Posted on 18th November 2001

The Meaning of Doha
By Walden Bello, Focus on the Global South and Anuradha Mittal, Food First.

The results of the WTO Ministerial in Doha, Qatar, have elicited some
confusion among many of those following the events.

A New Round?

Something was launched at Doha, but to call it a "round" of trade
negotiations might be stretching the concept of a round. A round means
negotiations on a broad range of issues directed at trade liberalization.
What was agreed at Doha were: a) negotiations to clarify or revise some
existing agreements, e.g., anti-dumping rules; and b) eventual negotiations
for new agreements, e.g., transparency in government procurement,
investment, and competition policy.

Getting immediate negotiations going on investment, competition policy,
government procurement and trade facilitation was at the top of the agenda
of the trading powers in Doha. They fell short of this objective, being
able to secure a commitment for negotiations on these issues only after the
fifth ministerial in 2003, and only with a "written consensus" from member
countries.

Doha and the Developing Countries

What is clear is that, contrary to the claims of European Trade
Commissioner Pascal Lamy, Doha did not launch a "development round." The
key points of the Doha Declaration, in fact, contradict the interests of
the developing countries. For example,

There is only a perfunctory acknowledgement of the need to review
implementation issues, which was the key agenda of the developing countries
coming into Doha;

The language on the phasing out of agricultural subsidies is watered down
owing to the strong objections of the European Union; There is no
commitment to an early phase-out of textile and garment quotas because of
the strong resistance of the United States;

The demand for a "development box" to promote food security and development
which was being pushed by a number of developing countries was completely
ignored;

There is no commitment to change the wording of the TRIPs (Trade-related
Intellectual Property Rights) agreement to accommodate developing
countries' overriding of patents for public health purposes;

There is no commitment to change the TRIPs agreement to outlaw biopiracy
and patents on life, which was a key developing country concern coming into
Doha;

The declaration eliminates the reference in the draft to the International
Labor Organization (ILO) being the appropriate forum for addressing labor
and trade issues, which leaves the door open for the WTO to assert its
jurisdiction in an area where it has no authority or competence.

The resolution of the TRIPs and public health issue is being trumpeted as a
victory for developing countries. This is exaggerated. While an attachment
to the declaration does recognize that there is nothing in TRIPs that would
prevent countries from taking measures to promote public health, there is
no commitment to change the wording of the TRIPs agreement. This is a
serious flaw since TRIPs as it is currently written can serve as the basis
for future legal challenges to countries that override patents in the
interest of public health.

A Defeat for Democracy and Development

In fact, Doha was a defeat for the developing countries, notwithstanding
the resistance they--and in particular, India--put up against arm-twisting,
blackmail, and intimidation from the big trading powers. Those of us in
Doha were witness, as the Equations team puts it, "to the highhanded
unethical negotiating practices of the developed countries - linking aid
budgets and trade preferences to the trade positions of developing
countries and targeting individual developing country negotiators."

Doha was a victory for the forces with a strong interest in subverting the
interests of the developing countries that form the majority of the
membership of the World Trade Organization by keeping the decision-making
process non-transparent and undemocratic.

Why Doha will Backfire

This is why this victory may well be a Pyrrhic one for the big trading
powers. The combination of developing country resentments inflamed by the
Doha process, a deep global recession brought about by the indiscriminate
locking together of economies by accelerated trade and financial
liberalization, and reinvigorated civil society resistance to corporate
driven globalization, cannot but erode the credibility and legitimacy of
the institutional pillars of free trade like the WTO. And without
credibility and legitimacy, institutions, no matter how seemingly solid
they may seem, eventually unravel.

At the conclusion of the Fourth Ministerial, Director General Mike Moore
thanked the delegates for "saving the WTO." The end result may well be,
instead, the accelerated decline of the WTO.


Postscript, by Alan Marston, www.pl.net

Trade in the global econonomy is a win-loose situation on the surface and a
loose-loose underneath. Every country in the world except a handful of
oil-rich states is insolvent in accounting terms, owing to the massive debt
burden run up since the 1960's by first governments and business and lately
by private individual - mainly mortgage - debt. The seemingly obvious way
of paying debt is to sell more than you buy (or in international terms,
export more than import). There's a small problem with that, if someone
nation or business sells more than it buys then someone nation or business
somewhere is buying more than it sells, i.e., one is seemingly getting out
of debt at the expense of another going into debt. This vicious circle
hurts everybody in the end.

The WTO acts on behalf of the US and Europe to skew trade relations in
their favour. Though smaller nations like New Zealand might feel the future
lies in working with the WTO, really this is a fantasy, the WTO is not
there for the smaller exporting nations, it is there to manage the
economies of larger nations and the larger corporates based within them. In
essence, the WTO is not a democratic body, though it purports to be a kind
of global trade government. We don't support undemocratic governments, we
shouldn't support undemocratic governance. The alternative is to form
alliances with other states and trading agreements that do reflect the
interests of the partners to the agreement - outside the WTO.