Millions of people in the world ƒâ€š ´s vast underdeveloped countries have already suffered, arguably making the WTO an instrument for human rights violations of epic proportions. If human rights - economic, political, social, civil and cultural - are not placed at the heart of negotiations on international trade and investment pacts, not only will these millions continue to suffer but they will even be joined by so many millions more.

Human rights: The principles

The central problem is that the WTO systematically disregards human rights: its core philosophy of neoliberal 'globalization' is methodically biased for 'free' trade that promotes corporate monopoly profits rather than human well-being and development; the big developed country governments aggressively push anti-developmental economic policies, which underdeveloped country governments tolerate and indeed sometimes even embrace. The end result is that domestic productive and social welfare structures around the world are devastated with severe effects especially on the economically vulnerable parts of populations who are the most numerous.

And yet almost all of the WTO ƒâ€š ´s member states have obligations under international human rights treaties and conventions that legally bind them to respect, recognize, uphold and promote human rights. This means that the trade and investment pacts they enter into, and the national economic policies that they implement, cannot violate the human rights either of their citizens or of those of other nations.

The norms of international human rights law are well-developed and, spanning nearly six decades, long pre-date the merely decade-old WTO. Human rights were definitively established as early as the Charter of the United Nations (UN) that even the WTO has to recognize. ƒÆ’ ¢â‚¬Å¡ ƒâ€š  Consequently, Article XVI, paragraph 6 of the Marrakesh Agreement Establishing the WTO (15 April, 1994) says: 'This Agreement shall be registered in accordance with the provisions of Article 102 of the Charter of the United Nations.' Article 102 of the UN Charter governs treaties and international agreements entered into by UN Member States, hence the WTO is a membership organization unambiguously founded under the Charter of the United Nations.

Human rights were subsequently fleshed out further, beginning with the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the UN Declaration on the Right to Development. Specific rights were identified and elaborated in the twin 1966 treaties of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). The UDHR, ICCPR, and ICESCR constitute a virtual international bill of human rights. Further emphasis and clarification of norms were made through the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

This is a body of international human rights jurisprudence that cannot be disregarded by the international trade and investment law being laid down by the WTO and, indeed, must take precedence insofar as trade and investment are merely means to development ends. WTO member states must above all uphold their international human rights and treaty obligations.

Consequently, international economic policy forums such as the WTO must not be used in ways that actively violate the human rights of peoples. And more than that, they should even be actively used to enable governments to discharge their human rights obligations to their peoples.

Human rights violations: The practice

The WTO however has done the exact opposite in its decade of existence and has pushed neoliberal 'globalization' policies - one-sidedly at that - to the detriment of the most numerous and most vulnerable sectors of society. The main subjects and ultimate beneficiaries of the WTO ƒâ€š ´s 'free market' policies have been giant transnational corporations (TNCs) and countries ƒâ€š ´ political and economic elites rather than the countless individual human beings most in need.

It has ever more geared the world ƒâ€š ´s economic policies towards promoting corporate and elite profits: the underdeveloped countries have been opened up to foreign trade and investment even as the protections and support for rich country TNCs continue. This has worsened poverty, deepened inequality and prevented the progressive realization of the human rights of billions.

The WTO violates people ƒâ€š ´s right to work and to food. Nearly three billion people around the world, overwhelmingly in the underdeveloped countries, directly depend on agricultural production for their livelihoods. Yet the WTO ƒâ€š ´s Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) has been used to tear down tariff and non-tariff barriers in the underdeveloped countries while permitting the developed countries to maintain billions of dollars in agricultural subsidies. This lop-sided agricultural trade has deprived millions of people of the most basic means for survival.

Cheap agricultural imports have flooded underdeveloped country markets, destroyed rural livelihoods, and displaced millions of farmers and farmworkers. As it is, some 750 million people worldwide are unemployed or otherwise still not earning enough from the work they have and are looking for more work. The collapse of domestic food production and the lost incomes of rural producers combine to drive people into hunger. A billion people are hungry every day of which 200 million are malnourished children under 5 years.

Trade liberalization has also intensified the process of workers being pitted against each other, and of their wages and benefits being driven down in a race to the bottom in the name of increased corporate 'competitiveness'. Even the working people of the developed countries have been adversely affected.

The WTO violates people ƒâ€š ´s right to health. On one hand, there are the adverse health outcomes due to lost livelihoods and deepening poverty. Health has become a luxury good for the 2.8 billion people, or over half the world ƒâ€š ´s population of 6.4 billion, who are miserably poor and struggle to survive on US$2 or less each day. Two billion people do not even have safe water to drink. Each year as a result of all this, 25 million men, women and children die from hunger and curable diseases. Half a million women die in pregnancy and childbirth. In the poorest countries more than one in four children die before they are 5 years old.

But the WTO also directly attacks people ƒâ€š ´s health in the interests of corporate monopoly profits. Despite the supposed solution on the agreement on Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and public health, the world ƒâ€š ´s poor still do not have access to affordable drugs. Underdeveloped countries without pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity have difficulty to import cheap generic drugs to address public health problems such as HIV/AIDS, and manufacturers of generic drugs are still unable to supply them because of stringent international patent protection rules. The TRIPS agreement also lays the basis for monopoly control, for profit, of indigenous knowledge that has been around for hundreds of years by creating the opportunity for giant TNCs to patent and control this knowledge.

The WTO also disarms countries from imposing health-promoting but allegedly 'trade-distorting' measures such as banning the entry of genetically engineered foods and seeds, or promoting mothers ƒâ€š ´ breast milk over TNC ƒâ€š ´s prepared infant formulas to reduce infant mortality, or stopping the import of unsafe materials like asbestos, and so on.

The intensified negotiations on the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) will also have severe consequences. The GATS will erode government ƒâ€š ´s power to regulate profit-seeking foreign investment in important public utilities, such as water and sanitation, and in vital social services, such as health and education. This will grossly undermine the ability of governments to meet their commitments under various human rights treaties to make these services affordable and accessible to all its citizens.

The WTO violates people ƒâ€š ´s right to education. For the world ƒâ€š ´s poor and increasingly poor, education is, like health, ever more a luxury good beyond their consumption. Educational systems around the world are decrepit or otherwise unaffordable. Over 20 percent of children do not even finish primary school and one in five adults are illiterate. The GATS especially as currently being negotiated will only make this situation worse.

At the same time the WTO conveniently turns a blind eye to people ƒâ€š ´s right to safety and security. While the WTO attacks people ƒâ€š ´s livelihoods and welfare it protects the big powers ƒâ€š ´ war industries through the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) Article XXI 'security exception'. ƒÆ’ ¢â‚¬Å¡ ƒâ€š   About a trillion dollars is spent annually in the global arms race of which half is of the United States ƒâ€š ´ (US) alone. All these weapons of mass destruction while, grotesquely, billions of people are denied food, work, health and education.

Human rights, above all

The vast majority of humanity suffers the ills of poverty and is mired in hunger, disease and ignorance. Trade and investment policies have a direct and immediate impact on these and cannot be negotiated without taking international human rights obligations fully into account and be guided by these principles. Indeed, trade and investment policies must not just pay attention to human rights but precisely be about actively promoting economic and social rights to food, work, education and health. The welfare of billions cannot be left to the dictates of the 'free market', self-serving political elites and big business.

Neoliberal 'globalization' policies have clearly gone against the spirit and letter of international human rights treaties. The advanced powers have used the WTO, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB) to aggressively push tight fiscal and monetary policies, open trade and investment regimes, and the right of corporations to make their monopoly profits. At the same time they restrict access to their domestic markets and continue giving their TNCs special privileges and subsidies. The world ƒâ€š ´s enormous numbers of poor that are most economically vulnerable have suffered greatly from these.

There must be a halt to new international economic policy agreements, and to greater liberalization through revisions in existing agreements, while the human rights impact of current agreements are assessed. All governments must uphold the primacy of international human rights law and human development. In both the review of existing international trade and investment rules and in the negotiation of future rules, they must be accountable to their binding human rights obligations.

There must be an immediate change in the national economic policies that are seen to breed the conditions for human rights violations, including an effective halt to the implementation of the relevant international agreements.

There must be a comprehensive review of the WTO ƒâ€š ´s policies and rules towards ensuring that whatever international trade and investment policies are advanced will be consistent with existing treaties, legislation and policies designed to protect and promote all human rights. International trade, investment and finance are not exempt from human rights principles - indeed they must be formulated to ensure that the greatest number, and in particular the most vulnerable sectors, enjoy fundamental human rights such as to food, work, health, education and housing.

There must be an international trade and investment regime that upholds economic sovereignty, especially the right of nations to take all the measures they deem necessary to protect and promote the human rights of their citizens. A multilateral forum that denies this does not have any moral and political legitimacy, and neither do the governments supporting such a forum. Powerful geopolitical and economic minorities must not be allowed to dominate or dictate procedures, processes and decision-making.

The current world economic order dominated by big power governments and their monopoly TNCs is a world where people ƒâ€š ´s lives are constantly and rapidly getting worse. Among the most urgent steps we can take in working towards a more secure, equitable, and prosperous place for everyone is to make sure that human rights are central to the scope, content and process of all international trade and investment negotiations.

ASIA PACIFIC RESEARCH NETWORK
December 10, 2005
HongKong, SAR

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