Women groups oppose WTO proposal on Trade and Women Empowerment

New Delhi, Dec 13: More than 160 women’s rights organisations have called upon WTO member governments to refrain from adopting the proposed “Joint Declaration on Trade and Women’s Economic Empowerment” introduced in the ongoing 11th Ministerial at Buenos Aires as it fails to address the adverse impact of WTO rules on women.

``The proposed declaration (introduced as a` new issue’) appears to be designed to mask the failures of WTO and its role in deepening inequality and exploitation,’’ they said in a letter to the member governments.
Asserting that they were not against multilateralism, they said that it should be based on solidarity, democracy and human rights, rather than in the interests of unaccountable multinational corporations or wealthy states.
Reacting to the proposal, environmentalist Vandana Shiva said, "Women were the first to show how WTO was institutionalised capitalist patriarchy on a world scale. We will not allow "women" to be used as a Trojan horse to expand and extend a system that is destroying the lives and livelihoods of women and children, peasants and workers , and the planet.’’
Global Coordinator of Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development Kate Lappin asserted that women rights organisations from all continents had rejected the proposed declaration as simply a 'pink herring' designed to distract attention from the harm the WTO does. 
``If there was genuine interest in women's human rights, governments would change the rules of international trade that currently drive down women's wages, displace women from their land, privatise public goods to enrich multinational corporations. We are sick of gender equality being used as a cynical ploy to justify neo-liberalism,’’ she said.
Zenaida Soriano of the National Alliance of Peasant Women, Philippines, said that women peasants have been devastated by the free trade policies that open up agricultural markets to foreign investment. ``Trade liberalisation worsens corporate land-grabs that deprive women of their land and livelihood resulting in widespread hunger that destroys communities and deepens women’s misery. ” 
The letter said, “The declaration takes a very narrow approach to assessing the gendered impacts of trade…. It is a ‘pink herring’, an attempt to obscure the harm WTO provisions have on women while ensuring the WTO can bring in ‘new issues’, (that are) likely to deepen inequality.’’
``The removal of tariffs and import limits alone have been detrimental to women’s rights. Tariff reductions reduce government revenue essential for public investments in health, education, energy, water, transport and social protection. Reduced public expenditure impacts most heavily on the economically poor and particularly poorer women. Governments are increasingly replacing that revenue with regressive taxes, such as Goods and Services Taxes which have discriminatory effects,’’ the letter said.
It further said that, ``if governments are genuinely interested in advancing women’s human rights through just trade arrangements, they would allow for pro-poor public stockholding of food, allow any domestic regulations a state deems necessary to advance women’s human rights and the public interest, ensure that states can fully utilise intellectual property flexibilities to provide access to medicines, seeds, technologies that advance women’s human rights. They would refrain from entering into any bi-lateral or multi-lateral agreements that further restrict (a government’s) capacity to use domestic regulations in the interests of the public.’’
Among the signatories to the letter are the Mahila Dakshata Samiti, National Alliance for Women, Public Advocacy Initiative for Rights and Values in India (PAIRVI), Federation of Women Farmers’ Rights, RITES Forum, Society for Rural and Education and Development, Indian Social Action Forum, Tamil Nadu Women’s Forum, Centre for Research and Advocacy etc. from India.
Other signatories are from women groups in the USA, France, Australia, U.K., Fiji, Nigeria, Kazakhstan, Philippines, Turkey, Uganda, Sri Lanka, Uganda, Burundi, Ghana, Pakistan, Bolivia, Rwanda, Nigeria, Senegal, Spain, Argentina, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Bangladesh, Nepal, Mexico, Cambodia, Indonesia, Hong Kong Thailand, El Salvador, Congo, Jordan and Myanmar. UNI