HONG KONG — The 149 members of the World Trade Organization, after days of protests during their Hong Kong talks, breathed a sigh of relief on hammering out a scaled-down agreement on global commerce. But many Christian and civil society groups fighting for trade justice rued that the deal will do little to help the world’s poor.
“Those talks might not have crashed as spectacularly as those at Seattle and Cancun. However, the deal will have as little impact on the world’s poor people,” said trade analyst Claire Melamed on the Web site of the British aid and trade justice advocacy group Christian Aid on Dec. 19 after the talks ended.
The main area of progress in the long-stalled talks came on Dec. 18, the final day of the WTO Ministerial Conference, when rich countries agreed on the year 2013 as an end date for agricultural export subsidies. By then there should be no more payments from rich country governments to support exports by their farmers and food companies.
“This is a step forward but one that is more symbolic than real, as the actual cuts in subsidies that will result are tiny less than five per cent of the total amount that the EU (European Union) and others pay to their farmers,” said Melamed.
But the text agreed in Hong Kong made it less likely that there would be significant reforms on other payments to farmers by governments in rich countries, she said. “Poor countries will also get no more access to rich countries’ agricultural markets as a result of what’s been agreed here,” Melamed noted.
The ministers at the WTO meeting also agreed to:
- the elimination by industrialized countries of their tariffs and quotas on 97 per cent of their import categories for goods coming from the world’s poorest 50 nations;
- the elimination by the end of 2006 of all cotton export subsidies and a series of moves to help West African cotton-growing nations;
- several billion dollars a year in aid from the United States, the European Union and Japan to Least Developed Countries (LDCs) so that they can expand their exports and adjust to rising global competition.
Brazil’s foreign minister, Celso Amorim, said progress had been possible in part because of the G20 alliance of developing countries formed at a previous WTO meeting. “I think the fact that we act together enabled us to have solidarity among developing countries across the issues,” Amorim told journalists, noting the G20 alliance had been able to act as a counterweight to the EU and the U.S.
Still, the role played by the G20 in reaching agreement came in for criticism from some NGOs from the Global South which charged that it had not taken into account the interests of the Least Developed Countries.
“This is a complete betrayal of LDCs, the poorest countries of the world, by all parties,” said Karmojibi Nari, a Bangladesh-based NGO working on trade, gender and labor issues, criticizing the final Hong Kong text. It said it was “especially” critical of the G20 alliance.
The G20 grouping focusing on agriculture is led by Brazil, China, India and South Africa. Other members include Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Egypt, Guatemala, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, the Philippines and Thailand. Together, these countries make up more than half of the world’s population and have two-thirds of its farmers.
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