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30 november 2000
seattle anniversary
one year
after seattle, world wide citizen action
against new trade round continues
One year after
the "battle of Seattle", citizens around the
world are organising a week of actions (30
November-4 December) to mark the anniversary
of the collapse of the 3rd WTO Ministerial
and the Multilateral Agreement on Investment
(MAI) (1). Activities are planned across all
continents, from Australia and Bangladesh to
India, France, Uruguay and the US.
Since Seattle
many thousands of citizens have intensified
their campaigns and protests against
neo-liberal economic globalisation that is
promoted by the WTO as well as the IMF and
World Bank. This was manifested in
demonstrations in Davos, Washington, Bangkok
and Prague.
In Seattle,
ten of thousands of citizens from around the
world had protested against the WTO and had
made a call of "No New Round, Turnaround".
Citizens groups had called for no further
expansion of the WTO and for a review and
repair agenda of international trade
rules.
In the
meantime, almost a thousand NGOs around the
world have signed the post-Seattle íWTO:
Shrink or Sink statement. The statement calls
for a rollback of the power of the WTO , to
reduce its role to a number of genuine trade
issues. The statement includes eleven
specific demands which include protecting
basic social rights and needs from the WTO,
dismantling the WTOís intellectual property
rights agreements, banning patenting of life,
ensuring special and differential treatment
of developing countries, ensuring that
multilateral agreements on environmental and
social aspects take precedence over trade
rule and ending the WTOís agreement on
investment measures.
Protest is increasing as the implementation
of WTO agreements are leading to threats to
livelihoods of farmers and workers, threats
to the survival of small farms and
enterprises, threats to food security and
misappropriation of traditional knowledge of
local communities through ëbiopiracyí and
threats to local, national and international
environmental and social laws.
Despite the
public outcry, governments are pursuing a
business as usual agenda and efforts to
launch a new round have been increased.
Therefore, citizens say ëenough is enoughí,
now is time to change course for a more
sustainable, equitable and democratic trading
system.
1) The Seattle
trade talks collapsed on 3 December 1999. One
year before that, on 4 December 1998, the
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and
Development's (OECD) proposed Multilateral
Agreement on Investment (the MAI, intended to
promote investment liberalisation) was also
abandoned.
To see the
Shrink or Sink Statement view
www.tradewatch.org
CONTACT:
Ian Willmore 0044 7887 641344 (FOEI)
Ronnie Hall 020 7490 2665
Press Office 020 7566 1649
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