FOR- Fellowship Magazine -Walking to the Heartland of Peace: A Muslim-Jewish Initiative

How the WTO Got Shut Down...Again:

A Triumph of Nonviolent Cooperation

by Mary Israel

"The fight for social justice is not only outside of the WTO in the streets, but also with us, inside the WTO."

—Celso Amorin, Foreign Trade Minister for Brazil

Not enough has been written in the US on the shutdown of the World Trade Organization Conference that was held in Cancun in September, 2003. To me, one of the makers of the giant puppet of Ixchel, the Mayan goddess of the moon and the deluge (shown above in the September 13th march), our work was a great success. We were tens of thousands of farmers, teachers, health workers, and students in protest of the unfair trade policies and global privatization enforced by the World Trade Organization. Our presence was a clear call for fair trade policies that serve to empower all parties, not global corporate imperialism played out in a charade of consensual agreements. Cancun revealed that at last there is an overlap in the strategy of the ministers from developing countries and the protesters in the streets outside: if the WTO is not going to be inclusive and fair in trade negotiations, then we work together, transcending differences, to shut it down.

Though every minister in the WTO has a vote, decision-making is dominated by the "G-7" countries: France, United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, Italy, and Canada. Draft-writing is done behind closed doors. After years of WTO policies that have forced farmers and small businesspeople to financial ruin, reversals of environmental laws, and the privatization and commodification of life, seeds, public water, schools, and land in direct opposition to the needs of the people, public disdain for the WTO has spread throughout the globe. Trade ministers from developing countries have seen general shut-out of their proposals and input into the drafts of WTO agreements, as well as disastrous economic fallout from the integration of its rules into their trade policies. In the words of Irene Odida, delegate from Uganda and member of the East African Parliament, “We have realized we have nothing to lose if these talks fail. If these talks go forward the way they have been, we have everything to lose.”

Inside

Developing countries entered the Cancun Ministerial already linked en bloc, from regional discussions leading up to the WTO. A sixteen-country bloc led by Brazil came to the table incensed on the agricultural issues. They wanted tariffs and export subsidies to be reduced in developed countries, yet be more lenient on developing countries. The least developed countries argued for the rights of their small-farm base and food security.

When some developing countries of the south push for opening up of northern markets, it is for the advancement of their major corporate agricultural industries, which are mostly relocated US companies taking advantage of cheaper labor and less strict environmental regulations. The irony of this was well elucidated by Francis Moore Lappé when she spoke before the World Sustainability Hearing on August 30^th in 2002. “It was the agricultural corporate giant Archer Daniels Midland whose CEO once stated that not one grain of wheat is exchanged on the 'free market,’ something that only exists in the rhetoric of politicians. The reality is that a mere 500 transnational corporations control seventy percent of the market for agricultural goods. Supporters of alternatives to industrial agriculture are not anti-market; we're pro-market, and anti-corporate centralization. So free trade doesn't exist, and we must make this clear while we move toward Fair Trade."

In June of this year, a proposal called the Cotton Initiative was brought to the ministerial by a coalition of states: Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, and Mali. They presented it in hopes of resolving the plight of their cotton farmers. The Initiative was seen as a test of the usefulness of the WTO to the needs of developing countries. Huge subsidies to US farmers ($3.7 billion dollars for 25,000 farmers in 2001) had depressed cotton prices on the world market. In turn, the national economies of these countries and all the cotton-exporting nations of West and Central Africa were crashing. The Cotton Initiative called for a phasing out of the US farm subsidies over three years and a form of financial compensation in the interim. The US solution was to twist the issue around and claim that the African states should "diversify their economies"—by buying cotton from the US and developing textile mills to process it—rather than help their cotton farmers.

When, after much debate, the text of an agreement was presented on Sept 13th, it reiterated the US's dismissal of the solutions proposed in the Cotton Initiative. This spurred renewed resentment among the ministers of the south. Attempts to formulate a more inclusive draft-writing procedure had been sidelined as well. A surly coalition of African countries eventually refused to accept negotiations on a single issue of the Cancun draft. They were also part of a ninety-country coalition that presented a position paper on development that was at odds with the plans from the G-7 countries. India spearheaded a coalition of developing countries that opposed the negotiation of the Singapore issues (investment, transparency in government procurement, competition policy and trade facilitation) in this meeting.

Eamon Courtenay, Minister of investment and foreign trade, Belize, remarked, "For not going blindly forward on a ‘rich country’ agenda, poor countries have been accused of being ‘spoilers.’ I, for one, am willing to spoil the party if it is one that cooks the future of Belize and the developing world.”

Outside

In dozens of alternative forums on WTO-related issues also held in the town of Cancun, we made more progress. To start with, Via Campesina, a global non-governmental organization (NGO) of farmers and indigenous communities concerned with sustainable agriculture, along with other Mexican NGOs, held an alternative forum for three days. Hundreds of delegates from community based organizations (CBO’s) from around the world attended. It took forty-five minutes to greet the delegations just by naming the country or province from which they came. Once the forum began, much mutual learning and information sharing went on in the areas of sustainable agriculture, fair trade, organizing in export processing zones, and many more topics. We were at different stages of understanding and working for Fair Trade. The disparity of viewpoints could not obscure the unity of purpose. We were the people’s bloc to freeze the WTO.

In another forum, South African activists shared their frustration with the lack of connection between their needs and the policies that their trade ministers seek both in the WTO and bilateral agreements. They were among many activists from the global south that do not feel allied to the ministers that represent them, who march and vocalize against the privatization of services and schools at home. This is one of the many lessons from our gathering—the agendas of ministers from developing countries may be contrary to those of the G-7, but they seldom represent the reasons for their public’s discontent.

Via Campesina led the first big march against the WTO, on September 10th. Tens of thousands of people filled the street from the park where the forums were held down to the barricade that closed off the peninsula of the hotel zone. As soon as we arrived at the barricade, many people worked to push it over where it crossed the road.

For South Koreans, the 10^th of September is a day sacred to the ancestors. An activist delegation from South Korea carried a coffin filled with flowers and burning incense in the march. They rammed it into the barricade, so police sprayed it with a water cannon from the other side. Much greater drama followed. A leader from the South Korean delegation climbed to the top of the fence and sat there to lead chants. Then he cried, “WTO kills farmers!” and stabbed himself in the heart. He fell off the fence into the arms of his comrades, and died within an hour at the hospital.

His name was Lee Kyung Hae. He was a leader of the Korean Federation of Advanced Farmers Association. As a representative of the farmers and fishermen whose livelihoods and very survival are being encroached on by the agricultural policies of the WTO, he acted so that the trade ministers of South Korea would have to attend to the desperate needs of these one out of every six South Koreans.

Lee’s act changed the activists who were gathered that day. Just as agricultural issues were at the forefront of talks inside the WTO, the plight of the small farmer became our primary focus outside. From the 10^th onward, the South Korean delegation was granted leadership, and they infused a very symbolic tone into our actions. Our collective use of the simple phrase “WTO kills farmers” was more than rhetorical: we were deeply moved. We acted reverently, nonviolently, and an international unity of Gandhian principles was invoked.

We marched on the WTO convention en masse again on the 13th. This time, we filled the kilometer from the first downed barricade to next one on the wide road to the hotel zone. The police had reinforced this barricade. We marched up to it and held the space, while a contingent of women from around the world stepped up to the fence with bolt-cutters and cut it apart. They cut down the barbed wire from the top and snipped out holes in the chain-link and the chains that held it together. Some men climbed up to the top and secured the ends of two giant ropes of twine. An assembly of gloved volunteers heaved on the ropes, again and again. As the barricades finally gave way, anticipation of violence surged through the crowd. Glances were cast at the water cannons awaiting us on the other side, at the army of federal police, clubs out, shields raised. I heard muttering: “I’m ready to go when the crowd goes.” “Vamanos ya.” Others slipped through the rabbit holes in the fence alone, to return by the same route again in less than a minute, a hand over an injured eye. I saw a dozen activists return thus victimized from the other side of the battered barricade. As we readied ourselves to advance, many of us recalled the brutal assault the federal police had inflicted on the last street protest in Cancun.

Dozens of militant and pro-violence activists pressed to the front of the group, clutching rocks and lengths of pipe. But by previous accord, they allowed the South Korean group to take the first position at the gate. Accepting the possible melee, we stood before the police to march forward to the WTO meeting place some nine kilometers up the road.

Then the last shreds of the inner fence were dragged aside. A group of twenty Korean leaders pressed in to fill the space where the barricade had been. They turned their backs on the police to face us. A megaphone appeared. Immediately the speaker called for us to be seated in the street, to observe silence. People seated themselves in the street slowly, as many of us were not aware that this had been planned—and too, many were ready to fight. Dozens of white long-stem carnations were passed over the crowd toward the front. The speaker requested a silent remembrance of Lee Kyung Hae. In that silence, some chattered and stood on the grass median, others with clubs and rocks in their hands shuffled from foot to foot. Most of us became truly calm, resolved, centered. Our peacefulness spread through the crowd. An effigy of the WTO was burned on the fence, then a huge American flag. Short speeches were made by representatives from every continent. Finally, those who had torn down the barricade now went forward and laid a single white carnation in the rubble, almost at the feet of the confused police.

Crossing over

Shortly afterward, we all turned and walked away. We gathered at the turnabout at Kilometer Zero, where the first barricade was torn down, to celebrate a victorious march. News came in from NGO representatives in the conference center: it was a deadlock inside, the beginning of the developing world’s refusal to submit that would later shut down the WTO for another round.

The first twelve ministers who refused to ratify the Cancun drafts represented over eighty percent of the world’s population. Though constructive alternative policies were not instituted to better serve these people, at least the more destructive trade policies pushed on them by the G-7 did not go any further. New, powerful alliances had formed that used their collective strength to take a stand against multinational corporate interests.

Is it the start of something very different? A World Fair Trade Organization that is headed by the ministers of the south, heavily pressured by their vocal grassroots and CBOs, that will form agreements in favor of fair trade and socialization of services? Will we see a forum for discussions on forgiving debts, and on international corporate accountability? Or, if the G-7 accepts a new, more inclusive draft-writing procedure, will the public put up with what that present neoliberal WTO produces? Or will the WTO sit in stalemate, while bilateral agreements on trade (where less-powerful countries lack the strategic advantage of teaming up) move forward?

Time will tell.

Mary Israel is a peace and environmental activist and puppetista hailing from upstate New York, now residing in San Francisco. She has volunteered in the FOR Latin America and Caribbean Task Force office, and traveled to Colombia on the first FOR delegation. She is presently working on A Community Guide To Environmental Health for the Hesperian Foundation, publishers of Where There Is No Doctor.