The Frontlines Initiative is a joint project of four national public sector unions - the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) and the National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE) - which joins forces with sister unions in Colombia to fight against the privatization of public services and to strengthen each other’s struggles to defend human and labour rights. The delegation in Colombia received an important briefing on the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA), a proposed international trade treaty that, if ratified, will put public services in Colombia, Canada and 48 other countries at extreme risk.

Several developing countries on Wednesday (July 8) expressed their frustration with the World Trade Organization (WTO) Director-General Roberto Azevedo's announcement that the work program with precise modalities for concluding the Doha Development Round (DDR) trade negotiations will not be delivered by end-July.

Some 341 global civil society organisations (CSOs) on Wednesday underlined that if the upcoming tenth ministerial conference (MC10) of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to be held in Nairobi, Kenya is to be a "success", it must deliver on development and turn around the WTO.

A proposal floated by the World Trade Organization Director-General Roberto Azevedo during his meetings with seven major developed and developing countries to bring about convergence on the domestic support pillar of the Doha agriculture package has now surfaced in a non-paper issued by Australia and Canada, several trade envoys told the SUNS.

Negotiations in the WTO are heating up – and they are going badly. In November last year, WTO members agreed to come up with a “Work Program” for resurrecting the Doha Round by July 31. In this article Deborah James of OWINFS network articulates civil society position on recent developments in WTO negotiations.

Today, 341 global civil society organizations – including development advocates, trade unions, farmers’ organizations, consumer and environmental groups from over 100 countries – sent a letter to WTO members today urging them to abandon the WTO expansion talks and instead focus on an urgent agenda to fix existing damaging rules in the WTO.

It’s almost impossible to keep anything secret these days – not even the core text of a hyper-secret trade deal, the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA), which has spent the last two years taking shape behind the hermetically sealed doors of highly secure locations around the world. According to the agreement’s provisional text, the document is supposed to remain confidential and concealed from public view for at least five years after being signed! But now, thanks to WikiLeaks, it has seeped to the surface.

One day after it leaked a trove of documents related to the massive, pro-corporate Trade in Services Agreement (TISA), WikiLeaks on Thursday published another four chapters of the proposed 52-nation trade deal, covering key areas ahead of the next negotiating round on Monday.