----------
> From: Harold Stokes <hstokes at bignet.net>
> To: Recipient List Suppressed:;
> Subject: Avoiding this is courting disaster
> Date: Thursday, April 26, 2001 3:33 PM
>
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: [ftaacollab] Ten Point Plan FOR the Americas: NO to FTAA!
> Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2001 13:39:54 -0400
> From: "Alesha Daughtrey" <alesha at citizen.org>
> Reply-To: ftaacollab at yahoogroups.com
> To: <ftaacollab at yahoogroups.com>
>
> * Please post widely! *
>
> This April, trade ministers and heads of state from 34 countries in the
> Americas and the Caribbean met in Buenos Aires, Argentina and Quebec
> City, Canada to move forward with negotiations on a new corporate
> globalization agreement: the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).
> The FTAA draft texts are secret, but information that has leaked out
> reveals that many of the FTAA's chapters are literally extensions of
> NAFTA rules. The goal of the FTAA is to impose the NAFTA model of
> corporate investment and patent protections, trade liberalization,
> deregulation, and privatization on every country in the western
> hemisphere (except Cuba). In real terms, the FTAA would significantly
> increase the power corporations have to keep governments from setting
> standards to safeguard workers and the environment, keep food and water
> safe and available to all communities, stop privatization and
> deregulation of essential public services like education and health
> care, and promote democratic and accountable decision-making.
>
> No matter where we live, the FTAA will attack our families, our schools,
> our jobs, our farms and our rights! Many people have asked, "Now that
> the People's Summit and protests in Quebec City are over, what's next in
> the international struggle against the FTAA?" A number of different
> organizations -- both international (such as the Hemispheric Social
> Alliance) and national ones throughout the Americas and the Caribbean --
> have put out excellent statements and policy papers suggesting next
> steps. Some representatives of international and national networks have
> drafted a complementary campaign-oriented sign-on statement on the FTAA
> -- the Ten Point Plan for the Americas -- which brings together many of
> the critiques raised by NGOs, unions and citizens around the hemisphere
> and underscores the main issues around which we are all already
> campaigning. This statement already has collected the support of 104
> organizations and unions from 15 countries. Hopefully, it can gather
> hundreds (if not thousands) more, and can be released in various
> capitals and major cities throughout the hemisphere in connection with
> continuing FTAA campaigns!
>
> Please join civil society groups throughout the hemisphere in rejecting
> the proposed agreement by signing your organization on to the
> international statement below. Here's how:
>
> 1) This is an organizational sign-on letter only. We will not be adding
> individuals to it.
> 2) To add your organization, send an email with "FTAA sign-on" in the
> subject line to alesha at citizen.org. In the body of the e-mail list the
> organization and country (contact information such as address, phone &
> fax is also appreciated) that you are signing on. Those who wish should
> also mention how many people the organization represents.
> 3) You can also sign the letter or see the Spanish, French or Portuguese
> versions by going to www.tradewatch.org and clicking on the FTAA/ALCA
> link on the globe.
>
>
============================================================================
====
> ===
>
> A Ten-Point Plan to Fight for the Americas: No to FTAA
> No NAFTA for the Americas!
>
> Over the last decade, transnational corporations have used international
> commercial agreements to improve their profit margins at the expense of
> the public interest. The 1994 implementation of the North American Free
> Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the 1995 establishment of the World Trade
> Organization (WTO) as part of the GATT Uruguay Round were both promoted
> as a means of creating global prosperity -- a rising tide which would
> lift all boats by opening markets and encouraging the freer flow of
> goods and capital across borders. However, the record has shown that
> this corporate-managed trade model actually has encouraged a race to the
> bottom in labor, environmental and public health and safety standards;
> increased pressure on the environment and natural resources; loss of
> living-wage and unionized jobs; attacks on food security; increased
> levels of poverty and economic inequality; wildfire spread of financial
> crises such as the Mexican peso crisis; privatization of services that
> denies many people access to essential social services such as health
> care, education and water access; and diminished democratic and
> accountable decision-making.
>
> Now 34 heads of state and trade ministers, from every nation of the
> Western Hemisphere except Cuba, are discussing an expansion of this
> failed model of increased privatization and deregulation to the entire
> hemisphere via a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). The proposed
> FTAA would combine the most problematic aspects of NAFTA, the WTO and
> the failed Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), effectively
> handcuffing governments' public interest policymaking capacity and
> enhancing corporate control at the expense of citizens throughout the
> Americas and the Caribbean, by:
>
> * providing new "investor protections" which empower corporations to sue
> governments in closed-door tribunals over domestic policies which may
> undermine their future expected profits, resulting in multi-million
> dollar cash compensations to be paid by taxpayers;
>
> * limiting governments' abilities to regulate direct foreign investment,
> as well as speculative capital flows, in order to protect their
> economies from excessive volatility;
>
> * setting up dispute resolution processes which refer disagreements to
> secret international trade tribunals above and outside of national
> judiciaries which allow foreign governments and corporations to bypass a
> nation's courts and legal system;
>
> * providing corporations with new rights and tools to attack government
> standards for food security, public health and safety, and worker
> safeguards and to attack laws that ensure that corporations do not
> pollute the communities in which they operate; and
>
> * expanding "trade" disciplines to cover the service sector, which could
> increase pressure on governments to privatize and/or deregulate
> essential public services that are already under fire.
>
> FTAA negotiations have been conducted under the strictest terms of
> secrecy. Business groups acting as official advisors to the FTAA
> negotiators have seen the draft text and related documents, as have some
> government-selected labor and environmental groups in the United States.
> However, the public and journalists have not been allowed access to the
> text. Indeed, only one government of 34 has even made public its own
> recommended language for inclusion in the final agreement. Even
> parliamentarians have been denied access to crucial information or have
> been left unaware that negotiations were ongoing at all. Despite the
> lack of transparency and democratic process in the negotiations, the
> governments involved are moving towards completion of the FTAA no later
> than 2005. They also are considering some "early harvest" agreements,
> which means that certain chapters would go into effect much sooner --
> wreaking havoc throughout the hemisphere as parliaments are forced to
> change public interest laws and regulations to comply with corporate-led
> priorities. While civil society has attempted to voice its opinions and
> concerns to negotiators from various governments, there is no evidence
> to date that these concerns have been heard, much less considered, in
> the actual FTAA negotiations.
>
> The undersigned groups will closely monitor their governments'
> participation in these negotiations to ascertain that FTAA negotiations
> modeled on a combination of NAFTA, MAI and WTO do not continue. Some
> specific indicators of the unacceptable corporate-managed trade system
> for which we will be watching are:
>
> 1. No New Corporate Power Tools: Any NAFTA-style Chapter 11 Investment
> language allowing corporate suits against governments is unacceptable.
> This extreme mechanism in NAFTA allows corporations to sue governments
> in undemocratic, closed trade tribunals for cash damages for domestic
> regulations that the corporations claim undermine their future expected
> profits. Already under NAFTA, this mechanism has been used to attack
> important domestic environmental, health and safety policies,
> effectively limiting the ability of governments to maintain national
> standards. In fact, every time corporations have invoked this NAFTA
> tool, the rulings and settlements have always been against the public
> interest and for corporations. In this perverse process, countries must
> compensate the "victorious" corporation with taxpayer dollars and must
> continue to pay the company continued ransom if it keeps a public
> interest law in place.
>
> 2. Hands Off Basic Social Rights and Needs of the Americas: It is
> inappropriate and unacceptable for social rights and basic needs to be
> constrained by trade rules, such as those proposed under current FTAA
> talks. Promoting, respecting and realizing fundamental worker rights and
> other human rights by all relevant means is important, including action
> at the appropriate international institutions. Issues critical to human
> or planetary welfare, such as food and water, basic social services, and
> health and safety, must not be undercut by commercial agreements.
> Inappropriate encroachment by trade rules in such areas has already
> resulted in major public campaigns centered on genetically modified
> organisms, old growth forests, and predatory tobacco marketing.
>
> 3. Services Needed for Survival: Services needed for survival, such as
> health, education, water, energy and other basic social services, must
> not be subject to trade rules. Domestic consumer health and safety,
> environmental and labor laws regulating any aspect of the service sector
> that treat domestic and foreign providers the same clearly must remain
> outside the purview of trade disciplines. In the Americas and the
> Caribbean, structural adjustment programs privatizing and deregulating
> essential public services -- which were required by the International
> Monetary Fund and World Bank -- have already led to a severe lack of
> access to health care, schools and clean water for peoples throughout
> the region. Current FTAA proposals would lock in this failure forever,
> making it impossible for any government to reverse any bad decisions on
> privatization of services.
>
> 4. Stop Corporate Patent Protectionism - Seeds & Medicine are Human
> Needs, not Commodities: All intellectual property policies must allow
> governments to limit patent protection in order to protect public health
> and safety, especially patents on life-saving medicines and life forms.
> The patenting of life forms including microorganisms must be prohibited
> in all national and international regimes. Current intellectual property
> rules in trade pacts, such as the WTO TRIPs agreement and NAFTA's
> Chapter 17 Intellectual Property rules, effectively prevent consumer
> access to essential medicines and other goods, lead to private
> appropriation of life forms and traditional knowledge, undermine
> biodiversity, and keep poorer countries from increasing their levels of
> social and economic welfare. There is no basis for inclusion of such
> intellectual property claims in a trade agreement.
>
> 5. Food Is a Basic Human Right, Not a Commodity: Trade rules must not
> restrict countries' rights or abilities to establish or maintain
> policies safeguarding small farmers, rural economies and food security.
>
> 6. Control over Natural Resources: Citizens and governments -- not
> transnational corporations -- must have the right to make decisions
> about the use and protection of natural resources. Policies governing
> natural resources should strike a careful balance between the social
> benefits of preservation, job creation and economic expansion. Thus,
> international commercial terms such as those found in NAFTA, which allow
> corporate interests to challenge countries' control or regulation of
> land, mineral oil and gas deposits, forests, rivers and other natural
> resources, are unacceptable.
>
> 7. Do No Further Harm: NAFTA and the WTO both contain provisions that
> undermine domestic environmental, health, safety, agriculture and labor
> laws. There is no place for such anti-public interest provisions in
> future international commercial agreements. Moreover, actions taken to
> implement multilateral agreements dealing with workers rights, the
> environment, health, development, human rights, safety, indigenous
> peoples' rights, food security, women's rights, and animal welfare must
> not be challenged or undermined by international commercial rules.
>
> 8. Disadvantaging Women, Minorities and Indigenous Peoples: There is no
> place in just international agreements for provisions that disallow a
> country from providing special and differential treatment to women,
> minorities, and indigenous people. Such an attack on countries'
> sovereign rights to determine domestic social priorities, for instance
> by offering preferential credit terms to disadvantaged segments of their
> populations, is offensive. Additionally, such policies are in direct
> conflict with international human rights agreements and the
> International Labor Organization's Conventions.
>
> 9. Promoting Development vs. Corporate Control: International commercial
> agreements must not discipline what governments can do to ensure that
> their citizens capture the benefits of foreign investment. The FTAA must
> not prevent governments from employing a variety of policy tools to
> promote equitable and sustainable development, such as restricting
> foreign capital in certain sectors, the reinvestment of profits, or
> limiting the purchase of farm land or other real estate.
>
> 10. Speedbumps Against Speculation: In order to prevent international
> financial crises from spreading, countries must maintain the power to
> take measures against speculative portfolio investment. The investment
> rules of NAFTA, which are the model for the FTAA, are exactly the wrong
> model, as they forbid governments to establish such basic protective
> measures.
>
> The undersigned organizations are committed to fight against the
> corporate model of globalization expressed in the FTAA, and will instead
> advocate for new visions for the Americas and Caribbean based on
> principles of democratic and transparent decision-making, equitable and
> sustainable development, and protection of the public interest above
> corporate profit.
>
> Alesha Daughtrey
> Senior Organizer/FTAA coordinator
> Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch
> +202-454-5103 (tel)/+202-547-7392 (fax)
> 215 Pennsylvania Avenue SE
> Washington, DC 20003 USA
> alesha at citizen.org
> www.tradewatch.org
>
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