WTO Ministerial Section • Volume 5 • Number 6 • July 2001
Ducking the Debate, the WTO Confirms Developing Countries’ Worst Fears
The WTO’s persistent refusal to address the system’s structural deficiencies with regard to transparency and public participation is a dangerous game at a time when so many are openly questioning the institution’s authoritativeness and legitimacy. Now the absence of formal institutional arrangements has come home to roost in the form of widespread indignation over a list circulated by the Secretariat concerning ‚non-governmental’ participants to the Doha Ministerial Conference. The imbalances of this list have the potential of confirming the worst fears of developing countries and critics of the multilateral system, who see the WTO as dominated by corporate interests and bent on come-hell-or-high- water liberalisation with little regard to its consequences to the poor, the marginalised, development or the environment.
All in all, 647 individuals have been invited to register for the Ministerial. More than half of these represent business-related associations (OECD-based lobby groups and specific commercial interests account for 85 percent). Even among public interest groups, less than a third come from developing countries. More than thirty US government-appointed bodies - such as the Industry Sector Advisory Committee on Chemical and Allied Products for Trade Policy Matters - have been confirmed as eligible NGOs (Friends of the Earth, an NGO with offices and membership in developed and developing countries, has launched a sign-on letter requesting the WTO to review their approval). In addition, while due to ‚space limitations’ in Qatar most entities on the list have been offered one place, some have been granted multiple slots.
Systemic Failure Alert
Beyond the question of who gets to go to Doha lies a much larger and serious systemic failure of the world trading system to engage with public interest groups. This failure is evident in the General Council’s continued stonewalling on ‚external transparency’ despite efforts of some Members.
The WTO is the only major intergovernmental organisation or policy forum that has no formal arrangements for dealing with other than government representatives. Many WTO Members continue to argue that the organisation’s unique nature as a government-to-government contractual negotiating forum would be jeopardised if such arrangements were put into place, but other inter- governmental organisations with similar functions seem not only to work, but also to have benefited from adopting formal mechanisms, proce- dures and criteria for civil society participation. The UN’s Economic and Social Council, UNCTAD, the World Bank, the European Court of Justice or NAFTA could offer models and ideas in this regard. The WTO’s interaction with non-governmental organisations is based on two brief provisions: Article V.2 of the Marrakesh Agreement, which states that the General Council ‚may make appropriate arrangements for consultation and co-operation with non-governmental organisations concerned with matters related to those of the WTO’. The 1996 Guidelines for Arrangements on Relations with Non-governmental Organisations (WT/L/162) allow the Secretariat to organise ad hoc symposia, informal briefings and the like but propose no formal avenues of interaction. In practice, NGOs have attended plenary sessions of Ministerial Conferences, although no formal decision exists on these events being open to the public.
While neither the Marrakesh Agreement nor the Guidelines contain elements for determining what constitutes an NGO, governments have developed several sets of criteria over decades. Operational in the organisations cited above among many others, these criteria differ according to the nature of the institution and are used to determine whether an applicant organisation can get accredited or otherwise formally recognised. The rights and obligations of accredited parties are spelled out with regard to access to documents and meetings, circulating papers or taking the floor during meetings. Many institutions also have a mechanism for providing financial assistance to ensure that developing country NGOs are not disproportionally under-represented at meetings.
No Policy Is Worst Policy
None of the above applies at the WTO. In the absence of formal institutional accreditation, the Secretariat has opted for a pragmatic ad hoc approach, which considers any entity that is not a government or a company as a ‚non-governmental organisation’. To be eligible for attendance at the very few WTO events open to any form of public participation, the interested NGO must satisfy the Secretariat that it is ‚concerned with matters related to those of the WTO’. Since no other guidelines exist (such as North-South balance, balance between private and public interests, etc.), eligible organisations are usually registered on a fist-come-first-served basis. This lack of agreed procedures is a perfect recipe for the kind of unbalanced representation that has raised so much indignation about the Doha arrangements.
As the WTO has taken no steps to seriously address its interaction with civil society - either in Doha or, much more importantly, in Geneva where decisions are prepared - there is more than delicate irony in the only reference to external transparency in the draft preamble of the Ministerial Declaration: “Ministers are committed to making our operations appropriately transparent and to promoting an improved understanding of our organisation”.