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NGOs Letter to Pascal Lamy for holding Non-Inclusive Mini-Ministerial |
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Wednesday, 17 May 2006 |
Mr. Pascal Lamy
Director General of the WTO
April 18, 2006
Re: Using Non-inclusive Ministerials to Conclude the Doha Round
Dear Mr. Lamy,
We are deeply concerned about your call for some Ministers to meet in Geneva in late April and early May. We are opposed to such a Mini-Ministerial meeting that could lead to critical decisions being made by only a handful of Ministers. It is now too late for the majority of Ministers to make their way to Geneva, especially when it remains unclear what the agenda of the meeting will be, and therefore unclear if it will be worth Ministers' scarce financial resources and time. Therefore, we are calling on you as WTO Director General and chair of the TNC to cancel this ad hoc exclusive Ministerial-level gathering and ensure that all WTO member delegations are fully involved in any negotiations regarding the Doha Round.
Your proposal at the recent TNC that "the establishment of modalities
as foreseen by the Hong Kong Declaration will require some sort of
Ministerial involvement during the last week of April, with a safety
net beginning of May" contradicts your previously stated commitment to
a bottom-up approach to the negotiations. Any negotiations or
decision-making process that happens at the end of April or at any time
should be all-inclusive, transparent, and with the full participation
of all members, as per the WTO mandate.
The current situation adds to the mounting concerns shared by civil
society and many developing country officials: that exclusive meetings
of certain countries to further negotiations in the WTO have become the
main negotiating arena for the Doha Round. These exclusive meetings
include the recent Senior Officials meeting of the WTO in Geneva on the
7-9th of March, the Mini-Ministerial meeting in London on the 10-11th
of March, and the recent Micro- Ministerial in Rio on March 31-April 1,
which you attended. While groups of Ministers, ambassadors and/or
delegates are certainly free to meet informally, our concern is that
these meetings have become the main negotiating fora. The countries
that are being excluded from these undemocratic and non-inclusive
decision-making processes are, of course, the majority of the WTO's
member countries, including the LDCs, the ACP, and the Africa Group.
These are the same countries which now face a Doha Round conclusion
that, if implemented, would harm the majority of their populations, as
confirmed by recent Carnegie, World Bank, and other studies, because of
the manner in which the negotiations process has been dominated by the
interests of the rich and powerful countries which have forced
development issues off the agenda.
If your call for Ministerial involvement is not to be seen as a wilful
continuation of this undemocratic, top-down approach, then it is
imperative that every member has equal access to the decision-making
processes of the Doha Round.
We therefore demand that the entire membership of the WTO be invited to
be involved in all processes and all meetings with regards to future
WTO negotiations. The presence of some Ministers must not become a
pretext for exclusive Green Room meetings where decisions are made
without the presence of all WTO members.
May we remind you that articles 48 and 49 of the Doha Ministerial
Declaration make abundantly clear that the Director General, above all,
should be committed to ensure that the negotiations are open to all
members of the WTO and that they should be conducted in such a manner
that facilitates the effective participation of all in order to achieve
benefits for all members and an overall balance in the outcome of the
negotiations. This mandate however has been repeatedly violated over
the course of the negotiations.
Sir, you have expressed a commitment to democratic process and
transparent operation of the WTO. Yet your invitation to Ministers to
come to Geneva seems inconsistent with your espoused commitments.
We have serious concerns that your proposed process is likely to be a
recreation of the procedurally flawed situation that produced the July
package in 2004, where only a select circle of Ministers were present
at a Mini-Ministerial in Geneva, which became the main decision making
and negotiating forum. Decisions were made without the full
participation of the entire membership that were as critical as those
of a formal Ministerial Conference.
If your past statements are to be more than rhetoric, we would like to
hear from you, as to how you are implementing your responsibility to
ensure that decision-making is based on the full participation of all
members.
We seek your urgent consideration of the above matters and your prompt
assurance that honest, democratic and inclusive processes, not the
interests of the powerful few or looming timelines, will determine the
process of WTO negotiations.
Yours truly,
Signed by 125 organisations
cc: Permanent Representatives of Member States, WTO |
