UNCTAD - a rosy future?

Friday 25 April

 

So as this week at UNCTAD comes to a close, what is the verdict? Is the world a better place after all that talk and networking, or have the several thousand delegates here just produced a lot of hot air?

 

There has been lots of talk about UNCTAD and its role. As the name suggests, the UN Conference on Trade and Development, looks at trade and development issues. In a world where the WTO is the dominant forum on trade, having UNCTAD around as an independent voice is important. In-between the conferences every four years, it produces research that contributes alternative viewpoints to the prevailing pure free trade orthodoxy.

 

However, lots of people also fear it is an ineffective talking shop. Unsurprisingly, the EU and the US don’t like some of its research and over the week they’ve been arguing that UNCTAD should have a more focussed (or should that be limited?) role. Others of us think that in an era of food, energy and financial crises, it is important that UNCTAD maintains and strengthens its political voice so that it can speak out and comment on issues that especially affect countries in the global south.

 

Having said all this, I've been disappointed at the lack of genuine debate in some of the official sessions that I’ve attended, where delegates have mostly trotted out their party lines. The real debates that have happened have apparently been behind the scenes in the ‘negotiating room’ where the final end-of-conference statement is being agreed, or in the civil society tent which has been lively and at times quite heated.

 

As I write I’ve just finished packing my bags to leave Accra – I’ve not yet seen the official statement that will conclude proceedings and indicate UNCTAD’s future mandate and workplan– maybe it’s still being argued over. However, if you believe in the UN system and believe that we can’t leave talk about finance, investment and the links with development issues to the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO, then you will want to see a strong and feisty UNCTAD in the future.

 

 

Wednesday 23 April

 

The official launch of WDM's report went really well. The room was pretty full and there was a lot of interest. I think African countries currently involved in trade negotiations with the EU were pleased to see some concrete statistics that they can feed into their own negotiating position. As Gyekye Tanoh from Third World Network said, "The report from WDM ought to be a weapon in the arsenal to destroy free trade deals and a building block when we seek alternatives."

 

The head of the European Commission delegation attended although he confined his comments to economic partnership agreements and not the Global Europe agenda. Our event chairman Helmuth Markov who is the chair of the European Parliament’s trade committee agreed that the Global Europe strategy is pure and simply about market access for European companies.

 

Now that’s over, I'm back to lobbying official delegations, where we can track them down! We are still trying to confirm a meeting with the Slovenian delegation but hopefully will be meeting with the group of MEPs on Thursday.

 

Oh and in case you are worried that its all work and no play, there is a concert tonight with Femi Kuti and hopefully Youssou N'Dour too. 

 

  

 

Tuesday 22 April

 

I haven’t yet identified any members of the UK press here so I can’t imagine that news from UNCTAD has been filling the airwaves and the newspaper columns back home. That’s a shame as incredibly important issues are being discussed here.

 

A key theme is south-south trade – trade amongst countries in the global south. It already accounts for a substantial part of world trade and that share will rise. China, India, Brazil and a few others dominate this, and many here at UNCTAD feel that this is also a real opportunity for poorer countries to trade more equitably and beneficially.

 

As deputy trade minister Rob Davies from South Africa said this morning, this is one of many problems with the EU’s proposed economic partnership agreements or EPAs, namely that they will prevent poor countries signing future preferential deals with other southern countries.

 

“The dynamic trading poles are now in the south. Developing countries can no longer afford to lock themselves into traditional North-South trade relations. We will continue to resist this at the WTO and if necessary by not signing the proposed EPA,” he said. His concerns were echoed by Trade Minister Carlos from Brazil and Minister Diop from Senegal at the same meeting.

 

And how does the EU respond to this critique? Well, they are present ‘en masse’ at a lot of the discussions but it sees to be mostly development rather than trade officials who speak and when they do, they kind of miss the points people are making. For example, they’ve been talking a lot about aid-for-trade as if that will make up for the injustices in the proposed trade deals. Africans in particular retort that that risks deepening aid dependence.

 

Incidentally, in the melee after the meeting, I managed to have a quick chat with Rob Davies and to give him a copy of our new report which looks at the impacts of the trade deal South Africa signed with the EU in 1999. I said that our report presented evidence that agricultural products and food processing industries have suffered in South Africa since the deal was signed.

 

He told me how, as they did not get what they wanted out of that original deal especially in these areas, South Africa had hoped that this could have been addressed through the EPA negotiations. But of course, instead the EU has used the new negotiations to push for EU company access on a whole range of new issues like services and investment.

 

On my way to lunch, I stopped off at the EU exhibition stand. As the banner says, there is no doubt that European business is benefiting from EU approach to trade policy – but a lot of people are doubting how widely those benefits stretch beyond Europe’s borders.

The UN comes to town

Well, what can I say, when the UN comes to town, it really goes to town. Central Accra has been transformed into a hi-security, be-suited and air-conditioned enclave. Motorcades complete with limos and motorcycle outriders whizz past with sirens at full blast, policemen with guns are everywhere and my pass has to be scanned whenever I enter the conference site.

Today is really the first full day of formal UNCTAD proceedings. It’s my first time at an official conference like this so maybe I should give a flavour of what’s going on. To be honest, it’s not always that clear. Official programmes are out of date as soon as they are printed; one is always arriving too early or too late for things; and you are always convinced something more interesting may be happening elsewhere (although it probably isn’t!)

NGO bods who last week at the civil society forum were wearing t-shirts and sandals - and quite frankly looking a bit hot and sweaty - have now been transformed in their attire. We are now dressed to impress the government delegates, suited and booted and some (definitely not me) are even braving high-heels. The air con alone at this event is probably doubling Ghana’s annual carbon footprint, but it’s also a big relief.

Meanwhile, I’ve spent the morning running around sorting logistics for our event on Wednesday to launch our new trade report Raw Deal. I’ve confirmed our speakers and talked to people about providing food and drink – which will hopefully bring in some hungry delegates.

I’ve also been ‘touting’ myself and our new report around the press room. I did some filming with Brazilian TV and hope that others will pick up on the report too as the week progresses. Luckily I’ve found that every country delegation has a pigeonhole where papers can be placed for them to pick up – that will be handy when it comes to handing out the report and making sure the right people get it. We really hope it will be useful evidence for developing country trade negotiators who are discussing trade deals with the EU right now.

Now a group of EU civil society folks are trying to track down the Slovenian delegation – why? Well, Slovenia holds the EU Presidency right now and so are important players. Some UK groups have also been trying to meet with UK government people but as I write they’ve not yet been able to fit us in…

Quote of the day goes to Pascal Lamy, head of the World Trade Organisation:

“We are not a development agency. Our budget is only 200 million a year and that is probably smaller than some of you NGOs.”

I wish.

Vicky Cann

Visiting local communities in Ghana

I’ve been taking a break from UNCTAD today. I decided to pass on the opening statements by Ban Ki-Moon and the Ghanaian president John Kufuor and visit some local communities in Accra instead with activists from the National Coalition Against Water Privatisation (NCAP). Old WDM hands will recall that in 2004-05, WDM campaigned with NCAP to stop British water company Biwater from bidding for a water privatisation contract in Ghana. This was a privatisation process which had received support from both DFID and the World Bank as well as several UK consultancy companies including Halcrow and Adam Smith International. Well, after being deluged with WDM postcards and feeling the heat from campaigners in Ghana, Biwater did withdraw their bid. But the privatisation went ahead anyway, and the management contract was finally awarded to a strange joint venture between Dutch and South African public water companies!? This joint venture, AquaVitens Rand Ltd (AVRL), is acting as a private water operator and started the for-profit contract in 2006. I was interested to find out how they were getting on…

I went round both Mamobi and Nima communities with Adam Mohammed Sanusi from NCAP. Both Mamobi and Nima are informal settlements that have grown up around a large marketplace. People live in small concrete houses or corrugated iron shacks and water coverage is very patchy. Pretty soon we came across a private yard tap where water was being sold to local residents, because they don’t have taps in their own home.

Mariam Usman told me: “It takes me 30 minutes to walk here to collect water and I do this 5 times a day for the 16 people who live in my household. Each time I pay 0.1 cedi. We have a tap in our home but there has been no water in it for 4 years! Help us – we need water! Today is Sunday and so I am coming to collect the water so that I can go back and wash my clothes. I am a street vendor but it is very hard to have the time to collect the water too.”

Next we met Jennifer Essador, who was just along the street and was working on a tea stall with her mother: “We need to buy water for our household and to be able to run our tea stall. We pay 0.1 cedis for 1 big container. We had a tap in our house but it has not worked for maybe 20 years! To get a new connection it might cost perhaps 2000 cedis which you can only afford if you run a successful business as that it is a huge amount of money.”

Sanusi tells me that, “There are maybe 200 private water companies selling purified water in Ghana. One is called Kausur as this lorry shows. You can pay 0.05 cedis for one 500ml sachet of water. I drink this water even though it is very expensive in comparison to the ordinary water which is 0.1 cedi for 20 litres or 1 gallon! I drink it because we have tested some samples of the piped water and it shows that while it looks clean, in fact there are particulates in it and it is not safe to drink. We try to educate people about this but it is very expensive for them to buy the purified water.”

Next we meet Bature Djangeru, who is a builder and also Sanusi’s landlord!

“The situation is much worse now than before privatisation. As there has not been much water in our taps, we have been to picket the offices of the water company to complain but the police came and told us to go away! The company still sends us the bills though and tell us that they are working to improve the situation. They should really just leave the company to the government as it is very simple – they are doing an inefficient job. Round here it is a favourite topic of conversation! It’s not that we don’t have competent managers in Ghana; it’s just that whenever we get World Bank money, we have to accept managers from overseas and they have to be paid far higher salaries than Ghanaians, and in dollars. It’s just inefficient.”

We now enter an adjacent community which is Nima. As it is approaching Sunday lunchtime there are lots of street-side chop houses and stalls selling a cornflour staple dish called tuo-zafi. It’s now baking hot in the midday sun and I’m relieved to find some shelter while I chat to the local assemblyman (like a local councillor), the Honourable Abdul Majid Logoh.

“We get water twice a week sometimes or maybe only once a month occasionally. In March there was a time when we were without water for 2-3 weeks. At that time, we then have to ask our wives and children to collect water, sometimes from maybe 3-4 kilometres away. That means that the children can’t always go to school. It’s worse. Lots of areas don’t have water but actually the bills have gone up a lot in two years – maybe even by 100%! If you can’t afford to pay, you get disconnected. Recently the water company and a government minister came along here and disconnected lots of households because they had not paid their bills. As an assemblyman I find it very frustrating when I see people carrying buckets to collect water. People also come to me to complain about the sanitation situation here. There are not enough refuse containers and so people have to dump their waste where they can. Also, the government has now passed control of community toilets to other groups and the price has risen from 0.02 to 0.05 cedis to use them! I have been to them and talked to them about this but we have not resolved the situation yet. The sanitation situation here is serious. There is no underground sewerage and so people store their solid waste in pits which get emptied or they put their waste water in these channels. There are problems with typhoid, malaria and cholera in this area – people get sick and sometimes die.

So, what’s the verdict on the privatised management? They certainly inherited a difficult, far-from-perfect situation but many people I spoke to were concerned that things were getting even worse. NCAP’s work continues. The contract contains clauses that the government can terminate the contract if AVRL does not meet the targets set out. NCAP believes that this situation is now present and are urging the government to stick to this commitment and bring back public management, with enhanced community and democratic oversight and far more public investment.

Vicky Cann

Global food price crisis

One of the hot topics here is the food price crisis. There are a number of things driving the rise in global food prices including the demand for cereals for use as agro fuels in cars.

Here in Ghana the concern about high food prices has focussed attention on the impact of the liberalisation of agricultural products and the subsequent reduction of subsidies and tariffs. For example Ghana has moved from a position of self sufficiency in rice to now where 65% of rice is imported. The headline in one of the local papers is ‘we must grow the food we eat’ and ActionAid Ghana ran a workshop this afternoon that I attended.

This morning we interviewed Tony Turan from IBON a research and education NGO. This interview will be edited when we get back and we’ll put it on the website. His argument is that conditions set by the Asian Development Bank on loans to the Phillipines meant that they went from being self sufficient to being the world’s largest importer of rice. It was an unprecedented order from the Philippines that then led to the rapid increase in the price of rice. The Phillipines has sneezed and Ghana and others have caught a cold.

As you’d expect discussions here in the workshops tend to be serious, evidence based and focussed on problem solving. Once in a while a speaker slips in a phrase showing their passionate frustration with individuals from the Global North. My favourites so far:

Peter Mandelson ‘has no sympathy or mercy. He will not budge”

Tony Blair has …..well maybe we’ll let that one go for now.

National Theatre

Vicky and I are the only guests in our small hotel attending the conference. However because the hotel is due to house delegates to the conference it has been given police protection. So since Wednesday we have been guarded by up to three armed police at any one time.

Yesterday we held our event presenting the findings of our research into the impact of European free trade deals in Mexico and South Africa.

Speakers from Ghana and the Philippines presented their analysis of the impact of free trade agreements in their regions.

With rooms at a premium when the UN comes to town delegates are scattered across Accra. Last night we met up with colleagues from organisations in North America, Europe and Africa at a restaurant in East Legon. Rice fish beer and discussions about the chances of a World Trade Organisation ministerial meeting in May. East Lagon is 20 minutes drive across town and the evening was completed with me directing the taxi driver on how to get back.

This morning a ten minute walk from the National Theatre where the Civil Society Forum is held to the National Conference Centre to register for the conference centre. Ten minutes and a few extra degrees of air conditioning, literally is appears to allow for the wearing of suits.

Work is still going on to finalise the conference centre. Here workers paint the back fence. Behind them is the Accra racecourse.