By Ranjit Dev Raj
BANGKOK, Feb 15 (IPS) - Non-government organisations (NGOs), itching for a showdown at the UNCTAD X conference here, sobered up after they were advised that the real fight was between them and the elected governments in their home countries.
The advice came from UNCTAD secretary-general Rubens Ricupero, who joined conference president and deputy prime minister of Thailand Supachai Panitchpakdi, in an "encounter with NGOs" Monday evening.
Ricupero said the way for NGOs to move organisations like the UNCTAD and the WTO was to "influence governments" first. "We in UNCTAD have been on the side of those who want to change rules. We are in the same boat," he added.
There was the question of the "legitimacy of non-state actors," Ricupero said adding that NGOs could gain a real voice by participating in electoral processes and influencing the way in which governments got elected.
Ricupero said UNCTAD did enjoy bigger maneuvering space than the World Trade Organisation (WTO), but there has been a price to that as well. "We have been criticised and punished by many developed countries which do not like what we say."
But NGO representatives were not prepared to give the UNCTAD a clean bill so easily and many accused the U.N. body of promoting the same strategies as the WTO, such as laying emphasis on market access and increasing and diversifying exports.
"What is being ignored by both organisations is that these strategies overtax the environment and take a toll on societies in developing countries with women taking the brunt of it," said Aileen Kwa of the Southeast Asian Council for Food Security and Fair Trade.
"Waiting for development to happen by increasing trade is like putting the cart before the horse and in effect the developing countries end up subsidising the developed countries with cheap labour and by using valuable natural resources," Kwa said.
Stiaan van der Merwe of Transparency International in South Africa demanded to know what UNCTAD was doing about corrupt practices indulged in by transnational corporations (TNCs) at a time when similar charges were being directed at governments in developing countries.
Fielding van der Merwe's question, Supachai, who is incoming WTO chief in a term-sharing scheme with the current head, said cronyism and corruption existed everywhere and both within and outside governments.
Thailand, he said, has set up an anti-corruption commission selected by Parliment and independent of the government to deal with the issues.
Supachai said transparency was important at every level including at the WTO. While the so-called 'green room' discussions cannot include all countries, they should include countries which may be small but have a particular interest, he said. In any case discussions must be fully reported, he added.
Ann Pettifor of the U.K.-based Jubilee 2000 Coalition raised the question of debt relief weighing down developing countries. There are too many cases of countries struggling to pay off debts for ill-conceived projects which were never even completed, she said.
Ricupero responded to Pettifor by saying that UNCTAD already had proposed an assessment of debt position and sustainability by an independent panel which included high financial experts who did not represent the interests of creditors. "But the proposal was seen as too radical and did not have much progress."
For the most part Supachai and Ricupero took the path of least resistance, agreeing and even endorsing well-known views held by NGOs on such vexed issues as export subsidies which wrecked the WTO meeting in Seattle.
"All trade-distorting devices must go and UNCTAD considers export subsidies in agriculture a particularly damaging practice," Ricupero said, citing the case of the "annihilation" of the tomato paste industry in western Africa following imports from the European Union.
But Ricupero and Supachai said that much as UNCTAD would like to see an end to subsidies, it was powerless to remove them. "Our task is to supplement research but we are aiming at full elimination," Supachai said.
The problem, said Supachai, was that industrialised countries seemed to think that UNCTAD should stick to preparing studies and stay out of such issues as constructing a new financial architecture -- imperative if the disruptive flow of speculative funds were to be controlled.
Ricupero said UNCTAD as a creation of the U.N General Assembly did in fact have the mandate to look into such issues as currency, finance, trade and technology but its hands were tied.
But senior policy adviser with the U.K-based Oxfam Michael Bailey suggested that UNCTAD should nevertheless "seek to be as propositional as possible and resist pressure from industrialised countries to limit it to a passive and technical role."
In fact, he said, there is a huge opportunity for UNCTAD in the weakening of the "Washington consensus" and the "loss of legitimacy and credibility" of the multilateral institutions like the WTO and IMF.:
