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Digital activism, the WTO and international trade rules - II
Into the light : Countering secrecy
As Eveline Lubbers has rightly pointed out, searching for secret information to expose online is still an underdeveloped strategy. The Internet has proved an effective weapon to combat the secret diplomacy that characterizes trade negotiations. In February 1997, the draft text of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), then being negotiated within the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), was obtained and posted on Public Citizens homepage. With this document in the public domain via the Web, international opposition against such an agreement was rapidly mobilized in part using tool such as listservs. Talks had been underway in secrecy for over a year. Yet not even elected officials had been informed about the high-level negotiations. NGOs had heard rumours about the talks, but government officials said no formal negotiations were taking place. Within a year of the leak onto the Web, international opposition led to the breakdown of the MAI negotiations that were seen by many as giving too much power to corporations and undermining democracy.
Since then, the securing of documents and placing them on the Web has been a useful tactic for publicizing the real agenda of governments and corporates. The campaign against the MAI showed that those who had previously been excluded from doing so could analyze technical and complicated trade-related information for its implications. The campaign also demonstrated that the Internet provided an excellent forum for doing this across borders. Traditional non-digital organizing also played a large role but it is difficult to imagine the strength of the campaign without the new channels opened up by digital media. Anti-MAI strategists could quickly share intelligence and strategy as events unfolded. The Internet helped to break the information monopoly developed by business, governments and bureaucrats. NGOs and citizens alike, once empowered with information, could challenge the official line and pressure democratic representatives.
In another example, on 25 February 2003 thousands of pages of confidential EU General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) negotiating documents were published on the Web by NGOs through sites such as GATSwatch. The coordinated action exposed the true nature of the EU's agenda and the veil of rhetoric on negotiations being an 'opportunity' for developing countries. Groups like the Canadian Polaris Institute and the UK-based World Development Movement (WDM) have revealed a global takeover of essential services and the financial infrastructure of developing countries for the benefit of EU-based transnational corporations. The European Union could be seen to be putting pressure on developing countries to privatize their public services (including drinking water) and to open up their services markets for European big business to extract profits.
Campaigners claim these plans to open up developing country markets to multinational corporations under the guise of development will actually harm the world's poorest countries. Whenever WDM had highlighted in the past the dangers of the GATS agreement, the UK government had accused the organization of making false claims about GATS. The European Commission has always made it clear to NGOs that negotiating proposals will not be made publicly available. In an email sent on the 3 April 2002, Pierre Defraigne, Head of the Cabinet of Pascal Lamy (European Trade Commissioner), stated that European requests "can not and will not be made public". Finally, these documents are in the public domain. Although not due to any European government or the European Commission.
The Internet has also played a part in revealing the extent of collusion between big business and government. The research group Corporate Europe Observatory were investigating a powerful trade association called International Financial Services (IFSL), based in London, which lobbies for trade liberalization into service industries which would privatize the provision of basic rights like water, education and health provision. The researchers came across an unlinked page in May 2001, accidentally appended to the IFSL Website. The page included the minutes of meetings held by the "Liberalisation of Trade in Services" (LOTIS) committee set up to liaise between IFSL and the UK government.
The minutes, never intended to be seen by UK citizens, cited how UK civil servants were worried that campaign groups opposed to the GATS were becoming too effective. The minutes recorded that a Foreign Office official, "noted that the campaign by the World Development Movement in particular was leading to a broadening of concerns.... He also pointed to the need to coordinate business responses to the NGO's allegations". Another civil servant from the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), complained that the case for the general agreement was "vulnerable" when campaigners asked for "proof of where the economic benefits lay" for poor nations. The committee decided to spend £50-70,000 to "counter the NGOs".
As every campaigner knows, access to the media is key. For the LOTIS Group, the Web leak showed that poses no challenge. The minutes record "Henry Manisty [Reuters] wondered how business views could best be communicated to the media. In that respect, his company would be most willing to give them publicity".
Governments can certainly justify taking the views of business into account when formulating trade policy. What concerned campaigners were the privileged co-operative arrangements between business and government that went beyond proper democratic policy-making process. Civil servants appeared, in the case above, to have been handing vital European Union papers to the business people on the LOTIS committee that were not available even to members of the European Parliament.
As the appalling reality of trade injustices becomes more widely known amongst politicians, it is becoming increasingly common for elected officials to leak documents on trade negotiations to campaigners, evening out some of the tide of material going out to corporates. Many NGOs seek to place this information in the public domain through the Web. Whilst the mainstream media continue to give minimal coverage to important issues like global trade and their impact on those living in poverty, political debate on policy decisions made in the name of citizens remains out of public interrogation.
Connecting through short message services
In June 2002 a Mass Lobby of the UK Parliament saw the Trade Justice Movement experiment with mobile phone technology through text messaging (short message service/SMS). Over 1, 000 people - almost 10% of the 12,000 who went to Westminster to lobby their MPs for fairer international trade - signed up to the service in advance through a Web form. Envisaged as a morale booster as people waited for their MP, event organizers sent updates like running totals of how many MPs had been lobbied (in total, 346 MPs, more than half of Parliament were lobbied in one afternoon). Being able to enhance people's sense of community at large events is vital. The success of the initiative was audible when a huge cheer went up as a message of support was relayed to campaigners from the South African president Thabo Mbeki.
"SMS has massive untapped potential for campaigners as we can communicate with our activists directly wherever they are." said Nick Buxton, Web development manager for the development agency CAFOD and formerly head of Internet campaigning for Jubilee 2000, who set up the scheme. New communications technology like SMS have a crucial role to play in furthering our goals of a fairer world for all."
Part III: Online action exchange
Back to Part I
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