(Fwd) Vandana Shiva on "free trade"

[J. Halász Judit]

Subject:                Vandana Shiva on "free trade"
  Our World is Not for Sale: Stop Corporate Globalisation
  Our World is Not for Sale: Stop Corporate Globalisation
  Our World is Not for Sale: Stop Corporate Globalisation
    Every aspect of life is up for sale,
    every aspect of human need and every
    form of human activity is being
    redefined as a tradeable service.
    Health and education will not be guaranteed
    to all members of society when they are no
    longer democratic rights provided through
    public services, but are commodities to be
    bought in the market place.
From: Lynette Dumble <ljdumble at connexus.net.au>
Subject: [MAI-NOT] Vandana Shiva: "Stop the GATS attack''.
http://www.the-hindu.com/stories/05031348.htm)
THE HINDU, Tuesday April 3, 2001.
An accord to auction vital resources
By Vandana Shiva
The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) is the
agreement being
most aggressively pushed through the ``built-in agenda'' of the
WTO through
no new round was possible in Seattle because of people's protests
and a
developing country backlash against their exclusion in trade
negotiations.
``Services'' include health and education, water and environment,
energy and
transport, food distribution and even government public service.
The 1994 GATS categories are:
- Business; Communication (telecoms, postal, audiovisual)
- Construction and related engineering services
- Distribution
- Educational
- Environmental (water delivery, energy, refuse disposal)
- Financial
- Health related and social
- Tourism and Travel related recreational, cultural and sporting
- Transport (sea, air, rail, road)
- and other
Hence every aspect of our lives is up for sale and every aspect of
human
needs and every form of human activity is being redefined as a
tradeable
service.
The WTO has drafted clever language about GATS being a
``bottom up'' treaty
rather than a ``top down'' treaty because a country can make
commitments for
trade liberation in different sectors through progressive
liberalisation.
Not a `bottom up' treaty
A treaty that totally bypasses national democratic decision-
making and
excludes citizen participation can hardly be called ``bottom up''. To
be
truly `bottom up', the rules and subject matter of GATS need to first
be
discussed among local communities and regional and national
parliaments.
They then need to be amended on the basis of democratic
feedback. Without
such a ``democracy round'', GATS is not a `bottom up' but a `top
down'
agreement being forced on the people of the world. The fact that
governments, as members of WTO, are putting the lives and
securities of
their citizens on auction to global corporations through GATS does
not make
the agreement legitimate or reflecting the will of people. GATS is
impinging
on issues of culture, resources and dispute resolution which under
some
national laws and constitutions are not under the jurisdiction of
federal
governments negotiating in WTO.

The philosophy of GATS is the auctioning of vital resources and
essential
services and transforming them from fundamental rights of citizens
to
markets for global corporations. Through GATS, in effect our lives
have been
put up for sale. Global energy and water corporations such as
Enron, Suez,
Vivendi, health and education, businesses such as the health
management
organisations (HMOs) in the U.S are pushing for liberalisation of
trade in
services. Even mining and logging corporations are riding on the
back of
GATS. And corporations trading in hazardous waste are trying to
use GATS.

Water privatisation

It is being argued that because this trade is already larger than
trade in
merchandise, service sectors should be commercialised and
globalised. The
promise is that services would be provided more efficiently and
prices of
essential services would reduce. But the experience of water
privatisation
in Bolivia, Puerto Rico and Argentina and energy privatisation in
California
and Maharashtra state in India shows that this is totally false.
In Bolivia, when public water system was sold to Bechtel and
International
water prices increased so dramatically that people protested, six
persons
were killed, hundreds injured. Finally, the corporations were kicked
out.
In 1995, when water was privatised in Puerto Rico, poor
communities had
no water, while tourist resorts and U.S. military bases enjoyed
unlimited
supply. In Argentina, when Generale de Eaux got a contract for
water
delivery, prices doubled and quality deteriorated. The company was
forced to pull out when people refused to pay their bills.
The WTO briefing of March 16, 2001, entitled ``GATS: Fact and
Fiction''
uses four arguments to allay citizens fears that GATS will lead to
the
dismantling of rights to water, health and education.

(1.) Art. 1 of GATS excludes ``services supplied in the exercise of
     governmental authority''.
(2.) GATS does not oblige countries to privatise or deregulate
services.
(3.) GATS does not oblige countries to open up their markets. In
what
     is termed the ``bottom-up'' approach to liberalisation,
governments
     can choose which services they open up and to what degree.
(4.) GATS does not prevent countries tightening regulations or
reversing
     previous decisions to allow service provision by foreigners.

Each of these responses is misleading.
Article I of GATS is recognised as ambiguous and does lend itself
to the
interpretation that public services are candidates for privatisation
and
liberalisation if services are offered on ``commercial basis'' or ``in
competition with one or more service suppliers.'' Since public
services also
have a fee, this could be interpreted as being commercial. Since
there are
always private actors in health, in education, this could be
interpreted as
being in competition. But small schools and private clinics are
different
from global corporations seeking trade liberalisation of services.

The very fact of putting vital service sectors up for trade
liberalisation
in the GATS classification for commitments, and allowing the entry
of
corporations in sectors which were beyond commerce is forcing
the Third
World to lock its essential services and scarce resources into the
violent
and unjust dispute settlement and trade sanction system of the
WTO.


Robbed of freedom

While WTO repeatedly refers to the ``freedom of countries'', its
rules and
rule-making processes rob weaker countries of freedom. Contrary
to the
propaganda that WTO rules serve the interests of the poor, the
rules are
rules of commercialisation - shaped and defined by powerful
corporations
to increase their power and profits.

None of the WTO arguments respond to the citizens' criticism of
the
principle of marketisation of essential services enshrined in GATS.
That
remains the goal and objective of GATS. The WTO response is a
weak attempt
at allaying realistic fears of citizens by using speed of processes of
implementation as an excuse to say the goals might not be
reached. But the
fact that a car can go off the road, or not start or start with delay
cannot
be used to deny the existence of a highway. GATS is the highway
to the
privatisation of our lives, and the highway leads in the wrong
direction.
That is the central issue of the debate on trade in services.

How and when different countries start their engines to drive down
this
highway is a secondary question. That they might not start at the
same time,
or might have different models of cars will not change the fact that
once
they are on the road to liberalisation of services, all will reach the
same
destination - a destination where water, health and education
cannot be
guaranteed to all members of society because they are no longer
rights
provided through public services, but are commodities to be bought
in the
market place.

The history of the Uruguay Round provides a good lesson of how
issues that
do not belong to WTO have been brought into WTO, issues that
were never
negotiated or accepted by the majority of members but were forced
on them.
TRIPs, agriculture, investment, services are not subject matters of
trade -
As the post-Seattle NGO Campaign stated, ``WTO needs to shrink
or it will
sink''. The U.S. and European Union pressure to commercialise
essential
services through GATS so that their corporations can make money
out of the
survival needs of the poor is a new wave of the genocide unleashed
through
WTO.

Trade liberalisation of agriculture is killing thousands of farmers, the
TRIPs agreement is denying cures to millions suffering from
Malaria, T.B.,
HIV/AIDS. Instead of pausing and taking stock of the destructive
impact of
WTO rules of agriculture, written by and enforced on behalf of 5
grain
trading giants and TRIPs rules made by the pharmaceutical and life
sciences
corporations, the WTO is rushing headlong into writing new rules
on behalf
of corporations wanting to control our water, our health, our
education.
That is why, as we move towards the next WTO Ministerial in
Qatar in
November, we will be organising and mobilising worldwide with the
common
call ``Our World is Not for Sale: Stop Corporate Globalisation''.
GATS
should be put into deep freeze. The future of services, and people's
rights
to water, health and education needs to be democratically debated
within
each society and country. Only after a ``democracy round'', in
which
ordinary people can take part, should issues be brought to WTO.
Without
democratic debate, WTO agreements have no legitimacy. The
citizens' agenda
cannot continue to be preempted by the corporate agenda and then
forced
undemocratically on people.

Broad alliances consisting of the women's movement, the
environment
movement, the education movement, the health movement, the
basic needs and
anti-poverty movements, and the economic and social justice
movements are
joining forces to ``stop the GATS attack''. We should be grateful to
WTO for
offering us this wonderful opportunity through GATS for building
solidarity
across sectors and across the world.

(The writer is Director, Research Foundation for Science,
Technology and
Ecology, New Delhi.)