Call for Mobilization
toward the WTO Meeting in Cancun 2003
People's Global Action

http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/agp/free/cancun/mobilization.htm

Dear compañeros y compañeras concerned about the WTO:

Last 15 and 16 of November, we came to together in Mexico City as a broad
spectrum of Mexican and International civil society organizations, and held
a strategy session to discuss our approaches to the upcoming 5th Ministerial
Meeting of the World Trade Organization (WTO), which will be held in Cancun,
Mexico from September 10 to 14, 2003. We were 240 people in all, from 89
Mexican and 53 foreign organizations, from 16 countries in the Americas,
Europe, Asia and Africa.

We agreed to send, to Mexican and International civil society, this CALL to
organize and coordinate actions and information exchanges with the goal of
derailing the WTO in its attempt to use Cancun to wrap up the consolidation
of the current phase of the global neoliberal model and launch a new round
of negotiations on new themes.

We make this CALL considering that:

*    The WTO is turning into a new "corporate" world constitution...
*    It is the over-arching keystone of the neoliberal global economic
architecture, which also includes regional initiatives like NAFTA, FTAA,
Plan Puebla Panama, Plan Colombia, G7, CAP, APEC, etc...
*    The "free" trade system being imposed via the WTO is undercutting the
livelihoods of peasant and family farmers, workers, indigenous peoples and
those of African ancestry, women, the landless, urban dwellers, fisherfolk
and the poor and middle classes worldwide...
*    The Cancun Ministerial will be the most important meeting to date for
the WTO, because of the fundamental topics to be addressed (agriculture,
intellectual property, services, investment) and the new issues being
proposed, which amount to a neoliberal and free trade vision for those
sectors which are of vital importance for our economies and our
sovereignties...
*    The worldwide movement against neoliberal globalization has been
building through meetings and protests at key points from Seattle to Prague,
Gottemburg, Bangkok, Genoa, Quebec, Quito, Porto Alegre and so many others,
and that in this context the upcoming WTO meeting in Cancun acquires
historic proportions.


The Mexican and international organizations who participated in the November
15-16 meeting, believe that the upcoming meeting of the WTO in 2003 in
Cancun, Mexico, represents a key crossroads which may determine the future
of the neoliberal model, of globalization itself, and of our peoples.

Therefore we CALL for the organization and coordination of information
exchanges, massive public education, mobilization, and actions of protest,
pressure, lobbying and repudiation, in Cancun itself, in the rest of Mexico,
throughout the Americas, and around the world. Although these activities
should reach a crescendo in the week of September 10-14, 2003, they should
begin now, and if possible should continue after.

We do not suggest a new and separate campaign on the WTO, isolated from the
work that each of our organizations is already doing on related topics
(NAFTA, FTAA, GMOs, PPP, Plan Colombia, the war, indigenous rights, the
environment, privatization, etc.), but rather to ADD the topic of the WTO in
a very visible manner, to all of the other campaigns already underway, and
in each and all of our on-going struggles, in such a way that it becomes
very evident to all what the relationships are that each other issue has
with the WTO, as the over-arching keystone of the neoliberal global economic
architecture.

In this process, we propose the following principles and methodologies:

*    Social movements should have a central, lead role in this process.
*    There should be space for participation by the diverse sectors critical
of, and impacted by, the WTO, including farmers and rural peoples,
indigenous peoples and those of African ancestry, unions, environmentalists,
anti-privatization groups, women, youth, fisherfolk, urban movements, and
many others.
*    We see this process as part of a broad, inclusive, diverse and flexible
movement, tending toward the strengthening of mechanisms of coordination
between movements and other civil society groups who are critical of the WTO
and the neoliberal model.
*    Any coordination should be operative and in the nature of exchanges on
the elements mentioned above, more than a coordination to establish or
impose common positions or the signing of general agreements. In no way do
we propose the centralization of, or control over, the participation of
organizations with respect to Cancun in 2003. Of course, this should in no
way impede those who already have, or wish to develop, common positions or
joint activities, from moving ahead among themselves.


With this CALL we launch the open and bilingual (Spanish/English) electronic
list-serve acancun-llaneta.apc.org

You may sign up for this list at:
www.laneta.apc.org/mailman/listinfo/acancun-l

We ask those who understand only one of the two languages for their patience
and forbearance with messages in the other language. WE ask all who can, to
put their contributions in both languages.

The next meeting pint in the process is Porto Alegre, Brazil, during the
Word Social Forum on January 23-28, 2003.

Signed,

The participants in the Social Movements Strategy Meeting in Preparation for
the 5th Ministerial of the World Trade Organization/Cancun 2002


Centro de Estudios para el Cambio en el Campo Mexicano (Ceccam)
Vito Alessio Robles No. 76 casa 7
Col. Florida. México, D.F. 01030
tel: 525 6 61 19 25 y 525 6 61 53 98