Is The WTO Collapsing Under Its Own Ambitions?

By Nicola Bullard

ATTAC
December 31, 2002

Just one year after the industrialised countries triumphantly announced the launching of the "Doha development round" of trade negotiations, the WTO is collapsing under the weight of its own ambitions.

In the past month, discussions on TRIPS and health - seen by many as the only positive outcome of Doha - fell into disarray when African governments walked out in disgust. One week before the end of the year, there is still no sign of a deal, despite the US' heavy-handed efforts to blackmail Southern governments to accept their demands that the agreement be limited to three diseases, plus a long list of other constraints that would effectively kill the local pharmaceutical industry in developing countries where they already exist, and force the rest to source from the West. So much for the "big win" of Doha.

The WTO has also been rocked by industrial action, as secretariat staff engaged in a two-week "go-slow" to support their demands for pay increases and additional staff. The staff association claims that the there has been no pay increase in twelve years (since the GATT days), that the workload has increased by 30 per cent since 1999, that the total numbers of words translated has increased by 29%, formal and informal meetings are up by 35% and technical assistance activities has increased by 25%. However, staff levels have increased by only 5% during this period and staff costs only 7.8%. Meanwhile, in October Dr Supachai received a hefty pay increase, retrospective to his starting date of 1 September, of approximately CHF45,600 (USD 31,875) per year to his base salary of CHF287,000 (USD 200,610) per year.

The problem is not new: many developing country delegations know first hand the impossibility of trying to keep pace with the over-blown agenda when they simply don't have the staff to cover all the meetings and keep up with the negotiations - even when their own commercial interests are at stake.

It seems that the WTO staff has drawn the same conclusion; the WTO agenda is too full and the workload impossible to manage. This advantages the rich countries which have scores of legal experts, trade lawyers and negotiators to monitor every committee meeting and to read every document, but it is a huge obstacle for delegations from developing countries. The solution is not to push the developing countries and the staff to keep up with a few rich countries, but to slow down the whole agenda to give everyone - staff included - the time to do the work properly and fairly.

Dr Supachai Panitchpakdi, director general of the WTO, is also nervous about the overloaded agenda, a concern that came out very clearly in his assessment of progress to the Trade Negotiations Committee in early December when he said that "with a number of deadlines now before us, we must be aware of the danger involved in putting too much off for later. We cannot risk overloading the agenda for ministers at Cancun. If that ministerial conference is not a success, then I fear the whole round could be put into jeopardy."

Supachai's warning is designed to put pressure on all the members to resolve their differences, but it also shows that the fear of a Cancun meltdown is never far from his mind, not surprising given that Supachai has staked his own success to the conclusion of the Doha negotiations by 2005.

The latest sign of a deep crisis in the WTO is the agriculture modalities overview paper released on 18 December by the chair of the agriculture committee Stuart Harbinson. In the words of veteran WTO watcher Chakravarthi Raghavan, the 90 page paper "put(s) one more nail in the coffin of the 'development agenda' of the new round of negotiations and the work programme launched at the 4th ministerial meeting in Doha in Nov 2001" while the US Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy say that it shows "just how far apart developed and developing countries remain."

"It stretches reality to think that the WTO can take 90 pages of major differences and turn it into 10 agreements in three months, and then the agreement put on hold until other item," said the IATP in their initial response.

But, perhaps the best assessment of where the WTO is heading comes from PSI deputy secretary Mike Waghorne who, in an end-of-the-year state of play email quoted Alexander Solzhenitsyn: "You only have power over people as long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power - he's free again."

Nicola Bullard is Deputry Director of Focus on the Global South.