The PGA call to action against the WTO summit in Qatar

Peoples Global Action calls on all grassroots social movements, community based organisations, trade unions, student organisations, indigenous peoples, farmers organisations, autonomous collectives and everyone who wishes to participate around the world to carry out actions against the World Trade Organisation (WTO) during the next ministerial summit in Doha, Qatar, November 9th-13th, 2001.

The WTO's aim is very simple: to remove anything that gets in the way of big business and free trade, upholding the freedom for multinational companies to act as they please. Made up of 135 member countries, the WTO polices international trade rules and continues to set an agenda that places profit above people and the planet.

Faced with a rapidly expanding grassroots resistance to capitalist globalisation, the WTO has fled to an isolated desert dictatorship for its next meeting. Already built into the agenda are three immensely destructive trade agreements: the Agreement on Agriculture (AOA), the General Agreement on Trade and Services (GATS) and the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). Between them, they cover issues like: the privatisation of health, education and water, forcing GMO foods and seeds on member countries and patents on life forms.

THEY CAN RUN BUT THEY CAN'T HIDE: WE ARE EVERYWHERE!

RESIST THE WTO THROUGHOUT THE WORLD THROUGH DIRECT ACTION AND CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE WHEREVER COMMUNITIES ARE DESTROYED AND ECOSYSTEMS SACRIFICED FOR THE SAKE OF FREE TRADE!

Regardless of whether the WTO meeting is maintained or not, we will be in the streets, because the streets are ours. Grassroots organisations all over the world are organising the following kinds of actions and call on others to do the same:

  1. Awareness-raising campaigns against WTO and the effect of their policies on a global and local level: community based consultations, counter-meetings, public debates, publications.
  2. Maximum disruption of the work of the trade ministers attending the conference: demands for the publication of national positions, blocking of communications or of departures of delegations, etc.
  3. Mass coordinated actions on a national and international level: work stoppages, road blocks, occupation of stock exchanges and other financial institutions (New York, San Francisco, Sao Paolo...), liberation of grain stocks (India) on Nov. 9th.
  4. Decentralised local action: land occupations, creative demonstrations of grassroots alternatives... Nov. 9th-13th.

german translation
Global Action against WTO
European Call to Action against WTO (DRAFT!)
3rd PGA Conference, Cochabamba, Bolivia
AGP