ALBA Accuses WTO of Carrying out Anti-Democratic Practices

Caracas, 15 Dec. AVN.- Member countries of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) warned on Wednesday that the World Trade Organization (WTO) is carrying out “more and more excluding and non-democratic practices”.

The denunciation was made by representatives from Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela during the preliminary meeting for the eighth WTO conference taking place this Thursday in Geneva, Switzerland.

The Latin American countries stressed that, “the implementation of sophisticated methods to prevent the participation of all WTO members -giving the false appearance of being an inclusive process and reached in consensus- are more frequent”.

ALBA member countries explained that the working agenda that will be discussed in the next WTO conference was born “from a consultation process among a reduced group” and they added, “The WTO has turned into an organization that is no longer managed by all its members”.

Furthermore, they said the Doha Declaration guarantees “general balance in the results of negotiations and such results should benefit all participants”. As ALBA denounces, to go against the Doha Declaration “paves the way for industrialised economies to decide the future WTO agenda.”

The imposition of plurilateral agreements, in detrimental to multilateralism, was labelled as a strategy “to progressively marginalise the issue of development and cause, in the medium term, j a new round of commercial negotiations”. If consolidated, it would lead to “a scenario of extreme commercial liberalisation among economies with huge differences in productivity and competitiveness.”

Edited by Venezuelanalysis.com