WTO’s pre-Cancun processes more opaque, undemocratic than ever

The forthcoming WTO Ministerial in Cancun may meet the same fate as the 1999 Seattle Ministerial simply because the WTO leadership and the major developed countries are attempting to manipulate the preparatory processes to pre-cook the outcome, in a manner worse than the preparatory process towards the previous Ministerial Conference in Doha in 2001.

Chakravarthi Raghavan

‘FREE trade’ ideologue and Columbia University academic, Prof. Jagdish Bhagwati, writing in the opinion page columns of the Wall Street Journal, has warned that the WTO’s 5^th Ministerial Conference at Cancun may meet the same fate as the Seattle one, and, while trying to distribute blame from the academic Olympian heights, has specially targeted the ‘populist’ economists and civil society movements.

As a matter of fact, say several Third World negotiators and observers at the WTO, Cancun may meet the same fate as Seattle simply because the WTO leadership and the major developed countries are attempting to manipulate the preparatory processes to pre-cook the outcome, in a manner worse than the preparatory process towards the previous Ministerial Conference in Doha in 2001, and this is meeting with increasing resistance from negotiators from a large number of developing countries, particularly those with hardly two or three ‘bodies’ to field for five to six informal consultations taking place at the same time.

The latest example, several Asian and African diplomats said, is the attempt to push through so-called compromises on the issue of special and differential treatment (SDT), on which the African group of countries on 4 July refused to be hustled into a decision, and insisted they needed adequate time to consult within the group and prepare a considered response to the latest proposals from the chairman of the WTO General Council.

Bhagwati, in the pursuit of ‘free trade’ theories and seeing ‘free trade’ as an object in itself, blames the Seattle failure (1999) on the protests of anti-globalisers, and contrasts it with Doha in the ‘pre-modern’ Gulf state of Qatar - where the 4^th Ministerial Conference was held in the aftermath of 11 September and the Ministerial Declaration on a new round of negotiations, the ‘Doha Development Agenda,’ was launched.

However, the Seattle meeting failed not because the ‘street’ was taken over by protesters (many of whom had in fact been encouraged to do so by the US administration), but because of the differences between the mercantilist ambitions of the US and the EU, compounded by the inept handling and the secretive consultation processes. Vast numbers of developing countries and their ministers were totally left in the dark as to what was going on, and there was high-handedness of both the then WTO Director-General Mike Moore and the US Trade Representative and chair of that meeting Charlene Barshefsky, who just announced at the Ministerial that she and Moore had the right to decide whom to call in for the smaller consultations and in effect run the meeting as she chose. This resulted, on the final day, in large numbers of developing countries going into the Committee of the Whole and saying ‘enough is enough’, the proposals from the chair were not acceptable to them and there was no consensus.

Before Doha, Bhagwati even suggested that rather than have a Ministerial meeting physically, Moore should have a Ministerial meeting via a video-conference hookup of all WTO members and their ministers and launch the negotiations (because of the worries about the security at Doha)!

The anti-globalisers, he says in his WSJ article, were intimidated by the post-11 September security considerations and the distance of Doha, and the Doha round of negotiations was successfully launched. He is now worried that Cancun is more accessible to civil society movements, and Mexico itself has a ‘tradition of activist students and protestors against globalisation’, and Cancun might see successful civil society protests.

For good measure, he also complained of the pro-globalisers, ‘who, as in Seattle, are unprepared’, with key issues where compromises were reached at Doha still unresolved - listing agriculture (blaming both US and the EC), TRIPS and public health (where the US, he says, has held up things because of the lobbying by the pharmaceutical industry), and the ‘poor’ countries who are accused of negotiating under the advice of ‘populist’ economists and NGOs.

Proliferation of consultations

Several developing-country diplomats and negotiators said in the week of 30 June that while the processes pre-Doha and at Doha were undemocratic and non-transparent, all the preparations were at least centred at the General Council under its mandate, and the then Chairman of the General Council Stuart Harbinson undertook all the informal consultations.

Members knew who was conducting consultations on what and where and, by and large, it was centred in and around the General Council - though at the end Harbinson and Moore claimed a right, nowhere found in the WTO rules, to submit their own texts, and through the undemocratic process of using the ceremonial opening meeting at Doha, brought these on the agenda.

After he took over as WTO Director-General, there were some assurances and remarks by Dr. Supachai Panitchpakdi to the key developing countries who met him, about not allowing the same process and/or taking ministers by surprise at Cancun. But some of the key countries say they were  not  sure  whether  this  still  was so.

Now, they said the chairman of the General Council was leading the consultations, with numerous  ‘friends of the chair’ holding ‘consultations’ on a number of issues and in small groups. As a result, the total number of meetings has ‘proliferated’, and they are held more or less at the same time, and it is impossible for developing-country missions to be present and participate to advance their interests or safeguard their positions.

There are ‘friends of the chair’ holding consultations on a range of issues where the WTO negotiators have missed deadlines, and the issues themselves are in the ken of the General Council.

There are also the ‘consultations’ going on in respect of the four ‘Singapore issues’ (investment, competition policy, trade facilitation, and transparency in government procurement), where the General Council chair, Ambassador Carlos Perez del Castillo of Uruguay, has asked the chairs of the working groups where these four items are under study to conduct consultations on them as ‘friends of the chair’.

In this process, there were, in the week of 30 June alone, one consultation on investment, two or three on competition, trade facilitation and transparency in government procurement.

On the major problem of SDT, where deadlines have been repeatedly missed, and the Special Session of the WTO Committee on Trade and Development (chaired by Amb. Ransford Smith of Jamaica) asked for clear interpretation of their mandate by the General Council, Perez del Castillo put forward some proposals for immediate decisions on some issues relating to the least developed countries (LDCs) and some others relating to other developing countries, and a third set of them to the WTO bodies.

The deadlines on the SDT issues were repeatedly missed because the majors would not agree, saying that they had problems about extending it to all developing countries and that a ‘graduation’ or ‘differentiation’ among developing countries was needed,  and  also  that  they  had  sent the proposals to their capitals for views.

Having blocked solutions, and having used the argument of the need to consult capitals for several months, suddenly on 2 July, a compromise was tabled by the General Council chairman, and the developing countries and Africans were asked to quickly agree, some African and other diplomats complained.

The text ran into problems with the African group of countries, as others. When the chair tried to push through the compromise text, Kenya and others said the African group had not been consulted, they had just got the text and needed time to study and consult within the group.

‘Friends of the chair’

A small group of ‘friends of the chair’ was then asked to go into the text, with the Brazilian ambassador as the chair of the group of six countries - the US, EC, Norway, Brazil, Kenya and Bangladesh. On 3 July, Africans said, proposals considered by the ‘friends of the chair’ were sent to delegations.

At the informal heads-of-delegation meeting on 4 July, the Brazilian ambassador reported on his consultations, and said that while progress had been made, no agreement had been reached. His report covered pre-shipment agreement, Art. IX and the understanding on waivers of obligations under GATT 1994, decision in favour of LDCs and measures in favour of LDCs, Art. 10.3 of the SPS agreement, TRIPS agreement (articles 7, 8 and 66.2), decision in favour of LDCs on market opportunities, and Understanding on the interpretation of Art. XVII of the GATT 1994.

When the discussions of individual proposals reported on were taken up, Morocco for the African group said that the group was in the process of consultations and they would present their views in a week’s time.

Some members (the General Council chair and the majors) wanted the African group and the LDCs ‘to move faster’. But others, including Kenya in the African group, said many deadlines had been missed, and at that time there did not seem to be any hurry. The Africans and the LDCs, and several others, said there  too many meetings taking place simultaneously and it was difficult for them to attend them all.

The General Council chair, Amb. Perez del Castillo said that the Council was meeting on 24-25 July, and the members would have a clear idea of where they stood. There would be another informal meeting of heads of delegation to discuss proposals in the Enabling Clause (non-reciprocal, preferential and more favourable treatment for developing countries).

Questions

In the discussions, other trade diplomats said, Kenya and Bangladesh reportedly raised some questions, and suggested they had not agreed. Kenya, from the African group, insisted that they needed time to look at these texts carefully.

With the General Council chair talking about the missed deadlines and need to complete the work fast, Kenya reportedly responded that the deadlines were missed in July 2002, and the major trading partners had held up the process on the ground they needed to consult in capitals. ‘How could the same issues now suddenly be presented to the Africans and others, and told that a decision need to be taken quickly?’

Kenya also recalled that a number of them had warned even at that time that if the issues were postponed, and deadlines were missed, they would be unable to cope with it since a number of other issues on which they had also to focus were coming up. They could not attend all these consultations and study them and present their positions. When the industrialised countries, with so many advisors, wanted more time, they were given. But now the Africans were being told that they had to agree quickly, without studying and understanding the implications and presenting their response.

China supported the Africans and suggested they should be given more time.

Malaysia suggested that while questions were raised about coverage etc. for all the developing countries, and that this was creating problems for some, no one had said this about LDCs. Malaysia  asked why the group could not take decisions immediately on all the items relating to SDT for the least developed countries.

Norway, while seeming to suggest that the LDC issues could be taken up, looked at and viewed positively,  did  not  say  that  it could agree.

The informal heads-of-delegation consultations on the SDT package were reportedly adjourned, and were to resume probably in the week of 7 July or the following week. The African group members said that they would be holding their meeting and prepare a response, and perhaps put it in writing.

Trade diplomats from developing countries said on 4 July that this was only one example of the way the process is going on, and leading to feelings that could ultimately pile up and prove counter-productive - with some pushing some issues viewed as important by the majors, or even particular perspectives in the agriculture negotiations, while the concerns of many others are left out.

The above first appeared in the South-North Development Monitor (SUNS - issue no. 5378), of which Chakravarthi Raghavan is the Chief Editor.