Date: Tue, 03 Apr 2001 20:45:02 +1000
From: Lynette Dumble <ljdumble-AT-connexus.net.au>
Subject: [GSN] Vandana Shiva: "Stop the GATS attack''. 


Dear sisters,
Today's Hindu carries another of Vandana Shiva's hard-hitting analyses, this 
one laying bare the realities of WTO's games with the General Agreement on 
Trade in Services (GATS). Adding to WTO's current misery, as Vandana 
concludes, we are most appreciative of WTO for its sinister agenda, and 
endless rhetoric which via GATS has provided a priceless opportunity for 
building solidarity across sectors and across the world: 

"Broad alliances consisting of the women's movement, the environment 
movement, the education movement, the health movement, the basic needs and 
anti-poverty movements, and the economic and social justice movements are 
joining forces to "stop the GATS attack" - Vandana Shiva, April 2001.

With warmest regards and apologies for possible crosspost, Lynette.

******************* 
(http://www.the-hindu.com/stories/05031348.htm)
THE HINDU, Tuesday April 3, 2001.
An accord to auction vital resources 
By Vandana Shiva 
The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) is the agreement being 
most aggressively pushed through the ``built-in agenda'' of the WTO through 
no new round was possible in Seattle because of people's protests and a 
developing country backlash against their exclusion in trade negotiations. 
``Services'' include health and education, water and environment, energy and 
transport, food distribution and even government public service. The 1994 
GATS categories are: Business; Communication (telecoms, postal, 
audiovisual); Construction and related engineering services; Distribution; 
Educational; Environmental (water delivery, energy, refuse disposal); 
Financial; Health related and social Tourism and Travel related 
recreational, cultural and sporting; and Transport (sea, air, rail, road) 
and other. 
Hence every aspect of our lives is up for sale and every aspect of human 
needs and every form of human activity is being redefined as a tradeable 
service. 
The WTO has drafted clever language about GATS being a ``bottom up'' treaty 
rather than a ``top down'' treaty because a country can make commitments for 
trade liberation in different sectors through progressive liberalisation. 
Not a `bottom up' treaty 
A treaty that totally bypasses national democratic decision- making and 
excludes citizen participation can hardly be called ``bottom up''. To be 
truly `bottom up', the rules and subject matter of GATS need to first be 
discussed among local communities and regional and national parliaments. 
They then need to be amended on the basis of democratic feedback. Without 
such a ``democracy round'', GATS is not a `bottom up' but a `top down' 
agreement being forced on the people of the world. The fact that 
governments, as members of WTO, are putting the lives and securities of 
their citizens on auction to global corporations through GATS does not make 
the agreement legitimate or reflecting the will of people. GATS is impinging 
on issues of culture, resources and dispute resolution which under some 
national laws and constitutions are not under the jurisdiction of federal 
governments negotiating in WTO. 

The philosophy of GATS is the auctioning of vital resources and essential 
services and transforming them from fundamental rights of citizens to 
markets for global corporations. Through GATS, in effect our lives have been 
put up for sale. Global energy and water corporations such as Enron, Suez, 
Vivendi, health and education, businesses such as the health management 
organisations (HMOs) in the U.S are pushing for liberalisation of trade in 
services. Even mining and logging corporations are riding on the back of 
GATS. And corporations trading in hazardous waste are trying to use GATS. 
Water privatisation 
It is being argued that because this trade is already larger than trade in 
merchandise, service sectors should be commercialised and globalised. The 
promise is that services would be provided more efficiently and prices of 
essential services would reduce. But the experience of water privatisation 
in Bolivia, Puerto Rico and Argentina and energy privatisation in California 
and Maharashtra state in India shows that this is totally false. 
In Bolivia, when public water system was sold to Bechtel and International 
water prices increased so dramatically that people protested, six persons 
were killed, hundreds injured. Finally, the corporations were kicked out. In 
1995, when water was privatised in Puerto Rico, poor communities had no 
water, while tourist resorts and U.S. military bases enjoyed unlimited 
supply. In Argentina, when Generale de Eaux got a contract for water 
delivery, prices doubled and quality deteriorated. The company was forced to 
pull out when people refused to pay their bills. 

The WTO briefing of March 16, 2001, entitled ``GATS: Fact and Fiction'' uses 
four arguments to allay citizens fears that GATS will lead to the 
dismantling of rights to water, health and education. 
(1.) Art. 1 of GATS excludes ``services supplied in the exercise of 
governmental authority''. 
(2.) GATS does not oblige countries to privatise or deregulate services. 
(3.) GATS does not oblige countries to open up their markets. In what is 
termed the ``bottom-up'' approach to liberalisation, governments can choose 
which services they open up and to what degree. 
(4.) GATS does not prevent countries tightening regulations or reversing 
previous decisions to allow service provision by foreigners. 
Each of these responses is misleading. 
Article I of GATS is recognised as ambiguous and does lend itself to the 
interpretation that public services are candidates for privatisation and 
liberalisation if services are offered on ``commercial basis'' or ``in 
competition with one or more service suppliers.'' Since public services also 
have a fee, this could be interpreted as being commercial. Since there are 
always private actors in health, in education, this could be interpreted as 
being in competition. But small schools and private clinics are different 
from global corporations seeking trade liberalisation of services. 
The very fact of putting vital service sectors up for trade liberalisation 
in the GATS classification for commitments, and allowing the entry of 
corporations in sectors which were beyond commerce is forcing the Third 

World to lock its essential services and scarce resources into the violent 
and unjust dispute settlement and trade sanction system of the WTO. 
Robbed of freedom 
While WTO repeatedly refers to the ``freedom of countries'', its rules and 
rule-making processes rob weaker countries of freedom. Contrary to the 
propaganda that WTO rules serve the interests of the poor, the rules are 
rules of commercialisation - shaped and defined by powerful corporations to 
increase their power and profits. 
None of the WTO arguments respond to the citizens' criticism of the 
principle of marketisation of essential services enshrined in GATS. That 
remains the goal and objective of GATS. The WTO response is a weak attempt 
at allaying realistic fears of citizens by using speed of processes of 
implementation as an excuse to say the goals might not be reached. But the 
fact that a car can go off the road, or not start or start with delay cannot 
be used to deny the existence of a highway. GATS is the highway to the 
privatisation of our lives, and the highway leads in the wrong direction. 
That is the central issue of the debate on trade in services. 
How and when different countries start their engines to drive down this 
highway is a secondary question. That they might not start at the same time, 
or might have different models of cars will not change the fact that once 
they are on the road to liberalisation of services, all will reach the same 
destination - a destination where water, health and education cannot be 
guaranteed to all members of society because they are no longer rights 
provided through public services, but are commodities to be bought in the 
market place. 
The history of the Uruguay Round provides a good lesson of how issues that 
do not belong to WTO have been brought into WTO, issues that were never 
negotiated or accepted by the majority of members but were forced on them. 
TRIPs, agriculture, investment, services are not subject matters of trade - 
As the post-Seattle NGO Campaign stated, ``WTO needs to shrink or it will 
sink''. The U.S. and European Union pressure to commercialise essential 
services through GATS so that their corporations can make money out of the 
survival needs of the poor is a new wave of the genocide unleashed through 
WTO. 
Trade liberalisation of agriculture is killing thousands of farmers, the 
TRIPs agreement is denying cures to millions suffering from Malaria, T.B., 
HIV/AIDS. Instead of pausing and taking stock of the destructive impact of 
WTO rules of agriculture, written by and enforced on behalf of 5 grain 
trading giants and TRIPs rules made by the pharmaceutical and life sciences 
corporations, the WTO is rushing headlong into writing new rules on behalf 
of corporations wanting to control our water, our health, our education. 
That is why, as we move towards the next WTO Ministerial in Qatar in 
November, we will be organising and mobilising worldwide with the common 
call ``Our World is Not for Sale: Stop Corporate Globalisation''. GATS 
should be put into deep freeze. The future of services, and people's rights 
to water, health and education needs to be democratically debated within 

each society and country. Only after a ``democracy round'', in which 
ordinary people can take part, should issues be brought to WTO. Without 
democratic debate, WTO agreements have no legitimacy. The citizens' agenda 
cannot continue to be preempted by the corporate agenda and then forced 
undemocratically on people. 
Broad alliances consisting of the women's movement, the environment 
movement, the education movement, the health movement, the basic needs and 
anti-poverty movements, and the economic and social justice movements are 
joining forces to ``stop the GATS attack''. We should be grateful to WTO for 
offering us this wonderful opportunity through GATS for building solidarity 
across sectors and across the world. 
(The writer is Director, Research Foundation for Science, Technology and 
Ecology, New Delhi.)