Cancùn Conference
Cancùn Conference
As usual, it is necessary to look at the facts from different angles: if we see things from the side of the great economic powers (the United States, Europe, Japan and Canada) then it can be seen as a failure; if we change the viewing angle and see it from the side of the poor countries (the so-called “poor front”) headed by China, Cancùn represents an historical turning point.
Nobody is against the WTO, but the idea that the rules of capitalism should be secondary to those of solidarity is an idea which is becoming increasingly widespread (and this is the great socioeconomic revolution of the third millennium).
Everyone knows the “famous” European law which gives incentives to the non-cultivation of some seed products like grain, barley, corn, rye, rape, sunflower, peas etc (the set aside) to support prices and the European market in the international panorama. I think that the entire General Directorate for European Agriculture (together with the parliament) should be called before an international tribunal for this criminal and unscrupulous policy.
Do you know how much the quantity of seed products annually retired through the Reg. EEC n. 1094/88 and its subsequent changes and variations amounts to? We have made an estimate on the low side: around 22.000.000 of tons of product, that annually would have been able to feed around 60.000.000 people (we repeat these figures are optimistically given and undervalued, hoping that someone proves us wrong). Imagine how many human lives (above all children) could have been saved. Is this the European policy that we are proud of?
After Auschwitz this is (together with others, still in progress) one of the great holocausts of our time and all of us are responsible for it.
All that had to be done was to continue the production and give these excess products to the “poor countries”, even at a political price.
Cancùn has said no to this way of governing the world, perhaps without reflecting very much on these capitalistic aberrations.
Cancùn has confirmed that such good values as the right to food, health, education, water and environment are “rights” that must be protected and not “commodities” governed by the merciless rules of the supply and demand.
Cancùn has decreed the entry of conscience into capitalism.
It is not so much the “the poor front” – the “G21″ – with China, India and Brazil at its head – which drives this revolution, but history which asks for a different sense and a fulfilment for itself. The Berlin wall fell, decreeing the failure of communism; capitalism without a conscience is also collapsing; we are now waiting for an epoch where economy, society and the environment are reconsidered in a single equation.
We are waiting for the birth of “Solidarity” as the only socioeconomic model that guarantees everything and everybody.
At Cancùn, this path has found its start.
The Final Document
1. In conclusion of our fifth Ministerial Conference in Cancún, we would like to express our deep appreciation to the Mexican government and people for the excellent organization and warm hospitality with which we have received in Cancún.
2. At this meeting we have welcomed Cambodia and Nepal as the first least developed countries to enter the WTO since its establishment.
3. All participants have worked hard and constructively to continue in the way of progress as required under the Doha mandates. We believe, therefore, have made a considerable step. We must go a long way, especially in some key areas, to be able to align the conclusion of negotiations as well as the commitments we took at Doha.
4. So we invite everyone to work on these important issues with a renewed sense of urgency and motivation to fully take into account all the views we have expressed in this Conference. We therefore ask the President of the General Council, in consultation with the Director General, to coordinate this work and schedule a meeting of the General Council at the latest by December 15, 2003 groped for a return to the path of negotiations in order to move toward a conclusion successful and timely negotiations. In the meantime, continue to exert pressure to ensure that this process occurs supervision.
5. We will thus, in this new phase all the valuable work that has been done in this conference. In those areas where we have arrived at a high level of convergence on the documents, we want to maintain this convergence while working for an overall conclusion of the negotiations and acceptable.
6. Despite this setback, we reaffirm all statements and decisions of Doha and we intend to work to perfect them fully and faithfully.
Guido Bissanti