PGA Call for Qatar
Cochabamba declaration from Peoples Global Action...
The PGA call to action against the WTO summit in Qatar
Peoples Global Action calls on all grassroots social movements, community based organisations, trade unions, student
organisations, indigenous peoples, farmers organisations, autonomous collectives and everyone who wishes to participate
around the world to carry out actions against the World Trade Organisation (WTO) during the next ministerial summit in
Doha, Qatar, November 9th-13th, 2001.
The WTOs aim is very simple: to remove anything that gets in the way of big business and free trade, upholding the
freedom for multinational companies to act as they please. Made up of 135 member countries, the WTO polices
international trade rules and continues to set an agenda that places profit above people and the planet.
Faced with a rapidly expanding grassroots resistance to capitalist globalisation, the WTO has fled to an isolated desert
dictatorship for its next meeting. Already built into the agenda are three immensely destructive trade agreements: the
Agreement on Agriculture (AOA), the General Agreement on Trade and Services (GATS) and the Trade Related Intellectual
Property Rights (TRIPS). Between them, they cover issues like: the privatisation of health, education and water, forcing
GMO foods and seeds on member countries and patents on life forms.
THEY CAN RUN BUT THEY CAN`T HIDE: WE ARE EVERYWHERE!
RESIST THE WTO THROUGHOUT THE WORLD THROUGH DIRECT ACTION AND CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE WHEREVER COMMUNITIES ARE DESTROYED AND
ECOSYSTEMS SACRIFICED FOR THE SAKE OF FREE TRADE!
Regardless of whether the WTO meeting is maintained or not, we will be in the streets, because the streets are ours.
Grassroots organisations all over the world are organising the following kinds of actions and call on others to do the
same:
1) Awareness-raising campaigns against WTO and the effect of their policies on a global and local level: community based
consultations, counter-meetings, public debates, publications.
2) Maximum disruption of the work of the trade ministers attending the conference: demands for the publication of
national positions, blocking of communications or of departures of delegations, etc.
3) Mass coordinated actions on a national and international level: work stoppages, road blocks, occupation of stock
exchanges and other financial institutions (New York, San Francisco, Sao Paolo...), liberation of grain stocks (India)
on Nov. 9th.
4) Decentralised local action: land occupations, creative demonstrations of grassroots alternatives... Nov. 9th-13th.
Peoples Global Action – http://www.agp.org