Asia-Pacific women reject trade talks.(Movements Within)

Men in black suits have traditionally dominated trade talks. They still do, but increasingly, women's organisations and networks are realising the importance of engaging in trade advocacy to achieve economic and gender justice.

At the Hong Kong Ministerial of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) held last December 13-18, 2005, women's groups asserted that since women are half of those adversely affected by trade deals being made by governments, women should have a say in how and if these deals are to be made.

Women say no to WTO

"WTO is causing us deeper hunger and poverty," was the common call of some 150 women representing various women's organisations who attended the opening of the Asia-Pacific Women's Village at Victoria Park in Hong Kong on December 14. "We demand WTO to get out of agriculture where most of us derive our livelihood, for WTO to get out of our lives," chanted the women delegates who represented peasants, indigenous women, Dalits, herders, and fishers.

According to the Asia-Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD) which coordinated the event, about 60% of food production in the Asia-Pacific region is done by women. However, the world trade on rice, wheat, sugar, corn, coffee, tea, and bananas is controlled by a few transnational corporations (TNCs). APWLD, which is also running a campaign called "Don't Globalise Hunger," accused the WTO of acting as an apparatus of the TNCs and of consistently pushing the corporate agenda at the expense of the already marginalised sectors of developing countries.

APWLD reported that highly subsidised agricultural products from the US and EU are institutionally dumped on developing countries because of the WTO Agreement on Agriculture (AoA), causing increased poverty, hunger, and deaths, particularly on women from food-producing communities. APWLD further said, "with hunger getting more massive and poverty deepening, more and more women in Asia suffer greater violence as they are pushed to take up low-paying jobs as farm workers and farmhands of rich land owners, forced to give sexual favours in exchange of rice to eat for the next meal, and even out-migrate to foreign lands just to be assured of survival."

Asia-Pacific women likewise took part in the opening march by some ...