From poverty to power - Oxfam-Québec

FROM POVERTY TO POWERMost alarming among the EU’s bilateral and regional negotiationsare the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with formercolonies in Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific. In these David-and-Goliath talks, the EU claims not to have any ‘offensive interests’, butits behaviour to date suggests that its default position is to maketraditional ‘eye for an eye’ demands for concessions, irrespective oftheir impact on development.Going beyond the provisions negotiated at a multilateral level,these agreements impose far-reaching, hard-to-reverse rules thatsystematically dismantle national policies designed to promotedevelopment. The overall effect of such rule changes is to underminethe development of effective states. They strip developing countries ofthe capacity to effectively govern their economies, robbing them of thetools they need to gain a favourable foothold in global markets, andtransfer power from governments to largely unaccountable multinationalfirms.Although developing-country governments have proved themselvesto be increasingly assertive at the WTO and in some regional andbilateral agreements, the balance of power in international tradenegotiations remains tipped heavily in favour of rich countries andlarge, politically influential corporations. Furthermore, within developingcountries, trade policy is often the exclusive province of largeexporters, while small businesses, trade unions, NGOs, women’sgroups, and indigenous peoples have very few mechanisms for participation,and their rights and needs are largely ignored.Trade rules have proved largely immune to the progress achieved inrecent years in recognising the importance to development of rights andequality, evidenced in areas such as aid, conflict, and debt relief. Instead,rich-country trade negotiators continue to pay lip service to development,while arguing that ‘political realities’oblige them to get as much asthey can and give as little as possible in return. Recalcitrant businesslobbies are likely to urge them to defend perceived victories, no matterwhat the developmental cost. One US negotiator at the WTO memorablysummed up this attitude when he reminded delegates that the USCongress needed to see ‘blood on the floor’ in the form of painful concessionsfrom poor countries before it was likely to agree to do anythingitself in what had been packaged as the ‘Doha Development Round’. 63324