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SURROUND THE 5TH WTO MINISTERIAL MEETING
WITH OUR WORLDWIDE ACTIONS ON SEPTEMBER 13, 2003
On September 10-14, 2003, the 5th WTO Ministerial Meeting will be held in Cancun, Mexico. Anti-imperialist activists and the rest of the world will be watching the developments of this ministerial conference, for it is expected to be contentious, with the campaign for a new round of negotiations for the four Singapore issues as the main political agenda.
The four Singapore issues are: investments, competition policy, government procurement, and trade facilitation. Most of the deadlines for the start of the implementation of these will be on January, 2005 which is just a scant two years away.
At the Doha conference, third world governments were able to block the launching of a new round and immediate negotiations on the four Singapore issues. However, the same conference started the process for a full-blown negotiating round by the Fifth Ministerial Meeting in Cancun. The meeting in Cancun will take up the Agreement on Agriculture (AOA), Trade-related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement (TRIPS), and the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS).
The AOA provides for increased market access through tariff binding, tariff reduction and detarrification. It also stipulates the withdrawal of domestic production support and export subsidies for agricultural products. Third World countries are to comply by 2004.
The AOA has aroused strong protests from peasants worldwide for it shall completely remove government and export subsidies for their farm products; at the same time, the AOA shall tear down all barriers for agricultural products coming from imperialist countries, to flood the poor and exploited countries.
This is sure to result in massive suffering and poverty for peasants especially those coming from semi-feudal and semi-colonial societies.
If approved by the WTO 5th Ministerial meeting, the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) will wreak havoc on the collapsing economies of many underdeveloped countries. In many underdeveloped countries, the services sectors are the remaining areas that foreign companies do not control. However, if the Cancun meeting shall approve this item, it shall allow multinational companies to fully control the financial services, telecommunications, media, transport, etc.
Finally, the TRIPS will allow the patenting of life forms which will have dire implications on food security and biodiversity. The poor will not be able to afford patented products. Genetically modified crops will be unsafe for human consumption and are harmful to the environment. The TRIPS will also hamper consumer access to medicines and other goods.
The people of the world must vigorously oppose these policies that favour the imperialist countries and their multinational companies at the expense of the underdeveloped countries.
The International League of Peoples’ Struggle, an international organization which has a membership of more than 200 mass organizations worldwide, is calling on its members, allied organizations, progressive individuals and institutions to join the world-wide mobilization against the WTO on September 13, 2003.
This world-wide mobilization will reinforce the militant mass actions that the Latin American peasants will undertake as they attempt to block the highways leading to Cancun, and the parallel efforts of anti-imperialist globalization delegates who shall hold a counter-conference to the WTO 5th Ministerial Meeting.
Our world-wide mobilization will surround the pro-WTO governments and their monopoly corporations who will be meeting on said date and who shall be protected by phalanxes of Mexican military, police, and undercover agents.
This will serve as a powerful message to the WTO and the imperialists that the peoples of the world are rising up to expose, oppose, and to bring to an end the devastation wrought by the WTO and its imperialist globalization structures and policies.
