Fifty non-governmental organisations from around the world on Monday condemned a draft plan for WTO negotiations on farming trade reform, saying it ignored promises to place development issues at the heart of the talks.
”The current draft is a threat to rural livelihoods in Africa,” Thomas Barasa, of Resource Oriented Development Initiatives in Kenya, said.
Calling the draft proposal ”narrow-minded”, he told reporters that it failed to cater adequately for food security, nor did it offer enough protection for small scale farmers.
”The needs of African countries are not represented in the draft,” he said.
Stuart Harbinson, the chairman of the World Trade Organisation’s agriculture talks, earlier this month gave the body’s 145 members his initial ‘modalities’ blueprint, or the framework outlining how to conduct the negotiations. The final outline is due end of March.
Harbinson, who is also Hong Kong’s delegate, called for all
export subsidies to be eliminated in two phases, the first after five years and the rest within nine years. The plan also called for cuts in tariffs and domestic support.
Bonnie Setiawan, of the Institute for Global Justice in Indonesia, complained that dumping, or the selling of goods on a foreign market at a lower price than is normally charged at home, had destroyed farmer’s markets in Indonesia.
The WTO had never tackled what he called this ”most serious
problem”, he said. Indonesia, which has about 27-million farmers, faced dumping of many commodities, including rice from the United States, Thailand and Vietnam, and of sugar from Australia, he said. The 50 groups called for trade rules to allow countries to introduce import controls and tariffs on dumped farming products.
They also underlined the need for action to strengthen food
security. The 26-page WTO draft text makes no firm overall proposals on issues such as food security or environmental protection, known as ”non-trade concerns”.
Arze Gilpo, of Asian Gender and Trade Network, called the
‘special and differential treatment’ outlined in the draft to help developing countries benefit more from trade liberalization ”inconsequential”.
”It will not stem the flow of heavy food imports that are coming into and destroying the markets and domestic production of developing countries,” she told reporters.
In the Philippines, agriculture provided a livelihood for more than half of the labour force — half of all the farmers are women — and contributed about 27% to the country’s gross domestic product, she said.
The latest proposal was ”very much worrisome”, she added, saying it would lead to greater intensification of farm trade. – Sapa-AFP