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Roddick blasts world trade body
Seattle: The ministers and the campaigners are gathering |
By Environment Correspondent Alex Kirby
The businesswoman Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop, says the system of world trade is unjust, unfair and unsustainable.
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More than a hundred trade ministers and heads of government are expected to attend the WTO meeting, its third ministerial conference. It is being held to initiate a "Millennium Round" of negotiations on further trade liberalisation.
'Obsessed with profit'
In her speech, Anita Roddick says the WTO is "blind to the injustice of the pursuit of profits at the expense of people".
"By default the WTO is a world government, but it is a blind government. It looks at the measurement of money, but it can't see anything else.
Anita Roddick: WTO is "blind" |
"Businesses have to be a force for social change. It is not enough to avoid hideous evil - they must actively do good.
"If business stays parochial, without moral energy or codes of behaviour - claiming there are no such things as values - then God help us all."
Many campaign groups are expected in Seattle to press the WTO to emphasise environmental protection, poverty and human rights in its work.
One UK group, the development charity Christian Aid, says the WTO should concentrate on "making trade fairer, not freer".
Another, the London-based World Development Movement, says the interests of developing countries should be the main priority in all the WTO's discussions.
Demand for reform
The WTO general secretary, Mike Moore, says the poor world should be given priority in new talks, and the UK Government has called for a "Development Round".
But WDM says it is concerned that "without substantial reform, developing countries will continue to lose out".
Its recommendations include:
- food produced for domestic consumption in developing countries should not be subject to liberalisation rules
- it should not be possible to patent life forms, nor should corporations be allowed to claim ownership of traditional products
- poor country governments should be allowed to regulate foreign investment for the benefit of the local economy
- rich countries should not be allowed to dump their surpluses in the third world, nor to use anti-dumping measures as another form of protectionism.
The WTO is failing the poor, critics say |
"But actually far more sovereignty has been given away to the WTO, with absolutely no mechanisms of democratic accountability."
The New Economics Foundation says it has obtained confidential World Bank documents which "admit that the WTO has failed the world's poorest countries".
Andrew Simms of NEF told BBC News Online: "If officials from the Bank and the WTO were more honest in public, we'd see that the scale of action needed to help the poorest countries is enormous"
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See also: |
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17 Nov 99 | The Economy |
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Trade talks deadlocked |
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10 Nov 99 | The Economy |
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Europe changes banana rules |
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25 Oct 99 | The Economy |
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Trade talks agenda 'agreed' |
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15 Nov 99 | The Economy |
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WTO hails China deal |
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