Bridges Weekly Trade News Digest • Volume 7 • Number 11 • 26th March 2003
NGOs Launch Campaign Against WTO Investment Agreement
Representatives of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and other interested parties met in Geneva from 19 to 21 March to consider investment issues. A seminar on 20 March focussed on the nature and implications of a WTO investment agreement, involving government officials both from countries favouring and opposing an investment agreement presenting their points of view, in discussion with civil society groups. Many participants agreed that while investment needs to be regulated, the WTO may not be the appropriate forum for this. In their opinion, discussions so far at the WTO have failed to achieve a balance between investor’s rights and their obligations, omitting environmental, labour and developmental and other public interest perspectives.
On 21 March, over 50 NGOs launched a campaign against negotiations aiming at a WTO investment agreement, stressing that an agreement would harm developing countries. Martin Khor of the Third World Network said proposals for an investment agreement tabled at the WTO by the EU and Japan (BRIDGES Weekly, 5 March 2003) are "not aimed at regulating investment but to regulate governments so that they can’t regulate investments". One participant noted that investment is likely to become the major rallying point for NGOs at the fifth WTO Ministerial meeting in Cancun in September, and the meeting in Geneva served to solidify the civil society movement in this regard. The organisations launching the campaign against an investment agreement include Oxfam, the Center for Consumer Defense of El Salvador, Public Citizen from the US, the Third World Institute from Uruguay, REBRIP from Brasil, the Solon Foundation from Bolivia, and the Third World Network.
ICTSD reporting; "Oxfam And Other NGOs Launch Campaign Against Investment Agreement," DIARIO EL COMERCIO, 21 March 2003; "Campaign groups aim to stop WTO investment pact," REUTERS, 21 March 2003.