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Al-Ahram Weekly 24 Feb. - 1 March 2000 Issue No. 470 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 24 Feb. - 1 March 2000 Issue No. 470
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Focus Heritage Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Legitimating capital
By Faiza Rady
When all else is controversial, the appearance of unanimity can always be relied upon to garner a broad consensus. The 190 nations who participated in the Tenth United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Bangkok, Thailand, from 12 to 19 February, closed the proceedings by issuing a solemn declaration in which they collectively agreed to invest in the struggle against global poverty and create a better and more equitable capitalist system -- one which will be specifically designed to address the plight of the world's two billion poor.
Interspersed with the lofty enunciation of highbrow principles, the declaration expressed the rich nations' ostensible determination to do something to relieve poverty. This they hope to achieve by "creating a fairer and better economic system" that will allow the wretched of the earth to "raise their standards of living and lead a full and meaningful life". In short, the prescription is capitalism with a more "humane" face -- an item which has long ranked high on the developed world's rhetorical agenda.
While the assembled dignitaries debated their brand-new development plans for the brand-new millennium, those who were not invited to join the proceedings sought to make their dissenting voices heard anyhow. The fury of the thousands of protesters who massed in the streets outside to protest the impact of neo-liberal politics reverberated round the conference hall so loudly, that not even the deafest bureaucrat or the most cloth-eared politician could fail to hear it. Boomee Sponog, a Thai farmer who lost his land to a World Bank-sponsored dam project, explained why everyone was making so much noise: "We want everybody to know that the government has done nothing for us."
The developed countries hoped they had learned the lesson of last December's World Trade Organisation (WTO) Ministerial Meeting in Seattle, which was effectively aborted in the wake of resounding demonstrations, as the Southern nations, emboldened, refused to comply with unilateral northern dictates. In the place of unadulterated free trade, they thus proposed a heavily-camouflaged, but still identifiable, version of the same thing -- trade with a "social conscience". Commenting on the North's rediscovery of the plight of the majority world, prominent economist Susan George dismissed the attempt: "It is touching to see the sudden neo-liberal concern with the fate of the poor in the South," wrote George. This rhetorical makeover was, however, de rigueur in Bangkok, as everybody who was anybody scrabbled to jump onto the new bandwagon. The United States, the European Union (EU), the World Bank (WB), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), even the WTO -- all preached sanctimoniously about "poverty alleviation" and reveled in self-induced mystic visions of loan write-offs for the world's 48 Least Developed Countries (LDCs). Leading the pack, WTO President, Mike Moore, disclosed that he was working on a package which would offer the LDCs free and unimpeded access to the developed world's markets.
Yet despite all the fancy posturing and bleeding hearts, and the elaborate promises to dismantle protective trade barriers and let Southern exports flood the world, no real commitments were made last week in Bangkok. None of the major trading powers was prepared to agree unconditionally to open its markets any further to goods and services from the LDCs.
Most delegates from the South were quick to denounce the rhetoric. Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika deplored that the developed countries' talk about debt relief had come too late in the day. "This is the macabre specter of someone visiting a dying man and saying, you'll die happy. You won't have any debts to pay," Bouteflika remarked.
Many political observers concurred with the Algerian president's sombre assessment of the rich countries' conversion to charity. Beyond paying pious -- if somewhat belated -- lip service to the need for poverty alleviation and juggling with an unfamiliar politically-correct jargon, the OECD nations' existing position on global trade emerged from the meeting virtually unscathed.
The US, in particular, manifested its disdain for UNCTAD -- a UN organisation notably lacking in any effective executive power -- by sending only a low-level delegation to Bangkok. Rita Hayes, the US ambassador to the WTO in Geneva, made the American position crystal clear by dismissing UNCTAD's pretensions to have any influence on the real issues at stake. "The WTO is the only organisation in town which has the rules and procedures... where the agreements are done and interpreted," she fumed. "[They cannot be] done at some of these other organisations which suddenly want to start interpreting what the WTO does."
While the US derided UNCTAD for attempting to move centre stage, the Asian nations deplored the UN's growing marginalisation and political impotence -- particularly in light of the recent spate of transnational mergers. Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said he was "worried and frightened" by the speed at which giant corporations were merging to grab monopoly control of global industries and their markets. "Now many of these corporations are financially more powerful than medium-sized countries... We fear that if they are allowed into our countries unconditionally they may swallow up all our businesses," warned Mohamad, who contended that the UN was increasingly ill-equipped to confront the multinational threat.
Many observers agree that the UN has indeed been neutralised as an effective challenger to transnational expansionism. "It used to be that the UN was a thorn in the side of multinational corporations. No more," remarked political analysts Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman.
Over the past year, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has in fact gone a long way to repositioning the organisation as the global capitalist's friend, by developing close working relationships with some of the world's largest transnational corporations through the powerful International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), among other channels.
Last February, Annan and the ICC released a joint communiqué stating that "the UN and the business community should work jointly to expand economic opportunities, especially in countries which may face marginalisation".
Annan then endorsed what he described as "partnerships", consisting of joint ventures between the world body and a number of transnational companies. According to these agreements, the UN would act as a "monitor" of corporate practices and "moderate" between Southern governments and transnationals, allowing the latter to use the prestigious UN logo and benefit from the agency's reputation, as well as its local contacts and field expertise. (The international agency, for its part, could clearly use some business advice, since it has agreed to provide these services for the astonishingly low fee of $50,000 per company.) Partner corporations, in turn, undertake to transfer more technology and investments to the South, presumably in the hope they will thus contribute to "alleviating poverty" by employing local labour, as well as becoming clients of local suppliers of parts and services.
In the opinion of some observers, however, the main aim of this so-called "partnership" between the international organisation and the corporate establishment is to coopt, and ultimately neutralise, the UN. "Ostensibly aimed at eliminating poverty by fostering increased corporate investment in impoverished areas of the world, this initiative will allow these global companies to cloak themselves in the benevolent and prestigious image of the United Nations," according to The Bridge News Forum.
While the UN claims that the lives of the world's two billion poor can only be improved with the help of the transnational corporations' money, critics also vehemently deny that the most pressing subsistence needs -- health, education and food -- can in fact be addressed by large companies, whose agenda centres on maximising profits by cutting costs.
The bad karma from the UN's cooption by big business was manifest at the UNCTAD meeting this week, as what was once a forum for the radical defence of people's rights saw itself reduced to a mere second-rank mediator in the WTO process, which it can neither prevent nor control. In the words of Thai activist Veerapol Sopha of the Forum of the Poor, "UNCTAD has done nothing but legitimise the attempts by powerful countries and transnational corporations to take advantage of people."
