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The Doha Report: November 9, 2001

By Anuradha Mittal,
Co-Director, Food First
November 8, 2001

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I arrived in Doha yesterday at 10 pm and was taken directly to the Ritz Carlton hotel. The skeleton U.S. delegation had reduced from over 200 in number to some 45-50 delegates, as the delgates took the option of not attending given the security concerns. The Congressional delegation and even the Secretary of Commerce and Agriculture had opted out. This resulted in the USTR inviting US NGOs and the press to stay at the fancy Ritz Carlton to fill the rooms.

This morning was the security briefing for the US delegates. Once they realized that I am an Indian national, I was unceremoniusly escorted out of the room. The USTR representative that had called the Food First office to invite me to stay at the Ritz exclaimed, "I had no idea that you are not a US citizen." The others were given a security briefing including an emeregency cell phone in case they had to be evacuated.

The security is tight with Qatari security officials heavily armed and dressed in blue camoflauge. The NGO center looks empty--very different from Seattle, where voices of the working poor, family farmers, unions, faith-based groups, women activists and other civil society representatives from around the world had sent a loud and clear message to the WTO: Your unaccountable and unparticipatory practices that have unleashed economic warfare on the poor are unacceptable.

The few of us who are here, met yesterday and this morning, to challenge this unparticipatory process and to strategize against muscle flexing by the US and the Washington Consensus in action in Doha. About 50 of us gathered outside the entrance of the hall at 4:30 pm where the inaugural session was to be held this evening. While the delegates walked in and press gathered around us, we all held the sign of "NO VOICE IN THE WTO," and covered our mouths with masking tape. The delegates had found this the most interesting moment of the conference as they flashed their cameras at us. Jose Bove, the French farmer, then decided to carry our message inside, but was immediately stopped and wrestled with by security forces.

Almost spontaneously, I started the chant, "What do we want?", and our demand "DEMOCRACY!" boomed across the hallways of the Sheraton Hotel in the state of Qatar where the WTO is meeting practically in secret , known to be unknown, so the economic forces can push through policies which hurt millions across the world.

Soon I was surrounded by cameras and media and the secretive, undemocratic policies of the WTO were being carried across the airwaves around the world.

At the inaugural session, Mike Moore, the Director General of the WTO proclaimed, "The transparency and inclusiveness, which is to say the legitimacy, of the Geneva process has been universally acknowledged." He credited Chairman Stuart Harbinson and ambassadors and delegates in Geneva, who he said have worked in an open process, marked by honor, integrity and good humor.

This contrasted sharply with what the delegate from Ghana based in Geneva, Lawrence Yaw Sae-Brawusi said to me. As we talked during our flight from Bahrain to Doha, he explained to me that since Seattle there had been a change in process. "It was more accountable, open and democratic. But the way the final draft was presented by Harbinson, it completed violated the spirit of the whole process. All the praise that has been showered on him is now wasted. The process needs guidelines of engagement by the Third World countries and cannot depend on the benevolence of chairpersons like Harbinson."

Message from Kofi Annan to the inaugural session claimed that since Sept. 11, the world has two choices: First, a mutually destructive clash of civilizations or, second, a world united through a global economy. As the economic heads meet to discuss international economy, they do so without discussing international politics. They are like ostriches with their heads in the sand who are not acknowledging the ongoing war in Afghanistan. They do so without acknowledging the Third Choice--not Tony Blair's Third Way, but a choice based on viable alternatives that the international civil society has offered that make the possibility of a better world a reality.

From Doha,
Anuradha