Organizations
Opposed to the WTO

The protests in Seattle were heralded for the unprecedented cooperation among the various organizations that enabled the protest events to achieve the scale they did. In Seattle, these organizations were vocal in their opposition to the WTO and mobilized their constituents to attend numerous events before, during and after Ministerial week, November 29- December 3, 1999. Some of these protest organizations were also officially-registered to attend the NGO (non-governmental organization) events inside the Ministerial. But who were these opposition organizations, and where did they come from?

The tools we use to answer these questions are the materials gathered by the WTO History Project that document the protests. However, most of these materials were gathered from the most prominent organizations, and therefore present a somewhat limited picture of which organizations were opposed to the WTO. One resource we can consult to address the question of the diversity of the opposition is a letter distributed by Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch and signed by more than 1400 organizations from around the globe.

The text of the letter is accessible below, and an Excel spreadsheet that contains an annotated list of the signees is available for download.

A list of the organizations that were registered with the WTO to attend the NGO events is also accessible below. This list includes organizations opposed to the WTO as well as supportive organizations.

In the near future the list of organizations will be converted into an interactive searchable format, so please check back soon.

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