People Before Profit:
APL’s Position on the
WTO Doha Ministerial Conference*

Our Aspiration

The Alliance of Progressive Labor (APL) and its affiliates are calling for a global ethic, one in which trade, investments and global economic and political arrangements work for poor people and their communities through sustainable development. We envision a new global order where the people’s rights and welfare, and not corporate profits, reign supreme.

Reforming the United Nations system including the Security Council; debt cancellation for developing countries in the South; codes of conduct for multinationals; Tobin-type taxes on capital flows; setting up of the International Labour Organization’s Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalisation; and a pluralistic system of trade governance to ensure fair trade are some of the many proposals that are part of a "people before profit" agenda.

The World Trade Organization (WTO), as it is today, is out of sync with this aspiration.

Our Critique of the WTO Worldview

The WTO is more political than an economic forum. Many of the inequities in the WTO is a reflection of the global imbalance of power: countries do not negotiate as equals, and diplomatic pressure from the North on South countries frequently forces the latter to accept outcomes which are not in their best interests. The undemocratic decision-making processes instituted by the WTO reinforce this imbalance. There can never be fair trade in this arrangement.

Through the WTO, countries of the North have succeeded in imposing their own model of development on the South and have reinforced that model through the rules they establish. It is a model where trade and trade liberalization are treated as ends in themselves, rather than as means to achieve the greater goal of human and social development. Much too, often policy-makers, including those in our own government, fail to distinguish between development as a measure of things getting better (as indicated by poverty reduction, greater social inclusion, etc.) and development as a measure of things getting bigger (in terms of more rapid growth in exports and gross national product).  Furthermore, WTO agreements have also effectively denied the countries of the South the traditional routes towards industrialization and sustainable development. 

To make matters worst, the North has hoodwinked the South into opening a wide swath of its economy, while the former continues to cling to its protectionist measures in various ways.

As a consequence, WTO agreements have miserably failed to live up to their promises.  Instead of reducing global poverty, they further enriched the North and the transnational corporations. Instead of promoting sustainable development, they have rollback whatever development the South has gained so far. All empirical evidences are too damning to be ignored.

This brings into question the legitimacy of current trade agreements and the approach to trade liberalization on which they are based.

Despite all these, the North is once again calling for a new round. The US and the European Union are now “hitchhiking” on the “war on terrorism” campaign to bamboozle the South to agree on what is seductively called a “development round.” Once again, the South is being set up for the killing.

Our Position on the Doha Ministerial Meeting

The APL believes that a radical new thinking is needed by the WTO to make trade an effective and pro-poor member of the international system. It is high time for a change of approach which places human and social development needs above the dictates of free trade theory.

For this reason, the APL calls on the Macapagal administration and all the Trade Ministers attending the 4^th WTO Ministerial Conference in Doha this November 2001 to:

1.      Desist from Implementing a New Round. We reiterate our opposition to launch a new round or to expand the WTO by bringing in new issues such as investment, competition, government procurement, biotechnology or accelerated tariff liberalization. Instead, the issues of inequity for developing countries must be urgently addressed. These issues must not be addressed in the context of further liberalization negotiations.

2.      Oppose the Introduction of Investment Policies in the WTO. Contrary to the claims of the WTO Secretariat, the proposals for introducing rules on investments in the WTO are nothing but a sneaky way of introducing the ill-fated ideas of the Multilateral Agreement on Investments (MAI). The national government must protect its right to use investments policies that would lead to sustainable development. The government must instead work to ensure that the conduct of TNCs are effectively regulated. This can be done by pushing for a Global Code of Conduct for TNCs in the UN.

3.      Democratize the WTO. We are seriously concerned about the democratic deficit which is progressively deepening in favor of the economic, financial and business interests of a handful of large corporations. Decision-making processes in the WTO must safeguard the participation and the interests of the developing countries.  The consensus decision making must be replaced with majority voting. 

4.      Assess the Impact of the Uruguay Round. WTO Agreements must be assessed on the basis of their effectiveness in addressing poverty reduction and promoting sustainable developments. We need to take decision based on evidence, then review policies as further evidence accumulates. There is an urgent need for  '"poverty-proofing" of trade policies by considering their potential impact on the poor and vulnerable before they are implemented, and assessing that impact once implementation has begun.

5.      Reform the Dispute Settlement Body (DSB). Even the WTO Secretariat Briefing Notes of the Disputes Settlements admit that “developed countries are the biggest users of the system." US, the EU or Canada the major players in terms of dispute settlement activity are well equipped with legal talent, are well briefed by export interests, and have a worldwide network of commercial and diplomatic representation that feeds their systems with relevant data. While developing countries, in contrast, have limited national expertise available and find it difficult to collect the type of information that is required to bring or defend WTO cases. Thus, the countries of the South must be provided with the capability to use the system more effectively. The DSB must also be reformed to ensure transparency and people’s participation (though their organizations and NGOs) in the DSB.

6.      Reorient the Agreement on Agriculture.   The Agreement on Agriculture is onerous. It has legitimized the use of subsidies in developed countries, while narrowing the options available to developing countries, which must compete in an increasingly global market. Many developing countries have unilaterally liberalized their trade regimes (often as part of structural adjustment programs of the WB-IMF), in reforms they are prevented from reversing by the WTO. There has been no reciprocal liberalization in the North. The result is the worst of both worlds. The agreement must ensure that its overarching goal is based on the World Food Summit commitment to reduce into half world hunger by 2015. It must veer away from promoting an industrial model of agriculture that has imperiled food security in developing countries. In the final analysis, the APL believes that what is needed is "food sovereignty" – a concept which emphasizes the centrality of national decision-making structures in determining food and agriculture policy. Thus there must be a broader and more effective special and differential treatment for developing and least developed countries in the WTO.

7.      Keep Public Services Away from the WTO. The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) may have already put public service systems -- and their regulation -- within WTO authority. We are gravely concerned about the limited scope of the "governmental authority" exclusion in the GATS. Many governments, including our own, may not recognize that certain aspects of public services and their regulation are already subject to those GATS obligations that apply “across-the-board,” among them the most-favoured-nation status and transparency. We are concerned that by making specific commitments, certain aspects of what ever is left of our public service system and our government’s regulatory ability in these areas may be subject to more demanding GATS restrictions, including national treatment and market access. Thus, there is a need to make the "governmental authority" exclusion in current negotiations more effective and permanent. National governments must preserve its decision-making authority in sensitive service sectors such as health and education. Furthermore, any commitments to GATS must first go through a thorough impact assessment and must be subjected to public scrutiny.

8.      Stop Corporate Patent Protection, Stop Patenting on Life. The sub-commission on the promotion and protection of human rights of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) stated in its resolution 2000/7 (August 2000), that "there are apparent conflicts between the intellectual property rights regime embodied in the TRIPS Agreement, on the one hand, and international human rights law, on the other." Recent events show that the current patenting regime promotes corporate rent-seeking behavior at the expense of people’s health. It has also led to a number of cases of “bio-piracy.” The APL believes that the inclusion of intellectual property claims in the WTO through the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPs) is a fatal mistake that must be corrected immediately. There is no basis for inclusion of such intellectual property claims in a trade agreement.

9.      Institutionalize People’s Participation in Trade Negotiations. All trade agreements have far reaching effects on the working people, especially those in the South.  Thus, all governments, including our own, must promote broad public discussions on any trade agreements before any commitments are made. We therefore call on the Macapagal administration to make public its previous commitments to the WTO, subject them to a thorough assessment, and to instruct the Secretary of Trade and Industry and other trade representatives, to conduct regular consultations with stakeholders, especially the workers, several months before making any new commitments.

10.  Develop the Domestic Market Alongside the Export Market. The long-term solution to achieve sustainable development is for government to balance export orientation with determined efforts to develop the domestic market. This would necessarily require the integration of the various small, separate “economies” that we find existing within the country through infrastructure development. But more importantly, this would also require the political will to institute a real asset reform not only in the rural areas (agrarian reform) but also in urban areas (urban land reform, profit sharing, etc.). In that way, we need not fall ill each time the US sneezes.

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