When the Doha meeting
wraps up tonight, hopefully with a reasonably
successful conclusion-although, of course,
not everybody will be fully satisfied with
every detail-the entire World Trade Organization
will be able to breathe a collective sigh
of relief. It will have avoided another "failure" like
Seattle. Thanks to ultra-tight security,
and the cooperation of Qatari authorities,
anti-globalization demonstrators, protestors
and other distractions have been kept to
a minimum. But tight security can go only
so far; it does nothing to improve the
public image of the organization, nor can
it improve public acceptance of its policies
or-perhaps the most important of all-public
trust in it.
Trust,
it goes without saying, is something that must be earned
over time. What went down in Seattle was largely the
result of mistrust. "Globalization" became
such a bogey-man in Seattle because few people understood
what the WTO is or how it works. It has, after all,
been around for only a few years. What's more, the
subject of international trade tends to be so complex
and technical, so burdened with opaque acronyms like
TRIPS and GATS and obscure (to the man in the street)
references such as "Singapore issues" and "Uruguay
Round." Add the secrecy that usually surrounds
trade (and most other commercial) negotiations, and
you have a prescription for world-class misunderstanding
and mistrust.
In the countries
of the developing world, that mistrust has been
compounded by the widespread
perception-based on some solid evidence-that the
WTO was not really set up to look after their interests,
but rather the interests of the industrialized
countries. Even now, when the WTO is promoting
what the delegates of the rich countries like to
call a "development round," many of the
countries most in need of development remain suspicious
and aloof. They continue to complain that their
views are neither solicited nor heeded, and that
even the physical set-up of this conference militates
against their full participation.
The developing countries can recite a long litany
of past promises of aid that were later broken.
They know that the United Nations has agreed that
rich countries should devote an amount equal to
0.7 percent of their GDP to official development
assistance. They also know that only four countries
in the world have ever met that target, while the
US, which paints itself as desiring to help the
poor countries in every way possible, devotes only
0.1 percent of its GDP to foreign aid-and very
little of that goes to the very poorest countries.
More fundamentally,
the developing countries has reason to question
the supposed benefits that they
are promised will come from freer trade. As John
Madeley, a Britisher who has been an observer of
global trade talks since 1982, points out in his
book "Hungry for Trade?" studies of the
effects of trade liberalization in 39 countries
all point to the same conclusion: "The majority
of the poor do not benefit [from trade liberalization,
including WTO trade agreements] but are instead
made more vulnerable to food security." The
studies also show, he says, that trade liberalization
increases the number of farmers forced off their
land, accentuates gender inequalities, increases
unemployment, causes increased soil degradation,
loss of biodiversity and depletion of water resources.
Given this track record, one can hardly blame
the governments of developing countries for viewing
the whole trade liberalization process with a jaundiced
eye. Nor can anyone expect them to jump for joy
at the prospect of more of the same.
So, whether or
not this meeting "succeeds" in
launching a Doha Round, the WTO will still have
to deal with the central issue that never really
got resolved in Seattle: the issue of trust. And
from what we've seen here so far, that's not going
to be easy to do.
|
