[asia-apec 600] APEC & "engagement" with "Civil Society"

[Gatt Watchdog]

This paper of Jane Kelsey's is almost 2 years old - but a very
helpful resource on the question of "engagement" or "non
engagement" with APEC
Aziz Choudry
GATT Watchdog


APEC: TO ENGAGE OR NOT TO ENGAGE?

To talk seriously about engaging with APEC we have to assume

First, that APEC has a locus with which NGOs and people's organisations could 
effectively engage, if they wanted to.

Second, that any NGO/PO that wanted to engage would be able to do so; that
these would only be the good guys; that we are agreed about who the good guys
are; that those who engage share a set of reasonably explicit goals with the
wider NGO/PO community; that they have a sense of responsibility to that
community; and that they would make themselves accountable the way in which
they pursue those common goals.

Third, that engagement would produce concrete, beneficial changes in what APEC
does and how it does it, and that there is agreement about the kind of changes
are positive.

Fourth, that APEC is genuinely interested in dialogue; that it would be
willing to accommodate the kind of changes that NGOs/POs would demand; and
that APEC members would abide by those changes to their rules.

Fifth, that the costs of engagement would be outweighed by the benefits
gained; and Ultimately, that the 'we' who are assembled here have the right
to make these decisions.

I have serious doubts about all of these.

Engaging APEC: The how and where?

At the purely practical level, I am puzzled about how and where NGOs/POs would 
intercede. APEC is not an institution. It operates through a continual
programme of meetings that take place on diverse levels, in disparate subject
areas and in all the member 'economies' of APEC. Would NGOs/POs seek to
participate in all or any of the working groups?
ad hoc expert groups?
standing committees?
senior officials meetings [SOMs]?
ministerial meetings?
leaders meetings?

The higher up the decision making chain, the less likely such access would be.
Even if access was granted, any NGO/PO voice would be a minority amongst the
cheer brigade of state and market actors who espouse global free trade, albeit
with variations on the theme.

Alternatively, it might be suggested that NGOs/POs could seek a parallel
advisory role to that which capital plays through the Business Advisory
Council; that this entity should have equal observer status at official
meetings; and it should be authorised to report on the labour, social,
environment or human rights issues arising from, and for, APEC. But
realistically that is never going to happen. APEC was born of the market,
having been nurtured enthusiastically and protectively by the forces of market
liberalisation, especially the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council [PECC].
They have achieved the deep integration of the interests and voices of
capital into every element of its operation and reinforced the dependency of
states on markets. No NGO or people's forum will ever be elevated to an
equivalent position within APEC.

Without such parity, what substantive changes can be achieved?

A further option is to seek dialogue and participation in decisions about APEC
at the level of national governments. Many NGOs/POs have tried. Some, mainly
Anglo-American NGOs, have had success and important information has been
gained and shared. But for many others-especially, but not only, in Asian
countries-the government's doors remain firmly shut. We then need to ask: what
responsibility and accountability exists on the part of those who can and do
engage to those who cannot?

What interests do those who engage represent and what determines the positions
that they take? Who then becomes the voice of civil society within APEC and
what happens to those who are excluded from this process?

Who engages APEC on whose behalf?

There were suggestions earlier this year that APEC was prepared to enter
dialogue with NGOs, a move apparently fostered by officials with the
Philippine government.  The official in charge of the Manila SOM suggested in
May 1996 that 'the networks of civil society deserve attention in a
participatory framework of markets corrected for failures due to
externalities and non-provision of public goods. Viewed this way, truly
representative non-government organizations must therefore be given chances to
present their own agenda for eventual incorporation by the intergovernmental
network of APEC in the implementation of action plans.'

What is a 'truly representative non-government organisation'-indeed does such
an entity exist? Presumably they mean the well-resourced, well-connected and
internationally-known lobby groups with funding from the big foundations, not
the less refined people-based movements working on the ground or indigenous
nations reasserting sovereignty over their resources and their lives? Given
that PECC defines itself as an NGO, this might even include
employers' organisations and right-wing think-tanks. It is also implied that
APEC would decide the criteria for accreditation and who meets its terms.
Once accredited, compromises will doubtless be required to stay in the game.
So again we need to ask: what accountability would there be, and to whom - the
organisation's members, their national or sectoral constituency or some
collective regional entity? Is there such a regional entity; if not, where
would the mandate come from to speak on civil society's behalf?

Engaging about what?

At the systemic level, we need to ask not just how and who, but engaging about
what? APEC is not a stand alone entity. It is one component of a deeply
integrated system of agencies, institutions, groupings and enterprises that
are committed to the common goal of global free markets and free trade,
although they have different interpretations of what this means and different
modes of achieving it. APEC's core concept of open regionalism assumes a
synthesis between itself and other agencies in the global liberalisation
process. It maintains informal links and overlapping membership with other
international, regional and subregional institutions and groupings (such as
the IMF, Asian Development Bank, NAFTA) which are committed to the same
agenda, and whose meetings, and outcomes, often coincide. In particular, APEC
is seen as the vanguard to push trade and investment liberalisation in the WTO
further and faster than it would otherwise go. It is clear, therefore, that
meaningful change cannot be secured by engaging with APEC alone.  Any focus
specifically on APEC must therefore keep the global agenda in mind. APEC
promotes a package deal of economic policies which include 
•	minimal controls on big business; 
•	unrestricted foreign investment; 
•	unlimited export of profits; 
•	privatisation of state assets, utilities and services; 
•	full exposure of domestic producers to cheap imports; 
removing support for domestic industry while increasing incentives to foreign 
investors;
•       privately-funded and owned infrastructure (roads, rail, electricity,
telephones, water, etc) operating through deregulated markets;
•       market-driven service sectors, including social services like health
and education;
•       'competitive' (ie. low-cost and deunionised) and 'flexible' (ie
temporary, part-time and contract-based) labour markets;
destruction of sustainable community-based production in favour of costly and 
ecologically unsound cash crops for export;
dispossession of small land-holders in favour of transnational enterprises
and agribusiness;
rampant exploitation of natural resources;
unrestricted movement for business immigrants, with strict controls on foreign
workers and refugees.

Such policies have serious 'non-economic' flow-on effects which, among many
others, include:
•       increased inequality and poverty, especially for indigenous peoples,
women, children, the elderly;
•       unstable, low-quality, low-paid employment with cuts to real wages and
to the social wage;
•       tax benefits and high incomes for companies and for the rich,
alongside income and welfare cuts for the poor;
dispossession and forced relocation of indigenous peoples and local
communities, often adding to the urban unemployed;
commodification and commercialisation of traditional, especially indigenous
peoples', resources and knowledge;
•       problems of access to, and affordabilility and quality of, essential
services;
•	run-down state infrastructure;
•       control by private, often foreign owned, conglomerates over the
country's financial, transport, communications and media infrastructure;
•       theft, sale (or gift) to private, often foreign, owners of resources
that legitimately belong to indigenous peoples; pressure to minimise
environmental protections in the name of promoting investment, tourism,
mining; subordination of the eco-system to the demands of economic growth.

The architects of APEC, in alliance with the WTO, international financial
institutions, transnational enterprises and their ilk, aim to lock in this
global agenda so it becomes impossible for future governments to change tack.
That means
•	if the economic theory doesn't work; 
•	if the social, environmental and cultural costs are too great; 
•       if the power it delivers to big business, foreign institutions and
private actors is unacceptable; or if citizens simply want to try a different
way, there will be nothing they can do, short of potential economic suicide.

Engaging only selected issues within APEC would leave the basic package
intact. But APEC has successfully insulated itself from any comprehensive
internal attack. Because it claims to be a community of economies-not
governments or countries- APEC excludes from consideration any 'non-economic',
social or political issues like human rights, poverty, employment or
environment, unless they are redefined in 'trade-related' terms. That is also
used to rationalise its anti-democratic membership and processes to ensure
that a mutually reinforcing elite of capitalists, government officials,
academics and fellow travellers remains firmly in control.

The Closure of APEC

It is abundantly clear that APEC is not interested in participatory,
democratic dialogue.  It has always operated through closed meetings of
carefully selected, like-minded officials, politicians, private sector
representatives and academics. Almost all deliberations remain secret until
after the decisions are made. New Zealand journalist Bruce Ansley observed
the process at work during the APEC trade ministers meeting at Christchurch
in July this year:

Little of it was reported. It met in secret, except for a few handouts, and
the odd press conference where the idea was to say as little as possible and
to stall questions with urbanities. No one outside the charmed circle knew
what was going on, and those inside intended to keep it that way; for all we
knew, they could have been plotting a new holocaust (although that was
unlikely; at its conclusion, the best that Trade Negotiations Minister Philip
Burdon could say of their efforts was that the meeting could have been a
disaster, but was not, so it must have been a success). What they were
plotting, of course, was a brave new world where nations and their corporate
alter egos could browse across one another's boundaries without impediment.
A few elements of the new order presented themselves for inspection; there
won't be nations-in Apec language (as singular as Esperanto) nations become
"economies" without, apparently, irritating social philosophies. These
economies aren't inhabited by people but by "human resources". They don't
have elected representatives; doubtless to his gratification, Jim Bolger
becomes an "economic leader". It is cold and grey and mechanical, and scary
as hell. (Listener, 3 August 1996)

Because the signing of international treaties, including those dealing with
trade, is considered an act of state by many governments, these agreements do
not require ratification by the legislature and can therefore be signed
without any debate, let alone a formal vote. The US government requires both
a mandate and formal ratification of any binding agreements they sign, but
because APEC is described as 'non-binding' the US is able to circumvent that
requirement also. This secrecy gives officials and ministers, who hold office
only in the short-term, enormous power that extends well beyond negotiations
about trade and enables them to lock future governments into pursuing the
global free market goal. For those who are subject to the rule of illegal
governments, either as indigenous nations denied their sovereignty or people
under military or foreign powers-and who are often the first to be sacrificed
on the altar of free trade and investment-the injustice is even more profound.

Even if engagement did secure some commitment to address some of these
concerns, the track record of powerful governments in international trade
agreements shows they are highly pragmatic and selective about what rules they
are prepared to obey. The US, in particular, insists on its sovereign right to
use unilateral sanctions against anyone it considers is behaving unfairly
towards it-at the same time as demanding that all other countries subordinate
their sovereign right to make their own decisions to the rules of
international trade.

Can APEC be humanised?

Some would challenge this as unduly pessimistic, claiming that international
pressure and the work of NGOs has forced APEC to pay heed to these concerns,
and that the interests of NGOs, trade unions and people's organisations
increasingly coincide. It is true that demands for improved labour and social
conditions, and for greater democratisation, now frequently accompany calls
for free trade, and are beginning to emerge at APEC. But underlying such
demands rests a fundamental paradox.  Protection of labour and human rights
assumes that a state has the recognised right, and the practical ability, to
regulate relevant activities that occur within its realm. Yet the deregulatory
requirements of free trade and investment make such protection ideologically
unacceptable, economically costly and extremely difficult to achieve.

Human Rights

Preoccupation with the interests of capital means that human rights abuses
frequently accompany free trade and investment regimes. Foreign and domestic
investors seek minimal barriers to the exploitation of people and resources.
International competitiveness almost inevitably dictates the deregulation of
labour markets, less onerous health and safety requirements, erosion (or
elimination) of minimum wages and conditions, lack of job security, reduction
of the social wage. Governments seeking to promote these conditions often
resort to repression to silence the victims, political opponents and public
critics.

In that sense, disrespect for human beings and human rights is intrinsic to
APEC's goals. Economic equalisation between countries is left to market-driven
economic growth. People are treated as resources to be utilised in the quest
for growth and economic gain. According to PECC in 1994: 'The very diversity
of the physical and human resource endowments of APEC participants . . .
creates enormous opportunities for further increases in mutually beneficial
trade and investment within the region.' Two Australian trade officials who
were deeply involved in the process encapsulated the prevailing view in 1992:

What is new in East Asia and the Western Pacific is that close observation in
neighboring country after neighboring country that trade liberalization
enhances economic performance has changed political perceptions of the payoff
matrix. Any perceived disadvantages in changes in income distribution
associated with trade liberalization are judged by the political process to
be less important than national gains. Those judgments are helped by the
obviously favorable effects on the incomes of the relatively poor in
labor-intensive manufactured export expansion in labor-abundant economies.
(P. Drysdale and R. Garnaut, 'NAFTA and the Asia-Pacific region: Strategic
Responses', pp. 103, 110)

Human needs are subordinated to the goal of national and regional economic
growth, based on the dubious assumption that the benefits will eventually
trickle down. They avoid addressing this by redefining the region as a
'family' of 'economies'. States, governments, indigenous peoples, paid and
unpaid workers, women, children, communities, and ecosystems are all
irrelevant, except as vehicles to promote the interests of capital or
resources to fuel production and profits.

At the operational level, APEC meetings themselves have become synonymous
with human rights abuses, as host governments try to eliminate any potential
embarrassment to themselves or their guests. In Jakarta in 1994 the government
cleaned the streets of itinerants and the poor, cracked down on dissident
journalists, and banned meetings and a press conference organised by a small
number of regional NGOs who had gathered to express their concerns about APEC.
At Osaka, Japan in 1995 the homeless who lived in the square outside the
conference venue were forcibly relocated to the other side of town; local
journalists reported that the ensuing inter-group conflict led to at least
one death.

In Manila this year the Philippines government has demolished the shanties to
remove eye-sores to foreign dignitaries, people are denied entry and
threatened with deportation, security crackdowns are occurring throughout the
country, journalists are being harassed and almost any potential pocket of
dissent it seems is being suppressed.

All this is designed to promote the image of a prosperous Philippines and
avoid embarrassment to APEC leaders, especially the Indonesian government
which is already a major investor in the Philippines. Defending the decision
to refuse entry to Jose Ramos Horta and others, President Fidel Ramos said:
'It is not so much the threat to national security that we are banning
foreigners from this announced fora relating to Apec. It is that it is
inimical to our national interest.' Such overt suppression exposes the narrow,
self-serving definition of 'freedom' to which free market advocates adhere.
As Conrado de Quiros observed in the Philippine Daily Inquirer on 25 October
1996: 

If you can allow goods to flow freely into countries, why can't you do the
same thing for ideas? . . . [Free traders] are not about justice, they are
not about dissent, they are not about people being free to say what kinds of
development they want. Freedom has no place in economic progress. Human rights
have not place in economic progress. At the end of the day, principle must
give way to expedience. Growth must take precedence over the moral imperative
to right wrongs. . . .

If governments will go this far to look good at a meeting, what will they do
to create an attractive free trade and investment regime and lure foreign
investors to their shores? Who and what will they sacrifice along the way?
Where is the room for participatory democracy and genuine dialogue in this?

Workers' rights

Recently there have been calls for a labour or social clause in both APEC and
the WTO, supposedly to address some of these concerns. It is no accident that
these calls emanate from governments and businesses in Anglo-American
countries. Their domestic political conditions and constitutional obligations
make it difficult to compete with countries which have less restrictive
political, human rights, labour and environmental codes. Their motives are
basically protectionist-they want to enforce a uniform model of free trade
and investment on all countries, but require a regulatory environment that
protects them in areas where they can't compete. At the same time, these
governments apply double standards-demanding stronger commitments to labour
and human rights, and democratic government, from their trading partners
while they increasingly move to erode such standards at home.

Their trade unions often support these calls, as much (more?) from concern
to protect the jobs of their members from cheap labour offshore as from
commitment to humanitarian goals. Take for example, the 'Trade Union Vision
for APEC' recently prepared by the Asia-Pacific Labour Network [APLN] of the
Belgian-based International Confederation of Free Trade Unions [ICFTU], as
reported in The Nation on 4 November this year. According to the APLN 'Apec
provides the potential for substantially higher economic growth, employment
creation, higher living standards and poverty alleviation for workers'. To
'make the transition to free trade more painless and to ensure that
businesses do not profit from exploitative practices' APEC is urged to adopt
rules such as collective bargaining accords and action against child labour.
The goal of this is a 'policy climate in which workers, through legal rights
to form and join their own freely chosen organisations, are able to work with
employers and the government to establish a sound system of industrial
relations.' As a New Zealander this sounds remarkably like the definition of
tripartism given by our Council of Trade Unions in 1993: to introduce a social
dimension into the structural adjustment programme. Perhaps the parallel is
not so surprising-the president of the NZCTU is also the president of the
Asia Pacific Regional Office of the ICFTU.

 In a similar vein, NGOs which have significant leverage in these countries, 
understandably, prefer to secure commitments to higher standards offshore,
rather than see their own standards forced to fall.

Greening APEC

Similar issues arise with calls for a green clause in APEC and the WTO. There
appears to be some progress towards that goal. Since the completion of the
Uruguay Round the environment has been promoted as the next major
trade-related issue to address.  The WTO has created a Committee on Trade and
Environment to examine the tension between the multilateral trading system
[MTS] and multilateral environmental agreements [MEAs]. APEC has established
a committee to develop a Japanese-initiated project to reconcile economic
growth, energy requirements and environmental sustainability. Earlier this
year APEC held a ministerial on environmental sustainability and trade. PECC
has produced its own report on the issue. But let us be clear about the
agenda here. APEC's interest in the environment and sustainable development
is driven by the strategic needs of capitalist expansion, not concern for the
environment or the people who depend on it to survive.

The futility of such attempts to redirect the priorities of such agencies is
vividly illustrated in the September 1996 legal brief prepared by the World
Wildlife Fund [WWF], a group which I understand favours constructive
engagement with the WTO. The brief (entitled 'Trade Measures and Multilateral
Environmental Agreements: backwards or forwards in the WTO?') exposes recent
moves within the WTO to subordinate environmental interests to those of trade.
Officials from various countries have argued that conflicts between MEAs and
the MTS should be resolved within the WTO framework, thereby giving
precedence to issues of trade. New Zealand officials, for example, have
proposed an 'accommodation' which would allow trade restrictive measures to be
taken under MEAs, but on conditions of proportionality, effectiveness and
least-trade restriction. All of these elevate trade interests over those of
environment, and empower the trade 'experts' in the WTO to adjudicate on
appropriate national environmental policies and outcomes. The WWF expresses
grave concern about the potential chilling effect which these proposed
guidelines or limited exceptions could have on commitments to negotiating,
extending and implementing MEAs.

Without doubt, similar positions are being promoted by same body of trade
officials within APEC. Whatever discussion takes place on the environment in
APEC, and any trade-related environment measures agreed to, will be premised
on, and located within, the free trade and investment paradigm. As I
understand it, that is not what greening APEC seeks to do. If it is, then
those who promote it can claim no mandate to speak as a regional voice on
environmental concerns.

Alternatives to Engagement

Opposition to the promotion of a social and green clause in APEC and the WTO
does not mean that issues of labour, environment, human rights and democracy
are of no concern. To the contrary, they are critical issues which should be
accorded primacy in the appropriate international, regional and national
forums, not subordinated within the global free market framework of APEC and
the WTO.

Since the US began to assert itself in APEC in 1993, a counter-network of
NGOs, unions, human rights and environmental groups has rapidly emerged. In
April 1994 the PP21 working group on APEC met in Bangkok and issued a
statement which urged discussion and debate over the role of APEC. They
proposed a people-centred approach to economic and social self-determination
through a regional social charter 'that will ensure that urban and rural
workers, subsistence consumers, small scale and informal sector producers are
effectively protected against the onslaught of economic globalization'.

Alongside the Jakarta APEC meeting in November 1994, representatives of 10
local and regional NGOs struggled to meet and discuss concerns about APEC in
the face of Indonesian government hostility. One year later, representatives
from over 100 NGOs and unions concerned with the environment, human rights,
labour issues, and economic and social justice gathered for a meeting before
the Osaka summit. Most of these were linked to other NGO or labour groups
working on related issues, forming an active, overlapping counter-network of
their own. Their official statement endorsed cooperation among the countries
and peoples of the region, but rejected the free market and trade
liberalisation model embraced by APEC as negating the development and
democratic aspirations of the region's people.

While most APEC governments were hostile to, or dismissive of, the NGOs, many
of the issues were taken up by the media at official APEC briefings. And, as
we have seen, moves to incorporate environment and labour issues within the
APEC agenda (on APEC's terms) and suggestions by the Philippine government
of dialogue with NGOs suggest a desire to pre-empt serious questions about
APEC's legitimacy. So this development has had some effect.

But, as within APEC itself, there are differences among its critics on the
appropriate response. Many, though not all, Anglo-American NGOs and unions
tend to support dialogue and participation within APEC to secure commitment
to a green and/or social clause. That generally implies a more rule-based and
binding approach of the kind their governments increasingly support. Most,
but again not all, Asian NGOs at the Osaka meeting opposed such participation,
believing that would help legitimise APEC as a powerful and permanent feature
of the regional landscape, when it is really quite fragile, rent with internal
conflict, potentially paralysed by disagreement over the direction and form
it should take, and far less potent than many assume. Other downsides of
engagement included redefinition and co-option of basic rights to fit the
APEC paradigm, divisions amongst forces critical of APEC, diversion of energy, 
diversion of analysis, loss of credibility, and the marginalisation and
disempowerment of people's movements.

Those opposed to engagement preferred to develop independent, people-based 
strategies that would challenge APEC's lack of political and popular
legitimacy, transparency and accountability from outside. Despite a greater
cultural sympathy for the Asian governments' approach, their target was not
simply one faction in APEC, but the interests of Asian and Western capital
whose aspirations it represents.

The message behind this position is crucial. APEC is not the enemy in itself.
It is a relatively transitory vehicle through which the global interests of
capital, and those of its agents and allies, are presently pursued. Even if
it falls apart or its internal conflicts reduce it to a shell, the networks
which feed it will continue operating and perhaps take on another form.
Mobilisation and strategies to address the core issues of economic, social and
popular justice need to remain the focus, and not be subsumed to the agenda of
those whom we seek to bring under control. Engaging with APEC is a red herring
which can divert our limited time, energy and resources from achieving that
goal.

There are diverse ways that this can be pursued, within the limited resources
available and differing room to move. Suggestions already on the table
include:
fostering an intersecting network of NGOs/POs to parallel the APEC mode of 
operating continued (but more disciplined) exchange of information, including
that secured from governments and leaks
demystification of APEC and heightened media and public awareness of the APEC 
critique;
national actions centred on APEC activities to pressure APEC and raise
awareness at home;
coordinated campaigns which, while not APEC centred, have an APEC-related
theme; prepare and publish high profile and authoritative critiques, including
a counter-EPG report to be published and presented at the 1997 Canada meeting.

The challenge for the meeting in Manila this year is to produce an action
agenda and action plan that builds on our strengths, pools our resources,
retains control of our strategies and remains true to the basic,
inter-related principles of participatory democracy, economic and social
justice, self-determination, ecological responsibility and fair trade.

Dr Jane Kelsey, Professor of Law, Auckland University,
Aotearoa/New Zealand, November 1996