ACTION AGENDA OF THE MANILA PEOPLE'S FORUM ON APEC

As members of people's movements, non-governmental organisations and trade unions we are committed to a process of economic development which responds to human needs and to a system of international economic relations that respects human rights, particularly the rights of women; a system that breaks the cycle of debt and lessens the disparity between rich and poor, and between nations.

The eradication of women's poverty, and the achievement of women's full social and economic equality are priorities. Workers, indigenous people, and particularly women must be assured they can fully participate in policy formation and decision making that affects their lives.

We recognize the need to strengthen our effort to combat the trade liberalization model evident in APEC and to imagine and construct an alternative world based on human rights and dignity. We need to engage the people in this effort, so they can participate fully in their own destiny.

To realise our dreams, we require concerted action by both governments of the countries participating in APEC, and by People'ss Organisations and NGOs in the Asia-Pacific region.

This paper is submitted, not in conclusion, but to suggest a beginning. It serves to examine who we are, to define our vision, and to suggest how these ends can be achieved. Let us make no illusions about our diversity of views. Rather let us affirm our commitment to genuine regional co-operation that is not based on a paradigm of naked economic liberalization.

This plan of action is the product of six separate meetings, each focusing on a separate issue, that preceded the 1996 Manila People'ss Forum on APEC. Each section is the result of lengthy discussion and debate and an attempt to reach consensus on these vital issues.

1. Gender and Economic Issues

Women of Asia and the Pacific Rim call upon governments to live up to commitments made in UN conventions, including the following:

# Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women

# International Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR)

# Beijing Platform for Action

# Convention on the Protection of the Rights of all Migrant Workers and Members of their families

# International Labor Organisation (ILO) Conventions on Labor Standards

# International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)

# Convention Against Torture, and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment

# International Convention on All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD)

# International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid

# Convention on the Rights of the Child

Action Resolutions

# Support the cause of Asian comfort women, particularly the Malaya Lola's clamour for the Japanese government's favourable action on the recommendations of the UN Commission on Human Rights;

# Uphold the inalienable right of the East Timorese to self-determination; the immediate withdrawal of Indonesian illegal occupying forces from East Timor; and a UN program to bring about a genuine peaceful resolution to the East Timor situation;

# Oppose state repression in Burma; prohibit membership in ASEAN of the illegitimate and lawless State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC); support international campaigns for human rights, democracy and peace in Burma; attention to the rights of Burmese women and children; recognition of the contributions of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD);

# Demand governments sign, ratify and enforce the UN Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families;

# Condemn the Malaysian government's anti-democratic behaviour in orchestrating the bust of the Asia-Pacific conference on East Timor II, and support the ten Malaysians who are still being detained;

# Call on the National Action Committee on the Status of Women in Canada to host a second International Women's Conference during the APEC summit in Vancouver in November 1997;

# Urge NGOs and people's organisations to continue building solidarity in opposing all APEC agreements that are detrimental to women;

# Call on women's organisations to push governments to make the eradication of women's poverty their central goal;

# Call on women's organisations to initiate and advocate for laws and policies that will end discrimination against women based on gender, class, sexual orientation, ability, race and ethnicity, or residency status;

# Condemn all urban poor demolitions undertaken by the Philippine government; and in particular, the Philippine government's violation of the rights of thousands of families whose houses had been demolished in preparation for the APEC Summit;

# Urge the Philippine government to stop all land conversions and massive displacement of small farmers and to implement genuine agrarian reform.

2. Labor and Migrant Policy

APEC dangles promises of jobs, riches and opportunity before the people of Asian Pacific nations”all to be achieved through trade liberalization. But the promise is realised for only a few ” trade liberalization brings increased poverty, dislocation, social disintegration, and despair to millions of workers and peasants, indigenous people, women and children in the region. With the consent of governments, basic human rights are overturned, and workers exploited to turn profits for the few.

We remind all governments that their first responsibility is to their own citizens, both at home and overseas, and they must resist the temptation to sacrifice the rights of migrant workers abroad for diplomatic or trade relations reasons

We call on governments of countries participating in APEC:

# to honour international commitments made over the years at conferences on the Rights of the Child (New York), the Environment (Rio de Janeiro), Human Rights (Vienna) Population and Development (Copenhagen), Women (Beijing) and Sexual Exploitation of Children (Stockholm). We call on all governments in APEC to subject their economic plans and IAPs to the social criteria and commitments they made at these conferences.

# to respect, enforce and improve national laws protecting human and labor rights, and where these laws do not meet international standards, to amend them and bring them into compliance. In particular informal sector workers, migrants, farm workers and free trade zone workers must be included within labor laws and governments must inform migrant workers of their legal rights.

# to stop involving the military or police in labor disputes, where they are used as an adjunct corporate security force, to harass, or threaten workers.

# to release immediately all imprisoned labor leaders and workers detained for trying to exercise their labor rights.

# to implement stringent workplace health and safety laws and regulations that include, but are not limited to the right to refuse dangerous work, and to refuse to work with substances that may harm the worker, the air, water and land. Such laws must require complete disclosure of information on workplace hazards to workers and their unions.

# to ratify and enforce international conventions including the UN's International Conventions on Political and Civil Rights, on Economic, Cultural and Social Rights, and on the Protection of the Rights of Migrants and members of their families.

# to ratify and enforce all ILO conventions on migrant workers and their families, as well as those guaranteeing freedom of association, and free collective bargaining, for private and public sector workers, prohibiting child labor, and forced labor and prohibiting discrimination in the workplace.

# to bring in regulations and protocols, in the sending and receiving countries, that protect migrant workers from abusive practices and conditions, both during the recruiting process and in the workplace. Governments must institute measures to stop illegal recruitment of workers by individuals and agencies and stop the trafficking of women and children for sexual services.

# to strengthen the ILO's complaint procedures by establishing complaint mechanism, for migrant worker conventions and those on core workers' rights. Enforcement systems that redress violations must be developed at the ILO in conjunction with other international bodies

# to stop relying on employment policies that foster the export of people to other countries and make it a priority to create jobs, at decent wages, so that workers can realise their right to remain in the country of their birth.

# to direct their embassies in foreign countries to extend swift, effective humanitarian assistance to migrants and to work for their protection in host countries.

# to provide assistance and relief, in the form of realistic and adequately funded education and training programs for workers faced with dislocation, job loss and informalisation, that is increasingly resulting from trade pressures.

Research and Information

We call on governments

# to compile and publish a compendium of laws and regulations regarding migrant workers in the different APEC member economies, as well as judicial procedures for protecting their human and labor rights, and to make this information widely available.

# to refrain from issuing partial and misleading information on the impacts of APEC, and to commission independent research on the consequences of liberalization as it relates to various sectors of the economy and work force.

Corporate Codes of Conduct for Transnationals

We call on governments to pressure corporations, in dialogue with workers and unions, to adopt codes of conduct for all phases of their operations, including contractors and sub-contractors everywhere in the Asia Pacific region. These codes must include respect for all relevant labor laws, recognise the rights of freedom of association and expression, and collective bargaining rights, and employment standards including wage rates, health and safety and benefits.

Governments must work with trade unions and NGOs to develop ways to monitor compliance with such codes of conduct and to assess the practices of corporations related to environmental pollution and clean-up.

Governments must develop mechanisms to hold corporations accountable to their obligations to workers, including back pay and severance pay when they relocate.

We call on governments to strengthen the ability to regulate multinational and transnational corporations, through international treaties or agreements that will allow claims against these corporations to be filed in the country housing their corporate headquarters, or in international courts, when claims cannot be adjudicated, nor damages collected in the country where violations occur.

Preparing for action

As people's movements, non-governmental organisations and trade unions, we recognise the need to consolidate and strengthen our efforts to combat the globalization model evident in APEC, and to imagine and construct an alternative world based on human rights and human dignity. We need to engage our membership in these issues, to develop new inclusive paradigms for relations among local workers and migrants. We need to strengthen relationships between workers, indigenous peoples, women, trade unions, migrant workers groups, popular movements and NGOs, and women's groups and to develop peoples' alternative structures for fair trade.

We call on people's organisations and NGOs throughout the region

# to undertake investigation and advocacy related to multi-national corporations operating in their country, and to communicate this information to home country organisations in order to assist the development of international campaigns on corporate responsibility.

# to begin a multinational study of migrant worker related laws, regulations and practices, together with a listing of resources available to assist migrant workers. This should be made widely available in all relevant languages.

# to begin an international study regarding the legal obligations of multinational corporations in various countries of the region, in order to develop proposals for strengthening the legal mechanisms to hold MNCs accountable for their action.

# to identify concrete impacts of APEC on labor and migrant workers, and to standardise and improve the systems of documentation and information exchange.

# to undertake mass media and education campaigns on workers rights and particularly on the issue of migrant workers to increase public awareness of their oppression, and identify migrant rights as workers' rights. Human rights weeks, international women's day and other events provide an opportunity to increase public awareness, but organisations should consider setting an international migrant month or week.

# to identify common solidarity campaigns in certain sectors, for eg. in fishing, telecommunications, agribusiness, or forestry, or against certain corporations and to improve networks for circulation of information on multinationals' activities.

# to respond to urgent alert actions, and to improve systems and structures for action alert, for example by improving links between labor organisations and human rights groups, and women's groups.

In preparation for the 1997 Vancouver forum, NGOs, trade unions, and people's movements should discuss what common initiatives have been successful, and work to establish a concrete agenda for common action.

We will launch common initiatives that will develop a social agenda, for example., through the exchange of information on labor and migrant rights situations in countries whose governments are in APEC; to adopt more uniform models of observing and monitoring labor practices in APEC economies; to hold TNCs accountable for the social and environmental impact of their operations; and to identify specific initiatives that can relate to the APEC experience, for example within NAFTA.

Trade unions should increase organising efforts across industries, countries, and across regions, and should actively support migrant workers, especially women, and their advocacy organisations in their demands for rights. Trade unions should also expand organising to include informal, and non-standard workers, many of whom are women or workers disadvantaged because of race, religion, country of origin or other similar factors.

Trade unions will work towards alternative economic activities to prepare for the re-integration of returning migrant workers to their home countries, and to build and strengthen workers networks in the region, for example by using ALARM for outreach for the 1997 Vancouver forum, by using ALARM as a clearinghouse for information and ; by continuing the networks established at the labor and migrant rights pre-conference forum in Cavite; by approaching the ICFTU and other unions to distribute information to member unions about the Vancouver forum as a means of increasing union participation. They will work to strengthen solidarity with community organisations, and workers' advocacy groups and with consumer groups, who have considerable power to affect the behaviour of corporations.

 

3. Ecology and Environment

We bind ourselves to the principles of ecologically and socially sustainable development, that:

# is people-oriented and environment-based;

# places a premium on social equity, gender equality, people's participation, justice and improved quality of life;

# fosters people's effective control over their resources as it encourages mutually beneficial interdependence among communities, be it local, national, regional or international;

# conserves the environment and protects biodiversity and does not compromise the ability of our future generations to meet their own needs, and;

# guarantees freedom of access for all people to information from governments and industry that relates to their land, waters, livelihoods, and health.

The imperative of genuine social and ecological sustainability must be advanced as a major challenge to economic liberalization.

The role of governments in development decision-making

Actions for Governments

Government decision-making and actions must be based on the principles of participatory democracy, fair elections, sovereignty, community empowerment, and ecologically and socially sustainable development.

Government decision-making must be transparent, and accountable for the environmental and social costs of production and should consider long-term multi-generational action plans.

Governments must protect the rights of indigenous people to their traditional lands, waters and resources, and support the maintenance of cultural beliefs, culture, and ways of life.

Community and national control over natural resources

Actions for governments

Access to information regarding any impact from resource use on a person's community, livelihood, environment or health is a basic right that shall not be denied.

Agricultural land must not be converted to industrial uses without the informed consent of those who derive their food and livelihood from that land.

Community control should be asserted over the allocation and management of natural resources on the basis of ecological boundaries (such as watersheds) rather than political boundaries.

There should be no patenting of any life forms. Governments should not permit access to communities for medical research or other purposes without the informed consent of the members of the community affected.

An international treaty, law or covenant guaranteeing peoples' right of access to information should be developed and signed by all countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

Governments shall not allow the right of farmers and fisherfolk to meet their basic food and nutrition needs from the land and sea to be removed or impaired by industries that pollute terrestrial and marine environments, or by transnational or foreign industries which deplete crucial food sources.

Governments should support, promote and implement with technical and financial resources an ecologically sustainable policy to ensure food security.

Natural resource accounting

Actions for governments

National accounting systems must expose the costs of direct and indirect subsidies to the use of natural resources, particularly in energy production, agribusiness, and extractive industries. The pricing of materials and goods should internalise the environmental and social costs of their production.

Governments shall require all development proposals to undertake an independent assessment of their social and environmental impacts before their approval, as part of the decision-making process, based on guidelines and outcomes formed through extensive community participation.

Governments shall replace the Gross National Product (GNP) method of national accounting, with its focus on purely financial and economic factors, with a system which includes measures of consumption and degradation of natural resources, to accurately show the environmental and social costs of industrialisation.

Actions for people's organisations and NGOs

Continue to research and disseminate information, between NGOs and to the community, about the use of market-based mechanisms by government and industry in environmental decision-making.

Continue to promote the non-economic and intrinsic values of intact ecosystems and ecological processes.

Energy production, consumption and use

Actions for governments

Governments must find alternatives to continuing to rely on non-renewable, polluting energy sources to fuel increasing demands by industrialisation, as they cause irreversible damage to ecosystems and biodiversity, and rob future generations of a resource base for their survival.

Nuclear energy, large-scale power projects, and large dams that negatively impact vital ecosystems and harm peoples' lives, should be rejected.

Restructure electricity industries to promote demand-side management, energy efficiency and energy conservation.

Actions for people's organisations and NGOs

Develop and promote models of energy preservation and conservation, and demonstrate potential for use of renewable energy sources.

Develop information and education services to encourage and promote reduction in energy consumption and a shift to the use of renewable energy sources.

Strengthen opposition to and build solidarity against the spread of nuclear power.

Toxic emissions, waste control and management

Actions for government

Hazardous chemicals that have been prohibited and withdrawn in developed countries must not be sold to developing countries.

Set targets of zero waste management in urban, rural, and industrial areas.

Ratify, implement in national legislation, and enforce the Basel Convention and the Basel Ban in all countries of the Asia-Pacific region. (The Basel Ban on toxic waste provides for an immediate ban on the shipment of toxic waste from developed countries to final disposal sites in developing countries, and for a phaseout by 1998 of shipment of toxic wastes from developed to developing countries for recycling purposes.)

Require new and existing industries to install the best available pollution control technologies, implement programs to minimise waste, and implement clean production and appropriate technologies.

The US Government must clean up Subic and Clark military bases in the Philippines and all other former and existing bases in the Asia-Pacific and the world, assess the extent of pollution and contamination, develop timelines and targets, compensate people affected by toxic emissions, and involve communities, POs and NGOs in the clean-up process.

Establish incentives (such as labelling schemes) to promote the use and purchase of goods derived from clean, environmentally sound, and socially just production processes.

Actions for People's Organisations and NGOs

NGOs will act on their responsibility to protect and advance the right to know by workers and the public.

NGOs will be active in researching and distributing information on hazardous wastes.

NGOs will monitor the progress of governments and industry in meeting these goals for clean production and zero waste management.

International conventions and treaties

Actions for governments

Policies and programs pursued by APEC or other regional groupings must comply with and not override laws set down in international treaties and conventions.

Renew and strengthen commitments to the conventions on biodiversity and climate change, and take immediate steps to demonstrate this commitment.

Develop a regional approach in the Asia-Pacific region to implementing global treaties that promote ecologically and socially sustainable development.

Governments should meet their responsibility to make information public and accessible in advance about treaties before they are signed and ratified, and to encourage participation by citizens at the national and community levels in these processes.

Actions for people's organisations and NGOs

Compile a directory of treaties and conventions relevant to the Asia-Pacific region, evaluate their status in terms of ratification and implementation, assess their implications for policies and programs pursued by APEC and other regional groupings, and disseminate this information throughout the Asia-Pacific communities.

Establish a regional fighting fund to run test cases to legally challenge APEC-driven initiatives that may breach UN treaties and conventions.

Areas for regional co-operation between communities of the Asia-Pacific

Actions for People's Organisations and NGOs

Continue to act as vigilant monitors of governments and industry, and continue to mobiles people at a community level while working in a coordinated fashion at the regional level.

Pool resources, information, and expertise, and continuing to listen to each other, the efforts of our organisations can substantially contribute to civil society and government action.

If governments fail to implement policies that promote ecologically and socially sustainable development, People's organisations and NGOs will maintain the process of political change and pressure governments to meet their responsibilities to their citizens.

We recognise that economic officials and government ministers are meeting annually to discuss the liberalising of trade in the Asia-Pacific region. and we call for transparency of all proceedings. The input of citizens must be taken into account as a priority, no decisions or mandates have any validity unless these demands are met.

4. Economics and Social Development

Current market-based economic strategies which rely solely on growth in exports, make few improvements in the lives of those people”farmers, workers , women and indigenous people”already living on the margins in many Asian pacific nations. Poverty in underdeveloped countries worsens in character and magnitude”structural adjustment programs dictate severe cuts to social services and income supports at a time when these are needed most. . Government economic programs are biased against small agricultural production for local needs and favour rapid industrialisation or production of cash crops for export. . The result is massive land use conversion, increased poverty in rural communities, ecological disturbance , and an unstable food supply. Rural residents streaming into the cities are the human raw materials required for an economic development that doesn't benefit them.

We call on governments throughout the region

Fundamental changes to the macro-economic model, which is characterised by unrestricted trade and investment, privatisation and deregulation, and espoused by APEC, are required. This realignment must:

This will require an examination of:

the intellectual incoherence of the so-called free trade and liberalised investment model, for example. rules that forbid governments from restricting trade in goods and services, or shaping investment terms, at the same time that open access to medicines, technology and ideas covered by intellectual property patents is denied;

the promised benefits, versus the contrary results, of the first two years of the Uruguay Round of the GATT, given the commitment of APEC and ABAC to extend and hasten the GATT/WTO process;

the real life impact of trade and investment liberalization on wealth redistribution and downstream economic and social costs, in all countries affected by APEC;

# comparative experiences under the GATT/WTO, NAFTA and ANZCERTA, which are the economic models for APEC, to illustrate the likely effects of APEC on job creation, real wages, social wage, living standards, consumer prices, small and medium businesses, agriculture, environmental conditions, and political stability;

# the impact of foreign direct investment on distribution and location of capital, local content in production and relative net inflows and outflows of capital;

# the long-term economic, social and environmental impact of foreign debt servicing and the benefits of investment in social infrastructure;

# the impact of the implementation of Uruguay Round commitments on agricultural production and price; the widening gap between agricultural and non-agricultural dimensions of the economy; the long-term consequences of converting cultivated land to non-agricultural purposes; and urban migration, with its resulting costs to government, or in default to the individuals themselves;

# the realities of international competition, given the structure of monopolised markets for specific commodities and services which are critical to the region;

# the impact of the APEC agenda on women, especially in unpaid labor, the informal sector, and the marginalised paid work force;

# the impact of commodification of information technology, the costs of denial of access to such technology, and the usurpation of indigenous people's control over their heritage; and

# the intensive cultural impact of APEC economic policies such as agricultural liberalization, intellectual property and harmonisation of standards on indigenous peoples, the family and traditional communities.

It is proposed to establish a working group to prepare documentation of alternative economic mechanisms, and proposals for transition to those mechanisms. The group will be asked to produce a first report for the Canada APEC summit in November 1997.

In the context of the common experiences of trade liberalization and investment of people within all member countries of APEC, and the different economic, political, cultural and historical conditions which affect the economic policies that are relevant, this report will identify:

# specific trade, regulatory, fiscal and other policy mechanisms which redirect the purpose of trade and markets to promote people-centred development, self-determination, genuine social well-being and ecological responsibility;

# proposals for addressing agricultural overproduction in the North and the trade-distorting dumping of subsidised agricultural products from the US and EU in Southern markets , as a policy alternative to liberalization of agricultural trade;

# mechanisms for democratically accountable, open regional economic cooperation among states, small producers and peoples, including documentation of examples of regional cooperation and people-to-people trade which already provide alternatives to transnational corporate enterprise, such as cooperatives, alternative trading, peasant and farmers movements, and means to facilitate these forms of regional trade and economic cooperation at a people-to -people level;

# technical means to factor into national accounts the value of women's unpaid labor, and the social and environmental costs and benefits of government policies;

# transitional mechanisms by which states can continue to regulate their economies prior to the replacement of the existing WTO/APEC regime, including interim amendments to close loopholes for manipulation of rules of those agreements, such as use of provisions on non-tariff barriers to undermine bona fide environmental, health and cultural measures as illegal trade barriers;

# criteria for, and methods to promote, ethical investment;

# means to achieve government-backed and/or citizen-defined and enforced codes of conduct for TNCs;

# methods, such as boycotts, labelling regimes and cooperative buying groups to mobilise consumer power in determining government and private sector economic, trade and investment policy;

# means by which information technology may be both protected and shared;

# criteria and means for carrying out poverty impact assessments of major policy changes, including commitments under SAPs, WTO and APEC;

5. Human and People's Rights

We affirm the spirit and principles contained in the Kyoto Declaration, the Bangkok Declaration, the Vienna Declaration, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Peoples, and other international instruments upholding human and peoples rights. We make this statement in support of the creed of peace and development based on social justice, in the face of the deleterious effects of economic globalization, trade and investment liberalization and corporate rule, of which APEC is a part.

Assertion of rights

In the face of development aggression and overt human rights violations spawned by the accelerated economic liberalization policies of Asia-Pacific governments, we call on the peoples of the Asia-Pacific region to assert and defend, with determination:

# Our sovereign right over the disposal of our national wealth and resources in the pursuit of ecological sustainability and to defend against moves to open them up for common exploitation by non-nationals;

# Our rights to ownership of and equal access to their sources and means of subsistence, including arable land and farmer supports;

# Our right to formulate and determine independent economic, social, political and environmental policies and programs to control national resources and meet their needs;

# Our right to maintain our diverse cultures in respect of economic, social, spiritual, political and legal systems congruent with the standards of international justice;

# The right of indigenous peoples and other peoples struggling for self-determination to manage, protect, develop and defend ancestral domains;

# Our right to resist any form of domination, be it economic, cultural or political, by utilising any means recognised by the international community;

# Our right of access to free and unrestricted information and participation in the formulation of policies, plans and laws on matters of public concern;

# Our right to have our basic living needs met, including adequate housing, education, and health;

# Our right to organise and mobilise at local, national and international levels on issues of mutual concern;

# Our right of access to the rule of law and to appropriate punishment for perpetrators of human rights abuses, including disappearances and extra-judicial executions;

# Our right to live in a region which is nuclear-free and free from health-threatening pollution,

# The right of peoples to food security - the ability to produce and have control over basic food needs and safe and potable water are essential to the realisation of human rights and peoples' rights;

# Our rights to safe working conditions and to other internationally agreed labor conditions; and

# Our right to psycho-social rehabilitation and assistance for victims of human rights and peoples' rights violations.

We call on the people's organisations and NGOs to :

# Initiate a massive information and education campaign on the impacts of the APEC member countries' economic liberalization programs and the potential impacts of APEC on the rights of people, especially marginalised sectors;

# Document and monitor the consequences of economic liberalising and of governments' commitments to APEC on peoples' rights;

# Resist, and build solidarity through various means and in various levels against, all forms of development aggression to effectively block, halt, and reverse their negative effects;

# Formulate, promote, and work for alternative, gender-responsive programs and structures, consistent with human and people's rights, to counter the principles underlying economic liberalising and to bring about the genuine empowerment and sustainable development of peoples;

# Work for an internationally accepted set of indicators for the measurement of peoples' access to and enjoyment of their economic, social, cultural and collective rights;

# Work and lobby for the formulation of laws, policies, and programs which will institutionalise respect for and promotion of people's rights by national governments at all levels of their operations;

# Forge unity with peoples in the Asia-Pacific region towards the creation of an international network of resistance against the onslaught of economic and cultural globalization and to build alternative structures and processes for joint endeavours for the empowerment and development of marginalised peoples, and

# Set up and/or strengthen the establishment of international legal mechanisms which would hold transnational or multinational companies accountable for their complicity in the violation of people's civil, political, economic, social, cultural and collective rights;

We call on the governments of the Asia-Pacific region, participating in APEC to:

# Institute as a condition for new and continuing APEC membership that countries ratify and implement the international instruments which uphold and promote human rights and peoples' rights;

# Engage in fair and responsible trade and investment through incorporating the provisions of the aforementioned international instruments into all international and regional trade and trade-related agreements and transactions, for instance, in the form of a human rights clause;

# Formulate and implement national economic policies and promote development through and within the context of UN-set standards and peoples' standards for individual and collective rights;

# Bring to an immediate end state-supported violence in the name of economic liberalising and establish or subscribe to an international system of war crimes courts to bring to account the perpetrators of genocide and similar violations against peoples of the region, by authorities and corporations;

# Work in cooperation with peoples' organisations and NGOs to develop and implement genuine solutions to the human rights problems of the poor, especially women, children, the aged and economic migrants;

# Guarantee peoples' unrestricted right to information and participation in the development of countries' laws and policies; and

# Utilise the APEC process to commission independent research into the actual and potential negative effects of trade and investment liberalising on human rights and peoples' rights.

We call on Transnational Corporations and Multinational Corporations to:

# Recognise their responsibilities as members of the international community and comply with international standards in their policies and practices, actively avoiding complicity in violations of human rights and peoples' rights, and

# Integrate into their corporate objectives and operations a commitment to the enhancement of the living standards of their employees and the communities in which they operate.

National and international trade and investment policies must reinforce , not undermine, people-centred development within a human rights and peoples' rights framework.

Trade and investment policies must be decided through open and democratic processes. We assert the peoples' right to determine what their countries' trade and investment policies will be and we demand that national and international processes and structures be established to bring about the empowerment of working people, indigenous peoples, and women.

6. Governance and the Role of the State

In embracing trade liberalization, without reservations, governments participating in APEC are retreating from any notion of beneficial interventions in the economy ” abandoning their responsibilities to protect the public interest , to act for the common good of their peoples

We call on people's organisations and NGOs to

# Establish a comprehensive educational program for people's organisations and non-governmental organisations on the policies and practices of APEC and the WTO to encourage public understanding and promote debate and the development of effective responses to these processes

# Monitor and document the effects of the new trade and investment regime on their governments and societies especially in terms of their capacity to determine their own interests and priorities towards development.

# Investigate the extent to which the structural and political processes associated with APEC impinge on questions of sovereignty, noting that national sovereignty should be distinguished from people's sovereignty, where the former conventionally represents state interest exclusively and often to the detriment of a broader notion of popular, democratic values;

# To explore all arenas and modes of resistance to the damaging effects of unfettered state-corporate power. This includes: a) the promotion of responsible investment, b) the use of national an international law to expose and challenge unlawful actions and activities of governments and corporations; c) political lobbying; d) demand to the UN Special Rapporteur on Social, Cultural and Political Rights to examine the impact of the WTO in the globalization process;

# To advance the role of civil society vis-a-vis the state and corporations in the determination of economic policy co-ordination in order to promote increased democratic accountability and good governance. Create counter-hegemonic institutions and coalitions by mobilising existing people's organisations and NGO networks to contest the present APEC-WTO agenda and in formulating strategic policy alternatives. This should include cross-sectoral networking with dialogue at all levels from grassroots through national and regional groupings to the international community;

# create structures to monitor and educate with a view to creating counter hegemonic institutions and coalitions of transnational cross sectoral networking;

# use the issues of East Timor and Burma to educate and mobilise around issues of governance and the role of the state in the APEC region;

# establish dialogue through various means, on defining civil society, and accountability; on what are euphemistically called Asian values;

# create a working group on governance issues.

 

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Global Competitiveness And Corporate Rule:

The Canadian Experience

by Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke*

Many of you are all-too familiar with how Third World countries have been forced into the unregulated free-market global economy by a process of structural adjustment. Countries wanting debt relief have privatised social security, deregulated their transportation and resource sectors, allowed transnational corporations to displace domestic industry, undermined or destroyed collective bargaining, and cut public services such as education and health to the bone. But what is less known to Americans is that the same thing is happening to their Northern neighbour

National surrender

In the name of global competition, our governments are handing power over to the private sector on a massive scale. In less than a decade, both Conservative and Liberal governments have gutted Canada's world-class social reforms, ended universality, slashed welfare, introduced workfare, broken the collective bargaining agreement with their public sector workers, deregulated environmental legislation, stripped natural resource protection programs, including Canada's parks, severed trade from human rights, privatised the transportation sector, commercialised the cultural sector, and endorsed world-wide free trade.

The results of these policies have been devastating for most Canadians. Several hundred thousand jobs and many hundreds of manufacturing companies have been lost to low-wage American states. Record levels of unemployed -- officially at just under ten per cent, but closer to twenty per cent if discouraged and severely underemployed workers are counted -- are accepted as normal. We are creating a contingency workforce of part-time, low-wage jobs with no security and few benefits.

Income disparities are growing among us: we dropped seven countries on the latest United Nations report that measures income distribution. We have our very own entrenched underclass and our middle class is disappearing. While child poverty hit a three-decade record in Canada -- there are fifty one per cent more poor children living in Canada today than in 1989 - corporate profits are soaring. Food banks and homelessness are mushrooming; whole families live on the streets, a notion that would have been inconceivable ten years ago.

How did this happen? Essentially, Canada's political and economic elite bought the current ideology that the global economy is inevitable, that there is no way to curb the power of global capital, and that, in order to remain competitive in the new world order, our nation had to turn its back on its history and institutions.

Sharing for survival

Canada, said a former Mexican Ambassador, is the solution looking for a problem. With a vast land mass, a harsh climate, three founding national identities -- Aboriginal, French, and multicultural English-speaking -- and a sparse population, largely scattered along the border of the biggest superpower in the world, our ancestors knew that they had to be creative in order to survive as a nation-state.

Where the American founding principles were Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, the Canadian founding principles were Peace, Order, and Good Government. Where the American narrative was individualistic and competitive - survival of the fittest - the Canadian narrative, for elemental reasons, was collective. Sharing was a prerequisite for survival.

Our ancestors knew that this survival depended on building a culture of interdependence, and so they built ribbons of common purpose -- economic, social, and cultural institutions -- that forged a nation-state out of the wilderness. Canada literally would not now exist if we had not built a strong public service to counter the North-South pull of corporate America.

Most crucially, they built a welfare system not based on individual charity, but on the notion that social security, particularly health care, is a right of citizenship and should be universally accessible to all Canadians. Strong national standards for what we call our ˜social safety net' promoted equality, and worked toward eliminating class and racial differences, generating a sense of community.

Corporate governance

All that has changed, beginning in the mid-1970s but dramatically accelerating in the last decade. Canadian capital went global, as it did all over the world, and, having escaped nation-state law, it called off its social contract with Canadian citizens. Big business in Canada launched an unprecedented assault on social programs, Canadian culture, full employment policies, environmental regulation, and the whole notion of public services.

Just as capitalism had been put on trial by citizens during the Great Depression, setting the stage for our welfare state, corporate Canada set out to put the whole idea of government on trial, calling for its re-invention by allowing the private sector to take over wholesale in areas of public service.

This could not be done in an ad hoc manner. While large corporations and banks, from the Hudson's Bay Company and the Bank of Montreal to the family empires of the Bronfmans, Reichmans, Thompsons, Irvings, Demarais, and Conrad Black, have always exerted a great deal of influence in shaping Canadian public policy, it was an informal arrangement of beneficent governing elites.

But the creation of a universal social safety net in the late 1960s was the result of an emerging, progressive citizens' movement which challenged the old, informal, elitist order. Corporate Canada decided it had to institutionalise and organise its lobby efforts if it were to regain influence it had lost.

Modelled after the United States Business Roundtable, Canada's corporate elite formed what has become the most powerful lobby group in the history of Canada, the Business Council on National Issues (BCNI). Comprised of the chief executive officers (CEOs) of the 160 largest companies (many of whom are subsidies of US transnationals) the BCNI's membership includes the largest corporations involved in the main sectors of Canada's economy: banking, manufacturing, resources, insurance, retail, telecommunications, and energy.

Armed with a network of corporate-sponsored research institutes and think-tanks, and backed by corporate-funded right-wing populist citizens' groups, the BCNI's mandate is to substantially restrict the role of government in the economy and to change the direction of economic policy in Canada. It operates as a virtual shadow cabinet behind the federal government in Ottawa, with established task forces in every major portfolio of public life. Each is backed up by advisory committees and well-equipped batteries of policy research personnel.

Over the past 15 years, the BCNI has been instrumental in establishing a dramatic shift in the macro-economic framework for policy making in Canada. Its relentless campaign to privatise and deregulate government enterprise became the norm: it convinced the federal government to fight inflation rather than unemployment; it was successful in promoting a wage control policy on public sector workers followed by a massive downsizing of the public service; it orchestrated the dismantling of public control over Canadian energy resources.

The BCNI wrote its own competition legislation, fought government plans for an industrial strategy and extensive job creation program, and engineered tax reforms that favoured corporations and the wealthy, all policies eventually adopted by government. (Canada's corporate tax rate now stands near the bottom of the OECD countries -- lower than the US -- and is the major factor in our ballooning deficit. Canadian business accounted for only 7.5 per cent of all income tax contributions in 1995.)

The BCNI played a pivotal role in making deficit slashing the number one priority in government policy making, constantly (and falsely) blaming social programs for the debt, and successfully paved the way for the dismantling of our universal social programs including unemployment insurance, social assistance, health care and pensions.

NAFTA harmonisation

But perhaps no policy tool was more important for the BCNI than the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement signed in 1989, and NAFTA, which replaced it. Even though Canada already had the highest levels of foreign domination of culture, industry, and resources of any industrialised nation on earth, corporate North America needed a formal economic rule-book that would force the Canadian economy to harmonise its practices and policies with the larger and more business-friendly US economy.

NAFTA limits Canadian governments' historic penchant for intervention, regulation, and social spending, and curbs workers' wage demands. The new continental market has pressured Canada to reduce social programs, wages, and environmental standards and as long as the deal is in place, no future government can even return to the old interventionist ways.

Free trade removed virtually all control over foreign investment in Canada, promoted the privatisation of public services such as health and education, enshrined the intellectual property rights of corporations, and contained no minimum protection for workers, social standards, health and safety measures, or the environment. It was and remains the crowning achievement of the BCNI.

The fierce fight over free trade was the first time many Canadians really understood that corporations in Canada are more powerful than their governments. They witnessed, also for the first time, unprecedented cross-border cooperation of big business forces to promote their agenda through all of North America.

In the US, the Business Roundtable set up the American Coalition for Trade Expansion with Canada, an industry alliance of 600 powerful corporations and industry associations with a combined workforce of 60 million; in Canada, the Business Council on National Issues set up a similar coalition, the Canadian Alliance for Trade and Job Opportunities, many of whose members were branch plants whose American head office companies belonged to the US coalition. The two groups worked closely together to coordinate their strategies.

Global Dimensions

Recently, however, it has become evident that most of the profound changes Canada has experienced are ideologically-driven and are part of a global phenomenon. In the new world order of global competitiveness, nation states and democratically elected governments have surrendered much of their sovereign power and the strategic tools required to develop a positive economic, social, and environmental future for their own peoples.

Through the process of globalisation, we are seeing a massive transfer of sovereign power out of the hands of nation states and into the hands of transnational corporations and banks.

This power grab has been carried out over the past decade or so through a series of economic initiatives promoted by big business and adopted by governments: free trade and the creation of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to enforce it; the growing debt and deficit crises of most nation states provoked in large part by the international movement of capital; the weakening of nation-state control over monetary policy; diminished public revenues from corporate taxes; the privatisation of what were once publicly delivered services; the deregulation of national economies.

To put it simply, we are now living in a new political era -- the age of corporate rule.

Mighty corporate interests have outgrown the nation-state and its laws. Governments may govern, but they do not rule. Transnational corporations have become economic sovereign entities whose paid lobby groups co-govern with elected politicians all over the world. Government leaders come, cap in hand, regardless of their political stripe, to the Economic Forum every year at Davos, Switzerland, where they implore the world's corporate leaders to invest in their countries on any conditions.

Corporate rule is an ideology, a system under which we live, but which, by its very pervasiveness, is growing invisible to us. Corporate rule is the globalisation of a doctrine. Corporate rule is the profit motive entering every part of our lives. It is the strip-mining of cultural diversity, the privatisation of the family. It has reached into our schools for our children, robbed our old of dignity. It seeks to own the genetic inheritance of the Third World. It buys and sells life. It has left its footprints in felled forests, stripped mines and fouled waters all over the world.

The myth of national competitiveness

Yet politicians everywhere exhort their citizens to accept these horrors and personal sacrifices in the name of nation-state competition and in order to improve the national ˜bottom line'. They talk of the GDP, national economic growth indicators, comparative advantage, and economies of scale. They say they are obsessed with export numbers, even though such measures have very little effect on reducing unemployment rates in any of their countries. They boast when they ˜win' a trade dispute with another country, ignoring the fact that most of this intra-nation trade is conducted by several hundred corporations who are the almost exclusive beneficiaries of expanded trade and who long ago stopped thinking in nation-state terms.

But the vast majority of their domestic policies foster the global economy which is rendering the nation-state obsolete. The 1995 United Nations World Investment Report on Transnational Corporations shows that all but five out of a total of 373 foreign direct investment regulatory changes made to domestic laws around the world in the last five years promote investment liberalisation.

When our leaders wrap themselves in our national flags and tell us that the pain we are suffering is for the national good, they speak with breathtaking hypocrisy. They don't want to set common social and environmental standards. That would mean that nation-states and their citizens are co-operating to bring the rule of law to international capital which they have no intention of doing.

A citizens' agenda

The commonality of the restructuring experience wrought by corporate rule unites the peoples of the world far more than it divides us: we are all experiencing massive job displacement and the growth in part-time jobs with few benefits and little security; the industrial sectors in all our countries have become more productive on the backs of fewer workers, who are earning less and working harder, often under punitive conditions; organised labour, public services, and social entitlements are everywhere under assault; income disparities between those in line to benefit from this system and the rest of us are growing, in some cases, dramatically; in all our countries child poverty is growing and an entrenched underclass is developing; everywhere corporate interests are promoting deregulation of the environment, with devastating consequences.

Peoples everywhere must reject the myth of national competitiveness, and demand the imposition of the rule of law on global capital. At the Council of Canadians, we have developed what we call the Citizen's Agenda -- a declaration of citizen rights in a global economy.

Central to it is the recognition that peoples around the world have the right to productive and fulfilling employment, food, shelter, education, pensions, unemployment insurance, health care, universally accessible public services, a safe and clean environment -- food, water, and air -- the safekeeping of our wilderness spaces, and to develop and celebrate our diverse cultures and freely communicate our distinct experiences.

We are developing tools to help individuals and groups form their own negotiation positions as they face governments and corporations, and alternative assumptions to counter the dominant ideology of the new economy. Canadians are rethinking our notions of democracy; we know we need to build new political vehicles if we are to reclaim control over our lives, communities, and environment.

The touchstones of the Citizens' Agenda are fair trade, full employment, democratic control, community, cultural diversity, popular sovereignty, environmental stewardship, public accountability, equality, social justice, and international co-operation.

Canadians have a powerful story to share with the world. Perhaps now we can use it to build a global citizens' movement. This can and must be the silver lining for those of us who fight to maintain standards for social justice and environmental stewardship in our country in the face of economic globalisation, and lost.

* Maude Barlow is a political affairs author and the national volunteer chair of the Council of Canadians, a national citizen's advocacy group of over 60,000 members and the founding co-chair of Action Canada Network. She was one of Canada's leading voices in the battle against the US-Canada Free Trade Agreement and NAFTA. She is a best-selling author whose works include Class Warfare: The Assault on Canada's Schools with Heather-Jane Robertson, Parcel of Rogues, and Take Back the Nation with Bruce Campbell. She is currently writing Straight Through the Heart, a critical examination of the Liberal government's role in developing and dismantling Canada's social programs.

* Tony Clarke is the former Chairperson of the Action Canada Network, the national Canadian coalition of labour and social groups, and Director of the Polaris Institute. Along with Maude Barlow, he is a founding member of the International Forum on Globalisation.

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Articles in 1997