Globalisation, trade and justice
So, can trade in the era of globalisation be ‘just’? Pambazuka News will carry a series of four special issues during 2006 that include articles designed to raise awareness and debate on issues of trade and justice. In this, the first issue, we have a range of articles that examine diverse issues related to slavery, colonialism and reparations. Other articles look at how trade impacts on women, provide pointers for civil society in their campaigning activities and examine new forms of trade injustices currently facing the continent.
It’s one the smallest states in a world were seemingly everything and everyone is globalised. That makes mountainous and landlocked Lesotho, with a population of just under two million and an unemployment rate of 50 percent, both vulnerable and dependent on the whims of market super powers to maintain its economy.
A January 1 termination of a previously little known agreement - the Multi-Fibre Arrangement (MFA) - resulted in Lesotho’s fragile textiles industry losing 13,000 jobs out of 54,000 and the closure of 10 factories. The 1970s MFA was a series of quotas set up to protect indigenous producers from import surges, but since 1995, the WTO began phasing out quotas to bring trading agreements governing textiles into line with global free trade regulations. It’s abolishment resulted in a surge of imports, mainly from China, where production costs were far lower.
In a country where one worker may be responsible for feeding, clothing and schooling a large extended family, the impact for Lesotho has been harsh. “The country is in crisis. We are in a real crisis,” said Daniel Maraisane, the General Secretary of the Lesotho Clothing and Allied Workers’ Union.
The reality of the 13,000 workers in Lesotho or the 250 000 others in Africa who lost their jobs as a result of the MFA (http://www.icftu.org/displaydocument.asp?Index=991223274&Language=EN), is that all of them were part of a complex trade web linking countries of the world that no-one could have imagined a century ago, a system where justice and the interests of ordinary workers often take backstage to global trade policies dictated by global powers. Countries like Lesotho and even entire continents like Africa, frequently appear to be on the losing end of the equation.
It’s in this context that 2005 saw a cacophony of calls for ‘trade justice’, defined as a commitment to lobbying for the introduction and implementation of trade rules that work for all people, instead of benefiting those who already have the most (http://www.tjm.org.uk/about/statement.shtml). Campaigners for trade justice argue that existing trade rules are damaging to many people, especially the poor and vulnerable, the environment and social policies. They maintain that the global trading system must be rebalanced, taking into account the needs of the poor, human rights, and the environment.
But can trade in the era of globalisation be ‘just’?
The world market has long been conquered, controlled and dominated by metropolitan capital. This was not achieved by economic means alone, but also by the use of brutal force. The metropolitan countries imposed unequal treaties, demolished existing manufacturing industries, enslaved, robbed, seized by tricks, exploited, and carried out wholesale colonization. Once the conquest of the world market had been achieved, and the North had ensured its domination, and only once that had been guaranteed, did the dogma of ‘free trade’ get imposed on a world scale. Just as the industrial revolution led to massive over-production and the voracious appetite to conquer the world and seize its markets, so the more recent revolutions in micro- and bio-technology have led, in their own way, to an era of conquering the world through a massive restructuring of economies – which was what the period of structural adjustment programmes and PRSPs was all about.
And it is no surprise that ‘free trade’ is once again the banner of the neoliberals and neocons. This new voracious surge is what is currently referred to as ‘globalisaton’. It is what has led to the rich getting richer, and the poor poorer. It is what has condemned us to be consumers, not citizens, and commercially degraded every aspect of our lives. And since only a minority have the capacity to consume, the vast majority of Africa’s people are effectively disenfranchised.
Trade in the era of globalization is neither ‘free’ nor ‘just’. 'The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas…And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies to flourish is called the US Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps.' (Thomas L Friedman: The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization, New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1999, p 373)
'There is a notion gaining credence,' writes Arundhati Roy, 'that the free market breaks down national barriers, and that corporate globalization’s ultimate destination is a hippie paradise … What the free market undermines is not national sovereignty, but democracy. As the disparity between rich and poor grows, the hidden fist has its work cut out for it. Multinational corporations on the prowl for sweetheart deals that yield enormous profits cannot push through those deals and administer those projects in developing countries without the active connivance of state machinery – the police, the courts, sometimes even the army.” (Arundhati Roy: The Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire. Harper Perennial, 2004. p 37).
Leading up to the 200th commemoration of the abolition of the slave trade and the 50th anniversary of independence in Ghana – both crucial points in terms of marking Africa’s historical relationship to the rest of the world - Pambazuka News will carry a series of four special issues that include articles designed to raise awareness and debate on issues of trade and justice. In this, the first issue, we carry a range of articles that examine diverse issues related to slavery, colonialism and reparations. Other articles look at how trade impacts on women, provide pointers for civil society in their campaigning activities and examine new forms of trade injustices currently facing the continent.
- Patrick Burnett and Firoze Manji, Pambazuka News
- Please send comments to [email protected]
Contents list
1. A leaking ship: The role of debt, aid and trade
2005 was supposed to be a year of action for Africa, with demands for “more and better aid, debt cancellation and more just trade policies”. What happened? Charles Abugre from Christian Aid offers some insights into the demands of the last year and provides pointers on where African civil society should focus their energies in the related areas of aid, debt and trade.
Full article: http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=31754
2. A Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade
Manu Herbstein’s first novel, ‘Ama, a Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, recently published in South Africa by Picador Africa, won the 2002 Commonwealth Writers Best First Book Prize. Set in the late eighteenth century, it tells the story of a young woman who is captured and enslaved in the West African savannah and transported to Brazil. Here, Herbstein reflects on the historical background to his novel and some of its contemporary implications.
Full article: http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=31755
3. Modern-day tyranny and slavery in Liberia
In late 2005, the International Labor Rights Fund filed an Alien Tort Claims Act case in the US District Court in California against Bridgestone, alleging "forced labor, the modern equivalent of slavery" on a Firestone Plantation in Harbel, Liberia. The lawsuit states: "The Plantation workers allege, among other things, that they remain trapped by poverty and coercion on a frozen-in-time Plantation operated by Firestone in a manner identical to how the Plantation was operated when it was first opened by Firestone in 1926." Robtel Pailey investigates modern-day slavery in the "land of the free".
Full article: http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=31756
4. Trade, justice and the case for reparations
Are claims for slavery reparations of US$777 trillion, as made by a 1999 African World Reparations truth commission in Accra, realistic? How does one begin to conceptualise claims for reparations in a broader historical and social context when it comes to centuries of exploitation? M.P. Giyose from Jubilee South Africa makes the case for understanding reparations as a transformation of the way the world functions, ultimately serving to restore and sustain human civilisation.
Full article: http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=31757
5. Trade, gender and the search for alternatives
It is women who bear the brunt of the effects of trade liberalization on social development through a lack of access to basic social services. But, writes Jennifer Chiriga from the Alternative Information and Development Centre, one of the major impacts of trade on women is how the capitalist ethic plays into building masculinity while at the same time playing down the role that women play in society. Alternatives are in the offing, she argues.
Full article: http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=31758
6. Vulnerable and poor face up to the implications of GATS
The time is fast approaching when water, health care and every other essential service become tradable - with enormous implications for the lives of the poor and vulnerable. Oduor Ongwen, the country director of SEATINI Kenya, describes the international agreement that is going to regulate trade in services, the General Agreement on Trade in services (GATS), noting that it is a “dangerous instrument for the externalisation of resources of underdeveloped countries such as those in Africa”.
Full article: http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=31759
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