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!

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 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.

Nichols says:

Locke has long been one of the Democratic Party’s most ardent advocates for free trade agreements that get high marks from multinational corporations but are condemned by human rights groups and labor, farm and environmental organizations.

As I’ve asked before on this blog, where will this leave Obama’s commitment to “fair trade” and to re-negotiating the NAFTA agreement?

Kirk is a former mayor of Dallas, Texas, who doesn’t seem to have much of a background on trade issues.

But there is cause for some cautious optimism, with APF reporting that

The Democrat is strongly backed by trade unions and opposes free trade pacts with Colombia and South Korea that were signed under President George W Bush’s administration

In announcing Kirk, Obama also said some excitingly progressive things about his future trade policy, including that FTAs “must be written not just with the interest of big corporations in mind, but with the interests of our whole nation and our workers at heart.” He also said that Kirk has “seen the promise of trade, but also its pitfalls, and he knows there is nothing inconsistent about standing up for free trade and standing up for American workers.”

On the flip side Kirk has spent the last 5 years working as a corporate lobbyist for Energy Future Holdings Corporation, a group created by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, TPG Capital and Goldman Sachs to acquire power utility TXU.

There’s some more background on Kirk here.

Unfortunately, Emanuel is remembered as the man who pushed the controversial North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) through congress – he recalls that “In 1993, I was President Clinton’s point man in ratifying NAFTA”.

While his views have clearly mellowed a little since then – he now admits that “the fact that our party is still debating this trade agreement 15 years later is proof it hasn’t lived up to its hopes” – he still clearly supports expanding the US’s free trade agreements, albeit with environmental and labour standards to protect US workers.  Clearly, the impacts of the US’s agreements on people and environments in other countries don’t enter his thinking.

I’ll leave the last word to David Sirota over at Open Left, which describes itself as “a news, analysis and action website dedicated toward building a progressive governing majority in America”:

According to Inside US Trade . . . “Among the House Democratic leadership, Democratic Caucus Chair Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) is actively advocating that Democrats would be better off having the votes on pending [free trade agreements] this year for a number of reasons, sources said. They said that one of the reasons Emanuel cites is that there are likely more Republican members in this Congress than there will be in the next, which would mean that fewer Democrats would have to take a potentially divisive trade vote now.”

Correct: Emanuel – one of the original architects of NAFTA – wants congressional Democrats to pass controversial NAFTAs with Colombia, South Korea and Panama right now, so as to avoid inevitably STRONGER opposition from his own party in the next Congress.

To really fathom how incredible this is, understand that Emanuel – the Democratic leader – is effectively acting as the House Republican whip. He’s saying that he wants these bills up for a vote because there are enough Republican votes right now in the House to pass it over current Democratic objections – and there won’t be enough GOP votes in the next Congress.

How many polls have to come out showing that the vast majority of Americans do not want their jobs and wages crushed by hacks like Emanuel? And how come Democrats are led by con artists who spent their White House career shilling for Wall Street, then cashed in as an investment banker, then bought a congressional race, only to go back to Washington to continue his corporate crusade over the dead body of his own caucus?

While his win in unequivically momentous and undeniably positive for Americans – and African Americans in particular – the question is whether his commitment for social justice extend past the borders of the US, and if so, does it extend to questions of globalisation and global trade?

Well, by the looks of it – unfortunately – probably not.  From the Obama website it seems that Obama will maintain the Bush & Clinton administrations’ commitment to promoting free trade, with a number of (important) qualifiers:

Fight for Fair Trade: Obama and Biden will fight for a trade policy that opens up foreign markets to support good American jobs. They will use trade agreements to spread good labor and environmental standards around the world and stand firm against agreements like the Central American Free Trade Agreement that fail to live up to those important benchmarks. Obama and Biden will also pressure the World Trade Organization to enforce trade agreements and stop countries from continuing unfair government subsidies to foreign exporters and nontariff barriers on U.S. exports.

As well, Obama promises to “fix NAFTA so that it works for American workers.”  (No mention of its impacts for Mexican workers, or anyone else for that matter.)

The problem with these positions is that, as Stephen Byers, Former British Trade and Industry Secretary wrote in 2003, “I was wrong about free trade. I was wrong. Free market trade policies hurt the poor”.  As I noted in a post last week, Bill Clinton has now also admitted that “We blew it. We were wrong to believe that food is like some other product in international trade.”

If free trade policies themselves hurt the poor, can we really imagine that adding labour and environmental standards on to them is really going to make them instruments of social or environmental justice? If it looks like a duck…