[asia-apec 9] Statement of the Phil PO-NGO Summit on APEC

[daga]

Date: Thu, 11 Jul 1996 11:14:33 +0800 (HKT)
From: "Asian Regional Exchange for New Alternatives (ARENA)" <arena at hk.net>
To: "Asianet (ac10136)" <asianet at hk.net>
Subject: Manila People's Forum on APEC '96 (fwd)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 10 Jul 96 13:09 GMT+0800
From: Philippine Peasant Institute <omi.apec at gaia.psdn.iphil.net>
To: arena at hk.net
Subject: Manila People's Forum on APEC '96

                        HIDDEN COSTS OF FREE TRADE
                STATEMENT OF THE PHILIPPINE PO-NGO SUMMIT
                                ON THE APEC

If the Ramos government is to be believed, APEC is nothing less than the
Philippines' ticket to economic salvation.  With an all-too familiar
combination of bullish rhetoric and doomsday scenarios reminiscent of the
GATT-UR debates, government is plying the public with promises of
APEC-induced growth, jobs, and all-around prosperity.  This, even as it
warns of economic isolation and stagnation should we fail to live up to
APEC's sweeping libaralization vision, a vision that has been defined and
controlled by the US and Australia from its inception.

We, the people's organizations and development NGOs represented at this
summit--we who have felt and witnessed the grave human and ecological costs
brought on by the neoliberal framework that the APEC represents--beg to
differ. We know only too well what the freeing up of markets and investment
regimes implies.  In its SAP and GATT guises, liberalization has meant the
marginalization of small farmers unable to compete with heavily-subsidized
produce and unable to defend their farmland from arbitrary land conversions
and agrarian reversals; the undermining of small fisherfolk's rights over
coastal and marine resources; the trampling of indigenous and Moro peoples'
rights to self-determination and to their ancestral domain; the violent
demolition of urban poor communities and their dislocation from their homes
and jobs; the pawning of labor's rights to self-organization, decent wages
and job security in favor of the steady infusion of investments; the exodus
of Filipino men and women to jobs abroad peddled by the government itself.
The list goes on.  All these costs are borne to a harsher degree by the
country's women, who not only bear the multiple burdens of poverty, but are
also unrecognized and discriminated upon in their efforts to assure them and
their families' survival. Its' toll will also be felt to a deeper degree by
future generations, as its growth-at-all-costs framework heedlessly extracts
resources and plunders our ecosystems without regard for the future.

Stung by past experiences and continued marginalization of peoples whom we
seek to represent, we look with deep suspicion upon APEC's concept of
cooperation that is hinged on the establishment of an Asia Pacific free
trade regime by the year 2020.  We reject  APEC and its anti-democratic,
unaccountable and untransparent processes.  We are committed to engage APEC
and the Philippine government in our pursuit of genuine people to people
cooperation in the Asia Pacific region, and in our desire to put forward
concrete development alternatives that place highest value to the right to
self-determination, sustainability, equality, and economic, political,
social and gender equity and justice.  We shall continue to resist the
onslaught of economic liberalization against peoples and communities even as
we continue to build these alternatives.

In this light, we call for changing the current US-driven, market-led,
growth-oriented development strategy to one that is centered on people and
nature, and ensures equity and participation across genders, classes,
sectors, cultures, and generations.  We aspire for nothing less than total
human and ecological development, one that does not divorce economic gains
from its social, political, ecological and cultural dimensions.

We call for a new development path where women and men are empowered
participants and equal beneficiaries, through a framework that works for
equity, food security and ecological balance.  We also call for fair trade,
socially-responsible investments, and genuine regional cooperation that
places communities and peoples at the core, and that upholds and respects
subsidiarity, local self-sufficiency and self-determination.  We urge the
use of alternative growth indicators such as the community net-worth in lieu
of the traditional measures of growth in redefining development.

We demand from the Asia-Pacific leaders full adherence to the U.N.
Declaration on Human Rights; the immediate ratification of the International
Convention on Labor and Migrant Rights; and to advance genuine people's
rights and welfare in the region in the pursuit of regional cooperation.

We demand government to promote and safeguard the people's welfare, and to
assume the responsibility for the efficient, effective and equitable
delivery of basic social services.  We demand government to protect and
uphold the national patrimony and sovereignty, to desist from being an
instrument of the US in its narrow interests in the region, and to protect
and defend the people from the ravages of market forces.  We demand
government to promote genuine and effective people's participation in the
formulation of national development plans and policies that are
gender-specific, sustainable, just and equitable.  We strongly condemn and
hold the Ramos government accountable to the massive APEC-driven,
anti-people campaign that has displaced peoples, communities and livelihood.

We call upon people's movements, in the Philippines, Asia-Pacific, and
across the world, to join in unmasking the hidden costs of the neoliberal
agenda being peddled by APEC and other instruments of the global market.  We
also urge peoples and communities to deepen their understanding of the
globalization process and its consequences, and to continue forging,
advocating and practicing alternative development paradigms that promote and
ensure equitable and sustainable development.

We commit ourselves to pursuing mutually beneficial interdependence of and
solidarity among peoples--be it with or without APEC, in engagements with
government, through Congress or the courts, or in caravans and mobilizations
on the streets, and in movements within and across borders, in all forms of
just struggles.  We believe that the daunting challenges of globalization
and the inexorable pace of development aggression demand no less.

                                        MANILA PEOPLE'S FORUM ON APEC '96
                                        Institute of Social Order
                                        Ateneo de Manila University
                                        Loyola Heights, Quezon City
                                        PHILIPPINES
                                        6 July 1996