"We, Parliamentarians from Africa attending the Sixth Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), being elected representatives of the people of Africa, and faithful to our oversight role, have keenly followed the process of multilateral trade negotiations since the failed fifth MC in Cancun in 2003. We have noted with concern that while the Doha Ministerial Declaration’s Paragraph 4 explicitly calls for the needs and interests of developing countries to be at the heart of the Doha Work Programme (DWP), vested interests in powerful countries of the North have hijacked the process and content of the DWP and is determined to deliver a “Round for Free” to developed Members of the WTO. We insist that the development concerns in all aspects of negotiations that have been raised by African Members and other developing countries must be addressed and explicitly agreed upon (with clear targets, indicators and timelines) as an integral part of the negotiations."

Key sites for keeping updated on events in Hong Kong

- Third World Network Africa
http://www.twnafrica.org/wto.asp

- Focus on the Global South
http://www.focusweb.org/

- Third World Network
http://www.twnside.org.sg/

- Hong Kong People's Alliance on the WTO
http://daga.dhs.org/hkpa/paw/pawindex.html

- WTO: Derail, Dismantle, Destroy
http://targetwto.revolt.org/

The state of California rewarded redemption with cold-blooded murder - justified with a press release and carried out in the dead of night, writes Alan Maass on the website www.zmag.org Stan Tookie Williams was put to death in the execution chamber at San Quentin Prison just past midnight on December 13. The former leader of the Crips in Los Angeles has spent the last decade of his life as one of the most powerful and articulate voices warning youth against violence, crime and prison. Gang truces negotiated along the lines of his “Protocol for Peace” have saved lives across the U.S.

In spite of recent initiatives to harmonise donor practices and align aid behind a PRSP-based partnership between developing country governments and donors, there is no systematic monitoring by developing country governments, at an individual country level, of whether donors are living up to their pledges on aid quality and support for the PRSP framework, or behaving consistently across countries. To redress this situation, Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPCs) have led the preparation of a methodology to enable them to assess the quality of aid they receive as part of the process of designing overall national debt and new financing strategies. This document sets out the HIPCs' findings and recommendations.

Today (December 13) marked the opening of the WTO, with actions inside the building and on the street. For GCAP it was an eventful day. The morning began with the publication of the Nelson Mandela adverts in the Financial Times Asia and the South China Post, with a message to the WTO delegates from Nelson Mandela, an op-ed in the South China Post by Martin Khor and commentary by Henri Valot. Later in the morning, GCAP campaigners made the formal handover of the e-action to EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson . In just three short weeks, the national coalitions of GCAP and the whiteband site managed to get an amazing total of 476,733 e-actions! In front of a huge media scrum, GCAP's trade demands were handed to Peter Mandelson by Sumie Arima, Thomas Deve and Rezual Karim Chowdury inside the WTO centre.

The International Monetary Fund has approved a $4.8bn (£2.8bn) plan to cancel the debts of 20 of the world's poorest countries. It is part of the multilateral debt relief initiative agreed by leaders of the G8 industrialised states last July. With the World Bank and IMF they set a target of writing off $55bn of debts from the world's poorest nations. Around 70% of the debt is owed to the World Bank, while the rest is owed to the IMF and African Development Bank. The World Bank is expected to announce a $38bn debt relief package later in December.

A recently published paper by the Institute of Development Studies summarises the findings of a comparative research project on the contribution of civil society organisations to democratisation in Africa. Drawing primarily on empirical case studies of civil society organisations in South Africa and Uganda, and related material from Ghana, the research examines their ability to influence government policy and legislation through tangible shifts in policy and legislative priorities and their implementation, and to widen the opportunities available to citizens to participate in public affairs, promoting a culture of accountability and challenging the power of the state to dominate decision-making.

This briefing paper from the Academy for Educational Development discusses the classification of children with disabilities in educational systems, including how such classifications vary across countries. It argues that the implications of the differing classification criteria affect the provision of educational opportunities for every child, regardless of the nature or level of his or her physical, mental, or sensory disability.

The One World Trust promotes education and research into the changes required within global organisations in order to achieve the eradication of poverty, injustice and war. It conducts research on practical ways to make global organisations more responsive to the people they affect, and on how the rule of law can be applied equally to all and educates political leaders and opinion-formers about the findings of our research. You may sign up for the newsletter by emailing accountability@oneworldtrust.org.

The prosecutor of the new International Criminal Court said he was investigating killings, mass rapes and other atrocities in western Sudan but could only interview witnesses outside of lawless Darfur. Luis Moreno Ocampo, an Argentine who was asked by the U.N. Security Council in March to prosecute those responsible for atrocities in Darfur, also told the council that the Sudanese government had been cooperating with him. But Sudan's Justice Minister Mohammed al-Mardi told Reuters in an interview that Moreno Ocampo's investigators would not have any access to Darfur.
Related Link:
Dead End in Darfur?
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/sudan/2005/1212deadend.htm

"We, the undersigned organizations and individuals dedicated to protecting and promoting human rights, are watching with keen interest the discussions now underway to create a new Human Rights Council at the United Nations. We are writing to you now, on the eve of International Human Rights Day and in honor of the victims of human rights violations in every corner of the globe, to urge each of your governments to adopt a General Assembly resolution by the end of this year establishing a Human Rights Council that will be stronger and more effective than the Commission on Human Rights."

The Global Organization Against Corruption (GOPAC) is an international network of parliamentarians dedicated to good governance and combating corruption throughout the world. Their website is intended to be a portal for parliamentarians and others, interested in joining forces to fight corruption and promote good governance.

The world marked International Anti-Corruption Day on 9 December, two years after the historic signing of the United Nations Convention against Corruption in Merida, Mexico. Releasing the Global Corruption Barometer 2005, Huguette Labelle, the new Chair of Transparency International argued that "Stronger leadership is essential if corruption is to be defeated".

Displaced people in the strife-torn western region of Darfur continue to be threatened and harassed even after their arrival in camps, aid workers say. Violence, however, is just one side of the coin. Many IDPs suffer more subtle forms of harassment and abuse that make daily life in the camps a constant misery.

The liberalisation of world trade in textiles has turned the sector on its head and had a devastating social cost, according to a report published on 6 December by the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions entitled ‘Stitched Up: How those imposing unfair competition in the textiles and clothing industries are the only winners in this race to the bottom’. As anticipated, China is cashing in on the unfair competition it imposes on its developing country rivals, with exports to the United States and Europe rising by 70% and 45% respectively between January and April 2005. China ’s advantage is mainly due to the unbridled exploitation of the workforce, characterised - amongst other things - by abnormally low salaries, excessive working hours and frequently intolerable health and safety conditions.

President George W. Bush’s administration is drawing up plans to carry out the biggest overhaul of the US foreign aid apparatus in more than 40 years in an attempt to assert more political control over international assistance, according to officials and aid experts. The proposed reorganisation could lead to a takeover by the State Department of the independent US Agency for International Development. Critics in the aid community fear the reorganisation will lead to a politicisation of foreign assistance.

In honor of international human rights day, Global Exchange has released a report on the “Most Wanted” Corporate Human Rights Violators of 2005. "We developed this list to illustrate that on issues as diverse as assassination, torture, kidnapping, environmental degradation, abusing public funds, violently repressing worker rights, releasing toxins into pristine environments, destroying homes, and causing widespread health problems, it’s not just governments that are to blame. Corporations carry out some of the most horrific human rights abuses of modern times. For the full list, please follow the link."

In 1989, the United Nations put forth the Convention on the Rights of the Child -- a treaty that protects the civil and economic rights of children around the world. To date, 192 nations have ratified the treaty. Only two have not. A decade later, just seven countries voted against the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), an independent body created to prosecute genocide and crimes against humanity. And in October of this year, members of the U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) voted overwhelmingly to pass a new treaty aimed at protecting cultural diversity worldwide. Only two states voted against it. The United States is the only nation to oppose all three. And the list of U.N. treaties and conventions that Washington has not signed or has actively opposed goes on and on.

A detailed and disturbing strategy document has revealed an extraordinary American plan to destroy Europe's support for the Kyoto treaty on climate change. Put together by a lobbyist who is a senior official at a group partly funded by ExxonMobil, the world's biggest oil company and a fierce opponent of anti-global warming measures, the plan seeks to draw together major international companies, academics, think-tanks, commentators, journalists and lobbyists from across Europe into a powerful grouping to destroy further EU support for the treaty.

The absolute ban on torture, a cornerstone of the international human rights edifice, is becoming a casualty of the so-called "war on terror", the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said. "Pursuing security objectives at all costs may create a world in which we are neither safe nor free", said Louise Arbour, speaking at United Nations headquarters in New York in the run-up to Human Rights Day, commemorated on 10 December. "This will certainly be the case if the only choice is between the terrorists and the torturers". "Governments are watering down the definition of torture, claiming that terrorism means established rules do not apply anymore", Mrs. Arbour continued.

Did you know that, according to an Oxfam report, America has 25,000 cotton farmers and every acre of cotton farmland in the US attracts a subsidy of $230 ($3.9 billion in 2001/2)? In fact America’s cotton farmers receive so much money in subsidies that it adds up to more than the entire GDP of Burkina Faso – the comparison being particularly relevant seeing as though more than two million people in Burkina Faso depend on cotton production. It’s facts like these that hammer home the imbalances of the global trading system and act as a reminder of what’s at stake for millions of people in discussions over agriculture at the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Read on for more quick facts, a glossary of WTO terms and links to background reading on the WTO.

Quick Facts on Trade

* Forced trade liberalisation has cost Sub-Saharan Africa US$ 272 billion over the past 20 years.

* The amount of money lost as a result of trade liberalisation could have paid all of these countries’ debts plus pay the vaccinations and school fees of every child.
SOURCE: http://www.christian-aid.org.uk/indepth/506liberalisation/index.htm

* The privatization of water in Ghana has meant that fees have increased by 95% and will probably rise by another 300% to meet the “market rate.”
SOURCE: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/sep2002/wate-s07.shtml

* Farmers in G8 countries are subsidised approximately $1 billion a day, which is roughly equivalent to the entire GDP of sub-Saharan Africa. SOURCE: http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20040725-031636-7601r.htm

* 24 sub-Saharan African countries face food emergencies. Some 30.5 million people will need food assistance.
SOURCE: http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2005/107852/index.html

* Uganda’s textile sector used to employ 500,000 people and earn $100 million in annual exports, but has virtually been brought to its knees by imports. 80% of clothing available in Uganda is imported and second hand. SOURCE: http://www.newint.org/issue373/currents.htm

* America has 25,000 cotton farmers and every acre of cotton farmland in the US attracts a subsidy of $230 ($3.9 billion in 2001/2.) America’s cotton farmers receive more in subsidies than the entire GDP of Burkina Faso – a country in which more than two million people depend on cotton production. This figure constitutes three times more in subsidies than the entire USAID budget for Africa’s 500 million people.
SOURCE: http://www.oxfam.org.uk/what_we_do/issues/trade/bp30_cotton.htm

* An estimated 25 million adults and children were living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa at the end of 2003. During that year, an estimated 2.2 million people died from AIDS. The epidemic has left behind some twelve million orphaned African children.
SOURCE: http://www.avert.org/subaadults.htm

* In 2002 ten of the highest grossing pharmaceutical companies each had sales over $11.5 billion. The world’s top 5 drug companies have a combined worth twice the Gross Domestic Product of sub-Saharan Africa. Mergers are leading to behemoths with ever increasing power. In 1995, 25 drug companies controlled over half the global drugs market; by 2000, just 15 managed to do the same thing.
SOURCE: New Internationalist (362) November, 2003

* It is reported that since the discovery of oil in 1956, Nigeria has made about $400 billion in profits. 70% of the 130 million Nigerians live on less than a dollar a day. SOURCE: http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2004-10/11majavu.cfm

WTO Glossary

ACP: Stands for Africa, Caribbean, and Pacific.

Agreement in Agriculture: Occurred under the Uruguay round and set out to protect the G8 countries’ interests in terms of agriculture.

Doha Round: This round of World Trade Organization negotiations aims to lower barriers to trade around the world, with a focus on making trade fairer for developing countries. Talks have been hung over a divide between the rich, developed countries, and the major developing countries (represented by the G20).

Cotonou Agreement: A treaty which sets out the relationship between the European Union and the African, Caribbean and Pacific governments. The agreement was established in June 2000 in Benin, succeeding the Lomé Convention, and provides for replacing the unilateral trade preferences that the EU accords to the ACP countries under the Lomé Convention with Economic Partnership Agreements involving reciprocal obligations.

Development Box: Rules and exemptions that would allow poor nations to protect their agricultural industries (these are an extension of “special and differential treatment” WTO principles, which intend to help developing countries integrate into the global economy of trade and implement their commitments).

Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs): The European Union has been bargaining with African countries in order to enable market access to European goods and services in Africa, which go beyond what is required of African countries according to the WTO.

Five Interested Parties: Comprised by US, European Union (EU), Brazil, India and Australia, the Five Interested Parties constitute the core negotiating group for the Doha round. (http://www.hardnewsmedia.com/portal/2005/11/205)

Free Trade: The untaxed flow of goods and services between countries, and is a name given to economic policies and parties supporting increases in such trade.

Free Trade Area (FTA): An area in which member states eliminate tariffs among themselves but maintain individual tariff schedules on imports from non-member countries. (http://www.eu-ldc.org)

General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT): Functions as the foundation of the WTO trading system, and remains in force today. The GATT, is an international agreement and is based on the "unconditional most favored nation principle." This means that the conditions applied to the most favored trading nation (i.e. the one with the least restrictions) apply to all trading nations.

Group of 90 (G90): An umbrella body of the African Group, the least developed countries and the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group. It is the largest grouping of members in the World Trade Organisation. (http://www.twnside.org.sg/title2/gtrends16.htm)

Group of 77 (G77): A loose coalition of developing nations, designed to promote its members' collective economic interests and create an enhanced joint negotiating capacity in the United Nations.

Group of 21 (G21): A bloc of developing nations established in 2003. The group emerged at the 5th Ministerial WTO conference, held in Cancún in 2003. In trade negotiations, the group has pressed for rich countries to end subsidies to their farmers and opposed liberalisation of their own agricultural sectors.

Lome Convention: First signed in 1975, it arose out of Europe's wish to guarantee itself regular supplies of raw materials, and to maintain its privileged position in its overseas markets.
Non-Agricultural Market Access (NAMA): These talks centre around industrial goods, but also include natural resources, and the goal of these talks is to open up the economy and make access to these products easier.

Special and Differential Treatment: The argument of developing countries that special circumstances require specific consideration and trade restrictions can be legitimate and appropriate instruments for development purposes. (www.soutchcentre.org)

Trade liberalization: Another term to refer to free trade.

Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS): An international treaty which sets down minimum standards for most forms of intellectual property regulation within all member countries of the WTO.

Uruguay Round: A trade negotiation lasting from September 1986 to April 1994 which transformed the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade into the World Trade Organization (WTO).

World Trade Organisation (WTO): An international rules-based and member driven organization which oversees a large number of agreements defining the "rules of trade" between its member states.

* All definitions, unless otherwise noted, come from Wikipedia.

Links

EPA Watch - http://www.epawatch.net
Eco News Africa - http://www.econewsafrica.org/
ACP EU Trade - http://www.acp-eu-trade.org/
International Gender and Trade Network - http://www.igtn.org/
Third World Network Africa - http://www.twnafrica.org/
SEATINI - http://www.seatini.org/

Further Reading

Does Foreign Equal Cheaper, Better, More? http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=31286
Egypt Cottons On To Its Interests http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=31269
Will WTO Shrink or Sink? http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/agp/free/wto/news/2005/1203doha_ho…
Nothing to Gain, Everything to Lose: Developing Country Prospects at the Hong Kong WTO Ministerial and Beyond
http://www.choike.org/nuevo_eng/informes/3637.html
Disneyland, Doha and the WTO in Hong Kong: The Spectacle of Corporate Fear, Absurdity and the New Universalism
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=13&ItemID=9164
Action Aid Report – Down the Plughole: Why Bringing Water Into the WTO Services Negotiations Would Unleash a Development Disaster
http://www.actionaid.org.uk/wps/content/documents/GATS_report.pdf
Oxfam Report – Africa and the Doha Round: Fighting to Keep Development Alive
http://www.oxfam.org/eng/pdfs/bp80_Africa_and_the_Doha_Round.pdf
EU must negotiate itself out of a corner
http://tinyurl.com/b6p47