NAIROBI (Sputnik), Anastasia Levchenko — Ministers from the World Trade Organization (WTO) member countries must address the inherent problems in the WTO rules that create imbalances between developed and developing countries, Deborah James, a representative of the Our World Is Not For Sale network of social movements, told Sputnik.
Kenya's capital, Nairobi, is currently hosting the WTO's four-day 10th Ministerial Conference, for which the economy ministers from over 160 states have. The summit aims to define the course of multilateral trade relations for the coming years.
"Developing countries since 1995 put proposals on the table to make WTO rules fairer for them… Bur ever since then the US, aided by Europe, Japan, Australia and Canada, have opposed every single proposal… There also need to be more rules of flexibility for the developing countries, especially on the differential treatment agenda. Rebalancing for the asymmetries is needed," Deborah James said.
According to James, affluent WTO countries are allowed to subsidize agriculture to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, while poorer WTO members are not allowed to subsidize the sector by more than 10 percent.
"That needs to change so that developing countries can have food security and can actually invest in rural development, in order to ensure that farmers have a decent livelihood," James said.
The Our World Is Not For Sale network consists of numerous organizations, activists and social movements worldwide that are fighting, as stated by the network, "the existing model of corporate globalization embodied in global trading system."
