HONG KONG — Participants at an interfaith conference on economic justice have urged the World Trade Organization (WTO) to respect people’s food sovereignty and halt the current negotiations on agriculture and the production of food.
“People’s food sovereignty is being undermined by the WTO’s Agreement on Agriculture (AOA),” a declaration said after a meeting held in Hong Kong from Dec. 9 to 11 which drew some 200 participants from 29 countries. And on Dec. 12 the UK-based advocacy and aid group, Christian Aid, urged poor countries to prepare for a walkout from the Dec. 13-18 WTO talks in Hong Kong unless the European Union makes a dramatic change in “its aggressive liberalizing trade policies.”
Christian Aid said leaked documents showed the EU was continuing to push developing nations to privatize sensitive services such as water, healthcare and banking, running counter to the Europeans’ own stand that the talks are primarily about pro-poor
trade policies.
Participants at the interfaith conference in Hong Kong said: “Agriculture has become the monopoly of large corporations which, through the current negotiations, aim at further reducing protection to farmers.” They urged the WTO to conduct an assessment of the impact of its trade agreements from the past 10 years on the world's people, especially the poor, before entering into any further trade pact.
“The WTO has challenged the banana and sugar industries in the Caribbean region — the industries that has sustained the region’s economy for a long time,” Oluwakemi Linda Banks, president of the Caribbean Conference of Churches, told Ecumenical News
International.
“However, the sad thing is the church did not talk much about it, particularly at the grass-roots level,” said Banks, an Anglican church leader, noting that more than half of the population in the Caribbean region was engaged in the sugar industry.
From Fiji, Semiti Qalowasa, a participant at the interfaith meeting, said: “International trade first came to Fiji as aid to the country.” He added: “But later on people found that the WTO does not make their lives better.” Semiti said garment production and sugar growing are the industries most affecting the Fiji population of about 800,000. Of them 20 per cent are in the garment industry and 10 per cent engaged in sugar production.
Participants at the interfaith gathering included Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and Christians. They appealed to faith communities to lobby governments to get out of the WTO and to work with civil society and people’s movements in strengthening community-based organizations. They joined an “Against the WTO March” on Dec. 11.
Among the 4,000 marchers the organizers said took part, the Hong Kong People’s Alliance on the WTO said that “the liberalization of agricultural marker promoted by the WTO have forced developing countries to open their market, so that agri-business
multinationals can dump their subsidized agricultural surplus products on developing countries resulting in ridiculously cheap prices … and millions of farmers falling into poverty.” |
