Globalisation - WTO Lauds Civil Society Impact
October 9, 2024 - AllAfrica Global Media
by Abimbola Akosile
Director-General of World Trade Organisation (WTO) Mr. Pascal Lamy has commended the efforts of civil society groups on trade negotiations, environmental issues and agriculture, to ensure a successful globalisation process.

According to the DG, in his keynote address to the WTO Public Forum last week, the global civil society sector has registered many 'successes' in the WTO, including the 2003 agreement on cheaper medicines for developing countries, and the inclusion of subjects like fisheries subsidies, environmental goods and services, and food aid in the Doha negotiations.

Speaking on 'How the WTO can Help Harness Globalisation?' at its 7th Annual Public Forum, he said this year's title is a question that the WTO places emphasis on.

Calling on participants' contribution towards the WTO agenda, Lamy said, "if we are opening our doors to the public today it is because WTO Members wish to tap into a wider pool of ideas, into fresh ideas, on how the WTO can best contribute to shaping the forces of globalisation".

Panellists at the public forum included Ms. Tarja Halonen, the President of Finland; Ms. Olubanke King-Akerele, Liberia Minister of Foreign Affairs; and Professor Kishore Mahbubani, Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in the National University of Singapore.

The WTO first launched the idea of a Public Forum back in 2001 when it had opened its doors to the public for a dialogue on the issues confronting the world trading system.

"The first Public Forum was attended by 400 participants, then a record number. Today, 1750 participants from across the globe have registered for this Forum, an indicator of the extent of globalisation".

Among those who registered for the two-day forum were various types of non-governmental organisations from environmental, to human rights, to labour rights groups; parliamentarians; academic institutions; members of the business community; journalists; lawyers; representatives of other international organisations; and students.

Lamy further disclosed that the current forum was organised through a 'bottom-up' or a 'grass-roots' process, where the WTO allowed the civil society to express itself and its priorities.

"This approach allows them to gauge societal priorities on trade, and trade-related issues. And this bottom-up approach has indeed led to very rich and broad array of issues to be debated".

Topics proposed by civil society at the forum were classified into four areas including global governance; coherence between the national and international levels of policy-making and between different multilateral institutions; economic growth and the role of trade as a vehicle for development; and, lastly, sustainable development.

To Lamy, "the annual forum has turned into a platform for the forging of new alliances amongst different actors on issues of priority concern. Civil society has realised that power can sometimes lie in numbers, and in a pooling of intellectual and other resources".

"First is the issue of intellectual property rights and the access to medicines. Due to the attention which civil society drew to this issue, in August 2003 the WTO reached an agreement on the use of compulsory licenses by developing countries without manufacturing capacity, in order to help them access life-sustaining medicines".

He claimed the issue of access to affordable medicines is one of great concern to many developing countries whose health care systems are often overwhelmed by HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases.

According to him, "some developing countries had viewed the TRIPS Agreement as an impediment to their efforts to combat public health emergencies; as restricting drug availability. In the developed world, on the other hand, pharmaceutical industries viewed the TRIPS Agreement as essential to encouraging innovation by ensuring adequate international compensation to the pharmaceutical sector for its research, development and creativity".

Lamy said for the developing world, the issue of compulsory licenses was an important test as to whether the WTO could meet their developmental needs.

Lamy espoused that close collaboration with WTO Members can sometimes be vital to achieving civil society goals. "The fact that the nexus between trade and the environment, which had been debated for many years in both GATT and WTO, was finally elevated to a 'negotiating' stage is also in large part due to civil society".

Part of the aim of these negotiations, according to the DG, is to help open markets to clean technology, whether in terms of the 'goods' or 'services' that it entails.

Speaking on the ongoing agriculture negotiations, Lamy claimed there are numerous issues on which civil society has also worked hard to bring forward, such as 'food aid', and which again must now be carried through.

"These negotiations tread a fine line, and must strike a delicate balance. While food aid must not be allowed to act as a disguised subsidy to agricultural exports, and while the food aid of one country must not be allowed to displace the exports of another country, food aid must continue to be available to those who need it. We must succeed in responding to humanitarian concerns", he said, urging civil society to help WTO strike the right balance in the negotiations.

"There is much at stake for the world in the Doha Round of trade negotiations. Fisheries subsidies, environmental goods and services, and food aid, are but a few of the issues on which we can make substantial welfare gains through these negotiations. But there are many others too. Key to the Doha Round was the re-balancing of the rules of the multilateral trading system in favour of the world's poor", Lamy said.

To him, "agriculture, an economic sector of great importance to some of the world's poorest nations, has been placed at the forefront of the negotiations, which also aim to address the concerns of the developing world in many other areas, such as removal of tariff peaks of some of their key industrial exports, like textiles".

Other areas of the negotiation from which the developing world stands to gain, according to Lamy, include opening of trade in services, which today represent over two thirds of the global economy; and trade facilitation, described as the cutting of the bureaucratic 'red tape' impediments to trade.

He claimed WTO is at a crucial moment, where Members have entered a period of intense negotiations, and are starting to see some light at the end of the agricultural and industrial goods negotiations.

"And as positions converge on these key subjects, the pace of work is also accelerating on the rest of the Doha agenda. I hope that we will soon be able to see the negotiating train reach its ultimate destination. As the negotiations progress, so does our parallel agenda on Aid-for-Trade package that would allow developing countries to translate 'stated gains' into commercial reality, by boosting their supply-side capacity", he said.

Lamy called on participants to seriously consider the magnitude of the current 'package' on the WTO's negotiating table, which would strengthen the WTO and enable it to welcome additional developing country Members, such as Liberia, into its fold.