Members of 453 civil society groups from over 150 countries have asked the World Trade Organisation (WTO) member countries to forestall — what they termed — the “corporate and rich country-government agenda” of permanently abandoning the ‘development’ mandate of the Doha Round negotiations, and replacing it with a set of ‘new non-trade issues’ at the global trade body’s coming Nairobi meet.
The Nairobi ministerial conference — on the Doha Round negotiations meant to liberalise world trade — will be a failure from a development perspective if ‘new issues’ (such as environment, labour, e-commerce, global value chains, investment, competition policy and transparency in government procurement), are agreed to as part of post-ministerial agenda, said the civil society groups in a letter to all the WTO members.
The civil society groups include trade unions, environmentalists and farmers. This is the largest number of endorsers on a sign-on letter about the WTO in the last decade, according to ‘Our World Is Not for Sale’ (OWINFS) network, which coordinated the effort.
“Civil society has condemned the unfair negotiations process in the WTO, in which the positions of powerful members are given predominance over the positions and needs of the vast majority of members who are developing countries …. The interests of workers, farmers, and the environment are shunted to the background in favour of corporate profit objectives,” they said in the letter.
