WTO Ministerial Section • Volume 5 • Number 37 • 30th October 2001

Civil Society In Doha: Still Fewer Expected To Attend

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On 24 October 2001, the process of accreditation for NGOs to next week’s Fourth WTO Ministerial Conference ended with the WTO Secretariat sending out its official registration letters. Even before the current international crisis erupted, far fewer civil society representatives were expected to turn up in the Gulf state as compared with the Seattle gathering in 1999 (see BRIDGES Weekly, 11 September 2001). Following the 11 September attacks, public participation at the WTO Ministerial is due to shrink even further.

After the publication on 13 August 2001 of the list of organisations eligible to attend the Conference (available at: http://www.ictsd.org/ministerial/doha/NGOlist.pdf), NGOs were expected to confirm their intention to attend. According to trade sources, 90- 100 organisations of the 647 originally applying have not confirmed their participation. After the 11 September attacks, another 30-40 NGOs, mainly North American and European, pulled out due to security concerns. When BRIDGES Weekly went to press, it was still not clear whether the places freed would be re-allocated to other NGOs.

The circumstances, trade sources said, created a "fairly messy" situation by which NGOs are reluctant to engage in serious planning for the meeting. NGOs had already voiced their discontent with the strictness of accreditation procedures before the New York attacks. Afterwards, the uncertainty on the eventual venue of the Ministerial, reasons of political opportunity, and security concerns have all contributed to shrinking further the already constrained plans for the Ministerial.

The conference seems to have attracted significantly less public attention than the previous Seattle Conference. "We saw far more activities before Seattle than now", one trade official said. Due to the fact that attending the Doha Ministerial will be more difficult than it was for Seattle, "less papers, less actions and less protests" have been planed for Doha. Before Seattle the WTO was "overwhelmed" with NGOs activities, while now it seems that "a certain fatigue has taken over", the trade source said.

Given the difficulties to enter Qatar and the political risks of massive protests, organisations are increasingly focusing back on the local level. Friends of the Earth International (FoEI), a leading network of environmental organisations, joined the chorus of critics after the publication of the eligible NGOs list, arguing that the strict limitation to the size of NGOs’ delegations would play a major role in determining which voices would be heard the most (see BRIDGES Weekly, 11 September 2001). With the Ministerial only one week away, a FoEI representative said that the organisation had decided to further downsize its delegation because of a combination of the reasons mentioned above. Other organisations are also deciding accordingly.

The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) is monitoring the events that NGOs are planning to hold in Geneva. IATP itself will be setting up an International Media Center as previously done for the Seattle Ministerial.

IATP and Public Citizen will hold daily briefings at the NGO Centre in Doha respectively from 08:00 to 09:00 and from 18:00 to 20:00 for the duration of the Conference.

The WTO Secretariat will hold an NGO briefing on "Logistical & procedural arrangements for NGOs during the Conference" and on "Negotiating state of play" at 09:00 on 31 October 2001 at the WTO (see also ICTSD calendar).

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