoming.

This is not to say that US and EU farm support systems should remain untouched - far from it. The lion's share of EU and US agricultural subsidies go to the rich, with some estimates suggesting that 60% of subsidies go to the richest 20%. There's clearly need for radical change. But this change in and of itself won't bring the manna that many hope it will. The problem is more complex, and lies in the systemic overproduction of crops in the North, and in the vested and wealthy interests that profit from this overproduction, and from a model that promotes export-based agriculture.

Finally, it’s important to remember that the outcomes of Hong Kong, deadlock or otherwise, will still leave the WTO largely intact. This is an unhappy state of affairs, and one that needs urgent redress not within the Ministerial, but beyond it.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: In a recent paper, ‘International Agrarian Restructuring and the Practical Ethics of Peasant Movement Solidarity’, (Centre for Civil Society at the University of KwaZulu-Natal) you set out to show "how the international agrarian counter-movement is not a reflex or knee-jerk response...but one that has to work with complex formations of identity, memory and militancy". Can you elaborate on the point that you are making here and how this relates to the WTO?

RAJ PATEL: The resistance to the WTO is complex and global. Many of the organisations that are fighting the increase of the WTO's ambit in agriculture are farming organisations with roots in a long history of liberation struggle. The Landless Peoples' Movement in Brazil, the MST, for instance, see themselves as the inheritors of the traditions of the Peasant Leagues in post-war Brazil. The Indian "Karnataka State Farmers Association", KRRS, with over 10 million members, sees itself as continuing the Gandhian vision of national liberation.

The way that these movements respond to the WTO isn't a call for increasing tariffs or subsidies or any of the other terms used by the international trade set. They want to take back the debate around agriculture from international capital, and that means taking back its meaning. Chukki Nanjundaswamy, one of the leaders of the KRRS, puts it like this: "We don't want the government to give us charity - we don't want subsidies in that sense. What we want is the fair price for what we grow - the 'scientific price'. This means a price that includes a fair price for the labour, and the inputs, and the land. Nothing more. Nothing less. But also, we want to take back control of how our food is distributed. We want to cut out the middlemen, the little thugs and the big corporations that steal from all of us. So we want to sell our food directly to the people who will eat it - we'll get more for our food, and they'll have to pay less. Our motto is 'One rupee more for the producer, one less for the consumer.'"

This is a solid example of the Gandhian idea of self-sufficiency at work, drawing on a history of anti-colonial struggle, and changing the way that agricultural commerce is structured. And this is a direct attack on the WTO, which seeks to structure domestic agriculture through structuring the international trade rules.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: In the same paper, you write that apart from dumping, deskilling, inequality and concentration of ownership, one of the features of people in the agriculture sector under neo-liberalism is a kind of collective amnesia. This is an interesting point - can you explain what you mean?

RAJ PATEL: One of the processes of international commerce since the second world war has involved the rise of new technologies in farming. An example of this is the 'Green Revolution', a series of technologies that involved irrigation, agrotoxins (pesticides and herbicides) and improved varieties that were compatible with these kinds of technologies. The yields from these new varieties were undoubtedly higher than before they were introduced.

But there are two problems - the first is that with the introduction of these technologies that encourage a monoculture of one kind or another, other kinds of farming systems, often more sophisticated, involving intercropping a range of crops in ways suited to local conditions, has been forgotten.

This is a problem today, because the Green Revolution technologies are failing, leaving behind soils that require extensive reconstruction after years of being soaked in toxins. Agro-ecological forms of farming, which preceded the Green Revolution in some cases, would have offered a way of managing this situation - but the skills have been lost.

There is, however, a second kind of amnesia - one that relates to the technologies used on farms today. The technologies are presented, by the chemical companies, and then by governments, as the only solution out of the trap of low productivity agriculture. Yet, as Prof. S.S. Gill of the Punjab Agricultural University points out, the Green Revolution was a substitute for land reform – it was a way of tamping down popular aspirations for radical change in the face of hunger. His work on the increases in productivity that have happened when landless and land-insecure rural people have been given land show that, in fact, productivity also shoots through the roof.

This isn’t to say that the main reason for land reform should be productivity increases - there are many better reasons than that. Yet we are encouraged to forget these political options in the face of modern farming technology. And this is symptomatic of a broader forgetting - a forgetting of people living in rural areas. Farming policy in almost every country world wide has placed a lower value on the fates of people living in rural areas, and their persistently higher rates of poverty, disease and education are tragic testament to this.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: How does/has the agricultural sector acted as a site of struggle against the neo-liberal system espoused by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and WTO? What examples are there from Africa?

In Africa, the history of colonialism has left its mark most centrally on the factor of production most necessary for agriculture – land. A number of governments, and the South African government is the most ardent exponent of these philosophies on the continent, have sought to redistribute land on a willing-buyer-willing-seller model. The model, approved and proselytised by the World Bank, is one where the owner of the land, who has invariably received the land through a process of colonialism, agrees to part with it at an invariably high market rate, and the buyer, invariably without the support s/he needs to successfully finance and grow on the land, pays for the land, only to default on the loan a few years later. At the recent Land Summit in South Africa, and due almost exclusively to three years of hard campaigning by the Landless Peoples’ Movement, the government admitted that the willing-buyer-willing-seller policy has been a failure.

More broadly, the loans doled out by the Bank and the Fund have imposed requirements to repay loans in dollars. These dollars can only be gained through exporting domestically produced goods. When African countries have been unable to repay the loans, the Bank and Fund have been willing to re-lend to governments, but with the loans have come conditionalities, or terms – governments are to reduce their ‘interference’ in the market by dismantling the supports for agriculture to which they have been committed. These supports include guaranteed prices, paid through marketing boards. With the end of guaranteed prices, and with farmers exposed to international competition, this has cemented African agriculture into a barely reconstructed version of their colonial form – providing cheap agricultural commodities to the Global North and, increasingly, large countries in the Global South, notably China.

Cotton, mentioned above, is just one example. African countries are driven by a range of key export crops, from coffee to cut flowers – all of which have a range of increasingly liberalised trade rules governing them, authored at the World Trade Organization. This process, of loan, conditions, and export agriculture, is why the Fund, Bank, and WTO are known as the ‘three sisters’ of neoliberalism.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: Community struggles are often at the coal-face of resistance to decisions made at forums like the WTO. To what extent do you think these 'voices' are heard at meetings like the one in Hong Kong?

RAJ PATEL: The WTO is meant to be a forum of governments, and to the extent that governments represent the will of their people, peoples’ voices ought to be heard at the WTO. It just happens that very few governments represent any kind of popular will, and the few that are able to represent these are sidelined, bought off, or brow-beaten.

With this in mind, the international peasant movement, Via Campesina, arranged to meet directly with the head of the WTO, Pascal Lamy, the man who had Peter Mandelson’s job until he was elected to be the ‘impartial head’ of the World Trade Organization. Unfortunately, the delegation was limited by the WTO to fifteen people, and when arriving at the WTO building in Geneva, only one member of the delegation, the Via Campesina representative from Norway, was allowed in. This is indicative of the extent to which ‘voices’ are heard at the WTO. In Hong Kong, there are already rumours of activists being blacklisted, and prevented from entering the country during the ministerial, and with the Hong Kong authorities making it difficult for these representatives to find accommodation so that they’ve somewhere to sleep after they’ve made their voices heard.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: What would be some of the key features of a food sovereignty model?

There are alternatives to the WTO. Via Campesina has proposed a model called “food sovereignty”. It’s not something of which many people have heard, so it’s worth jotting down a quick definition: “is the right of peoples to define
their own food and agriculture; to protect and regulate domestic agricultural production and trade in order to achieve sustainable development objectives; to determine the extent to which they want to be self-reliant; [and] to restrict the dumping of products in their markets . . . Food sovereignty does not negate trade, but rather, it promotes the formulation of trade policies and practices that serve the rights of peoples to safe, healthy and ecologically sustainable production.”

The main point here is not to replace one neo-liberal dogma with another, but to take seriously the right of ‘peoples’ to define their own food and agriculture. In other words, a food sovereignty model would look significantly more democratic than the prevailing one. But this is to understate the case – because we’ve not yet seen this kind of democracy at work on a sustained basis at a national level anywhere in the world. It’s a call for a direct democracy, not a representative one. This means a call for engagement, debate and contestation – the kinds of things that we see very little of outside the smoke-filled rooms at the WTO. It calls for every person to take more direct responsibility and claim over their lives – it’s a call for empowerment. It means, of course, disempowering those who profit from the current agricultural system – but it also means empowering those who profit least – rural and urban producers, and consumers around the world. And we’re a constituency that richly deserves more control over our lives.

* Interview conducted via email. Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org

The WTO: Chugging along, spreading economic terrorism of the fundamentalist kind

2005-12-08

Riaz Tayob

In the gloomy world of World Trade Organisation (WTO) negotiations, developing countries are being asked, in the words of one commentator, to “chase a black cat down a dark alley blindfolded”. Riaz Tayob takes us into the corridors of the WTO and introduces us to the complicated and confusing world of negotiations on issues that affect the lives of millions in the Global South. Agriculture, health, services – it’s all up for grabs and rich countries will stop at nothing to get their hands on as big piece of the pie as they can cram into their mouths. In this context, and with a dash of manipulation and strong-arm tactics thrown in for extra spice, the danger is of a deal that is an empty gift but sold as real, concludes Tayob.


The importance of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) belies its relatively obscure birth in 1995. Since then it has been quietly chugging along, spreading economic terrorism of the fundamentalist kind. Market fundamentalism is dressed up in the clothes of growth, trade and development and yet this emperor is still naked. And the emperor will stay naked irrespective of what happens in Hong Kong, China. Whatever deal is brokered during this round of negotiations in Hong Kong or thereafter, developing countries cannot benefit much.

Past experience shows that developing countries can put their foot down and stop the process. However, until now they have been unable to extract anything meaningful from a show of unity and are still prone to the “divide and exploit” tactics of the rich countries. The systemic imbalances of the process work against developing countries and it is interesting to see how the audacious negotiating tactics of the rich countries has forced developing countries to move from being antagonists to protagonists on the same issues in a short space of time. The one redeeming feature of the current system is that the empty gift development deception so painstakingly cultivated by the rich countries and their coterie of media is being unravelled from within and without.

Essentially three outcomes are possible. Firstly, no deal is brokered at all. The talks then promptly resume after Hong Kong. Secondly, some sort of minimum deal is worked out to narrow the differences and then to pursue further discussions after Hong Kong. Thirdly, a big deal is brokered. The rich countries must consent to this as they effectively have a veto. A development deal that really meets some or all of the developing country interests may happen, after all this is a development round. But this is unlikely if developing countries continue to be clear about their demands for development space, corrections to inherited imbalances and the inclusion of new opportunities. This is because the essence of the round is about rich countries seeking market access in the developing countries and not about development. So while expectations of a deal in Hong Kong may be low, developing countries have high expectations of the negotiating round. However, the ever present danger to citizens of the world is that the liberalisation machinery may get its way after all, as happened with the rejected Cancun text being accepted almost verbatim six months later by the General Council in Geneva. The lesson to be drawn from this is nothing less than constant vigilance. Deep technical and political analysis is required to ensure that development is not a casualty of the Doha Negotiations.

The high level of ambition in these current Doha Development Agenda negotiations is being recalibrated. High ambitions, it seems, are likely to harm the prospects of a deal and all parties who have an interest in the multilateral system need to be constructive to make progress. This sounds reasonable enough, but only if one discounts the entire experience of developing countries in the WTO. Why should countries who are facing increasing poverty and inequality compromise on high development expectations? The rich countries have continuously made excessive demands on the agenda, to deflect attention away from the demands of the poorer countries, to undermine legitimate demands for changes in agriculture and to limit policy instruments that can be used for development. Besides defending their current policy space, developing countries have sought greater balance in the system by redress of built in inequities, access to promised opportunities that are meaningful and a change to agricultural subsidies regulation.

This overly modest set of demands has been greeted with aristocratic extravagance of the rich countries who have demanded over the years inter alia:

- a 0% tariff on manufactured goods by 2020 (so called Non-Agricultural Market Access – NAMA);

- rules on competition, investment, transparency in government procurement and trade facilitation (the “Singapore Issues” or the “New Issues”);

- reversals on the rights on intellectual property to prevent adequate access to medicines;

- limits on miniscule developing countries agricultural subsidies (de minimus supports);

- more liberalisation on services including essential and public services.

Recalibration of expectations for Hong Kong is a direct consequence of the rich country strategies. The strategy and tactics are so excessive that developing countries have over the years found themselves being protagonists and antagonists for the same issue. This is a reflection not only of their adaptability and “constructive engagement” at the WTO, but the sheer might and power of the rich countries in the negotiations.

For instance, in the services negotiations, developing countries were very hesitant to undertake further commitments under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). The general opposition to liberalisation was well recognised and when the rich countries saw that they were not getting market access into poor countries they sought to change the negotiating process from a bilateral request-offer to one that ensured that all countries liberalised a specific number of sectors. Developing countries faced with this audacious demand now spend a lot of their time defending the original GATS negotiating process. The initial proposals on competition policy started by some developing countries were perverted into something that the developing countries later had to oppose. Contrast this with the European Union (EU) first dropping their demands on the four Singapore Issues in Cancun then, according to Martin Khor of Third World Network, “undropping” it so that it is squarely on the agenda now. Developing countries cannot even get issues of major national interest on the agenda whereas the EU has the liberty to drop and undrop an issue. And they perceive themselves to be more development friendly.

The services negotiations are important for the rich countries because most of their new employment is in this sector. It has been packaged by the first world media marketing it as an opportunity for the developing countries when in fact the rich countries are desperate for this access. The services negotiations have not reached a point where outstanding issues have been sorted out. At this stage a country has very little idea about the scale and size of a liberalisation offer because the rules have not been worked out. In addition, there has been no progress on measures to protect domestic service suppliers if there is an import supply surge. Developing countries are being asked in these negotiations, as Chakravati Raghavan in his candid way has put it, to ‘chase a black cat down a dark alley blindfolded.’ The recent US/Mexico case has shown that if a country liberalises services at the WTO, pursuing national development goals may be made illegal.

It is not as if the stakes are not high for developing countries. The damage that can be inflicted on developing countries as a result of this round is enormous. In agriculture, the legal fiction of subsidies needs to be addressed. The developed countries deception was stylised into different legal boxes that allowed them to continue to pay subsidies. By definition, some subsidies were prohibited (blue box), others were targeted for reduction (amber box) and a door was opened to sanitise trade distorting support by calling it non-trade distorting support (green box) that has no limits and is legal.

The fiction that the green box is non-trade distorting is now well exposed. Pertinent for rich country citizens is that these supports go mainly to large agricultural corporations and not to their small farmers, so the issue is not about rural livelihoods and the well being of their citizens. Private corporations receive direct payments from the tax payers and still charge exorbitant prices to consumers for agricultural products. It shows a high degree of regulatory capture of the rich country political system which has been shown to cause untold misery, suffering and environmental degradation throughout the developing world – for which no amount of aid can compensate.

Peter Mandelsohn, the EU trade commissioner, has recently alluded to the importance of food production as an issue of national security. He said: "I don't believe in a free market in agriculture... If we had a free market ... we'd be in the hands of a relatively small number of producers who could hold us hostage." Internally, he does not want a system that would compromise the ability of Europe to cater for her needs. Externally, holding the entire developing world hostage to a system that compromises their food security is not an issue for discussion.

Implicitly, Mandelsohn recognises that the political control that the current trade deal gives the rich countries over the citizens of the developing countries is far too important to be given up. After all, if you can control the food supply of the poor countries, as the rich world does, then it is easier to exert other forms of control. The more brazenly imperialist US does not give as much credence to the European perspective and recognises that ownership of productive resources in the developing countries provides far more political leverage, and is seemingly willing to compromise more on agriculture but also not by much. The EU and US expect the poor countries to salivate over their offers, because of their generosity. They offer to cut the ceiling of what they are allowed to pay. It has no impact on the actual subsidies they are paying, because they are paying less than what they are legally entitled to pay. In any event, they do not want to place any limits on the Green Box subsidies which are legal and have no ceiling. This keeps the possibility open that they can shift their subsidy cuts from one box to the other, meaning that their offer is actually worthless. Less than 10% of their gross domestic product is in agriculture while in many African countries it is over 50%. The logic of the rich countries is: “why teach a person to fish when you can give them a meal”. This is what the rich countries sell to their citizens as “development.”

The rich countries are also pursuing major cuts on tariffs in industrial goods, fisheries, forestry and mining products (NAMA – Non Agricultural Market Access). They propose to cut tariffs by a formula on each and every line of tariffs. Rich countries already have low tariffs and have a proposed a formula that cuts the tariffs of developing countries much more than it would cut their own, in real terms. Yet, in terms of the agreements, the tariff cuts are supposed to non-reciprocal, with developing countries cutting their tariffs less. Argentina, Brazil and India have proposed a formula with a medium cut. The Caribbean nations have proposed a formula that proposes a very small cut for developing countries. Despite the attractiveness of the Caribbean proposal support for their proposal has not been forthcoming. The draft report produced by the Chairman of NAMA predictably sidelines the Caribbean proposal for the Ministerial.

There is an even better alternative method to tariff cuts under NAMA, if tariff cuts are required of developing countries at all. Yilmaz Akyuz says that an average cut in tariffs, as opposed to a line by line cut, will allow developing countries the flexibility to better meet their future needs because they could protect some sectors while opening up others for competition, as long as the changes do not exceed the average tariff limit. What is very worrying about Akyuz's analysis is that the average tariffs of developing countries are already much less than the average tariffs used by the rich countries during their developmental stage. What is even worse is that least developed countries and some others are being asked to place a ceiling (bind) on all their tariffs in exchange for not making any tariff cuts. This is a very serious limitation on their policy flexibility, especially if they are supposed to be getting this round for free. But with usual rich country aplomb, the packaging of the “gift” matters much more than the real contents inside.

In public health, the rich world and the WTO Secretariat in Geneva are all party to a fraud that can directly be linked to the suffering and deaths of millions of our people. In 1995, developing countries secured legal rights to violate patent laws which were protected under the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) agreement. Developed countries then promptly proceeded to prevent countries from using these flexibilities and in 2001 in Doha, developing countries secured an agreement that merely restated the rights they already had. The flexibilities in the TRIPs agreement to promote access to medicines had a limit, however. If a country was violating a patent right using a compulsory license to legally make generics, it could only produce primarily for its domestic market.

African countries with limited local production capacity faced the risk of not being able to secure adequate supplies of generics and sought a waiver. The waiver would allow them to secure enough generic drugs, allowing the producers to produce more than the limits in TRIPs. This may have been a tactical error that history may judge harshly because Africa pursued a waiver instead of relying on the flexibilities provided in article 30 of TRIPs, that gives wider flexibility. By pursing the waiver we undermined the possibility of developing article 30, which is more flexible and provides greater access to drugs. In any event the waiver has proven so onerous to be positively useless as no developed or developing country has made use of it in spite of a huge need for drugs.

The waiver had two components, a signed agreement and the text of a speech read out by the Chairperson of the TRIPs council. The agreement placed conditions on using the waiver and the Chairperson's text had many more onerous conditions. The signed agreement did not refer to the Chairman's statement when it was signed. The WTO Secretariat then fraudulently added an asterisk and a footnote referring to the Chairman's text, in an effort to make the use of the waiver nigh impossible. The developing countries protested about this and to date the Secretariat of the WTO refuses to remove the asterisk and the footnote. The developing countries refuse to recognise the Chairman's text as part of the agreement because it was not agreed to and also undermines the purpose of the waiver. So the dispute on the TRIPs agreement is a false dispute created and orchestrated by the rich countries to protect profits at the expense of millions of lives.

The danger inherent in the TRIPs agreement was made very clear at the Second African Union Extraordinary Session of Trade Ministers in Arusha. South African and Kenyan officials attempted to withdraw the Africa Group proposal. The Africa Group proposal is the basis for opposition to the fraud on the waiver and an attempt to secure a solution that is practical. Using tactics that can only be called highly synchronised, South Africa and Kenya tried to get the Africa Group proposal withdrawn. They did this without making it explicit that this is what they intended. Thankfully with concerted effort by other Africans this was averted. It is interesting to note that South Africa indicated unequivocal support for the Africa Group proposal during its consultation with civil society. The change in position therefore undermines the value of the consultations. With Kenya of course, the change in position occurred at a time when the entire cabinet was fired and yet there was a continuity in the position of TRIPs. The powers behind these changes seem to have an influence on African politics that is as opaque as it is powerful.

There is a real problem with transparency, accountability, good governance and democracy at the WTO. The WTO processes are simultaneously crude and sophisticated in their dictatorial tendencies. The draft texts for discussion in Hong Kong have been prepared by Chairpersons who have been accused of ignoring developing countries proposals and putting in elements where there is no consensus. Overall the bias of these chairpersons is toward the rich countries. The rich countries make a point of complaining that they have been sidelined by the chair in an effort to create an impression that the chairpersons texts/reports are not biased. Developing countries have not been as easily hoodwinked as the rich country media on this. The representative of Venezuela, upset at the text presented by a Chair, asked him “where does your responsibility [for the text] end and where does ours [the members] begin.”

From the very beginning developing countries have to start negotiations from a point of weakness that has been built into the process. The fact that Pascal Lamy is now the Director General of the WTO should also not be forgotten. He was unanimously selected for the job and has moved from being the bully boy in the school yard to the teacher with the whip. What is clear is that he has not seemed to have changed his tendency to tell developing countries what is good for them. He did this in his previous position as EU Trade Commissioner and continues to this day. In what must have been one of his lowest moments in his career, he addressed the AU Trade Ministers meeting in Arusha. He said that expectations must be recalibrated and that African countries should develop a bottom line. This was not a problem. However like Father Christmas he came carrying the “gift” of “aid for trade” and the promise of an increase in assistance for African countries. Now it can be seen as genuine, but in the context of North-South relations it can also be seen as an attempt to buy up the ministers. After all, many African states are aid dependant and are easily influenced in this way.

The danger of a deal that is an empty gift, well packaged by Lamy and his de facto political bosses in Washington and Brussels, is real. The Lamy factor should not be underestimated. The WTO may be a medieval institution, as Lamy once called it. He now has the power of the medieval lords behind him to drive a deal whatever the cost to developing countries. Developing countries should remain vigilant and ensure that they get what they want from the round. They do need to do a lot more to expose the injustices that they face in the process because without such exposure, the rich countries maintain and extend their power. If they do this more and more, then any failure of this round can be clearly blamed on the rich countries instead of them.

* Riaz Tayob works for the Southern and Eastern African Trade Negotiation Institute (SEATINI) www.seatini.org

* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org

The WTO: The dead-end street of trade liberalisation and the need for an alternative – now!

2005-12-08

With the sixth World Trade Organisation (WTO) ministerial meeting taking place in Hong Kong, the core of on-the-streets protest will be drawn from organisations in Asia. Pambazuka News asked Nicola Bullard from Focus on the Global South, a Bangkok-based group that researches international finance and globalization issues, about strategy, messages, WTO reform and the links between African and Asia in resisting an unfair deal.


PAMBAZUKA NEWS: In April, Focus on the Global South articulated a "strategy of derailment" for the WTO in an article 'The End of an Illusion: WTO Reform, Global Civil Society and the Road to Hong Kong'. The article said: "Essentially, derailment involves zeroing in on the key point of vulnerability of the WTO: its consensus system of decision-making. Concretely, it means working to prevent consensus from emerging in any of the key negotiating areas prior to and during the Sixth Ministerial in Hong Kong." Has anything changed and does this strategy remain the focus of activity?

NICOLA BULLARD: Well, the first thing to say about preventing a consensus is that it’s a short term strategy, aimed to slow down the process in the WTO, and the reason we want to slow it down is because we firmly believe that under the present conditions of unfair agreements, unequal power and undemocratic processes, most developing countries have little to gain in the WTO.

Our larger critique is that the overarching model, based on the assumption that export oriented trade liberalisation will lead to growth and hence development, is based on a faulty model. This critical view is supported by economic data on employment, incomes and growth which show that over the past 10 years, although there has been a boom in the volume of trade, this has not resulted in increased living standards, employment or broader benefits to the society.

In terms of the concrete strategy leading to Hong Kong, we are still working in every way that we can to strengthen the solidarity of developing country groups and to maximise the contradictions and disagreements between the negotiating countries in an effort to stall a consensus: we are working with trade delegations in Geneva, working at the national level to increase the pressure on the domestic front, and working with the media to heighten their awareness of what’s at stake and who is calling the shots in the WTO. So, blocking consensus remains an important objective.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: What is the role of mass public pressure in pursuing the goal of derailment and how successful has it been in the run up to the WTO meeting? What role do you expect it to play in the immediate period before the meeting, as well as during the meeting?

Public pressure, mobilisations and demonstrations are key: the work that we do “inside” the WTO, like policy analysis and lobbying, is pointless unless it is part of a larger process of mobilising public opinion, democratising the debates over trade, and bringing real in-the-streets pressure to bear on politicians at the national level. In addition, demonstrations can draw the media spotlight to what is going on inside the WTO. However one of the perennial struggles is to get the press to focus on the content of our arguments against the WTO rather than whether or not there will be violent protests in Hong Kong. However, I think this battle is being slowly won as the press becomes better informed about trade and development.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: What are the key messages that you are pushing ahead of the summit?

NICOLA BULLARD: One of the slogans that many groups agree to is “no deal is better than a bad deal”. By this we mean it’s better for developing countries to walk away from the table than to accept a shoddy deal that is not in their interests.

We are also focussing on the ten year record of the WTO. What we see is a litany of broken promises as the rich countries time and time again refuse to deal with the issues of central concern to developing countries such as ending dumping, protecting their agricultural sectors, access to life saving drugs, an assessment of the impacts of the Uruguay Round liberalisation (that is, the last ten years of trade liberalisation) and consideration of the costs of adjusting to the WTO trading rules. All of these issues, and many more, have been systematically ignored by the powerful countries who stand to gain from the system.

So our overarching message is that the WTO is a faulty system, there is a fundamental design flaw in the trade model it is promoting, and we need a different approach before the damage gets even worse.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: From Africa, it often seems as if some of the most dynamic and powerful resistance to the policies of the WTO and the World Bank and IMF take place in Asia. How much of a mass public awareness is there and if you think there is, what do you think are the factors that have contributed towards its creation?

NICOLA BULLARD: Funnily enough, from Asia we think that some of the most powerful resistance to the WTO comes from Africa! After all, it was the African ministers who walked out in Seattle, it was the G90 that walked out in Cancun, it was four small cotton producing countries – Benin, Mali, Bukino Faso and Chad – that brought the scandal of US cotton subsidies into the public eye, and it was the African countries who fought so hard to get a reconsideration of the TRIPS and health provisions.

Of course they may not be winning these battles but they are certainly courageous, especially when you consider how vulnerable they are to pressures from the EU and the US, threats about not having their debts rescheduled and so on.

Many Asian countries are much more competitive in the global trading game and often their positions are more aggressive. This is partly because of the industrialisation that took place in the 1970s and 1980s, which saw many of the East Asian “tigers” made tremendous economic leaps by adopting state-driven development strategies, such as directing investment to certain sectors and protecting fledgling industrial sectors. Many of these measures are now illegal under the WTO regime or the bilateral trade agreements which are proliferating in the region. In addition, many sectors of the society, especially workers and farmers and even small local enterprises, realise that the WTO does not protect their interests. For these reasons, there are now large, vocal national campaigns against the WTO and FTAs across the region, including in Thailand, the Philippines, South Korea, Indonesia, Pakistan and India.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: There still seems to be a school of thought that maintains that the WTO can be reformed. From your perspective, is there any credibility left to this view? Why?

NICOLA BULLARD: The WTO refuses to reform itself, even in the most fundamental aspects of its operations. For example, there are no clear rules about decision making, keeping records, making information available to the members and so on. A long list of proposals made by a large group of developing countries post-Doha on how to improve internal procedures was shelved, never to reappear. As one commentator remarked, a local Scout Club is more transparent than the WTO.

On substantial issues the rich countries have been intransigent – and why wouldn’t they be: the name of the game in the WTO is to maximise access to other people’s markets, while protecting your own. It’s a game that can only be played by rich countries, and these are the very same countries who make the rules. There is no incentive for them to reform the WTO.

Let me give you an example: in Doha the membership agreed to the TRIPS and health declaration which aimed to improve access to low-priced generic drugs to combat life threatening diseases. So, there was a small victory. However, after 12 months of wrangling that “victory” was tuned into a failure because the EU and the US hatched a deal between them which imposed a so-called “solution” which did nothing to resolve the problem and everything to protect the interests of the pharmaceutical companies and the intellectual property regime.

No, there is no hope for reforming the WTO.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: A great deal of euphoria was felt after Cancun. Our own publication, Pambazuka News, carried an article that stated: "Africa emerged from the talks a major negotiating player, no longer the dinner of other trading partners, but defining the direction and outcome of the talks in Cancun." (http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=17486) Somehow it seems like that euphoria hasn't been carried forward, not only in Africa, but globally. What happened to the promise of victory?

NICOLA BULLARD: Well, we let our guard down! Cancun was a great victory, but the EU and the US were able to turn the tables when they pushed through the framework agreement at the July General Council meeting the following year. And they did this in a very clever way by bringing India and Brazil into the “inner circle” of negotiations by creating the FIPS – the five interested parties which is the EU, the US, Brazil, India and Australia. By getting the agreement of this group they were able to enforce it on the rest of the members, despite rumblings in the corridors.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: Lastly, how can stronger links be built between the people of Africa and Asia in pursuing a common agenda with regards the WTO?

NICOLA BULLARD: Of course one can’t talk about Africa as a whole or Asia as a whole: there is so much diversity and different realities in each region. However, many countries have similar problems; rural livelihoods are disappearing, the agricultural sector is being destroyed by dumping, unemployment and underemployment is the norm, incomes are falling due to declining terms of trade, industries are being driven to the ground by cheap imports, and foreign direct investment is proving to be an unreliable development partner. In addition, many countries shoulder a heavy debt burden. However, it’s terribly difficult to build solidarity amongst these countries when they are operating in a trading system which is based on competition, and this competition is particularly destructive when all countries have to trade is cheap labour and cheap natural resources and raw materials.

However, I am optimistic that things can change: there is a new discourse emerging in many different quarters which talks about “policy space” – the idea that countries should be able to set their own economic and development strategy rather than having one imposed by the rich and powerful countries through the WTO and the IMF.

The evidence is clear that trade liberalisation is a dead-end street for many countries and they need an alternative – and they need it now. Civil society stands ready to support any governments that are brave enough to put the interests of their people ahead of the interests of the local and global elite. For our part, all we can do is to strengthen the ties between the people of Asia and Africa, to share information and strategies, and to support each other’s campaigns not only on trade but also on issues such as debt, democracy, and against the ongoing domination of the big powers and the big institutions.

Ironically, one issue that might bring many countries together is the impact that the impressive entry of China into the global markets is having, and will continue to have, on smaller and less competitive countries. But it’s too early to tell how this will evolve.

* Interview conducted by email. Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org

WTO quick facts, glossary and background reading

2005-12-08

Did you know that, according to an Oxfam report, America has 25,000 cotton farmers and every acre of cotton farmland in the US attracts a subsidy of $230 ($3.9 billion in 2001/2)? In fact America’s cotton farmers receive so much money in subsidies that it adds up to more than the entire GDP of Burkina Faso – the comparison being particularly relevant seeing as though more than two million people in Burkina Faso depend on cotton production. It’s facts like these that hammer home the imbalances of the global trading system and act as a reminder of what’s at stake for millions of people in discussions over agriculture at the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Read on for more quick facts, a glossary of WTO terms and links to background reading on the WTO.


Quick Facts on Trade

* Forced trade liberalisation has cost Sub-Saharan Africa US$ 272 billion over the past 20 years.

* The amount of money lost as a result of trade liberalisation could have paid all of these countries’ debts plus pay the vaccinations and school fees of every child.
SOURCE: http://www.christian-aid.org.uk/indepth/506liberalisation/index.htm

* The privatization of water in Ghana has meant that fees have increased by 95% and will probably rise by another 300% to meet the “market rate.”
SOURCE: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/sep2002/wate-s07.shtml

* Farmers in G8 countries are subsidised approximately $1 billion a day, which is roughly equivalent to the entire GDP of sub-Saharan Africa. SOURCE: http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20040725-031636-7601r.htm

* 24 sub-Saharan African countries face food emergencies. Some 30.5 million people will need food assistance.
SOURCE: http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2005/107852/index.html

* Uganda’s textile sector used to employ 500,000 people and earn $100 million in annual exports, but has virtually been brought to its knees by imports. 80% of clothing available in Uganda is imported and second hand. SOURCE: http://www.newint.org/issue373/currents.htm

* America has 25,000 cotton farmers and every acre of cotton farmland in the US attracts a subsidy of $230 ($3.9 billion in 2001/2.) America’s cotton farmers receive more in subsidies than the entire GDP of Burkina Faso – a country in which more than two million people depend on cotton production. This figure constitutes three times more in subsidies than the entire USAID budget for Africa’s 500 million people.
SOURCE: http://www.oxfam.org.uk/what_we_do/issues/trade/bp30_cotton.htm

* An estimated 25 million adults and children were living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa at the end of 2003. During that year, an estimated 2.2 million people died from AIDS. The epidemic has left behind some twelve million orphaned African children.
SOURCE: http://www.avert.org/subaadults.htm

* In 2002 ten of the highest grossing pharmaceutical companies each had sales over $11.5 billion. The world’s top 5 drug companies have a combined worth twice the Gross Domestic Product of sub-Saharan Africa. Mergers are leading to behemoths with ever increasing power. In 1995, 25 drug companies controlled over half the global drugs market; by 2000, just 15 managed to do the same thing.
SOURCE: New Internationalist (362) November, 2003

* It is reported that since the discovery of oil in 1956, Nigeria has made about $400 billion in profits. 70% of the 130 million Nigerians live on less than a dollar a day. SOURCE: http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2004-10/11majavu.cfm

WTO Glossary

ACP: Stands for Africa, Caribbean, and Pacific.

Agreement in Agriculture: Occurred under the Uruguay round and set out to protect the G8 countries’ interests in terms of agriculture.

Doha Round: This round of World Trade Organization negotiations aims to lower barriers to trade around the world, with a focus on making trade fairer for developing countries. Talks have been hung over a divide between the rich, developed countries, and the major developing countries (represented by the G20).

Cotonou Agreement: A treaty which sets out the relationship between the European Union and the African, Caribbean and Pacific governments. The agreement was established in June 2000 in Benin, succeeding the Lomé Convention, and provides for replacing the unilateral trade preferences that the EU accords to the ACP countries under the Lomé Convention with Economic Partnership Agreements involving reciprocal obligations.

Development Box: Rules and exemptions that would allow poor nations to protect their agricultural industries (these are an extension of “special and differential treatment” WTO principles, which intend to help developing countries integrate into the global economy of trade and implement their commitments).

Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs): The European Union has been bargaining with African countries in order to enable market access to European goods and services in Africa, which go beyond what is required of African countries according to the WTO.

Five Interested Parties: Comprised by US, European Union (EU), Brazil, India and Australia, the Five Interested Parties constitute the core negotiating group for the Doha round. (http://www.hardnewsmedia.com/portal/2005/11/205)

Free Trade: The untaxed flow of goods and services between countries, and is a name given to economic policies and parties supporting increases in such trade.

Free Trade Area (FTA): An area in which member states eliminate tariffs among themselves but maintain individual tariff schedules on imports from non-member countries. (http://www.eu-ldc.org)

General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT): Functions as the foundation of the WTO trading system, and remains in force today. The GATT, is an international agreement and is based on the "unconditional most favored nation principle." This means that the conditions applied to the most favored trading nation (i.e. the one with the least restrictions) apply to all trading nations.

Group of 90 (G90): An umbrella body of the African Group, the least developed countries and the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group. It is the largest grouping of members in the World Trade Organisation. (http://www.twnside.org.sg/title2/gtrends16.htm)

Group of 77 (G77): A loose coalition of developing nations, designed to promote its members' collective economic interests and create an enhanced joint negotiating capacity in the United Nations.

Group of 21 (G21): A bloc of developing nations established in 2003. The group emerged at the 5th Ministerial WTO conference, held in Cancún in 2003. In trade negotiations, the group has pressed for rich countries to end subsidies to their farmers and opposed liberalisation of their own agricultural sectors.

Lome Convention: First signed in 1975, it arose out of Europe's wish to guarantee itself regular supplies of raw materials, and to maintain its privileged position in its overseas markets.
Non-Agricultural Market Access (NAMA): These talks centre around industrial goods, but also include natural resources, and the goal of these talks is to open up the economy and make access to these products easier.

Special and Differential Treatment: The argument of developing countries that special circumstances require specific consideration and trade restrictions can be legitimate and appropriate instruments for development purposes. (www.soutchcentre.org)

Trade liberalization: Another term to refer to free trade.

Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS): An international treaty which sets down minimum standards for most forms of intellectual property regulation within all member countries of the WTO.

Uruguay Round: A trade negotiation lasting from September 1986 to April 1994 which transformed the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade into the World Trade Organization (WTO).

World Trade Organisation (WTO): An international rules-based and member driven organization which oversees a large number of agreements defining the "rules of trade" between its member states.

* All definitions, unless otherwise noted, come from Wikipedia.

Links

EPA Watch - http://www.epawatch.net
Eco News Africa - http://www.econewsafrica.org/
ACP EU Trade - http://www.acp-eu-trade.org/
International Gender and Trade Network - http://www.igtn.org/
Third World Network Africa - http://www.twnafrica.org/
SEATINI - http://www.seatini.org/

Further Reading

Does Foreign Equal Cheaper, Better, More? http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=31286
Egypt Cottons On To Its Interests http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=31269
Will WTO Shrink or Sink? http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/agp/free/wto/news/2005/1203doha_hongkong.htm
Nothing to Gain, Everything to Lose: Developing Country Prospects at the Hong Kong WTO Ministerial and Beyond
http://www.choike.org/nuevo_eng/informes/3637.html
Disneyland, Doha and the WTO in Hong Kong: The Spectacle of Corporate Fear, Absurdity and the New Universalism
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=13&ItemID=9164
Action Aid Report – Down the Plughole: Why Bringing Water Into the WTO Services Negotiations Would Unleash a Development Disaster
http://www.actionaid.org.uk/wps/content/documents/GATS_report.pdf
Oxfam Report – Africa and the Doha Round: Fighting to Keep Development Alive
http://www.oxfam.org/eng/pdfs/bp80_Africa_and_the_Doha_Round.pdf
EU must negotiate itself out of a corner
http://tinyurl.com/b6p47

Reconcile with the Living, Not Just the Dead

An Open Letter to President Museveni, December 4, 2005

2005-12-07

Mahmood Mamdani

When does the pursuit of justice turn into revenge-seeking? This question, more than any other, lies at the heart of two issues that bedevil this country: a troubled political succession and the ongoing war in the north. Our response to these issues will shape both your legacy and the political future we bequeath the next generation. If it should seem audacious for an ordinary citizen to set aside normal courtesy and write an open letter to his President, I urge you to think of this letter not as the pursuit of political advantage but as an out-of-the-ordinary response in an extraordinary situation.

Political Succession

The reluctance to hand over power to anyone but close family is a widespread phenomenon in Africa and the Middle East. That those in power should want to hang on to it is not surprising, but their ability to do so is. A reflection of weak political institutions, the refusal to hand over power further weakens these institutions. The result is that even constitutional republics are coming to resemble monarchies.

This is the context in which I suggest we understand both the ‘third term’ controversy and recent charges brought against the principal opposition leader, Kiiza Besigye. The language of the ‘third term’ debate is misleading because you, Mr. President, are seeking a sixth – and not a third – consecutive term in office. Similarly, the current focus on whether or not Mr. Besigye committed rape and treason is also misleading. Whereas it is the business of the courts, civil and military, to decide the truth of these allegations, only the political authority has the power to decide whether and when to bring charges to court. Simply put, why has a 1993 charge of rape been brought to the courts 12 years later? And why is intent and preparation to mount a guerrilla struggle being construed as evidence of treason given that the promise to ‘return to the bush’ has become part of the political vocabulary of those members of Uganda’s political elite who, whether presently in government or in opposition, came to power in 1986 through a guerrilla struggle?

After all, was not the more striking fact about the period that followed the disputed election of 2002, an election whose conduct even the courts were reluctant to vindicate, that the opposition – even if it talked of and prepared to go to the bush – did not in fact take to the bush? My point, Mr. President, is that we need to focus on the political rather than the legal issues involved in the matter.

While the courts can settle the truth of these allegations, the public must concern itself with considering the political cost, and thus the political wisdom, of introducing these charges now, against the unquestioned leader of the opposition, a few months before an election that follows a highly controversial constitutional amendment. The point will be clearer if I compare the situation today with that of 20 years ago, when you had just come to power.

I believe history will acknowledge the building of a ‘broad base’ government after 1986 as a key political contribution of the NRM government. The broad base was a response to a context in which the NRM recognized that it did not have sufficient political support in the country as a whole to demand that those who had resorted to violence for political ends be brought to justice. Instead of taking them to court, the NRM offered them a political deal: give up the recourse to violence without giving up your objectives, and we will give you a share of power or simply the perks of office. How many of those who held positions in the broad-based cabinet could have been charged with accusations the courts would have upheld? What shall we call this: a legally unjustifiable impunity or a politically justifiable reconciliation? The answer is clear: it was the latter.

The lessons of 1986 are hugely relevant for 2006. As in 1986, now too both the political class and the citizenry are deeply divided. The whole point of the electoral system in a divided country, especially one with a recent history of civil war, is to shift the contest from the military to the political field, and thereby to demilitarize political competition. It is this achievement you are risking by insisting on taking Mr. Besigye to the courts – whatever the truth of the allegations levelled against him.

The War in the North

For a long time, the war in the North seemed to simmer as a local affair with local consequences. Even if most people were content to leave its conduct to the government, a growing number wondered why there was no end to it, why every round of peace talks was broken up by war talk, calling for a military victory amidst a military stalemate. The government pointed the finger north, to meddling by the government of Sudan. But now that war has ended even in the south of Sudan, that explanation can no longer suffice. Ugandans are compelled to look internally for an explanation as to why the northern war has continued for a second decade.

The facts are as evident as they are puzzling. First, the LRA guerrillas are estimated in the hundreds, rather than the thousands, with elementary training and rudimentary technology. Second, whereas the LRA preys on civilians, the government has interned most of the population (over a million) in barbed-wire camps, without providing them adequate security, food or medicine. I visited a camp of roughly 15,000 internees two years ago; it was ‘protected’ by 15 armed soldiers, and periodically raided by the LRA. Recent figures, both official and unofficial, show that the level of excess deaths in the internment camps far exceeds those killed by the LRA. Finally, and not surprisingly, most of the local population seems to have kept a distance from both the LRA and the government. So why does the northern war continue?

Does the answer lie in revenge, a vendetta rationalized as the pursuit of justice? Or does it lie in advantage? The case for both grows with time. First, has not the on going war channelled a growing proportion of the official budget to military uses, and created a vigorous constituency inside the army for a continued war and against a negotiated solution to it? Second, has this constituency not been further reinforced by those civilian leaders who realize that the security budget is relatively immune from scrutiny by outside agencies, such as the IMF? Third, is it not significant that every major regional intervention by Uganda – whether in Rwanda, Congo or Sudan – has been launched from the north, in light of the fact that the northern war provides a theatre for constant military mobilization? Fourth, is not the most evident consequence of the war a brutalization of the society in the north – particularly the million plus interned – and a militarized distortion of its politics? Fifth, is there not a corresponding political advantage gained by holding up ‘Kony’ as an alternative in the wings, a threat to the population should it demand that the government resolve Uganda’s own local ‘war on terror’ politically? And, finally, has not the continuation of this ‘war on terror’ in the north secured for your government a place as a front-line state in the global ‘war on terror,’ thereby assuring it the uncritical protection of an American political umbrella?

No one can answer these questions for sure, but no one can afford to ignore them. For one thing is certain: whether intended or not, each of the above outcomes spells out the rising cost of the war in the north for all of us.

The Issue is not Impunity, but Reconciliation

The conduct of the northern war has become more complicated by the entry of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The ICC was created to hold governments accountable, especially concerning large-scale atrocities against civilians, defined in law as ‘crimes against humanity.’ This is why the internment of a million plus civilians in armed camps in the north, without adequate provision of security or food or medicine, should have been a matter of prime concern for the ICC.

But the ICC has chosen to focus its apparatus of justice on just one side of the conflict, the LRA. By providing impunity for the government while seeking to bring rebels to justice, the ICC is contributing to the continuation of the northern war, rather than to its resolution. No wonder the ICC is politically isolated in the country. Inexperienced and under great pressure to perform, the ICC needs to recognize that its involvement in northern Uganda is fast turning into a political and legal travesty, one from which it needs to step back if it is to avoid the first spectacular failure in its short career.

Mr. President, I was among many who were heartened when you talked of the need for reconciliation in the days that followed the death of former President Obote. I urge you, Mr. President, to fulfill the promise of 1986 – not just to reserve reconciliation for the dead, but to extend it to the living. Specifically, I suggest two measures: one a national reconciliation whose provisions are broad enough to apply to both Dr. Besigye and to the leadership of the LRA and, two, a disbanding of internment camps in the north as a first step to restoring normal civilian life there.

This is the prime requisite for building both a sustainable political community and a viable rule of law in today’s Uganda.

Yours truly,

Mahmood Mamdani

Taking Pan-Africanism to the people

2005-12-08

Aisha Ibrahim

First, I will like to thank you all for creating such a forum and congratulate you on a such hard and fine work.

I totally agree with Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem that "Pan-Africanism needs to leave the conferences and executive mansions and become part of the lives of ordinary people." (See Taking Pan-Africanism to the people, http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=30541)

However, what I think that he fails to address is the question of our responsibilities as Africans to other Africans and the continent as a whole. For example, as guests or residents of other African nations, we have seen how so many people (like those from my home country Nigeria) have abused such privileges and end up tarnishing the image of a whole nation.

If such despicable acts occur at present whereby people do need visas to cross borders, what will happen when/if such restrictions are removed? I think Pan-Africanism should start with a clear understanding of the interconnectedness of our lives as humans and as Africans.

Views on the Commonwealth stance on Zimbabwe

2005-12-05

Andrew M Manyevere

As a Zimbabwean in the Diaspora, the Commonwealth stance on Zimbabwe is good but not good enough.

The toothlessness of Commonwealth gatherings is occasioned by the presence in the forum of African leadership that never come up with substantive ways to change tyrannical regimes.

Maybe due to the nature of the composition or constitution of this body, we witness the failure of a radical approach to grievances of human rights abuses. In recent years Zimbabwe has remained a matter of both regional and world concern, with strong recommendations coming mainly from the west but however moderated by the sympathizers of Robert Mugabe in personalities like Thabo Mbeki of South Africa and Benjamin Mkapa of Tanzania.

One gets a strong feeling that African leaders fear being criticized and that they would defend each other irrespective of the wrong. Politically the notion of being criticized brings with it the negative connotations of failure. Because many of the leadership in Africa has done something that could cause protracted legal battles, there is a phobia for former African leaders going through trial, hence many have either died in exile or run away.

This could well explain the silence from Africa.

The above should therefore help us to understand the stand taken at the Malta Commonwealth meeting which made Zimbabwe a reference in passing rather than an issue on the agenda.

It is in this context that I find the Commonwealth stand on Zimbabwe misplaced in terms of human sympathy for ordinary Zimbabweans, given the atrocities gone and going on in Zimbabwe under the Zanu PF regime. If Uganda and the Maldives shall be the subject of investigations on human rights abuses, one would have hoped that Zimbabwe should have been given the same treatment.

As the UN investigations have shown, beyond a doubt, that human rights are being breached in Zimbabwe, the Commonwealth must call on higher organizations to intensify the inquiry into the need for a free and fair elections to establish justice, freedom and a democracy.

Global: Why I love Africa?

2005-12-06

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4486930.stm

BBC listeners and readers share their personal experiences of the African continent. "Why do I love Africa? Because we are all related. All Africans are brothers and sisters says Jonathan Tommy. Biologically, where ever you are from in Africa, we are related. In Africa if you are from the same house - you are related, from the same village - you are related; from the same country - you are related. Even from the same regional grouping like west, east, north and southern Africa - we are related as long as you are an African we are all related. We refer to each other as brother and sister in Africa. We do not have cousin or nieces - all we have are brothers and sisters. That is why I love Africa - so let us stop killing one another."

Going Home

Simao Kikamba

2005-12-08

A review of Going Home by Simao Kikamba. Visit http://www.kalahari.net/e-trader/referral.asp? toolbar=mweb&linkid=5&partneridB14&sku(361201 for more details.

Going Home is a story told by a political refugee living in South Africa. It investigates the life of one particular immigrant, Mpanda from Angola, and his experiences of trying to make the best of being an unemployed foreign national in South Africa. There are four parts to the narrative. Part one: Mpanda is arrested and sent to the Lindela Repatriation Centre. Part two: We learn of Mpanda's story: his return home to Angola from Zaire, his relationship with a woman called Isabel, his political involvement and embarrassment and his final decision to flee to South Africa. In Part three, we follow his life as a refugee in South Africa. Finally in Part four he is freed from detention and allowed to go back home – to Yeoville. Going home is a very moving debut novel, revealing the anguish of a man trying to survive in a country where nobody allows him to belong. Sim?o Kikamba is a leading new voice in Southern African writing.

Going Home is an assured debut and deserves to be widely read. Simao Kikamba effectively voices the all too prevalent but overlooked plight of African refugees and exiles trying to make a living in host countries where the attitude towards them is increasingly hostile and xenophobic. While the plight of exile and the notion of 'home' is a well established trope in literature, what is new here is the particularly contemporary grounding of the story and characters in South Africa, Angola and the DRC. While it may be true that the South Africa reading public has become jaded with novels depicting apartheid and its immediate aftermath, perhaps the equally bleak stories of contemporary racial discrimination will find a place soon enough, and deserve to.

That said, I do have some problems with the narration in Going Home, which I find rather wooden. This tends to underscore the bleakness of the narrative itself and makes for a harrowing read. As a reader I get a sense of how the world and experiences of the narrator look and seem, but not how they feel. Likewise, the dialogue is a little stilted. All the characters speak in the same manner and I don't get a sense of their individuality; cultural, linguistic or otherwise. Perhaps this shortcoming is as a result of the work not being sure of what it is trying to be. Is it a novel or a memoir? Perhaps the author is not sure either. In its present form, I believe it would be more effectively billed as a memoir, which would cause one to be more forgiving and less rigorous when it comes to the language.

However, these are pedantic quibbles which pale in consideration of the larger importance of this book. I found myself less inclined to criticise the writing in the second half of the book, and rather to appreciate the story. This is the strength of the book; the reader can appreciate not only the narrator's struggle to make a life as a refugee in Angola and South Africa, but also the bravery and dedication of the author in realising this book.

* Reviewed by Byron Loker. Byron Loker's debut collection of short stories will be published in 2006 by Double Storey Books in South Africa. Visit byronloker.com

Recent Pambazuka News reviews

- Resisting Racism and Xenophobia: Global Perspectives on Race, Gender and Human Rights
http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=30615

- Chairman of Fools by Shimmer Chinodya
http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=30529

- The Trial and Other Stories by Ifeoma Okoye
http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=30324

- A Tragedy of Lives: Women in Prison in Zimbabwe
Edited By: Chiedza Musengezi And Irene Staunton
http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=29967

Prize-Winning Fiction led by African females

2005-12-06

http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm?aid=2539

Who will tell the stories of contemporary Africa? A new generation has emerged since Nigeria's Chinua Achebe in 1958 wrote the first "African" novel, "Things Fall Apart," detailing the destruction of the Igbo culture by British colonialism. Three new African narrators--Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie of Nigeria, Leila Aboulela of Sudan and Tsitsi Dangarembga of Zimbabwe--have taken the lead in telling eloquent and stirring stories of women's lives as part of the region's narrative.

Africa Blog Roundup: Goodbye Baby Faith

2005-12-06

Sokari Ekine

Some of you may remember that as part of the World AIDS Day roundup I posted a piece from Kid’s Doc in Jos - Kids Doc in Jos http://www.ecwaevangel.org/blog/faith-died_72 - on 15th month old HIV+ twins Faith and Favour. At the time Faith was very ill with pneumonia. The heartbreaking news is that baby Faith died on Thursday 1st December – World AIDS Day, 2005 aged 15th months. He is survived by his twin, Favour and their mother.

“Faith died yesterday, in the ICU. Now his mom would like someone to care for his sister. She doesn’t see any way she can do it all herself, and find a job to support the two of them. I am so worn out this week, I’m sad about Faith, at the same time I feel bad that I no longer feel the full impact of a child’s death. And I wonder how I can even be sorry for myself being tired and failing to save Faith, when the mother’s loss is so great. Most of her ‘support team’, counselors from Spring of Life, left for the all-Africa AIDS conference in Abuja the morning after Faith died, so she’s lacking even that support right now.”

The death of baby Faith will leave all of us with a heavy heart but even more than that - anger. Anger at the complete failure of the Western and African leaders to deal with this terrible illness that is killing children and their parents. People with HIV and AIDS NEED DRUGS – without drugs there is nothing but death and more death. Faith never had a chance and neither will his sister or their mother. If he had been in Europe or had access to HIV drugs he would be alive today.

Aqumada - aqumada http://yekolotemari.blog.com/435192 writes about his recent experience of traveling in the West – a Black man with a US passport being detained and interrogated.

“A lone black traveler, however, does not have the same rights as other white travelers. The questions in the interrogation room mainly focused on my cultural and racial identity. Many ridiculous questions such as what my religion was and whether I go to the mosque were posed. Although irritating and embarrassing, I had to answer the questions in a way that would distance me from the stereotypical image of a terrorist (Arab and Muslim). At one point, one of the cops suggested that he remembered arresting me the previous week (a week I was not even in Britain). Not being able to control my anger, I lashed out at the police officers. Although he retreated from this question, I was probed via intentionally constructed misleading questions intended to find out whether I was an Eritrean/Muslim/Somali etc. I believe the fact that two Somali men (still at large) killed a British police officer during the previous week and the recent bombing incident that an Ethiopian man was involved in did not help.”

Nigerian Blog, Grandiose Parlour -
Grandiose Parlour http://grandioseparlor.blogspot.com/2005/12/nigerians-need-to-act-or-shut-up.html writes that Nigerians need to “Act or shut up”. He is referring to the forthcoming 2007 elections which are already being heatedly debated in the Nigerian blogosphere and national media.

“Nigerians including my humble self are darn good critics, but unfortunately our rants hardly get transformed into actions. A good example is the current political nonsense unfolding in Nigeria, despite the outcry from all corners of Nigeria and the world it appears those with the powers to act are not listening or ready to take action.”

Ethiopian blog Weichegud! ET Politics - Weichegud http://weichegud.blogspot.com/2005/12/dedessa-new-waterloo.html has a commentary on the Channel 4 documentary “Ethiopia’s Agony” and the report in last Sunday’s London Observer “Democratic Dawn in Ethiopia Fades as Abuses Come to Light” both of which report on the thousands detained in the Dedesa concentration camp set up my Prime Minister Meles who seems to be competing with Mugabe to see who can commit the worst atrocities on their own people and political opposition.

“Only the minds of the people who run the EPRDF could have thought no one would notice the arresting of tens of thousands of people and dumping them in a detention camp.”

Nonetheless as Wonkette writes

“It will take a few more thousand deaths before the main stream media latches on to this story. That is inevitable. The world will be outraged. One of the imprisoned leaders of the opposition will die in prison. A couple of high-ranking government officials will resign/defect and spill the beans. In order to hide what has happened in Dedessa, the government will commit even more atrocities. And the rest will be history. It's a textbook case of an autocrat who has worn down the welcome mat.”

And that’s about it!

* Sokari Ekine produces the blog Black Looks, http://okrasoup.typepad.com/black_looks

* Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org

Africa: Africa's push for Reproductive Rights Fund rubs US the wrong way

2005-12-07

http://www.awcfs.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=113

A number of African gender advocates in both government and civil society have put up spirited fight to have the United Nations create a Fund to address millennium development goal issues of reproductive health and gender empowerment. To be known as the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) Fund, resources channelled to this Fund are to be used to lower the high maternal and child mortality rates in sub-Saharan Africa, ensure gender empowerment and environmental goals are implemented with speed. “It looks like we are not getting our priorities right. Although other Funds are important, the one to save lives is more important,” says Dr Richard Muga, the Director of National Council for Population and Development. But the United States, especially the Bush Administration and other pro-life advocates, are said not to be warming up to the idea.

Africa: African women confront Bush's AIDS policy

2005-12-06

http://www.madre.org/articles/afr/aidsafrica12105.html

Rebecca Lolosoli radiates a quiet authority beneath layers of elaborate beadwork that cover her forehead, neck, chest, and wrists. She smiles readily while addressing an audience of US college students, though to them, her topic is a metaphor for hopelessness. Rebecca is talking about AIDS in Africa, specifically among women in her Indigenous, Samburu village of Umoja, Kenya. "For years, people were dying and we did not know why," she recalls. "Now we know that AIDS can be avoided, but only by making great changes in our lives."

Central African Republic: Anti-women songs banned

2005-12-06

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4499160.stm

There has been some criticism in the Central African Republic of a ban on misogynistic songs which came into force over the weekend. Communication Minister Fidel Ngouandjika threatened action against the broadcasting of songs that portrayed women as inferior to men. He said they undermined the role of women and contravened their rights. Women only got the vote in the former French colony 20 years ago and men are allowed to marry up to four wives. The BBC's Joseph Benamse in Bangui says the minister has been condemned by many for acting beyond his authority.

Kenya: What next for Kenyan women?

2005-12-06

http://www.awid.org/go.php?list=analysis&prefix=analysis&item=00289

On November 21, 2005, after a five-year constitutional review process, Kenya held a referendum to approve or reject a draft constitution. Sixty-seven percent of the voters rejected the draft. Association of Women In Development interviewed Winnie Guchu, a Nairobi based women's rights activist and consultant, about the country's constitutional review process and what it has meant for women's rights. Follow the link for the full interview.

Senegal: Villages to stop cutting girls

2005-12-06

http://tinyurl.com/a9b9e

It takes at least two people to circumcise a girl, one to hold her legs and the other her arms," said Ourey Sall, who for years performed the procedure. "Afterwards, we apply a mixture of goat droppings and plants to stop the bleeding." It has been five years since she put down the knife, breaking a tradition handed down from her mother, and her mother before that. It was a difficult decision but one being made more and more in Senegal today. On this day, Sall was among a crowd of men, women and children attending a ceremony in which members of 70 villages from the country's northeastern Matam region publicly renounced female genital mutilation (FGM) as well as forced and early marriages, according to IRIN.

South Africa: Organised lesbian and gay sector welcomes the Constitutional Court’s judgment on same sex marriages

Joint Working Group press release

2005-12-05

"As the Joint Working Group (JWG) we are proud to be in a Constitutional democracy that honours the equality and dignity of all citizens, as reflected in the judgment. In terms of the current form of both the common and statutory laws of marriage, the Court’s ruling acknowledges the denial of equal protection of the law, as well as the unfair discrimination of the State, against lesbian and gay people. As such, the Court was unanimous in declaring the common law definition of marriage and the Marriage Act unconstitutional, as they infringe our right to equality and dignity. Furthermore, in line with previous decisions, the Court asserts the rights of lesbian and gay people to access equal benefit and protection of the law and for our relationships to hold equal status in the eyes of the law."

For the transcript of the Constitutional Court ruling, visit
http://www.constitutionalcourt.org.za/site/ga ylesb.htm

Further information can be found at:
http://www.mask.org.za
Press release: Organised lesbian and gay sector welcomes the Constitutional Court’s judgment on same sex marriages


Released by the Joint Working Group (JWG): 1 December 2005

The organised gay and lesbian sector welcomes this morning's Constitutional Court judgement and urges parliament to rectify the relevant statutory defects, with regard to same sex marriage, in line with the framework of the Court’s ruling.

As the JWG we are proud to be in a Constitutional democracy that honours the equality and dign