South Asia Watch on Trade, Economics & Environment (SAWTEE)

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NETWORK NEWS

Nepal’s position for Livingstone and Hong Kong Meetings

SAWTEE and ActionAid International Nepal jointly organised the threeday national seminar titled ‘Road to Hong Kong’ from 16-18 June 2005 in Kathmandu. At the end of the seminar, government officials, civil society actors, academicians, lawyers, private sector representatives and journalists issued a 37-point resolution.

The resolution was adopted with a view to helping His Majesty’s Government of Nepal prepare a national position for a Meeting of the Trade Ministers of 31 least developed countries (LDCs) held in Livingstone, Zambia from 25-26 June 2005 and its negotiation strategy for the Sixth Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to be held in Hong Kong from 13-18 December 2005.

Expressing disappointment with the slow progress in negotiations on issues of utmost importance to the LDCs, the resolution calls for, among others, the following initiatives:

Various preferential facilities offered by the developed and developing countries to the LDCs should be bound at the WTO.
Duty free and quota free access to LDC products should be provided in developed as well as developing countries and bound at the WTO.
All the non-tariff barriers on export interest to the LDCs should be eliminated.
The LDCs should be provided with unconditional and needbased technical assistance to enhance their competitiveness and address their supply-side constraints.
Developed countries should allow free movement of natural persons from LDCs in all categories (skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled), without linking them with commercial presence no later than 2007.

Developed countries should eliminate overly burdensome visa requirements and qualification

The transit rights of landlocked countries should be established on a multilateral basis.
The process of reconciliation of Convention on Biological Diversity and Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights should be expedited.

The resolution also calls for addressing the special needs of the LDCs, in particular the landlocked LDCs, for their effective and meaningful integration into the multilateral trading system.

Workshops on Farmers’ Rights

AFTER the completion of the three year regional programme titled ‘Securing Farmers’ Rights to Livelihood in the Hindu-Kush Himalaya Region (FRP Phase I)’ in 2004, SAWTEE together with its partners in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka initiated the second phase of this programme (FRP Phase II) for another three year period. FRP Phase II seeks to protect farmers’ rights, with its focus on mountain areas of five South Asian countries. The project addresses farmers’ rights issues – access and benefit sharing, prior informed consent and farmers’ active participation in the decision making process – in the context of globalisation and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) regime.

Under the project, SAWTEE’s partners in India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka – Consumer Unity & Trust Society, Kolkatta; Forum for Protection of Public Interest, Kathmandu; Sustainable Development Policy Institute, Islamabad; Law & Society Trust, Colombo – organised the Need Assessment Workshops on Farmers’ Rights between May and August in their respective countries.

These workshops were organised to consult with the stakeholders, including farmers and their groups, government authorities, civil society groups, and experts, and discuss the intervention strategies that need to be designed for the successful implementation of the project at the national level in respective countries. A wide and in-depth discussion with the stakeholders ultimately helped SAWTEE and its partners to plan their future strategies for the implementation of the project. Besides, the workshops also helped to network with these stakeholders and build alliances with like-minded organisations.

South Asian Centre of Economic Journalists formed

SAWTEE and Centre for Trade and Development (CENTAD) – an Oxfam GB Initiative – New Delhi jointly organised the three-day regional training seminar for South Asian journalists titled ‘Road to Hong Kong’ from 11-13 July 2005 in Pokhara, Nepal. The seminar culminated in the formation of South Asian Centre of Economic Journalists (SACEJ). SACEJ is a loose network that aims to establish linkages between economic journalists in the region.

Mr Shafqat Munir, a senior journalist from Pakistan, is the Convenor of the network while journalists from Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka are its members. The objectives of the training seminar were two-fold:

To take stock of issues in the context of the Sixth World Trade Organisation (WTO) Ministerial to be held in Hong Kong from 13-18 December 2005.
To orient and build the capacity of economic journalists in the region in the context of understanding issues under the ambit of the WTO and encourage them to help mainstream public interest dimensions in the trade negotiating process.

The training were provided on issues such as introduction to the multilateral trading system; agriculture; nonagricultural market access; services; standards; trade facilitation; intellectual property rights; trade and development; and dispute settlement.

The South Asian trade experts made presentations on these issues to enable the media persons understand their implications on the South Asian economies. The seminar was instrumental in creating greater awareness among the participants on the need to put development at the heart of trade negotiations.

Forty participants – including 32 economic journalists hailing from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka – participated.

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