Bridges Weekly Trade News Digest • Volume 8 • Number 7 • 26th February 2004
Second Civil Society Hearing In Lead-Up To UNCTAD XI
On 23 February 2004, the Preparatory Committee for UNCTAD XI organised its second hearing for civil society and the private sector, addressing all four of UNCTAD XI’s sub-themes — development strategies in a globalising world economy; building productive capacity and international competitiveness; assuring development gains from the international trading system and trade negotiations; and partnerships for development. As the second of three such hearings leading up to the 13-18 June conference in São Paulo, Brazil this year, the meeting was well attended by UNCTAD member states, a broad spectrum of civil society groups from the South and North, as well as a number of private sector representatives. One of the points most emphasised by a large number of participants was the role of UNCTAD — and the timeliness of UNCTAD XI, post-Cancun — in helping to catalyse a revitalisation of the WTO’s Doha round negotiations and support developing countries’ efforts to include a strong development dimension in the round’s final outcome. On the issue of productive development and competitiveness, the need for education and human capital formation was stressed repeatedly.
Follow-up of civil society concerns raised at first hearing
This session followed up on a 16 January hearing (see BRIDGES Weekly, 21 January 2004), where representatives of civil society called on UNCTAD to, inter alia, continue its promotion of ‘policy space’ for developing countries to pursue their development goals, as well as undertake monitoring and assessment activities on the impact of trade rules at the global, regional and bilateral levels (a summary of the 16 January hearing is available at http://www.unctad.org/en/docs//tdxipcd4_en.pdf). These sentiments where echoed at the 23 February meeting. Participants further raised concerns over the danger of overly narrowing UNCTAD’s mandate through, inter alia, attempts to remove language from the latest pre-conference negotiating text referring to UNCTAD’s broader role of offering developing countries policy advice. Highlighting a selection of such language changes allegedly being promoted by the US, EU, and Canada, Goh Chien Yen, the representative from Southern-based non-governmental organisation ‘Third World Network’, pointed to "concerted efforts" on the part of certain developed countries to "undermine the independence and integrity of UNCTAD and its work".
On UNCTAD’s mandate, a submission from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) highlighted the concern over a lack of strong and detailed language in the pre-conference text mandating UNCTAD to continue the revitalisation of its work on commodities (for example, UNCTAD’s recent report ‘Economic Development in Africa: Trade Performance and Commodity Dependence’ — see related article this issue). Other areas highlighted for UNCTAD to commence and/or continue work in included ensuring a gender-sensitive approach to trade policy analysis and evaluation (especially vis-à-vis nation poverty reduction strategies), monitoring the behaviour of transnational corporations, and providing a forum for the current competition policy debate.
The next hearing, which will aim to promote discussions via roundtable debates on specific issues within the various sub-themes, is tentatively scheduled for the week of 19-23 April.
Background on UNCTAD XI
Every four years UNCTAD holds a conference to set its priorities and guidelines, and to provide an opportunity to debate key economic and development issues. The last conference, UNCTAD X, was held in Bangkok, Thailand from 12-19 February 2000 (see http://www.unctad-10.org/). UNCTAD XI, to be held 13-18 June 2004 in São Paulo, Brazil, will focus on enhancing the coherence between national development strategies and global economic processes towards economic growth and development, particularly for developing countries. See http://www.unctad.org/unctadxi for comprehensive details, including a tentative agenda for the conference.
ICTSD reporting.