The SA Trade Strategy Group's Manifesto - July 2002
“OUR WORLD IS NOT FOR SALE !”
1. We are members of environmental, economic and social development
NGOs, faith-based and community-based organisations, workers, women,
youth and other peoples organisations which participated in a workshop
on “Trade and the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD)”,
4-5 April 2002 in Cape Town, under the auspices of the Trade Strategy
Group, a nation-wide South African network of NGOs, labour organisations
and social movements.
2. We have examined the current United Nations WSSD Chairman’s
Paper which provides the basis for the preparatory discussions on the
text to be presented for inter-governmental negotiations, and multi-stakeholder
(civil society) dialogue with governments in the World Summit on Sustainable
Development that is due to take place in Johannesburg 26 August to 4
September 2002.
3. On the basis of our long and deep experiences in our organisations
and communities, and from our discussions in this workshop we are convinced
that
3.1 Sustainable development is a participatory process based on
sustainable use of global resources and on fundamental changes in:
the current methods and modes of economic production, the unbalanced
and unjust social and geographical distribution of income and economic
resources, and the grossly exaggerated levels of consumption for
privileged minorities. These unsustainable global features demand
socially equitable and environmentally sustainable global redistribution.
3.2 Economies must be designed and operate to serve people and
the planet, rather than people and the planet serving economies
and narrow economic interests. Thus we are opposed to the over-exploitation,
commercialisation and privatisation of natural resources (particularly
water), community knowledge, people (particularly women and children)
and public social services, which are being turned into exploitable
and trade-able commodities rather than protected and preserved as
public goods and human rights. Such policies are aggravating the
exploitation and outflow of natural and human resources from the
poorer communities and countries, especially in Africa, to the rich.
3.3 International trade must be fundamentally restructured and
redirected in practice, and re-defined in policies to ensure the
protection of peoples livelihoods, food security, social needs and
cultures, and domestic production within communities and countries.
This demands the ending of trade and production subsidies in the
more highly industrialised economies which encourage export dumping
and irresistible import competition in less industrialised economies;
and which has damaging effects on production, employment and other
aspects of our societies and economies. This also requires the ending
of current policies of import tariff reductions in weaker economies
that contribute further to such unfair competition and pressures.
3.4 International agreements are essential to deal with matters
of common concern and responsibility of all humanity on the basis
of common but differentiated responsibilities. These concerns include
the guarantee of fundamental human and labour rights, gender equity,
environmental integrity and justice enshrined in global agreements.
These must constitute the over-arching framework of principles within
which all other policies, particularly on international trade and
investment, and economic programmes are located.
3.5 International institutions and meetings, such as the WSSD,
are essential platforms for all peoples and nations to negotiate
such fundamental policy frameworks within agreed principles. The
organisations of the United Nations are the central universal agencies,
although they are in dire need of reform and democratisation. Above
all, they are in serious danger of being taken over or subordinate
to the currently dominant trade-and-growth ideology and the corporate
interests driving it. This must be resisted and reversed. In this
light, too, other powerful international organisations, particularly
the IMF, World Bank and the WTO must – if they are to continue
to have any role - be firmly located within the international system
of organisations and subject to the collective framework of global
agreements.
3.5 The World Trade Organisation is not an institution located
within and serving the long-established and evolving body of international
agreements by and for humanity and the planet. The WTO is a recently
devised instrument for economic globalisation, using international
trade and ‘trade-related’ agreements to advance the
interests and serve the needs of global corporations. These are
promoting the ever-greater ‘integration’ - or rather
the opening up to global corporations - of all economies and all
economic sectors within the emerging ‘globalised’ economy.
4. It is within the above understandings that
§ We do not accept that neo-liberal economic globalisation promoting
limitless ‘growth’, deregulated markets and exponential
increases in consumption is compatible with sustainable development.
§ We do not accept that international trade and investment
as currently regulated and projected by the WTO serve sustainable
development and our needs.
§ We are convinced that the so-called Doha Development Agenda
that emerged from the most recent WTO Ministerial Conference, in November
2001, will not advance the development needs of the majority of the
world’s population and will undermine global environmental management
and the crucial Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) promoting
this.
And we therefore make the following proposals and demands to the WSSD
4.1 The WSSD must not promote the WTO in any way or form, because
WTO-driven economic globalisation does not and cannot promote sustainable
development and global equity and justice.
4.2 The WSSD must remove any references to the Doha Declaration
which was produced through a thoroughly undemocratic process and
is being used by supporters of the WTO to push the world towards
a new round of negotiations for the extension of the coverage and
powers of the WTO.
4.3 The WSSD must counter the current global ‘free’
trade system and regime by promoting alternatives based on local
production for local markets and needs, and in order to reduce the
social, environmental and economic costs of international trade
and dependence upon foreign markets.
5. OUR PROPOSALS ON NePAD
Within the above considerations and positions, we note that the WSSD
Chairman’s Paper (Para 21, a) states that actions are required
to “promote the establishment of mechanisms necessary for the
immediate implementation of the New Partnership for African Development
(NePAD) in its totality”.
While we recognise the high aspirations in the ‘African Renaissance’
initiative and the aim of African unity, we are concerned that NePAD
is
§ located within the currently dominant globalised economic
system, which is leading to ever-widening inequality and deepening
poverty in the world;
§ based on an economic growth model driven by foreign investment
and the private sector, as opposed to holistic people-centred development
that prioritises the satisfaction of peoples needs and human rights;
§ promotes the discredited and destructive structural adjustment
programmes of the IMF and World Bank including investment liberalisation,
privatisation and so-called PPPs (public-private partnerships) etc.
We also note that NePAD
§ has been largely created and driven by the South African government
in conjunction with a few other of the larger/stronger governments
in Africa;
§ has been produced with minimal, if any, input and ownership
by all African governments and peoples;
§ has been publicly launched with virtually no information to
and engagement with the people of Africa, or the incorporation into
NePAD of the wide and varied experiences from African social movements;
§ has, to the contrary, been elaborated through wide-ranging
bilateral and multilateral consultations with foreign governments,
multilateral agencies such as the WTO and World Bank, and business
organisations on the aims, substance and financing of this programme.
In this context
5.1 We urge all African people’s economic, social, labour,
environmental, cultural, professional, political and other organisations
to support this preliminary statement; and to subject this African
programme to thorough and detailed analysis, public dissemination
and discussion, and appropriate responses and actions, based on
the principle that popular participation and ownership is fundamental
to democratic process and sustainable development.
5.2 We call upon African governments to suspend any further implementation
or international promotion of this programme, pending full governmental
engagement, broad and inclusive popular consultation within civil
society, and active engagement between civil society and governments
throughout Africa on the substance and aims of this programme.
5.3 We urge the allies of African social movements, and civil society
activists throughout the world to support these popular African
initiatives; and, in turn, to challenge the governments of the highly
industrialised economies on their roles and responsibilities, together
with their transnational corporations and international financial
forces, in shaping a global economy and regime so inimical (hostile)
to the needs and aspirations of the people of Africa, the rest of
the Third World, and the world.
“ANOTHER AFRICA IS POSSIBLE !!”
“ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE !!” |
