UNCTAD X: An Opportunity Lost?

By Walden Bello*

To many partisans of a more equitable global economic system, the tenth conference of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) was, on balance, a disappointment. In the wake of the collapse of the World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial in Seattle, one would have expected UNCTAD to more aggressively assert its role in framing the rules of global governance in trade and financial issues. After all, despite its lack of resources, UNCTAD has something that neither the IMF not the WTO has: legitimacy.

Dousing Expectations

But from the very first day of the marathon event on February 7, while addressing the NGO Plenary Caucus for UNCTAD, Carlos Fortin, the deputy secretary general, stated clearly that, when it comes to global trade, "UNCTAD has no negotiating authority; the WTO has that." It was a message that was repeated over the next two weeks at various forums. UNCTAD's role, said Secretary General Rubens Ricupero, was to provide good critical analysis of global economic developments, provide technical capacity training to developing countries entering the world trading system, and "build consensus" on key trade and development issues. Do not underestimate the power of analysis, Ricupero told NGO delegates, because in the long run ideas prevail, and he went on to cite Friedrich Hayek's paean to the free market, The Road to Serfdom, as an example of how ideas ultimately prevail. Published in 1944, at the height of state-interventionist Keynesianism, this book became the bible of the Reagan free-market revolution in the 1980's.

Sensing that appealing to the power of ideas did not douse the dissatisfaction of some NGOs with UNCTAD's not challenging the WTO's monopoly on rule-setting on trade, Ricupero, in another meeting with civil society organizations, told them that they had to understand the realities of power, and if they wanted to move UNCTAD to gain negotiating authority, they had to lobby their member governments to push UNCTAD in that direction, not depend on the Secretariat.

Fair enough, it seems, until you realize that the UNCTAD secretary general plays a decisive leadership role in shaping a consensus on where the organization should be going. After all, it was largely the dynamism of Raul Prebisch, UNCTAD's founder, that enabled UNCTAD in the late sixties to play a key role in securing global commodity agreements and preferential access to developed country markets of developing country exports.

UNCTAD and Civil Society

This lack of boldness in asserting UNCTAD's role in the framing of global rules contrasted with Ricupero's determination to bring civil society input into the UNCTAD process, despite resistance from many member- governments. The NGO Plenary Caucus for UNCTAD X, which took place prior to the conference, was one of the innovations marking this UNCTAD meeting. But that many member governments are still uncomfortable, if not suspicious of NGOs, was underlined by the few government delegations that were on hand at the plenary hall to hear the reading of the statement "UNCTAD and Civil Society: Towards Our Common Goals."

Many observers were also disconcerted by the way UNCTAD appeared to give special attention to providing a platform for the chiefs of three controversial agencies dominated by the North--the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and the World Trade Organization--to expostulate at length on their views in so-called "interactive debates." In contrast, Prime Minister Mohamad Mahathir, who is probably the most eloquent Third World critic of the development paradigm represented by the three institutions, was confined to about twelve minutes on the opening night of the conference.

Camdessus and Moore

The annoyance of many was compounded by outgoing IMF chief Michel Camdessus' message and by the dynamics of the session with WTO head Mike Moore. While paying lip service to the need for a "new paradigm for development," Camdessus urged greater liberalization of trade and capital flows, a factor that is increasingly seen by much UNCTAD research as a major cause of poverty and instability. Instead of admitting the Fund's role in worsening the Asian financial crisis, Camdessus told his audience that the "rapid recovery" of the Asian economies would not have been possible without the IMF's actions.

In the session with Moore, the WTO chief alternated between a conciliatory tone and a hard line. An example of the latter was Moore's declaring the preservation of the "consensus" system of decision-making as "non-negotiable." The consensus principle has been much abused by the big trading powers, with the US, for instance, resorting to it to prevent the crystallisation of majority opinion in support of the candidacy of Thai Deputy Premier Supachai Panitchpakdi during the competition for the WTO leadership in 1999.

But more disturbing than Moore's comments was the way that the session on the WTO was dominated by interventions by rich-country representatives. Especially objectionable to many was the way Clare Short, the UK Minister for International Development, used her intervention to attack NGOs, asserting that in Seattle, "many of those that claimed to care about people in the developing world did not speak for their interests…We should not allow these voices to continue to claim to speak for developing countries."

Non-Controversial Documents

The negotiations around the Bangkok Declaration were relatively trouble-free. "It's really a stringing along of motherhood statements on development, poverty, and making sure globalization brings benefits to the majority," said the head of an Asian government delegation. There was a bit more heat in the negotiations over the final text of the Plan of Action. Developing country delegates wanted to change the wording of a paragraph urging free market access to developed country markets from covering "essentially all" to "all products" from the least developed countries-a moved opposed by the European Union member states.

A North-South tangle also ensued over the insistence of some developed countries that the Plan contain a specific reference to UNCTAD's promoting good governance, transparency, and measures against corruption, which many developing country delegations resisted. On both counts, the rich countries' views prevailed. Why the struggle over wording when this was a non-binding document? Because, as one Asian delegate explained, "this is shadow boxing, in preparation for the real negotiations. People want to make sure that there are precedents than can be cited or that there are none that can be pointed to in the binding negotiations, like those at the WTO."

UNCTAD X's High Point?

Yet UNCTAD X will probably be remembered mainly for what went on outside the official sessions. The daily demonstrations of several hundred protestors associated with Thailand's Assembly of the Poor were not on the scale of Seattle but they were impressive. But the conference will probably be best remembered as providing the background for the "pie-ing" of Michel Camdessus by Robert Naiman, the 35-year-old activist of the anti-IMF "50 Years is Enough" Campaign. This act can truly be described as the splatter that was heard and seen around the world, ironically owing to the globalization of corporate communications networks extolled by the IMF. Though Paul Krugman, the economist and New York Times commentator, branded the act as a symbol of Northern NGOs "saving the developing world from development," the people in the Third World knew better. The cake on Camdessus' face elicited an enthusiastic response throughout the world, not least in Thailand, where "hitman" Naiman was treated as a celebrity by people in the street.

It was also apparently received favourably by the delegates at the Queen Sirikit Convention Center. As one senior UNCTAD official said, "Everybody will tell you they disapprove of the act, but I still have to meet somebody who was unhappy that it happened to Camdessus.