Please cut and paste this letter and email or post it to as many people as you can. This is an Open Letter to Heads of Nations/Countries and WTO Negotiators. at the end of the letter pleas make space where the following information Name, Designation And Organization, Address, Signature can be filled out by recipients.
AN OPEN LETTER TO OUR PRESIDENT and WTO AGRICULTURAL NEGOTIATORS
We, leaders and members of farmers’ groups all over the country, are concerned about the on-going negotiations in the World Trade Organization (WTO), leading up to its 6th Ministerial Conference in Hongkong in December.
We are fully aware that rapid agricultural trade liberalization, as a result of fulfilling our commitments to GATT-WTO-AoA, have led to massive dumping of cheap agricultural imports from developed countries and their transnational corporations. This has destroyed the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of farmers and agricultural workers. With no alternative sources of income, our people have become poorer. Furthermore, increasing reliance on imports are threatening our country’s ability to produce our peoples’ staple food.
As the government re-commits itself to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) particularly that of ending extreme poverty (Goal 1) and promoting just and fair trade (Goal 8) , we call on our President and our WTO negotiators to :
1. formulate policies that will protect the small farmers and minimize debilitating effects of WTO agricultural policies
2. work for the elimination for trade distorting domestic support measures and export subsidies of developed countries
3. calibrate market access and tariff reforms in consideration of the peoples’ agricultural conditions
4. ensure that our country has meaningful access to special products (SPs) we have selected on grounds of food and livelihood security and rural development The principle of SPs should be an integral part of a new, and subsequent rounds of negotiations.
5. ensure that our country has access to a special safeguard mechanism which is: easy to implement, automatically triggered (both in terms of price and volumes), open to all agricultural products and under which both duties and quantitative restrictions could apply
6. refuse liberalization of basic services such as water, electricity under the GATS.
7. refuse liberalization of fisheries sector under the Non-Agriculture Market Access (NAMA).
8. protect farmers’ rights to control seeds
9. ensure participation of civil society leaders in task forces and committees engaged by governments in trade policy formulation and reviews
MAKE GLOBAL AGRICULTURAL TRADE FAIR AND JUST!
PROTECT FARMERS’ RIGHTS ! ENSURE FARMERS’ WELFARE!
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