BusinessWorld | By Iris Cecilia C. Gonzales | August 21, 2003
BANGKOK, Thailand - The World Trade Organization's (WTO) failure to fully open trade negotiations to all its members, particularly poorer countries, will continue to hinder the organization's success.
Thus concluded members of cause-oriented groups, government representatives, and trade analysts who ended a two-day regional briefing here yesterday.
The briefing, organized by nongovernmental organizations, intended to update the participants on current developments in world trade negotiations and what may be expected from the fifth WTO ministerial meeting in Cancun, Mexico next month.
At the close of the conference, participants who came from all over Southeast Asia agreed on the need to make fully transparent all WTO talks and sessions to all its members, particularly poor countries, so their opinions can matter.
Geneva-based trade analyst Aileen Kwa, who has been following the WTO for the last six years, said this was among the major procedural problems at the trade organization.
She cited, for example, the drafting of WTO agreements which, she said, were not transparent and usually excluded developing countries.
These resulted in drafts that failed to reflect the differences in positions on issues, especially between rich and poor nations, she added.
Ms. Kwa said the lack of transparency was also evident during recent negotiations for the Cancun Ministerial.
The Cancun meeting will be the midway of the Doha round of WTO negotiations that aimed to further liberalize global trade.
Many sectors have dubbed the Cancun conference as the "make-or-break" session for the end-2004 deadline set during the Doha round for the resolution of key disagreements.
These included further opening farm trade and making cheap medicine available to poor countries by allowing them to access medicine patents from rich countries.
"As the preparatory process towards the Cancun ministerial intensified, all semblance of democratic and transparent functioning of the institution had been lost," Ms. Kwa said.
She cited as example the mini-ministerials or smaller meetings at Sydney, at Tokyo, and at Montreal since the Doha Round in November 2001 in Doha, Qatar.
Shen noted that many poor countries wanted to attend these mini-ministerials but were not invited. Even the Philippines was not invited, government trade negotiators confirmed earlier. And informal meetings or trade negotiations between rich countries held during these mini-ministerials were also unrecorded.
Ms. Kwa also noted that only trade ministers will assess and evaluate draft agreements for review during the Cancun meeting.
This prompted cause-oriented or interest groups from Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan and Thailand to conclude during yesterday's briefing that indeed, the WTO system was "undemocratic and lacked transparency."
"Given the importance of WTO decisions on domestic policies ranging from food security, health, basic services, the environment and development policy making, we find it imperative to address the democratic deficit at the WTO," the groups said in a joint statement.
One trade activist said that because of problems hounding the WTO system, it will be a victory for poor countries if the Cancun meeting also failed.
"It could end up like in Seattle, which exposed the WTO as a failure," said the activist, whose group was one of the organizers of the regional briefing.
But Carlos Acosta, European Commission Trade Counsellor in Thailand, said WTO members should have more faith in the organization to do the right thing. "The role of the WTO is not perfect, but we have to be more optimistic," he said.BusinessWorld:
