The World Trade Organisation summit in Doha has been billed as a Development Round, i.e. the issues and interests of the developing world, some 80% of the global population, were uppermost on the agenda. It was nothing of the sort. It has been widely touted as successful because the developing world finally, at the last minute, accepted the agenda. It only did so because its arm was being firmly twisted.
At any rate, Doha was essentially talks about talks. Now the serious business of discussions and negotiations is about to begin - but on the agenda fixed at Doha and the agenda, in the words of an African delegate, “stinks”.
The last global trade talks which culminated in 1993, left the developing world battered and bruised. They had come expecting a more level playing field to be at least discussed. They wanted the same rules, such as the protection of industries in the north and massive export subsidies for agricultural products in the EU to be reconciled with the demands that they open up their own markets and cut subsidies. Instead, as Charlotte Denny writes in the UK Guardian, “sidelined by the world’s great trading blocs, the EU, Japan and the US, they signed up to an unfair and unbalanced deal.”
“Over the seven-year negotiations,” Denny continues, “western countries did little to unlock their markets - agriculture and textiles imports are critical for developing economies. Meanwhile poor countries committed themselves to introducing complex new laws on intellectual property rights, customs systems and foreign investments, designed to make it easier for western companies doing business in the developing world.”
The Seattle WTO meeting two years ago, held against a background of massive protests from thousands of lobby groups and NGOs was a complete failure. Developing countries walked out in protest when the US threatened to link trade with labour standards. Poor countries saw this, accurately as scheme to bar their goods from western markets.
This time around in Doha, developing countries had come prepared. They were already furious because the negotiating text which had been drawn in Geneva without their participation, pulled no punches in its attempts to load in the interests of the rich world.
“But,” writes Caroline Lucas, a UK Green Party Member of the European Parliament (MEP), “that was nothing compared to the ruthlessness of the tactics employed against them.

Read the full story in the January 2002 edition of African Business Magazine

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