Archive - Signon Statement

In this letter to Mr. Roberto Azevêdo, Director General, WTO, 162 organizations expressed concerns regarding intellectual property commitments being forced on Yemen as part of its WTO accession package that will be presented for formal adoption, to the 9th WTO Ministerial Conference in Bali, 3-6 December 2013.

Over 280 civil society organizations representing a broad range of civil society groups and global union federations representing hundreds of millions of workers across the world urged Roberto Azevedo, the Director-General of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and WTO member states, to take the issue of food security in developing countries as a matter of serious and immediate concern not to render the G-33 proposal on public food stockholding a travesty by asking developing countries to agree to the current text on the peace clause.

The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) together with 163 other trade union and civil society organisations are raising concerns over a proposed expansion of the Information Technology Agreement (ITA II) being negotiated at the World Trade Organisation (WTO). In a joint letter to the WTO members, they argued that the proposed expansion, would lead to erosion of manufacturing potential in developing countries and called for a comprehensive impact assessment of ITA I before taking a decision on ITA II.

After many failed Ministerial meetings and nearly twelve years of negotiations, the Doha Round of WTO expansion is at a crossroads. Developed countries have pushed aside agreements to negotiate on key developing country issues intended to correct the imbalances within the existing WTO, which formed the basis of the development mandate of Doha. Even worse, developed countries appear to be re-packaging the same liberalization and market access demands of their corporate interests to create a “new trade narrative” towards gaining agreements at the upcoming 9th Ministerial in Bali. In this statement with specific demands Our World Is Not for Sale (OWINFS) network asserts that in addition to a long-term transformation of the global trade and economic architecture, immediate changes must be made to WTO in order to provide countries more policy space to pursue a positive agenda for development and job-creation, food security, sustainable development, access to affordable healthcare and medicines, and global financial stability.

Today, as governments meet in Geneva to negotiate a proposed Trade in Services Agreement (TISA), 345 organizations representing hundreds of thousands of people from nearly every developing and developed country, called on governments to abandon the talks. Among the endorsers were 42 major international and regional networks such as Public Services International (PSI), UNI Global Union, the European Federation of Public Services Unions (EPSU), the IndustriALL Global Union, the International Union of Food and Allied Workers (IUF), and the ATTAC European network. The letter was organized by the OWINFS network.

DECLARATION OF THE G20 COUNTER-SUMMIT
St Petersburg, 4 September 2013

Social movements and civil society organizations from different parts of the world have met on 3 -4 September 2013 in Saint Petersburg, Russia, on the eve of the G20 Summit and in a context of the threat by the United States of America (USA) to attack Syria. With the participation of more than 30 international delegates of world social movements, our G20 Counter-Summit, was hosted by the Post-Globalization Initiative.

On 11th June 2013, the WTO TRIPS Council took a decision (IP/C/64) to extend for a further 8 years, the flexibility of least developed country (LDC) Members under Article 66.1 to not apply the provisions of the TRIPS Agreement except for Articles 3, 4 and 5 (which concern national treatment and most-favored nation treatment). This decision was a compromise deal as the EU and US exerted intense pressure on the LDCs to accept conditionalities that are not in favour of the people in the LDCs.

Global civil society organizations, representing hundreds of millions of members across the globe, urge WTO members to abandon the negotiations towards a binding agreement on Trade Facilitation in advance of the upcoming 9th Ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Bali. Further they call upon governments not to promote binding rules on Trade Facilitation either inside the WTO through the proposed Trade Facilitation (TF) agreement, nor through other avenues such as bilateral or regional Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) or Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs).

Global civil society groups write to Pascal Lamy, outgoing WTO Director General, to strongly object to the recently formed “WTO Panel on Defining the Future of Trade.” This panel, more than half of which is composed by representatives of the business sector, does not have the global legitimacy of the stakeholders – those who will be impacted by the future of trade negotiations within the WTO – to be able to propose a legitimate path forward for future WTO negotiations.

Global civil society groups urged WTO member countries to oppose the current Least Developed Countries (LDCs) accession package, and send it back for re-negotiation and improvement before it is accepted by the WTO membership.