Global Policy Forum

by Gustavo Capdevila

The new round of global trade-liberalizing talks unanimously agreed to here on Wednesday - albeit reluctantly by many poor countries - will not neglect the concerns of developing nations, First World representatives insisted. After six days of haggling at the Fourth Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization, none of the more than 140 WTO member states stood in the way of consensus in the Qatari capital. The talks are slated to begin in January and will cover nearly all the issues that the world's wealthy nations wanted to see included.

In the preparatory sessions leading up to the ministerial conference, the United States and European Union (EU) had tried to convince poor countries of the virtues of new negotiations, promising that they would turn into "a development round". Mike Moore, the WTO's director-general, stated that the development dimension could be found in the negotiations on agriculture, facilitation of trade and the application of pending agreements, among others.

Argentine trade negotiator Roberto Lavagna took a more cautious tone, saying that he would wait to see how the negotiations play out before deciding whether he would agree with the "development round" moniker. And Brazil's Foreign Affairs Minister Celso Lafer, who participated in the Doha meeting, commented that the resolutions adopted "do not constitute a good accord", but that they do form part of the balance in the multilateral trade system.

Nigerian Trade Minister Mustafa Bello, meanwhile, stated that the African bloc had accepted - with reservations - the decisions made by the ministerial conference regarding negotiations on investment, competition, trade facilitation and transparency in government procurement. The African nations remain concerned about the WTO's approach to environmental questions and to agricultural issues affecting the least developed countries.

The new round will be broad-based, covering talks on environment rules, industrial tariffs, implementation of prior accords and intellectual property rights. Formal negotiations on investment, competition rules, transparency in government procurement, and trade facilitation will be determined by the next ministerial conference, to take place in 2003.

Moore issued assurances that the new round will be more balanced than the previous series of multilateral trade talks, known as the Uruguay Round (1986-94), alluding to the fact that the developing countries are better organized this time. But non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Doha for the conference charged that the new round "will exacerbate poverty and inequality". One NGO representative charged that "the development round is devoid of development".

Michael Bailey, with the humanitarian group Oxfam International, predicted that the new round will overwhelm the negotiating capacities of poor countries and that they will be forced to open their markets unconditionally to transnational corporations. The Third World Network, an international NGO based in Malaysia, issued a statement that the Doha ministerial declaration has marked a vast expansion of the WTO's mandate and operations and that it is headed "in the wrong direction". The ministers' decision in Doha will ultimately cause serious social and economic problems in developing countries and will restrict the right of these nations to adopt the policies or implement the development options they need, said the Third World Network.

But the NGO delegations generally agreed that the portions of the ministerial declaration that refer to pharmaceutical patent rights and access to medications represented one of the few victories the poor countries achieved in Doha. Largely as the result of intense pressure from the sub-Saharan Africa bloc, Brazil and India, the Doha declaration recognizes governments' unrestricted right to adopt effective health policies for their populations - particularly for responding to pandemics such as HIV/AIDS, malaria or tuberculosis.

James Love, with the Consumer Project on Technology, said that the ministers' decision to begin a new round of talks sets a precedent for evaluations of existing bilateral or regional trade accords. The Fourth Ministerial Conference of the WTO was extended by one day because of some fierce opposition to the inclusion of certain points in the new round of trade negotiations. One of the highlights of the six-day meet was the approval of China's accession to the WTO. The Asian giant will add its high-growth economy and a market of 1.3 billion people to the global trade system.

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