The WTO's Doha Development Round: bad news from start to… finish?

Nearly 10 years ago, the IUF, together with two of our sister international union federations and a coalition of international civil society organizations, warned of the likely consequences of the WTO's stalled Doha Round of trade negotiations, calling it "a recipe for the massive destruction of livelihoods, mass unemployment and the degradation of work". That was after 4 years of negotiations which showed the exercise to be a thinly-disguised effort by wealthy countries to extract major concessions from developing countries on goods and services with agriculture being employed as a 'bargaining chip'.  Now there is a new threat coming from the WTO - the way in which the Doha Round may be formally wound up or suspended in the months preceding the Nairobi WTO ministerial in December.

The main goal of the US and its allies, including the EU, is to clear a path in the WTO to introduce a dangerous set of new issues that correspond to what they are negotiating in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) (see Trade Deals that Threaten Democracy). These include, among others, investment, government procurement, and state-owned enterprises - issues which were rejected by developing countries at the WTO in 2003 and cannot be negotiated while the Doha round formally continues. A revived push to renew the stalled WTO services negotiations (GATS) is also taking place while the secret TISA negotiations advance, creating additional pressure.

On July 8, the IUF and two of our sister GUFs (ITF and PSI) therefore joined with over 300 civil society organizations in calling on WTO members to resist these plans and insist on a radically different agenda for Nairobi and beyond. The letter points out that food security issues, including the ongoing subsidization of developed country agricultural exports, were used to entice and coerce developing countries into signing onto Doha Round. Wealthy exporters are now moving to get this off the agenda while attacking the right of poor countries to maintain public stockpiles of food reserves.  

You can read and endorse the letter here