If there are some people hesitating to organise actions against WTO in December, they should know that we might just be at a decisive moment in the struggle against free trade. The Free Trade of the Americas negociations are totally blocked after the first major anti-summit demonstrations in the South. If Hong Kong fails, as it could very well do, things might start to change direction.
In Geneva, we decided to do our major mobilising effort before Hong Kong, because since last year we have realised that WTO - fearing another summit failure - has been trying to actually make the major decisions beforehand, particularly at the General Council meetings held in Geneva. We have been mobilising locally (with rallies and picquets in front of WTO at the first three Councils this year, and organised an international demonstration for the last one, which happened at the end of October.
About three thousand people, mostly from Geneva and France, demonstrated on the weekend before the opening of the meeting (see photo attached). The demo was very spirited, particularly thanks to the french, who came still inspired by the strong mobilisations in France against the government's neo-liberal policies. There was a smaller rally in front of WTO on the opening day of the Council, so that all the delegates would hear us, and a picket was maintained outside during the whole meeting. At both demos there were strong speakers from movements all around the world, particularly from the farmers, as Via Campesina (including our friend Prem from Nepal) was present.
Evaluation: The mobilisation was organised by a very broad coalition, including organisations like ATTAC and most of the NGOs working on WTO. The negative aspect of this is that it would not have been possible to organise something without them, as the more radical, younger part of the movement closer to PGA is relatively de-mobilised at present. The positive aspect of the situation is that most of the more "mainstream" organisations (including even the big Swiss development NGOs for example) have much more critical positions than before. The idea of "social clauses" in WTO for example has been completely forgotten, and we were finally able to have a position signed by most of the organisations which was clearly for de-railing the WTO negociations and implicitly against the WTO as such. Ten years experience of WTO and its effects has brought them significantly closer to our positions. (see for example the international food workers union on agriculture http://www.iuf.org/den2429 ) Via Campesina, as such may still say "agriculture out of WTO" but all the southern delegates who spoke were saying "Kill WTO!". The funniest thing was the number of members of delegations and people working at WTO who congratulated us for being outside!
But the best news is that for the moment, the negociations haven't moved forward during these meetings. On services they have had so few offers of liberalisation that they are now proposing to finish the negociations only next July and to have mandatory percentages of liberalisation (so called "benchmarking"), thus abandonning the fiction that WTO is a volontary process. But this is also generating some strong resistances. On agriculture the US and the EU have both made illusory promises of reductions concerning export subsidies (actually pushing the money from "box" to "box" in a sort of complicated shell game), but happily don't seem (for the moment) to be able to agree between themselves or with India and Brazil on how to split the pie. The cotton producers of Africa, who revolted in Cancun, haven't got any of the relief they were promised. Etc.
There is no doubt that we are winning the argument about "free trade". We shouldn't stop now. On our own, or working with the other parts of the movement, we should make ourselves heard !