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GLOBALISATION UNDER ATTACK... OR NOT
While there appears to be a difference in the way non-governmental
organisations in the North and those in the South view
globalisation and ways of dealing with it, some activists believe
that globalisation has forced people in developed and developing
countries into 'a common condition of exclusion', with 'grounds for
a new solidarity'.
By John Madeley
Geneva: It is commonly assumed that non-governmental
organisations, unlike governments, work together - or that they
should. But they seem to stand divided - right down the middle -
over the issue of how to deal with globalisation.
Recently, NGOs from Africa, Asia and Latin America stole the show
from their counterparts based in affluent Northern countries by
convening a conference in Geneva to highlight the impact of free
trade. In addition, a debate on globalisation dominated NGO events
in London for the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM-2) in April 1998.
The aim of the Geneva meet was plain from its title - the 1st
Conference of Peoples' Global Action Against Free Trade and the
World Trade Organisation. It sought to allow peoples' movements
from all continents to pool into 'worldwide resistance against
globalisation' and build up local alternatives.
It was convened by groups that included Movimento Sem Terra in
Brazil, the Karnataka State Farmers' Association of India, the
Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, Nigeria, the Peasant
Movement of the Philippines, the Central Sandinista de
Trabajadores, Nicaragua, and the Indigenous Women's Network, based
in North America and the Pacific.
>From the North, a Spanish-based organisation - Play Fair Europe! -
played an important role in organising the conference in the city
that houses the World Trade Organisation.
But the North's mainstream development NGOs stayed away, possibly
deterred by pre-conference publicity which said that a hallmark of
the global alliance would be a 'confrontational attitude, i.e.
fundamental opposition to the world trading system, since we do not
think lobbying can have a major impact'. Lobbying is at the centre
of most Northern NGO campaigns.
The depth of the South's feeling against globalisation - the world
as a single market - was considerable in the Geneva meet.
'Globalisation is destroying millions of livelihoods,' said Sarath
Fernando of the Movement for National Land and Agricultural Reform
in Sri Lanka. 'The alternative is for us to fight back for our
survival.'
Farmers from India spoke of how globalisation has led to lower
tariff barriers on food imports into India, and that the increase
in these imports was affecting their livelihoods.
'We want to tell the governments that they are destroying humanity
with these policies,' said Alejandro Demichelis, of the
Confederation of Education Workers, Argentina.
There was nonetheless a wide range of views among the 300
participants about lobbying and confrontation. The strategies
appear to stem from analyses of the globalisation process itself -
activists who think it can be reversed want to confront it; others
favour alternatives.
'The process of economic globalisation is irreversible,' said a
Filipino participant, Clarissa Balan, of the World Student
Christian Federation. 'We can develop an alternative, parallel
trading system that is fairer than the main system. If people will
spend their money on fairly traded products, then this type of
trade could be a real challenge to globalisation.'
A manifesto, agreed by the participants, spoke of the need to
revive traditional knowledge systems and strengthen local market
systems 'by developing producer-consumer linkages and
cooperatives'. Only a global alliance of people's movements, it
says, can implement action-orientated alternatives that can stop
globalisation.
The manifesto calls for direct confrontation with transnational
corporations, and stresses that 'direct democratic action' against
globalisation should be combined with the constructive building of
alternative and sustainable lifestyles.
It also says that 'democratic action carries with it the essence of
non-violent civil disobedience to the unjust system'.
Many participants believed that non-violent civil disobedience was
one way of fighting back against the 'undemocratic nature' of the
globalisation process. 'Even democratically elected governments
have been implementing policies of the globalisation of poverty
without debate among their own peoples or their elected
representatives,' the manifesto says.
Civil disobedience against globalisation is already happening in
both the North and South. In India, farmers have burnt imported
foodstuff in protest against an increase in food imports - just as
Indian freedom fighter Mahatma Gandhi torched British-made clothes
in the 1940s.
In France, 120 members of the French Peasant Confederation forced
their way into a Novartis factory recently to denature transgenic
maize seeds in protest against a government decision to allow the
cultivation of this maize. During the action, the modified seeds
were mixed up with non-modified varieties.
In Britain too, small 'direct action groups' have been staging
imaginative protests against such globalisation-linked issues as
genetic engineering in food products and the proposed Multilateral
Agreement on Investment (MAI) that is aimed at easing the path of
Northern private investments into developing countries.
While issues such as the MAI are as yet little understood, the
movement is broadening in Britain - ordinary people are getting
involved as genetically-modified food is widely seen as a health
hazard.
Signs of a North-South NGO divide were apparent at the London
meetings to coincide with the Asia-Europe summit - held in the
backdrop of the financial crisis in Asia that is blamed by many
NGOs on the global free movement of financial capital.
Several activists disagreed with Britain's International
Development minister Clare Short's assessment that 'globalisation
is unstoppable - the genie is out of the bottle. If we demand that
it stop, it will not.'
Martin Khor of the Penang-based Third World Network replied:
'Globalisation is not something that has dropped from heaven. It
is not inevitable; it is made by human beings taking decisions in
rich countries. We can change those rules - in the WTO, in the
World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.'
An eight-page document brought out by the NGO event and presented
to British Premier Tony Blair avoids mentioning the word
globalisation altogether.
Andy Rutherford of the British NGO One World Action, who helped
author the document, said: 'It is not a question of evading
globalisation. The debate on whether globalisation is good or bad
is a disempowering debate. We have to go beyond those comments.
Our aim is to constructively engage with leaders in Asia and
Europe.'
Khor said if a similar NGO event had been held in the developing
world, 'I suspect the outcome would have been different. The
language would have been more pointed, very clear, more critical of
globalisation. For those of us living in the developing world,
globalisation is a dirty word. Here (in the North), it is a
positive word.'
However, Vandana Shiva, a well-known Indian activist on
agricultural, food and environmental issues, points out that
globalisation has forced people in both the North and the South
into 'a common condition of exclusion'.
'It's the first time that Northern citizens have experienced this
- it's a situation we have always experienced, and we now have
grounds for a new solidarity,' she says. - Third World Network
Features/PANOS
-ends-
About the writer: John Madeley is a British development journalist
and editor of International Agricultural Development. The above
first appeared as a Panos Feature (30 April 1998).
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