"Fermiamo le trattative WTO a Cancun"

Il sindacato internazionale Trade unions worldwide sta invitando i paesi membri della WTO a un'apertura concreta verso Cancun, in quanto gli accordi avranno ampie implicazioni per la legislazione delle 146 nazioni facendo regredire i diritti sociali.

The ICFTU calls for WTO to promote openness and transparency and to respect human rights through the UN system

Brussels, 10 July 2003 (ICFTU OnLine): Trade unions worldwide are urging member countries of the World Trade Organisation to push for more openness in the WTO. The results of WTO negotiations this year at the 10-14 September Ministerial Conference in Cancùn, Mexico will have far-reaching implications for the legislation in 146 nations, and yet this free trade club of nations is not only secretive, but suffers from a major deficit in its social dimension.

Adequate public oversight of the WTO is impossible because negotiations take place behind closed doors. Trade unions and other public interest groups, as well as national parliaments, are shut out from the WTO's crucially important decision-making processes. This makes it extremely hard to monitor the social and environmental implications of trade agreements, such as the way they affect workers' rights, impact on women, or interact with national environmental legislation.

The current bilateral negotiations on trade in services (part of the "GATS" process), which will shape members' trade laws in years to come, are secret. The negotiations cover a wide range of issues from education, health and water to tourism, banking and supermarkets. Neither the WTO itself, nor WTO member states, make public the contents of these negotiations. The WTO should be held accountable for its actions by being subject to public scrutiny. The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), and its Global Union partners are calling on trade ministers to come clean to national trade union organisations, and other concerned groups with details of the offers and requests they are making in the context of GATS.

Trade unions are also protesting at the power imbalance inside the WTO. Developing countries, which form two thirds of the total WTO membership, encounter problems in fully participating in the negotiations. Not only do they lack the financial resources to match those of economic giants such as the US, EU and Japan, but the smaller countries are marginalized in the negotiations by literally being locked out of the 'green-room' trade meetings that powerful countries organize to 'speed up the decision-making process'.

This power imbalance has meant that even the commitments of the so-called "Development Round", launched at Doha in 2001, have so far resulted in little more than broken promises by rich country governments on issues important to developing countries, such as agriculture, and access to affordable medicines. Instead, rich countries are pushing for multinational companies to get better access to developing countries' lucrative services markets, and trying to get negotiations started on investment, competition and trade facilitation. Negotiations on these so-called 'Singapore issues', under their current terms of reference, are opposed by a great many developing countries (backed by trade unions worldwide).

Unions are is particularly concerned about the unprecedented powers given to the WTO "Dispute Settlement Body" to overrule any democratic national laws that supposedly violate trade agreements. This body bases its rulings on the advice of a panel of selected trade experts. Proceedings are secret, and the involvement of relevant third parties such as representatives of workers is prohibited. Rulings of the WTO can only be appealed once, and they cannot be challenged by any other court.

The fact that the WTO casts aside social or environmental standards in its agreements is completely unacceptable. Trade unions are demanding that the WTO accept the principle that these factors carry just as much weight in the well-being of nations as do narrow economic factors*.

According to ICFTU General Secretary Guy Ryder, "For decades, trade unions worldwide have been striving to improve conditions for working people all over the world. We cannot risk having these hard-won victories overturned and the WTO must be reformed to put social concerns first in its scale of priorities".

Furthermore, the WTO's narrow focus on economic issues threatens to undermine many of the international instruments which protect workers' rights and human rights in general, such as the International Labour Organization's Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work and the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, because trade measures to implement those declarations would be considered discriminatory under WTO rules. In order to help defend these achievements, unions around the world are calling on national delegations to press the WTO to accord consultative status to trade unions and other civil society groups at the WTO, as well as ensuring their regular involvement in national delegations to the WTO.

The ICFTU is calling for Respect for Democracy at the WTO as part of the Global Unions Campaign on Globalisation, which aims to build community awareness and public support for putting the interests of people first in these processes.

For background information on the international trade union position on democracy and openness at the WTO, visit:
http://www.global-unions.org/globalisation