WTO Symposium For NGOs
Biased The organizers of the WTO
Ministerial Conference in Seattle are facing a wave of criticism over their choice of
speakers to address a symposium for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on international
trade issues to be held today at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center. Adding
to fierce popular opposition to their bid to launch a new trade round, the U.S. government
and the WTO Secretariat are now being accused of attempting to "co-opt" and
"deceive" NGOs and peoples movements with a symposium that had been billed
as an effort to "engage" civil society.
At best, it is seen as a clumsy move that will only create more cynicism and anger
among the NGOs it is supposed to placate.
Very few NGO representatives have been invited to join the two panels of the
day-long symposium. Instead, both are top-heavy with government ministers, including the
leading U.S. and EU trade negotiators, Charlene Barshevsky and Pascal Lamy, who have been
given the floor to tell NGOs and delegates from developing countries why a new round will
be beneficial, especially for the poor. Ministers or officials from developing countries
that have been active in proposing changes to the WTO system and its rules, however, have
not been invited to speak.
In keeping with this trend, the few members of civil society that have been asked
to join the symposiums two panels include free-trade academics, such as Jagdish
Bhagwati, that can be counted on to lecture NGOs about the virtues of further
liberalization. Academics or experts that question economic globalization, meanwhile, are
conspicuous by their absence - a fact that is bound to reinforce the impression that the
WTO Secretariat and the U.S. government are bent on achieving a monopoly of views to
further their own agenda.
What has perhaps most angered the NGO community - out in force in Seattle - is the
choice of NGO representatives invited to speak. The National Wildlife Federation and the
World Wildlife Fund, whose leaders are speakers at the event, both supported NAFTA and
remain "on the fence" about the WTO, says Debi Barker, Deputy Director of the
San Francisco-based International Forum on Globalization. Consumers International, another
of the tiny group of NGOs invited to speak, is also clearly viewed as an establishment
organization. None can be said to be representative of the vast majority of NGOs, local
community movements and street protesters that are overwhelmingly critical of the WTO.
Prominent environmental and social-justice leaders such as Ralph Nader and Vandana
Shiva were not invited to join the symposiums panels. Nor were any groups, such as
Third World Network and Friends of the Earth, that challenge the WTO and the economic
system that it promotes.
That has left the WTO and U.S. organizers of the event extremely vulnerable to the
charge that the whole exercise is designed to bluff the public into believing that the WTO
is now more transparent and sensitive to their concerns. If that is so, critics warn it
will be a dismal failure and that NGOs and civil society will not be taken in.
Simon Retallack
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