Since February this year, the WTO has resumed the negotiations on the Doha Development Round. An agreement is expected to be reached by June 30, 2007. What are the concerns raised by the developing countries and activists that is slowing down the negotiations process?

Doha Development Round is now back on the agenda of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). This happened after a group of about thirty ministers at the World Economic Forum held in Davos, Switzerland in January 2007 agreed on the resumption of the negotiations over the coming months. A compromise is hoped to be reached by WTO Members by end of June 2007.

Leading countries in the talks including the European Union, the US, India, and Brazil met in February in London and Geneva to continue a series of bilateral meetings. The talks have focused on different categories of exemptions to the cuts in agricultural tariffs that will be permitted to rich and poor countries.

However, India has held firm to its position that developing countries should have the right to shield up to 20% of agricultural tariff lines by designating them as 'special.' India also wants to have a 'special safeguard mechanism' to protect farmers from import surges. The US and some other farm exporters argue that these would deny them virtually any new market access opportunities.

Under the Doha Development Agenda, developing countries are being compelled to agree on bringing all import tariffs on industrial products to below 15% while the rich countries will retain their industrial tariffs almost unchanged.

Faizel Ismail, South African trade representative to the WTO, in an interview with Inter Press Service, says, “This is totally unfair, imbalanced, and disproportionate to the level of commitments that members will have to undertake in a development round of trade negotiations... This does not reveal the enormous imbalance in the efforts that have to be made by developed and developing countries, as the degree of adjustment involves loss of jobs and employment in developing countries,” he added.

To the contrary, WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy, in his speech at an international seminar in New Delhi, India on March 12, 2007, urged WTO Members to speed up the process of the Doha rounds of talks.  “It [the negotiation] is taking place at too slow a pace... time is not on our side...the multilateral process of negotiations must therefore kick-in at full speed,” Lamy said.

“The bias of the Doha negotiations to serve the private interests of the biggest corporations instead of benefiting the majority of the world’s people, mobilised public opposition in developing and developed countries all around the world... the current trade liberalisation agenda is not working for the majority of women and men, particularly those living in impoverished developing countries, and that especially women ‘tend to be among the most vulnerable to adverse impacts’,” said Barbara Specht, Network Women in Development Europe (WIDE) information officer.

“Trade can be a medium of development,” Specht added, but trade liberalisation is not a panacea to poverty and gender inequality.

Launched in November 2001 at the ministerial conference in Doha, Qatar, the Doha Development Round aims to unlock global trade in sectors such as agriculture, services, and manufacturing, claiming that this will benefit poor, rural nations through shares in the world’s agricultural markets. Negotiations on the Doha round of trade talks were suspended in July 2006. Developing countries and activists accuse it of promoting economic liberalisation at the expense of development, social, and environmental goals.

Related article:
“Not another Doha: ASEAN to discuss trade issues” in we! November 2006, No. 2

Sources:
“Collapse of the WTO Doha negotiations: Turning point for developing a multilateral trading system based on women’s rights and sustainable development” from Network Women in Development Europe, posted on July 25, 2006, <http://www.eurosur.org/wide/Globalisation/WTO-PR-25072006.htm>.
“Developing Countries Fight Another Formula” from Inter Press Service News Agency, posted on March 3, 2007, <http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=36807>.
“Doha talks bring engagement but no deal” from The Financial Times, posted on February 26, 2007, <http://www.ft.com/cms/s/b8c64fa4-c5d0-11db-b460-000b5df10621.html>.
“Lamy calls for 'full speed' negotiations” from the World Trade Organisation, posted on March 12, 2007, <http://www.wto.org/english/news_e/sppl_e/sppl56_e.htm>.
“New Push for Doha Talks” from the Council on Foreign Relations, posted on February 9, 2007, <http://www.cfr.org/publication/10555/>.
“Push for progress in Doha Talks proceeding sluggishly” from Bridges Weekly News Digest, posted on February 28, 2007, <http://www.ictsd.org/weekly/07-02-28/story4.htm>.