The “Millennium Round” of the World Trade Organization (WTO) occurred in Seattle, Washington, the week of November 29, 1999. While the WTO proclaims the virtues of free and globalized trade for all and claims itself as an impartial trade policeman, it is clear that WTO policies benefit the corporate interests of rich and industrialized countries at the expense of the social dimension of trade policies, human rights, environmental protections, and the fair and equitable distribution of the world’s wealth and resources. Of primary importance to the WTO is the overturning of laws designed to protect the environment, ban growth hormones or restrict genetically modified foods. At the same time that the WTO aims to promote free trade, powerful countries and corporations continue to protect their economic interests through tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade. The strategy is to convince poor countries to relax their protectionist policies while rich countries do little to open their markets. The areas where poor countries are most competitive - textiles, footwear, and agriculture - are where industrialized countries are most reluctant to remove restrictions on imports while demanding that poor countries open their markets to US food exports. Thousands of food producers in developing countries will be displaced from the market and unable to compete with subsidised imports from rich nations.

When an organization such as the WTO functions like a quasi-world government, superceding national and international laws (that govern human rights, women’s equality, peace, development, equitable distribution), for the benefit of corporate profit and capital accumulation, everyone who is not of the national or transnational elite will be hurt. The WTO is the largest and most powerful trade arrangement in the world and for this reason, has generated a global civil society protest, one which was in full force in Seattle at the end of November. Their is a very committed and knowledgeable group of women, the women’s caucus of the NGO forum, who convened a women’s day on December 1st, 1999 at the WTO, parallel to the ministerial meetings. Th issues they identify as crucial for consideration are WTO impacts on food, security, human rights, labour standards and investment, as well as the differential impacts on developing countries in the areas of agriculture, textiles, services and environmental protections.

Along with the majority of developing nations, it is the vulnerable populations within those and other countries who stand to lose the most. Farmers of Caribbean and African countries are particularly threatened, as are farmers in the Philippines, India, and other agricultural producers who are poor relative to other countries. As is always the case, the most vulnerable populations are overwhelmingly female.

Besides agriculture, this round of the WTO heavily focussed on protections for intellectual property called TRIPS (trade in intellectual property). Intellectual property refers to the knowledge and technology across all sectors, from manufacturing to agriculture to pharmaceuticals. Through the model of the US patent protection system, the WTO would grant to northern transnational companies such as Monsanto the right to own and sell knowledge pertaining to crop growth, hybrid generation, extraction of herbal resources for medication, and other innovations in the creation of technologies. The corporation would be protected, but not to others who may also be creating innovative technologies, leaving them vulnerable to poachers. The option would be to buy technologies from the corporations or to do without them. The poorest countries will be unable to purchase the technologies essential to successful participation in the global trading system. Besides the fact that many of the technologies contravene the Convention on Biodiversity, patenting them arrests control of ideas in a way that fundamentally ignores where and how corporate knowledge very often comes to be: through the extraction and appropriation of indigenous knowledge. For indigenous peoples in Canada, Asia and Central American and Australia, for instance, intellectual property cannot be distinguished from cultural property.

In addition to food security and land and resource use for physical survival, is the issue of cultural survival and the right to self-determination. There was a large indigenous peoples’ presence at the WTO that convened an evening of speakers and rallies on December 1, following the women’s day activities. In Canada, there are a number of women working on the issue of intellectual property rights, with particular focus on the relationship of Aboriginal women to intellectual and cultural property, in the areas of art and design, agriculture and pharmaceuticals.

Social justice groups are not uniform in their strategies or political positions in relation to the WTO. There are obvious conflicts between labour groups in industrialized countries and in developing countries that unions work hard to negotiate. There are difficulties in ensuring that worker’s rights also include women’s rights, which necessarily includes unpaid work, often not calculated as labour. There are some who want to reject the WTO wholesale, others who say there is no way to get rid of it, so we are stuck dealing with it. There are some who argue that trade and globalisation can result in increased wealth and benefits for all if managed properly; others who say that under global capitalism, there will always be some who gain on the backs of others. Many are agreed that the negative impacts of the last WTO meeting (Uruguay Round) have not been adequately assessed at this point, and for that reason, are arguing that the Seattle meetings should not move ahead on trade liberalisation agenda at this time but rather, to the meeting should have been used to fairly asses impacts and develop compensatory policies for the next round.

It is not an easy task to sort through all the various positions. However, from out research so far, it seems that one good strategy to adopt is to insist that human rights, food security, women’s equality, environmental protections and appropriate development always be considered “trade issues” that have to be “on the table” first and foremost prior to entering any trade agreement. Canada, for instance, is a signatory to all United Nations human rights treaties. According to UN treaties, human rights are absolute and nonderogable, meaning that they are granted on the grounds of being human and they cannot legitimately be transgressed under any circumstances. One strategy to humanize the WTO is to compel WTO countries to not agree to anything that does not respect their prior commitments to human rights. In Canada, we have some opportunities to do this, for instance, by documenting the impacts of trade arrangements, putting them into the language of human rights and women’s rights, demonstrating how it is that Canada’s agreement to a particular macroeconomic arrangement contravenes its obligations to guarantee economic, social, and cultural rights to people in Canada. It’s one strategy; there are many others.