TITLE: African Govts Urged Not
to Negotiate Non-Tradeable Items Under WTO AUTHOR: Etim
Imisim PUBLICATION: This Day (Lagos) SOURCE: AllAfrica.com
DATE: 4 January 2005 URL:
http://allafrica.com/stories/200501050352.html
NOTE: For background on African governments' proposal to
bring traditional knowledge (TK) within the WTO rules on
intellectual property rights, see GRAIN, "The TRIPS Review
at a turning point?", July 2003 at
http://www.grain.org/briefings/?id=122
AFRICAN GOVTS URGED NOT TO NEGOTIATE NON-TRADEABLE ITEMS UNDER WTO
By Etim Imisim
A recent African Court of Women found that women are victims of the brutalising patriachies that make history and run traditions. It claimed that women had survived institutionalised systems of violence during colonialism and apartheid. Today, globalisation, which it called wars without borders, is bringing them newer forms of slavery and genocide. Etim Imisim looks at international trade from the perspective of gender.
The African Court of Women has heard that women in every era in history in all cultures and societies have in different ways been marginalised and violated. The court heard testimonies of women as a vulnerable and marginalised group. It heard further that women have been forced to bear the brunt of increasing impoverishment, especially in the South, and more especially in Africa. The women said they were survivors of institutionalised systems of violence in the past such as colonialism and apartheid.
Today, they are being plagued by globalisation, which they called a regime of "war without borders" and said is renewing itself through newer forms of violence and bringing women "new forms of terror, slavery and genocide."
"We are unable to grasp the violence of our times," the women said. "Women's worlds are worlds of care, of community, of connectedness, the finest expression of humanity."
The African Court of Women was a special poetic session at the recent African Social Forum at Lusaka, Zambia. It sought to discover a set of new imagery that is located in the discourse of dissent. It was being framed by radical African feminists who hoped to use it to counter the dominant discourse, which they claimed promotes the rule of the minority over the majority and excludes poor people from power, voice and resources.
The court was facilitated by Wahu Kaara of Kenya, Corin Kumar of India/Tunisia, Sara Longwe of Zambia, Rabia Abdelkrim of Algeria and other pan-African feminists.
"The African women's voice is the totality of the pains of the continent," the women said. "Women are the voice of the poor. We weep because of what we know."
The women said they were concerned that globalisation sought the weakening of national sovereignty. This was possible through a regime of measures that are run and supported by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). They voiced alarm that African governments were committed to the process of emasculation of the state. By accepting to implement structural adjustment programmes, privatisation and the deregulation of labour laws, African governments aimed to create the enabling environment for investment, the women said.
But the key thing about good governance, they continued, is not creating an enabling environment for business. It is creating an environment for citizenship rights and freedoms to flourish in society.
This was where they noted that there was a gap between national constitutions, which said citizens have the right to shelter, education, health and other social services and the actual freedoms that citizens get to enjoy. When national governments fail to discharge their constitutional responsibilities, the burdens are passed on to women who are the ones who take children to the clinic and who are the ones who get sacked first from work when multinational corporations are restructuring under a neo-liberal economic regime that cares for profits above human security.
"We risk our lives as women to take over the responsibilities of government, without being skilled," said gender specialist Brenda Ndlovu of Gender and Trade Network (GENTA), South Africa.
"This idea that everything is for sale is not sustainable," said Mohau Pheko, GENTA coordinator. GENTA, a non-governmental organisation (NGO), had facilitated the session on gender and trade at Lusaka.
The African women also expressed strong interests in indigenous knowledge, a related issue, and asked African governments not to negotiate on them under the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
They asked further that the scope of WTO be limited to trade-specific matters and that agriculture is not for trade.
"The worry is that WTO is beginning to trade and make rules about things that should not be traded," said Lebohang Pheko, another gender specialist with GENTA South Africa. "Why should people trade in agriculture?"
Pheko added that local knowledge is precious and cannot be bought or sold without compromising the dignity and identity of its owners.
Women form the bulk of the agricultural workforce of the continent, the women claimed. They produce food for household tables and are responsible for household national food security.
They noted also that their position is supported by international treaties that have been ratified by national governments, including African governments. Indigenous knowledge had been written into Agenda 21 and the Convention on Biodiversity, they said.
Indigenous knowledge is a matter of growing interest to the United Nations, and has a direct relationship with the Millennium Development Goals. Women are at the centre of all eight goals, including poverty eradication and environmental sustainability.
The women further asked WTO and other international trading institutions to mainstream gender in their activities.
The argument is that international trade policies affect women differently from men. The reason is that they are not on the same economic and social levels.
Trade benefits are often related to the access and ownership of resources. Those who have land, capital, credit, education and health stand to gain from trade. Those who lack them, are on the fringe, lose out.
Marina Fe B. Durano puts it this way: "If trade favors those who have these resources then the benefits of trade are limited to those who have the resources, in many cases these would be men."
One way of understanding the gender inequity is to point out that women are mainly involved in subsistence farming and, at best, small commercial farms. They are excluded from big commercial farming because it is capital intensive.
Women still have problems even in freeholding arrangements, as the land tenure systems of most societies are against them. This was the concern of most southern Africans at the court. Testimonies from South Africa noted that a key issue behind the evolving order in the country was the ownership of land, which applied to the Orange Farm and other farming communities. Another was that the level of unemployment is high and that privatisation has brought a new kind of apartheid to the country.
"We don't have our own land to grow what we want," a woman said. "As a woman, if you don't have land, you have nothing."
The same reports came from Zambia and Zimbabwe. But in Kenya, the new constitution has vested the ownership of land in communities.
A further claim by women was that trade policies are fashioned out all the time that affect the lives and livelihoods of women.
But the trade process that makes the rules is undemocratic. Trade structures lack accountability, access and participation. Gender and social impact assessments of trade policies are never conducted. And women are hardly ever involved in trade negotiation teams.
Defenders of international trade say globalisation has brought significant increase in food production.
But the women movement said trade liberalisation, the tool of globalisation, erodes domestic food production. It noted also that WTO agreement on agriculture has made developing country agriculture unsustainable. The agreement operates free market access and supports the removal of commodity support programmes for Third World countries. The women said that many people, particularly in Africa, are hungry and malnourished because of it.
With drums, dances, testimonies, visuals and expert analyses, the court was told of the crosses that are the lives and livelihoods of African women across.
A Kenyan peasant said women are working hard on coffee farms, but that their life is declining instead of improving because "we are not benefiting from the coffee we produce. We work on the farm. We have a lot of things to do. But we are not getting any profits from our labour. I ask all responsible bodies to look at our problems and find solutions to them. Coffee is our life. We get our clothing from our coffee. We send our children to school from our coffee. When the price of coffee declines we cannot do any of these. We have a great problem. Coffee production is labour intensive. We care for our coffee and we take it to the middle man and get low prices. Coffee farmers are unhappy and devastated. We have no support. All the farmers whom I represent are in crisis. Coffee for us is like money in the bank. We save our coffee for our future.
"Our question is, 'When will we be involved in our lives?'"
"Women must critique policies that reinforce globalisation," Mohau Pheko argues. "Globalisation is just another fancy word to describe patriarchy in its most nefarious form."
According to GENTA, "Instead of providing markets for African economies, trade agreements have served to extend markets for the rich countries thus widening the income gap between the North and South and inequities between women and men."
The argument was that medicine and food comes from the indigenous knowledge of communities and that women are its custodians or keepers.
In the past, there was a deep and abiding reverence for the natural world and the spiritual practices of the people.
Traditionally, elders were respected as the carriers of wisdom. Women carried the language and culture of the people and were also respected. And so were children, who are carried the identity of the community and transmitted it to future generations .
Local or indigenous knowledge is the body of information that a people have accumulated over generations. It is what defines a people and constitutes everything a people call their own.
Indigenous knowledge includes the traditional ecological consciousness of a people as well as the physical endowment of their natural environment. The artifacts and histories of a people are a part of their local knowledge. So are their language, spiritual and intellectual spaces and worldview.
Worldwide, there is the need to involve owners of indigenous knowledge in the global resource management processes. In Africa, the balance is most fragile. But the women said they hold African governments responsible for integrating local knowledge into conservation and community empowerment.
"Trade on agriculture and intellectual property rights has threatened food security, placing women at a serious disadvantage", GENTA said.
The women said Africans are being dispossessed of the very things that made their lives possible. And that their distinctive worldviews misrepresented and undermined.
Another area of discontent among women is the general disrespect for their labour. There was a gap between the value of labour that a woman who goes into the forest to get firewood to provide fuel for the community and the level of remuneration that she enjoys. There is no equity in the distribution of resources, the women concluded.
The women concluded greed is the engine of the global market and that it is what is "unleashing new wars over resources." These included wars for oil, diamonds and minerals.
A special session had also been held on resource control where Ms. Pricilla Achakpa and Mr. John Moru, officials of Nigeria Social Forum at Lusaka, presented a case against oil exploration and exploitation in the Niger Delta and the environmental devastation of the region. They said hydrocarbon pollution resulting from the activities of multinational companies has destroyed farmlands and polluted streams and rivers, grievously harming the livelihood of communities.
"As people's resources are stolen by the multinational and transnational corporations, states become more militarilised."
The militarilisation of states constituties the militarisation of the political and economic structures, the court heard. But it did not end there. A more dangerous turn is the militarisation of the mind itself.
And buried deeper in these structures are the visible and invisible indices of wars of poverty, of subsistence and of underdevelopment.
GOING FURTHER (compiled by GRAIN)
Website of the African Social Forum,
Lusaka, Zambia, 10-14 December 2004
http://www.forumsocialafricain.org
More
information about Gender and Trade in Africa (GENTA)
http://www.genderandtrade.net/Africa/Africa.htm