A Report

On 12th December 2005, the Focus on the Global South, Federation of Indonesian Peasants Unions and La Via Campesina organized a 3 hours public forum on the G20’s and their current position at the Hong Kong. Two official delegates of the G20 countries, Mr. Gopal Pillai from India and Mr. Rosseto, Minister of Agricultural Development from Brazil and one delegate from G33, i.e. Ms. Delima Hasri Azahari from Indonesia, took part in this public forum along with three representatives from social movements and farmers movements which included Mr. Henry Saragih from Federation of Indonesian Peasants Unions, Mr. Yudhvir Singh from Bharatiye Kissan Union (member of La Via Campesina-India) and Gonzalo Berron from Hemispheric Social Alliance, Brazil. More than 100 people from different organisations and movements participated in this public forum, which was moderated by Dr. Walden Bello of the Focus on the Global South at the La Via Campesina tent at the Victoria Park.

Surprisingly, in this public forum, the government negotiators and the civil society representatives showed common concern about the status of agriculture in the WTO and failure of peasantry in the developing countries. But we should not hide the fact there are differences. The developing counties maintain their presence in the WTO is essential to discipline the distortion in agricultural trade but the civil society maintains that WTO should be out of agriculture since the WTO has failed to discipline distortion in agriculture and failed to get failed to get developed countries to reduce their domestic support.

Echoing this feeling, Mr. Gopal Pillai said that there is a deficit of trust between the developed countries and the developing countries since the former, esp. US, has not yet reduced their subsidies and their subsidies would rather increase at the end of the Doha Round in 2016 despite the proposed cut. “So unless developed countries reduce their actual subsidies, there is no question of developing countries open their market for them”, said Mr. Pillai. He also said that there is no question of bringing back Peace Clause, which expired last year, and now developing countries can sue the developed countries in the Dispute Settle Body (DSB) for providing subsidies, which would affect the developing countries. And if there are no substantial cut in subsidies by developed countries, there will be no gain in this round. He also said that the developing countries would not allow the developed countries to shift their trade distorting subsidies from the Amber Box to the Green box, which has no reduction commitment. And if this happens, we would take them to the DSB.  Agreeing with Walden Bello, Pillai also said that “no deal better than a bad deal”.

Ms. Dalima Azari said that G33 is demanding for Special Product and Special Safeguard Mechanisms (SSM) for developing countries as well as no cut in de minimis for developing countries and more disciplining of the Green Box.

In response to the official delegates, Mr. Yudhvir Singh said that we have had enough of WTO in last 10 years. The developed countries have no fulfilled their commitment of cutting their subsidies. We cannot trust them anymore and we must not have any agreement at Hong Kong. Let the developed countries fulfill their previous commitment first.

Mr. Ganzelo said that we do not want market access for our agribusiness by sacrificing in other areas of services and NAMA. We cannot accept any agreement on NAMA and Services because accepting NAMA will be a serious threat to our workers in Brazil.