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Africa: Doha Deception Round

AfricaFocus Bulletin
Jul 1, 2006 (060701)
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor's Note

As negotiators again reported "no progress" at international trade negotiations in Geneva, 100 developing nations released a statement saying they were still willing to negotiate but that the chasm between the views of rich and poor countries was huge. Even if a face-saving agreement is reached over the next months, critics said that major powers had already demonstrated that they had no interest in proposals to address developing country concerns.

One such proposal, presented in early June by the Africa group, focused on measures to address the long-term crisis in trade in agricultural commodities on which many developing countries are still dependent.

This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains excerpts from a media summary of a new report by ActionAid International (http://www.actionaid.org) on "The Doha Deception Round," and summary of the June Africa Group proposal on trade in commodities by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (http://www.iatp.org), as well as links to further documentation.

For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on trade issues, see http://www.africafocus.org/tradexp.php


Note: AfricaFocus Bulletin will be taking a break for the next two weeks. Publication will resume in the third week of July.

++++++++++++++++++++++end editor's note+++++++++++++++++++++++

The Doha Deception Round: how the US and EU cheated developing countries at the WTO Hong Kong Ministerial

June 29, 2006

Media Summary

[For full text of the summary and the full report, visit http://www.actionaid.org]

Threats, deception and manipulation are the underhand negotiating tactics used by rich countries such as the EU and US in the current round of global trade talks, warns ActionAid in a new report, 'The Doha Deception Round: How the US and EU cheated developing countries at the WTO Hong Kong Ministerial.'

Power politics, exclusive meetings, diplomatic arm-twisting and 'take-it-or-leave-it' ultimatums are leading to a final trade deal that will not alleviate poverty and that could have a devastating impact on millions of people worldwide.

Poor countries should not be forced to accept a bad deal at any price and should make history and reject it.

Hardball tactics by the EU and US are undermining the very goal of the current trade talks known as the 'Doha development round' which is supposed to have the interests of poverty and development at its heart rather than leading simply to more trade liberalisation in favour of rich countries.

The WTO and its chief Pascal Lamy take much of the blame for allowing and even encouraging a growing reliance on exclusive and informal negotiations which have become the norm over the past two years and which help the big players skew the Doha round, warns the study. ...

To highlight the unfairness of current practices at the WTO, ActionAid looks at the lessons of the WTO ministerial conference in Hong Kong in December 2005. These practices are set to intensify in Geneva in the final stages of the WTO negotiations.

The Hong Kong ministerial was riddled with pitfalls for developing countries, it says:

  • Invitation-only 'green room' negotiation sessions organised by the WTO leadership completely undermined the so-called 'democratic' decision-making process
  • Round-the-clock talks ground down overstretched and exhausted developing country negotiators who were unable to stand up to rich countries with far bigger delegations.
  • Divide-and-rule tactics used by developed countries to drive wedges among developing nations, ranging from trying to buy them off with vague promises and spin about development deals to providing heavy-handed "friendly advice" and pressure on their political leaders.
  • An eleventh hour take-it-or-leave-it 'consensus' deal brokered by the few which left the majority with no choice between the rubber stamp or the extreme option of rejecting the whole package. If they rejected the deal they fear they would be blamed for wrecking the conference, the Doha Round and even the global trading system.

Hong Kong was billed as a milestone in efforts to complete the Doha Round this year. Such moves were based on ground rules set in the July Framework which was hatched by 'key' WTO governments in 2004 and then handed down to the rest of the membership. The process was compounded by a string of so-called 'mini-ministerials' and other gatherings of self-selected WTO members. ...

It is now clear the EU and US are pursuing an aggressive trade liberalisation agenda and are offering very little in exchange. The report concludes that developing countries do best when they stick together in coalitions and resist divide-and-rule tactics.

Developing countries should dismiss the argument that any deal is better than no deal: as things stand, no deal is better than a bad deal for developing countries. ...

The report is based on 37 in-depth interviews with negotiators, diplomats and others who were deeply involved in the Hong Kong conference. For reasons of confidentiality, their names are not revealed. It looks at a number of examples to show what was wrong in Hong Kong, providing a snapshot of some of the deep-rooted problems in the WTO process.

Green rooms and the myth of democracy and transparency

The 'bottom-up' approach was the big buzzword in Hong Kong. The theory was - and remains - that the negotiation process should be driven by all WTO members rather than being imposed upon them. At the end of the conference, Pascal Lamy told journalists that consensus had been reached after hundreds of meetings and other consultations among members and between different regional groupings in the WTO.

...In reality, the decision-making hinged on green room talks between a few countries deemed to represent the main interests of members, with Brazil and India and a sprinkling of other called in to represent the developing world. ...

According to an African trade negotiator: "Ultimately, the real forum of negotiations was the green room and whatever you said in the other rooms didn't matter. What mattered was the position of the big guys and what they felt they could deliver." ...

The green room was a problem even for the developing countries who were allowed the inside.

"You keep repeating your position over and over again, and rather than being heard, people get annoyed, they start to demand concessions from you rather than actually compromising with you," said a negotiator from the African-Caribbean-Pacific group (ACP), which represents 56 WTO members.

The final hours of the conference were just as bad: the heads of delegations were given only an informal meeting to voice their final statements on the overall text of a deal that had emerged from the Green Room process only a few hours before.

"[Pascal] Lamy had picked about 20 countries that were to a large extent positive about the text," said a delegate from an African country that was wary of signing up to the manufactured consensus. "The evolving scenario placed some delegates who wanted to oppose the text at a disadvantage and instead they began to question whether or not the problem was their inability to comprehend the text or the problem was the draft Hong Kong text itself."

To cap it all, the closing plenary session was set up theatre-style without microphones so that delegates could not speak unless they were prepared to clamber onto the stage and demand a microphone, something only Venezuela's vice-minister chose to do.

Double-dealing on the services text

Ahead of Hong Kong, developing countries had expressed increasing unease over the way negotiations on services were heading. In essence, what was being drafted was a one-sided wish list for countries seeking sweeping liberalisation, rather than a balanced document taking into account the concerns of different members. The draft that ended up on the table on the table in Hong Kong disregarded the repeated objections of developing countries: alternative proposals from around 70 developing countries had simply been sidelined by Pascal Lamy and WTO brokers.

After facing delaying tactics before Hong Kong, developing countries at the conference were then told that it was too late, because the purpose of the ministerial was to sign off and not negotiate.

"Not only was it was it unethical but also unprocedural," said an official from the G90, which represents 64 WTO members. ...

Brussels' and Washington's divide-and-rule tactics

Attempts by G90 members to have their voice heard on services sparked a fight back by the EU and US against the developing countries steering such efforts.

Rwanda, for example, spearheaded moves in the run up to Hong Kong to ensure that the conference would address developing countries' concerns. Although WTO rules mean that the world's Least Developed Countries (LDCs) - 32 of whom are WTO members - are not required to commit to services liberalisation, such nations have stood alongside others in the G90 who would have to. As a result, Rwanda was among several LDCs that faced heat from the EU and US, through 'reminders' that they should shut up on services if they wanted to get anything out of separate talks on a package of dutyfree and quota-free measures for their products.

"With these tactics of bad guy versus good guy, they managed to break up the G90," said a delegate from the grouping. Malawi, which picked up the baton on behalf of the developing country majority, also had to deal with pressure from the proponents of liberalisation including phone calls to its president from the EU.

"We suspect it was the EU who called given what they were saying to us in the meetings," said a capital-based Malawi delegate. ...

An empty development package

The so-called 'development package' a deal that would purportedly help the world's LDCs received huge publicity in Hong Kong. It was the media-friendly result that the WTO needed to prove that the goals of the Doha round had not been set aside. But the package turned out to be the biggest deception of the Hong Kong outcome. ...

The EU first proposed the development package two months before Hong Kong, a move which enabled it to put the US on the defensive and set itself up as the noble champion of preference-receiving countries, while at the same time fending off criticism of its own agriculture tariffs. The US, which accused the EU of hiding behind the LDCs, proved little better, dangling the possibility of a deal in front of the world's poorest nations.

Negotiations on the package took up the bulk of the LDCs' time in Hong Kong, pulling their delegations away from other areas of concern to developing countries.

For one ACP trade negotiator, the package was "like a carrot on a bungee, just when you reach for it, it goes back up again."

Focusing on the mantra of duty-free and quota-free imports of LDC goods, the final fudge which emerged offered 97 percent access to rich markets but left the possibility of loopholes so that the developed world [could] restrict imports of key LDC goods such as textiles or leather goods.

The LDCs had actually rejected what was put before them in Hong Kong, saying they would not settle for a half-baked deal and that they wanted more negotiations at the WTO's Geneva base to ensure they got substantial results.

"Our demands were simply brushed away," said an LDC official from Africa. ...

US dodging on cotton

Cotton is a particularly contentious issue at the WTO. Under the 2004 July Framework, it was meant to be dealt with "ambitiously, specifically and expeditiously," but there was little or no subsequent movement.

The issue was back in the spotlight in the run up to Hong Kong, as the so-called C4 countries (Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali) plus Senegal pressed for an end to the dumping of cotton on their markets, mainly by the US, and for compensation for the economic damage it has caused. The cotton debate has resulted in an absurd situation where the US has promised the affected countries aid money to make cotton production more efficient while at the same time destroying their trade production capacity through dumping.

In Hong Kong, the US only agreed to duty-free and quota-free access for the C4 by the end of the Doha round and to remove cotton export subsidies this year. Other parts of the deal are still up for negotiation.

Far from being a huge sacrifice, the US concessions were effectively meaningless, because the C4 mainly export to the EU and the bulk of cotton dumping comes through US domestic support schemes and not export subsidies, which Washington was in any case required to eliminate after a WTO dispute settlement decision last year.

Despite the paltry nature of the deal, C4 delegates gave in simply to keep the debate alive -- because of veiled threats from the WTO secretariat that future cotton talks could be derailed if they didn't -- and to avoid taking the blame for any broader failure in Hong Kong.

In addition, the cotton countries had to endure almost non-stop talks during which they were vastly outnumbered and slowly ground down. "It was deplorable, all happening in the night," said a C4 official. "You have to have extraordinary physical force to do this. It all contributes to the non-transparency. In a state of extreme fatigue, you can't think or negotiate well. The US had more than 200 people. They can change their negotiators in all the meetings. We had to be everywhere."

...


On the Right Path to Development: African Countries Pave the Way

By Carin Smaller and Sophia Murphy

Commentary June 16, 2006

Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
http://www.iatp.org
http://www.tradeobservatory.org

[Excerpts. For full text see http://www.tradeobservatory.org]

The June 7 proposal by the African Group (an alliance of 41 African countries) to the WTO on managing trade in agricultural commodities is a refreshing way forward for addressing poverty and improving living standards in rural areas in the context of the Doha Agenda. The proposal emphasizes the need to ensure stable, equitable and remunerative prices for commodity producers and to deal with structural oversupplies in commodity markets. The proposal lays down a challenge to WTO members: are they serious about doing something for development with the Doha Agenda or not? ...

Since the Doha Ministerial Conference in November 2001, a group of African countries including C“te d'Ivoire, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe, has called for WTO Members to address the rural crisis in developing countries that arises from the decline in prices of commodities. This group of African countries has emphasized the negative effects of the "colossal power asymmetry" in commodity markets, which allows a small number of multinational companies to gain an ever-increasing share of the profits from commodities trade, leaving producers in developing countries unable to get a fair price for what they produce. To date, the majority of WTO members have not given serious consideration to these concerns although the declining price of agricultural commodities remains a serious obstacle to reducing poverty levels and to securing benefits from expanding global trade for many developing countries.

On June 7, the African Group took a stand on these vital issues. The proposal by the African Group identifies four areas for inclusion in the Doha negotiations:

(1) The elimination of tariff escalation where it discourages development. Tariff escalation describes a tariff structure in which tariffs increase as products are transformed from their raw state into a processed good. For example, tariffs on raw cotton are typically lower than tariffs on clothing. Tariff escalation allows developed countries to import raw materials at low cost from developing countries for their own industries but protects developed country industry from value-added imports, which discourages industrial development in developing countries.

(2) The adoption of international systems to manage the supply of commodities so as to stabilize prices. For commodities like coffee or cocoa, world prices are severely distorted by the structural oversupply of the commodities on inter- national markets. Oversupply has depressed prices with devastating effects for small-scale coffee and cocoa producers.

(3) To allow the use of export taxes and export restrictions to stabilize commodity prices. Major suppliers of commodities to world markets, or a number of suppliers acting in concert, can thereby avoid sharp declines in the world price when supplies increase. This also allows countries to slow exports if they want to retain commodities for their own food security. And it offers countries another option for increasing government revenue.

(4) To negotiate more concrete disciplines to eliminate non-tariff barriers that affect commodity trade. Non-tariff barriers can include health and safety standards and packaging requirements that are essential to any country's trade regulation. However, other non-tariff barriers can be used as a way to keep out imports, unfairly discriminating against producers and exporters from poorer countries. A better system at the multilateral level is needed to ensure that any standards put in place are the result of a participatory process, ideally one that provides funding to commodity producers to raise the quality of their goods.

The proposal from the Africa Group is an important initiative. By calling for systems of supply management, the proposal offers meaningful alternatives to tackle the root causes of dumping (the sale of exports at prices below the cost of production). ...

These are proposals that farm organizations the world over support. Farm organizations in the U.S. as in Kenya know that their biggest challenge is stopping the steady (and sometimes precipitous) decline in farm income - they know export expansion, lower tariffs, disciplines on export subsidies may all have their merits as trade policy, but in the markets in which farmers (not brokers or processors or retailers) actually trade, these policies have done nothing to support employment (on-farm or in the local economy).

The development agenda promised by developed countries in Doha never materialized. The African proposal offers a serious chance to redeem this sad state of affairs. It deserves careful consideration by the WTO membership.

Resources

African Group Proposal on Modalities for Commodities, June 2006 http://www.tradeobservatory.org/library.cfm?refid=88066

Commodity Proposal by C“te d'Ivoire, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe, June 2005
http://www.tradeobservatory.org/library.cfm?refid=73146

Submission on Declining Terms of Trade for Primary Commodities by Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya, May 2004
Available at: http://www.wto.org. Search documents for wt/comtd/w/130

Submission on the Implications of Declining Terms of Trade for Primary Commodities by Tanzania, Uganda And Kenya, March 2004 Available at: http://www.wto.org/. Search documents for wt/comtd/w/124

Submission on the Crisis Created by the Long-Term Decline of Prices for Primary Commodities by Tanzania, Uganda And Kenya, July 2003 Available at http://www.wto.org. Search documents for WT/GC/W/508/Corr.1


AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic publication providing reposted commentary and analysis on African issues, with a particular focus on U.S. and international policies. AfricaFocus Bulletin is edited by William Minter.

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