The crisis continues at the preparatory
conference for the 13th meeting of the United
Nations Conference on Trade and Development
(UNCTAD) to be held from April 21-26 in Doha,
Qatar.
It began when the North, led by the
US delegation and the Swiss ambassador, refused to
allow the United Nations agency any latitude for a
discussion on the toxicity of finance and its
reform. At the 4th BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India,
China and South Africa)
summit in New Delhi last
month, the powerful "locomotives of the South"
promised to back the UNCTAD summit, and implicitly
offered support for UNCTAD's critical position on
finance-driven globalization.
A broadside
and press conference from 49 former staff members
of UNCTAD, including its former secretary general,
put on record their frustrations with the North
for its obstinacy. Toward the end of last week, it
appeared as if these criticisms were to be brushed
off as the irritations of mosquitoes. And then the
slumbering "G-77 + China" awoke.
At the
founding conference of the UNCTAD in 1964, the
bloc of developing nations issued a Declaration of
the 77 (their number at the time; there are now
132). The main thrust of the declaration was a
pledge from the 77 countries to work together for
a new international division of labor. Political
colonialism had substantially been invalidated,
but the inheritances of colonialism in the
economic and social domain lingered - one-crop
economies and economies premised on the
comparative advantage of low wage costs doomed
these countries to a second-class position.
In October 1967, the G-77 emerged as a
formal institution, and its Charter of Algiers
established its basic outlook: to challenge the
import barriers in the North and to uproot the
unfavorable terms of trade that privileged the
products of the North against those of the South.
The high point of the G-77 came in 1973, when the
UN General Assembly voted in a resolution for a
New International Economic Order (NIEO).
Faced with the NIEO, the advanced
industrial countries created the Group of Seven
(1974) and a political process to undermine the
G-77 and the NIEO. The debt crisis of the 1980s
weakened the South, which was now unable to push
its political agenda. The G-77 withered (it was
here that China joined, so that the group is now
formally G-77 + China). By the 1990s, as the
UNCTAD secretary general of the time, Rubens
Ricupero, remembers it, the North pushed for the
creation of the World Trade Organization (1994)
with the hope that this would make UNCTAD
irrelevant.
"When I arrived at UNCTAD in
1995," Ricupero told IPS, "there was already a
conspiracy afoot by the 'usual suspects,' the rich
countries - not to change the mandate as they want
to now, but to simply suppress the organization
that they have never accepted since its
inception." The G-77's weakness mirrored that of
UNCTAD.
The kerfuffle caused by the former
UNCTAD staffers last week was heightened by a
statement circulated around the UNCTAD preparatory
conference called "Friend of Development,"
authored by 10 influential states from the South.
They wanted UNCTAD to directly deal with questions
of financial reform.
The Europeans and the
US seemed undaunted by these challenges. They went
into a final meeting with the G-77. The Swiss
Ambassador Luzius Wasescha had earlier pointed out
that his theory for the current UNCTAD was to
stonewall the South and "create chaos" in the
mechanism to draft a consensus document. This
sentiment was unchanged in the final meeting.
A member of the G-77 delegation told me
that the Thai ambassador who heads G-77, Pisnau
Chanvitan, was distressed by the attitude of the
North. Either the G-77 would have to join the
public declaration inaugurated by the ex-UNCTAD
staffers or it would lose its dignity. On April
13, the G-77 released a forthright and unexpected
statement that mirrored the ex-staffers' cry from
the heart.
The April 13 statement from the
G-77 marks a major break from statements released
over the past several decades. The first paragraph
uses the word "candid" twice and "candor" once,
emphasizing the need for the kind of plain
speaking that has eluded the G-77 since 1975. The
statement makes two broad points, one about the
process and the other about the substantive issues
at hand.
Process:
Chanvitan's statement complains that the G-77 has
tried its best to be flexible with the
negotiation, but "perhaps our constructiveness was
viewed as weakness, and our accommodation viewed
as capitulation". The North has "regressed to
behavior perhaps more appropriate to the founding
days of UNCTAD, when Countries of the North felt
they could dictate and marginalize developing
countries from informed decision-making."
One Northern ambassador's role was singled
out for being "shameful and reminiscent of the
darkest days of the North-South divide".
Remarkably, Chanvitan noted that the
preparatory conference has seen "behavior that
seems to indicate a desire for the dawn of a new
neo-colonialism". Such language has not been heard
from the G-77 in decades. "Perhaps, in our desire
for consensus," Chanvitan notes, "we have
accommodated too much and this good faith was
misunderstood, and abused. Perhaps this should end
now."
Issues: The bulk of
the statement from Chanvitan is about the problems
of process. The North is not blocking UNCTAD XIII
without reason. The main issue before UNCTAD and
the other meetings of this summer (Rio +20 and the
G-20) is the question of financial reform and
finance-led globalization. Chanvitan hopes that
UNCTAD XIII can contribute to a new beginning. The
basis of the new start will be
"development-centered globalization" which
"presents an opportunity to articulate a vision of
development based on equality, based on a
differentiated approach to development, and based
on equal respect for all."
Despite its
bluster, the G-77 seems prepared to accommodate
the North. Chanvitan writes that the G-77 could
adopt "the condensed text" that largely reflects
the wishes of the North, with some input from the
South. Over this weekend, the North has gone into
a huddle. It is likely that they will return on
Monday prepared to fight tooth and nail for the
final outcome to reflect their vision.
If
this is the case, one would have to see whether
the G-77 has the wherewithal to stand firm on this
newly articulated foundation. If the G-77 folds,
this narrow opening at the UNCTAD XIII will close
and we shall be back, as Chanvitan put it, "to the
darkest days of the North-South divide".
Vijay Prashad is Professor and
Director of International Studies at Trinity
College, Hartford, United States. This spring he
will publish two books: Arab Spring, Libyan
Winter (AK Press) and Uncle Swami: South
Asians in America Today (New Press). He is the
author of Darker Nations: A People's History
of the Third World (New Press), which won the
2009 Muzaffar Ahmed Book Prize.
(Copyright 2012 Asia Times Online
(Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us about sales, syndication and
republishing.)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
