Features
Current trade rules devastate workers in poor countries and further enrich the wealthy, which is why War on Want is demanding trade justice, as Helen Taylor finds out
It's just not fair
Global finance can be a baffling business – loaded with impenetrable
acronyms like GATS, WTO, TRIPS, IMF…
But look at it another way and it’s all shockingly simple.
“There are 1.2 billion people in the world living on less than $1
a day, while the European cow gets a subsidy of $2 a day,” says Louise
Richards, chief executive of War on Want.
This means the world’s richer countries subsidise their own farming
industries to the point where the produce is so cheap, it’s impossible
for farmers in Africa – where 70% of the population earn their living
from agriculture – to match the low prices of western imports.
“The West keeps its farming subsidies so it can flood developing
markets with very cheap products,” says Nick Dearden, War on Want’s
campaigns officer.
This is the reality of global trade. It isn’t fair and it isn’t
just. Which is why War on Want is putting trade at the top of its agenda,
with a campaign that hopes to draw in trade unionists.
“We want to make people realise trade is something that affects
them, that we are all tied up in the globalisation process,” says
Mr Dearden.
The problem is not trade per se but unregulated trade. Developing countries
could access an extra $700bn a year if the management of trade took their
interests into account – that’s 15 times what they currently
receive in aid.
Yet the existing liberalisation of global markets ties countries into
pitiful trade agreements that benefit the richest at the expense of the
poorest. So the economic divide continues to grow and developing countries
remain dependent on aid.
“Too often aid has been targeted in a way that increases developing
countries’ dependence,” says Mr Dearden. “For example,
aid is used to dump huge amounts of US grain on a developing world economy,
which destroys the local market and weakens the economy of that country
in the long term.”
It’s a vicious circle. Poorer nations are forced to accept the neo-liberal
economic policies of the west, such as low trade barriers and exchange
controls, in order to get their hands on aid. But the less they trade
themselves, the more aid they need and the more the richer countries can
blackmail them into accepting unequal trading agreements.
The WTO is a master at developing such agreements, with initiatives such
as GATS (the General Agreement on Trade and Services, see page 26) removing
barriers to competition in the services sector and leading to increased
privatisation.
In theory, the WTO is a democratic organisation, with poorer nations
holding voting powers on its decision-making bodies. But in reality the
agenda is set by the richer nations before the meeting even starts and
poorer countries can’t always use their vote as they would like.
“I’ve seen at the WTO ministerial how pressure is put on developing
countries to vote in a certain way,” says Ms Richards.
The latest attempt by the WTO to exercise its power is through the Trade
Related Intellectual Property Rights treaties (TRIPS). These treaties
are a grand display of hypocrisy.
If it looks like big corporations risk losing out due to liberalisation,
trade restrictions are introduced. This is where TRIPS comes in, by using
patents. These treaties have allowed pharmaceutical corporations to patent
medical processes, so that developing countries can’t afford the
medicines to treat diseases such as TB and AIDS. With 70 million HIV positive
people in the world, that’s a nasty trade agreement.
“You’ve got a treaty saying that the corporations who came
up with processes that alleviate suffering and prevent the passing on
of AIDS from mothers to children are allowed to charge so much for their
products that developing countries can’t afford them,” says
Mr Dearden. “And under international law these countries aren’t
allowed to make their own versions of these medicines either.”
So what the foreign aid departments of the world powers are giving with
one hand, their trade agreements benefiting big corporations are taking
away with the other.
“At the same time as Bush was giving aid to Africa for AIDS he was
kowtowing to the pharmaceutical companies to prevent developing countries
from getting cheap drugs to treat AIDS,” Ms Richards says.
TRIPS also tips the balance of trade in favour of the rich by allowing
companies to buy the rights to agricultural processes. Basmati rice, for
example, which has been grown in India for thousands of years, is now
owned by one company which sells seeds to farmers at a high price every
year.
“In effect, they’re stealing these countries’ products
and selling them back to them,” says Ms Richards.
War on Want will take these concerns to the WTO summit in Cancun, Mexico,
this September as part of its ongoing Just Trade campaign. There it will
be calling for a poverty assessment of treaties such as TRIPS and GATS
and an introduction of trade rules that facilitate poverty reduction and
sustainable development. It’s a massive task, to turn the tide of
global trade in favour of the poor, but the organisation is quietly confident.
“We’ve seen a globalisation of solidarity in the past year,
which is built on an alliance between NGOs, trade unions and grass roots
movements,” says Ms Richards. This was seen in the anti-war movement,
and it can be seen in links being made between sister unions in different
countries, which undermine the desire of multinationals for workers around
the world to compete.
“We can show how belonging to a union has made a difference and
we can draw the links between the importance of being a union member in
Bangladesh and the importance of being a union member in the UK,”
adds Ms Richards.
Trade could be a positive tool for development, but it has to be based
on core labour standards and trade rules that enhance social justice.
It’s not impossible. It just means putting the needs of the poor
before those of the rich at the next summit of world leaders.
“If trade agreements can protect patents, why can’t we protect workers’ rights and make poverty the main focus of trade?” concludes Mr Dearden.
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