11/9/13 Citizen News Service - CNS: Free Trade Agreements (FTAs): A Threat To People' s Freedoms

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Free Trade Agreements (FTAs): A Threat To
People's Freedoms
The year 2011 has seen the most significant
attempts to revive the World Trade
Organization (WTO) in recent times, with
the stated objective of member countries to
conclude the Doha round before the end of
the year. At this juncture, developing
countries like India need to take stock of the
situation so that key concerns are taken
into account. It is assumed that free trade
and the removal of regulations on investment
will result in economic growth, reducing poverty and generating employment
opportunities. However, past evidences show that these kinds of agreements allow
transnational corporations more freedom to exploit workers rather than help them.
By removing all restrictions on businesses, it severely affects the lives of the
common people.
The European Commission is currently negotiating a free trade agreement (FTA)
with India and
several rounds of negotiations have already been held.
In a statement issued after the conclusion of her recent visit to India in the second
week of April, 2011, Ska Keller, a Green member of the European Parliament,
warned that the proposed free trade agreement (FTA) between India and European
Union will have serious consequences for the Indian people.
According to her, FTA is a threat to poverty eradication and development of the
Indian people, as regulations on intellectual property rights might endanger the
production of generics and thereby block the access to medical treatment for
millions of poor people in India and other countries.
I therefore support the campaign Hands off our medicine of Mdecins Sans
Frontires or MSF (doctors without borders) Europe! I am also concerned that
Indian farmers could stand affected negatively. Moreover, there are severe concerns
that the deal with the EU could force small shops to close or wholesome industries
to close down due to competition from Europe, she added.
She also feels that any so called benefits of the FTA cannot be foreseen yet. Only
one of the Indian partners stated at all which advantages India hopes to achieve
from the FTA: more liberal visa regulation and technology transfer. But it is doubtful
whether these advantages will be achieved as firstly it is the member states, and
not the European Commission, to decide about visa regulations. Secondly,
technology transfer can only happen, if European companies produce and apply
their technologies in India and even if they did, small enterprises would not benefit.
Similar concerns were voiced by U.K. based Madi Sharma, a member of the
European Economic and Social Committee (EESC). She called for the suspension
of the negotiations until studies had been carried out to assess the likely economic
and social risks of the FTA on Indian society. Until now, the talks have been
guided by a study that fails to take the FTAs impact on the informal sector into
account even though over 90 per cent of the Indian economy is informal, up of
people like street vendors and domestic workers, she said in a statement.
According to a Joint statement of seed solidarity between European and Indian
people issued during the International Days of Action in Brussels , recently (on 18th
April): Free trade would make seed slaves and would have devastating
consequences on small farmers and seed growers. In its FTA talks, the EU
demands a range of commitments like market access for EU agricultural products,
and IPR (Intellectual Property Rights) protection in the form of patents / data
exclusivity for its agri- chemicals industry. The investor protections sought by EU
through the proposed FTA, will mean priority access over land and water being
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11/9/13 Citizen News Service - CNS: Free Trade Agreements (FTAs): A Threat To People' s Freedoms
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given to EU industries/businesses rather than local farmers.
The statement endorsed that traditionally, farmers all over the world have saved
their seeds to sow, re sow, share, exchange and sometimes sell, but never own it
exclusively. But the free trade agenda gives dominant control and market
freedoms to corporations and agribusinesses, but severely limits time-honoured
farmers' freedoms. It reduces farmers the original producers of seed-- to be
consumers.
EU seed legislation already gives strong preference to industrial varieties to the
detriment of traditional heirloom varieties and the vast plant diversity developed over
centuries. It restricts the right of farmers and gardeners to produce, multiply and
exchange their own seeds.
Intellectual property in FTAs can undermine the right to health in many ways. For
example, tobacco companies are using FTAs with intellectual property in
investment chapters to sue governments directly for their efforts to bring in
measures to protect public health.
"Data exclusivity has proven to be damaging to public health in free trade
agreements in other countries," said Anand Grover, the UN Special Rapporteur on
the Right to Health. "It would be a colossal mistake to introduce data exclusivity in
India, when millions of people across the globe depend on the country as the
pharmacy of the developing world."
"As we speak, Philip Morris is using the Switzerland-Uruguay trade agreement to
sue Uruguay for its decision to introduce larger and more graphic health warnings
on cigarette packs," said YK Sapru, of the Cancer Patients Aid Association, which
has long advocated for tobacco control measures in India.
The international medical humanitarian organisation MSF has already voiced its
concerns about the severe limitations FTA would impose upon Indian generic
manufacturers to produce affordable medicines. MSF relies on affordable medicines
produced in India to treat more than 160,000 people living with HIV/AIDS across the
developing world. India is also the source of 80% of the AIDS medicines purchased
by donors like the Global Fund.
Generic medicines from India have played a critical role in scaling up AIDS
treatment across the developing world because until 2005, the country did not grant
patents on medicines. This allowed manufacturers to produce more affordable
drugs, pushing their price down by more than 99% over the past decade. But
World Trade Organization rules obligated India to start granting medicines patents
in 2005. This is having a negative impact on access to affordable versions of the
newer generation of HIV/AIDS drugs, some of which have already been patented in
India.
Now the policies the EU are pushing would restrict the production of affordable
medicines even further. In particular the EU is seeking to impose data exclusivity
which would act like a patent and block the marketing of generic medicines for up
to ten years. Alarmingly, data exclusivity would apply even for products that didnt
deserve a patent in the first place under Indias law.
The European Union is demanding patents through free trade agreements (FTAs),
which are longer than that demanded by the World Trade Organization. Its actions
are a direct threat to access to safe, effective and affordable medicines across the
developing world. India should resist pressure from the European Union to accept,
as part of a free trade agreement, harmful provisions that will have a major negative
impact on access to affordable medicines, and on agricultural practices.
Shobha Shukla - CNS
(The author is the Editor of Citizen News Service (CNS)
and also serves as the Director of CNS Diabetes Media
Initiative (CNS-DMI).She is a J2J Fellow of National
Press Foundation (NPF) USA. She has worked earlier
with State Planning Institute, UP. Email:
shobha@citizen-news.org, website: http://www.citizen-
news.org/)
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malinejaclyn 13 October, 2011
"Census Bureau: A Threat to Freedom
by James Bovard, June 2000
THERE ARE three certainties in life death, taxes and the continuation of the
Census Bureaus proud tradition of keeping information it collects about
individuals strictly private. So announces the Census Bureaus web page,
seeking to assure Americans that they have nothing to fear by opening their
lives to the prying of this years census.
Regrettably, after seven years of the Clinton administration, some Americans
might be a little skeptical about this trust us were the government line. And,
considering the Census Bureaus dark history, people have plenty of reason to
fear that their answers could be used against them.
In 1942, the Census Bureau made up a special list telling the U.S. Army how
many Japanese-Americans lived in each neighborhood in the United States.
The Army used the census lists to send out trucks to round up 120,000
Japanese-Americans for internment camps during World War II. "
Reply
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