This year saw some fantastic sessions organised by a variety of international NGOS, all of which can be downloaded as MP3 audio files here.

To save you some time, I’ve picked out the ones I think are probably of most interest to readers of this blog:

• Climate-change policies and trade rules: Conflict or coherence? – Organised by the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), and Friends of the Earth Europe (FOEE).  Download the audio here.

• A new global contract for food and agriculture: What can the WTO contribute? – Organised by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP). Download the audio here.

• Human rights impact assessment (HRIA): A pertinent tool for informing and improving trade governance? – Organised by 3D for Trade — Human Rights — Equitable Economy. Download the audio here.

• Labour and environment provisions in bilateral and regional agreements: Challenges for the multilateral trading system

• - Organised by the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD). Download the audio here.

• Multilateralism, our global crises and strategies for the future – Organised by the South Centre and the Global Development and Environment Institute, Tufts University.  Download the audio here.

• How do agreements on trade in services have a role in the financial crisis and the measures to deal with the economic crisis? – Organised by the Third World Network (TWN) and Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO). Download the audio here.

• Fundamental human rights at work and the role of the WTO:  operational routes – Organised by the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC). Download the audio here.

That should keep you listening for a few hours!

In the meantime, if you’re in Melbourne or Sydney, you may be interested to come along to a special public meeting next week, to be addressed two prominent Pacific Island trade activists:

Trade, labour mobility and development in the Pacific.

The Australian government has been pushing for greater regional economic integration in the Pacific islands, and promoting a regional trade agreement known as PACER-Plus. But what will free trade and increased overseas investment mean for workers and local communities in the Pacific? What are the costs and benefits of increased labour mobility in the Pacific and seasonal work schemes which provide access for Pacific workers to the Australian and New Zealand labour markets?

Join us to hear from two leading campaigners for trade justice in the Pacific:

* Maureen Penjueli from Fiji is co-ordinator of the Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG), which links regional community, church and women’s organisations to raise awareness about the social, cultural and economic impacts of PACER-Plus and free trade in the Pacific.

* John Salong from Vanuatu is director of the Vanuatu Women’s Development Scheme (VANWODS), a non-government microfinance group, which provides disadvantaged women with access to credit and income earning opportunities. John has been active in the debate about remittances, seasonal labour mobility and development options for rural communities in Vanuatu.

Details:

MELBOURNE:

Date: Monday 16 November 2009, 6.00pm
Venue: Meeting room 1, Ground floor, Trades Hall (Corner Lygon and Victoria Streets, Carlton – enter off Victoria Street).
Full Details here (PDF)

SYDNEY:

Date: Thursday 19th November 2009 at 6pm
Venue: Mitchell Theatre, Level 1, Sydney Mechanic School of Arts, 280 Pitt Street, Sydney CBD .
Full details here (PDF).

The speakers have been organised by Aid/Watch, and are being supported by Global Trade Watch.  For further information contact: Gary Lee (Aidwatch) on (02) 95578944 or Nic Maclellan on 0421840100.

UPDATE:

There’s also a meeting in Canberra:

Date: Tuesday 17 November 2009 at 6pm
Venue: Lecture Theatre, Manning Clark Centre, Australian National University
Full details here (PDF)

Last year, he was also appointed by the Un to the position of “Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health”.  (Yes, that’s his actual job title!  Fantastic isn’t it – I wonder how he fits it on his business cards?)

Anyway, on June 2 Grover presented his annual report to to the UN Human Rights council. (You can also download his accompanying speech here – most of the quotes below are from the speech.)

His report is an outstanding, scathing attack on the effects of the WTO’s TRIPs agreement, and other bilateral & regional FTAs in denying ordinary people around the world access to life-saving medicines.

He starts with some worrying statistics:

Nearly 2 billion people lack access to essential medicines, and massive inequalities still remain regarding access to health services and medicines around the world, which is partly due to high costs, Improving access to medicines could save 10 million lives a year, 4 million in Africa and South East Asia.

Then he sheets home the blame:

TRIPS and FTAs have had an adverse impact on prices and availability of medicines by creating obstacles for States to comply with their obligations to respect, protect, and fulfill the right to health. Similarly, the lack of capacity, together with external pressures from developed countries has created obstacles for developing countries and LDCs to use TRIPS flexibilities to promote access to medicines.

I am particularly concerned that the supply of generic medicines is now in doubt as countries that have been the generic producers have become TRIPS compliant and have had to introduce product patents.

Among a variety of evidence of how these agreements are blocking access to medicines, his report recounts a shocking story I heard in Thailand in 2007 when I was there filming Squeezed. The story is this:

Thailand also faced pressure following its attempts to lower prices of medicines through compulsory licensing. Between 2006 and 2007, Thailand issued compulsory licences for HIV and heart disease medicines in order to meet its obligations to provide universal access to medicines. In 2007, Thailand was placed on the Special 301 Priority Watch List. The position of the European Commission was also unwelcoming of the measures taken by Thailand. One of the affected companies withdrew seven pending applications for registration of new medicines in Thailand, thus effectively withholding them from the Thai market.

I always thought that this was extraordinary: a pharmaceutical company withholding its medicines from a market that’s in need (and willing to pay!) in “punishment” for a government taking steps to protect the health of its citizens!

Anyway, the impacts of TRIPs and the TRIPs+ provisions of mnay FTA are much wider – it’s worth having a look at the report to see just how wide.

Unforunately the recommendations which accompany the report are neccesarily conservative (nothing inthere about abolishing TRIPs altogether, I’m afraid.)  But it does recommend against TRIPs+ provisions for developing countries (like the ones that Australia includes in its FTAs):

Developing countries and LDCs should not introduce TRIPS-plus standards in their national laws. Developed countries should not encourage developing countries and LDCs to enter into TRIPS-plus FTAs and should be mindful of actions which may infringe upon the right to health.

Which is a start.

The report is only 27 pages long, so if you have a change, please read through it.  Otherwise, here’s the main thrust, from the Executive Summary:

This report examines the empirical evidence of the impact of free trade agreements on jobs. Using studies and statistics collated here for the first time, the report shows how past trade liberalisations caused huge job losses in both Africa and Latin America, the two continents that bore the brunt of early experiments in structural adjustment and other free trade policies. Findings from those experiments reveal a pattern of deindustrialisation, job losses and falling wages whose impact continues to be felt to this day, condemning whole generations to unemployment and poverty and stifling hopes for sustainable development.

In sub-Saharan Africa, trade liberalisation led to job losses across a wide range of countries, including Kenya, Malawi, Côte d’Ivoire, Zimbabwe and Morocco. Zambia saw unemployment double as the formal sector lost tens of thousands of jobs. Nor were these short-term losses: even today the vast majority of Zambian workers are forced to eke out a living in the informal economy, and 95% do not earn enough to lift themselves and their families above the $2 a day poverty threshold. Industrial employment in Ghana fell by 17% during the first eight years of trade liberalisation reforms, and by 22% for women.

Latin America experienced a similar loss of industrial and manufacturing jobs as a result of trade liberalisation. Unemployment in Latin America increased from 7.6 million to 18.1 million over the 1990s, almost entirely through the loss of existing jobs. Trade liberalisation in Brazil alone reduced net employment by 2.7 million jobs between 1990 and 1997. In Mexico, the trade liberalisations which saw the rise of the maquila sector brought huge job losses in the agricultural and manufacturing sectors, as well as a catastrophic decline in the value of wages. In real terms, the minimum wage dropped to just one fifth of its 1976 value by 2000.

Despite this evidence of the impact of previous trade liberalisations, some politicians are still calling for the swift conclusion of the Doha round of negotiations at the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Yet the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) has calculated that millions of jobs are at risk in developing countries as a result of the new trade liberalisation which the Doha round would require. Even the EU’s own assessment predicts that a conclusion to the Doha round along the lines currently proposed will cause significant job losses across the agricultural, industrial and service sectors of the developing world.

. . .

Free trade is no answer to the current economic crisis. At a time when unemployment levels are already rising sharply as a result of the global recession, further trade liberalisation will only exacerbate the threat to jobs. The free market approach undermines the possibility of decent work and of achieving sustainable development. War on Want believes that states must retain the policy space and levers of control in order to govern markets, manage international trade and provide decent work for all.

Download the full Trading Away Our Jobs report here.

The report says that

Liberalisation of overseas markets has been pushed aggressively by the industry’s lobbyists via free trade deals, firstly at the World Trade Organisation and more recently at the bilateral level.

It highlights two major impacts:

Firstly, the entry and presence of foreign banks is associated with the ‘cherry-picking’ of richer customers (both individuals and large businesses) and a decline in services and credit for poorer customers and smaller businesses. Rural communities are especially affected; foreign banks rarely have a meaningful presence outside large urban areas.

Secondly, the entry and presence of foreign banks produces a discernible and negative shift of credit away from productive activities (investment in agriculture, industrial production or local services) which can boost local development, and towards personal consumption, via credit cards and credit for items such as cars and mortgages.

You can dowload the full (52 page) report here or get a 2-page briefing here.

The mining industry loves it since it will let them export more Australian minerals to Asia. And the Textile Clothing & Footwear Union hates it, since

Accelerating tariff reductions hurt Australian manufacturers and their workers, this FTA further reduces the scheduled reductions which were announced close to a decade ago.

But a much more significant question is: what do the 560 million citizens of ASEAN – those who will be most affected by this agreement – think of it?

The answer is that it’s extremely difficult to tell, because (and this is something no-one in the media has mentioned, as far as I can find) only 3 of ASEAN’s 10 member nations have any sort of democratic processes to speak of. (I’m counting Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand as democracies here, which leaves Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Burma/Myanmar, and Vietnam, which are all – more or less – dictatorships).

I’ve made the point before that negotiating a “free” trade agreement with a dictatorship is worse than unfair – it’s anti-democratic.

In Australia, while trade negotiators are not elected, they are constrained by an elected government and parliament who must justify their actions to Australian citizens.  In Australia, an attentive and critical press and opposition political parties help to make sure any deal is really in the interests of Australian citizens.  While these protections are not always successful – witness the passing of the US-Australia FTA which was clearly a damaging deal for Australia –the fact that checks and balances exist at least gives trade negotiations some legitimacy.

In dictatorships like China [and 7 of the ASEAN nations], unelected and unaccountable governments face no such “inconvenient” constraints.  There is no system of checks and balances by which citizens might feel that their interests are properly protected from a government known for its high level of corruption.  There is no free media and no opposition to scrutinise the deal which is negotiated.  Indeed, there is no requirement that the dictators even consider the interests of the people over whom they rule.

What right does the Australian government have to impose a free trade agreement on the peoples of ASEAN, without any sort of systems in place to represent their views or interests (rather than the views or interests of their rulers) in negotiations?

And how many Australians want a free trade agreement with vicious, murderous regimes like Burma’s military junta anyway?

As the Parliamentary Library noted in December, the AUSFTA has increased Australia’s merchandise imports from the US and reduced our exports, increasing the overall trade deficit with the US.

Feil builds on this analysis, noting that

The trade deficit numbers relate to trade in physical merchandise. They do not include income payments and payments for intangibles such as royalties, management fees, technical service fees and dividends. . .

Analysis of merchandise trade doesn’t take into account the potentially most devastating areas of one-way Australian market penetration created by the USAFTA.

The ABS economic indicator for 2007-08 shows Australia’s “income” deficit in the balance of payments has increased from $37 billion in 2005-06 to $45 billion in 2006-07 and $50 billion in 2007-08.

This is the statistical area where we simply don’t know what is going on, except that we are paying out much more than we are receiving. If we are supposed to become a service economy, the income flow needs to be the other way.

Global Trade Watch join’s Feil’s call for a full government review of this “free” trade agreement, especially in light of Kevin Rudd’s recent admission that the Global Financial Crisis has “called into question the prevailing neo-liberal economic orthodoxy of the past 30 years – the orthodoxy that has underpinned the national and global regulatory frameworks that have so spectacularly failed to prevent the economic mayhem which has now been visited upon us.”

If free trade is not a central neo-liberal economic orthodoxy, I don’t know what is.