Enterprise Issues
With Siaka Momoh
…What lessons for Nigeria?
They gathered, all – various organizations and social movements representing the landless peasants, small farmers, indigenous peoples, artisan fishers, women, workers, small and medium business, consumers, and marginalized peoples in South and Southeast Asia, on the occasion of the International Conference on Alternatives to Corporate-led Globalization and Regional Integration. Date was December 9-10, 2006 in Cebu City. Their concern was the pain certain policies on trade matters being driven by developing countries is causing them. They gathered to brainstorm on how to fight this.
The summit highlighted the problem. For these Asians that gathered, the recent proliferation of bilateral and regional free trade agreements pushed by developed countries such as the ASEAN- Japan Economic Partnership Agreements, US-ASEAN Trade and Investment Framework (TIFA), the Australia-Thailand FTA, Japan- Malaysia FTA, Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement (JPEPA) and in particular the surge in negotiations for US FTAs in the region such as the US-Thailand FTA, the US-Malaysia FTA, and the US-Korea FTA and preparations for such in the Philippines and Indonesia pose grave threats to people’s livelihoods, public health, biodiversity and environment. They argue bilateral and regional free trade agreements aim for a more rapid and comprehensive liberalization of economies of developing and least developing countries, “have exacerbated poverty as well as class and gender inequalities for the last two decades”.
The summit, in line with the crusade of the likes of Oxfam International, a hardline global NGO, argued that through the ASEAN, the negotiations for regional and bilateral free trade and investments agreements with rich industrialized countries were being fast-tracked on top of its existing economic initiatives like the ASEAN Free Trade Agreement (AFTA), ASEAN Industrial Cooperation Scheme (AICO) and ASEAN Investment Area (AIA). Envisioned to create a single market for more than 500 million Southeast Asian people; that these free trade agreements and regional economic integration project “is coated in rhetoric of ‘creating equitable access to opportunities’.” The summit noted that however past and present episodes of liberalization and economic integration “have shown that they merely expand and facilitate market and investment opportunities for developed countries’ transnational corporations. The Asian summit therefore concluded that the creation of an ASEAN single market within the rubric of free trade would only result to worsening the economic, social, political and environmental crisis faced by many developing and least developed countries in the region, in particular, the aggravation of landlessness and dislocation of small farmers, fishers and indigenous peoples; more virulent import surges destroying local livelihoods and enterprises; stagnation of national industries leading to more unemployment and lower wages and exploitative working conditions, rising out-migration and increased environmental destruction.
The summit would not buy the idea of food sovereignty being undermined under WTO, the bilateral and regional free trade agreements and the ASEAN’s neo-liberal concept of economic integration. It drew attention to these agreements which “are aimed at ‘harmonizing’ trade, investments, intellectual property, sanitary and phyto-sanitary and environmental policies and standards of developing and least developed countries”. It noted that “this clearly violates the inherent rights of peoples, communities and governments to determine their own policies on food and agriculture that are appropriate to their specific circumstances”.
A glaring fallout from this is that meanwhile, states and national governments in both South and Southeast Asia, instead of protecting their national sovereignty in order to promote the interests of their small farmers, fishers, workers, indigenous peoples and local businesses have acceded and embraced neo-liberal policies of liberalization, deregulation and privatization… The summit noted that most governments in the region have failed to represent the democratic interests of their people and have addressed the rising tide of resistance and struggles of peoples for survival with intensifying repression and human rights violations, that in many cases, governments have initiated political reforms such as constitutional changes to further align their national policies and legislations with the neo-liberal corporate agenda of the WTO and the international financial institutions.
It believed the current surge towards intensifying neo-liberal globalization, regional integration and trade liberalization through free trade agreements and domestic policies and regulations “are clearly driven by the trade and economic as well geo-political interests of developed countries and their transnational corporations and thus openly undermines human rights, food sovereignty, social rights, environment, and democracy in the region”.
The summit is right. This issue once received a robust treatment in this column a few months past….
First published 2006. Republished courtesy of Archives Siaka-Momoh
