WHAT WE STAND FOR

Asserting People’s Right to Choose: Self-determination, Democracy and Development

We reassert the fundamental right of countries to develop economic and industrial policies that foster genuine economic development, create decent jobs and protect livelihoods, and enhance the environment. All countries, and especially poorer countries, must have the right to use policy options (such as local content policies) to increase the capacity of their own productive sectors, particularly small and medium enterprises. Countriesmust also preserve their ability (“policy space”) to shape economic social and environmental development strategies that serve the most vulnerable of their people. The drive for “coherence” among the international institutions has become a means to deny that policy space: the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and some individual donor countries force governments to implement neo-liberal policies and the WTO and other trade and investment agreements lock these policies in.Therefore:

• Our World Is Not For Sale demands an end to the secretive and coercive practices that have become the hallmark of trade negotiations, especially at the WTO, where a few powerful governments, often acting on behalf of their corporate elites, are able to coerce weaker governments to achieve their goals.
• The dismantling of tariffs and other trade measures must not be allowed to put local economies, especially those of poorer countries and/or poor economic sectors, at the mercy of transnational corporations, and threaten local economic development, labour laws and standards, public and consumer health and safety, and the environment.
• “Free trade” negotiations in the WTO and elsewhere cannot be allowed to continue operating as a Trojan Horse to secure pro-corporate rules on investment, competition, government procurement, market access, agricultural production, domestic regulation of services and intellectual property rights. Neither can the current power dynamics, in which the rich industrialised countries force their economic agenda on poorer countries, be allowed to continue.
• The use of structural adjustment and debt conditionality to force trade liberalization in third world countries and elsewhere must end. The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the regional development banks need to write off all the debts owed to them by developing/transition countries so those countries can reallocate these funds to meet the urgent needs of their people.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14