Feb 11, 1998

PEACEFUL CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE AGAINST GLOBALISATION

Geneva, Feb 9 (IPS/Gustavo Capdevila) -- The first co-ordinated international campaign against free trade and globalisation will be launched within two weeks in Geneva, in a drive for peaceful civil disobedience across all the continents.  

The group organising the campaign, known as People's Global Action (PGA), announced 300 delegates will be attending a world co-ordination meeting "of the anti-global market resistance" from February 23 to 25.

Switzerland's Olivier de Marcellus, spokesman of the organising committee, said the action would be directed against free trade and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) - the multilateral body which promotes the liberalisation of economic relations.  

The platform of the committee proposes "a very clear rejection" of the WTO and also questions "other trade liberalisation agreements" which it identifies as "active promoters of socially and environmentally destructive globalisation."  

Agreements objected to include regional pacts like the Asia Pacific Economic Coordination, the European Union, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Southern Cone Common Market (Mercosur).

Peaceful civil disobedience will be organised to coincide with the Second WTO Ministerial Conference from May 18 to 20, to be attended by trade ministers.  

The WTO called this conference to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of its predecessor in the multilateral trade system, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).  

The PGA committee identified the multilateral trade system as "the main instrument used by transnational capital to impose its global economic government."  

Its conference in Geneva was attended by delegates of "grass roots movements" representing peoples from all over the world. De Marcellus said representatives came from citizen, economic and cultural rights defence groups and that "they are all opposed to the liberalisation of international trade."  

The PGA committee openly opposes the WTO, stating that "dialogue can have no impact whatsoever on such profoundly antidemocratic and ideologically biased organisations, where transnational capital is the only real political player." All the non-governmental organisations (NGOs) which tried to work within the WTO failed to get anywhere, said the PGA, and "therefore, we prefer confrontation." 

The committee will propose the conference in Geneva launch a call for non-violent civil disobedience during the days in May when the WTO ministers will be meeting. The proposal will end with an invitation to "build local alternatives for local peoples, in response to the action of the governments and corporations."  

Last week, People's Global Action held an international drive to collect signatures for a declaration condemning the World Economic Forum held in Davos, Switzerland, attended by business leaders, economists and governors. The document was signed by 220 organisations representing 23 million people world-wide, said De Marcellus.

The declaration condemned the globalisation which "only benefits the multinational business elites, while an increasing number of people are sinking into poverty, with no chance of access to basic health and education and forced to live alongside environmental destruction." 

Signatories of the manifesto against the Davos Forum include the Zapatista Front of Mexico, and international organisations like Friends of the Earth and the Indigenous Women's Network, and alternative thinkers like Noam Chomsky, Ken Loach and professor Nanjundaswamy.