Intergovernmental Organisations Swap Notes On Working For Inclusive Trade

If world trade is to be more inclusive it needs to assess a populist backlash against trade that is occurring in different parts of the world, says Jean-Baptiste Velut, an associate professor at Sorbonne Nouvelle University of Paris.

Velut was introducing a panel yesterday during the 5th World Trade Organization Public Forum, an annual event that brings together stakeholders and members of the public to discuss trade issues, with the focus this year on inclusive trade.

The panel speakers were from the World Health Organization, the International Labor Organization and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nongovernmental organisation. They were aiming to be participants in the design of inclusive trade policy processes by having a comparative analysis of intergovernmental organisation practices.

An intergovernmental organisation or international governmental organisation is one composed primarily of sovereign states. The term can also include international nongovernmental organisations such as international nonprofit organisations, or multinational corporations.

‘Why Inclusive Trade?’

“We can ask, why are we talking about inclusive trade?” said Velut. “There is a constant gap between trade critics and trade advocates.”

He also noted that there are two sets of problems associated with inclusive trade reforms. The first is related to the process and policy of trade reforms and this links to the question of inequality, especially in relation to North America and Europe.

He said there is a compartmentalization of US trade policy that has led to a “silo effect that creates deficits in expertise.”

Regarding the backlash against trade, he said this was shown in the 26 September televised debate between the US presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. The decision of the United Kingdom to leave the European Union in its 23 June Brexit vote was another sign of this.

Part of the problem stems from the process of reforms to make trade more inclusive.

“There is very little assessment of stakeholders’ practices and very little feedback. There is no real feedback loop,” Velut said, urging greater communication between countries and other stakeholders.

There is a need to bring together people from different backgrounds and not just from the trade sphere, he said.

Gaudenz Ulrich Silberschmidt, a medical doctor who is the director for partnerships and non-state actors at the World Health Organization, and its IGO representative, said, “We have a very broad mandate on health. We were founded in 1948 as the health agency of the UN system.”

WHO has the challenge of being three agencies, in that it is a heavily “normative” agency, a development agency, and an emergency response agency. He said Ebola showed it has to have a reach even into village level.

Silberschmidt explained that the WHO recently went through a long and complex negotiation process on its engagement with non-state actors.

“[W]e had to create something new and therefore started to talk of non-state actors,” said Silberschmidt.

“After lengthy negotiations, our member states agreed non-state actors refers to NGOs (nongovernmental organisations), private sector entities, philanthropic foundations and academic institutions.”

Making the link to trade, he said epidemics have always been global.

Also he noted, “If we from the WHO say stop traveling, it is probably the single biggest trade impact we can have. We were under pressure concerning the Olympic Games” and the WHO had to take an evidence-based stand to allow access for the Games in view of the Zika virus.

When the Volkswagen emissions scandal emerged it had broken an air pollution standard based on a WHO standard.

“In our current reform there were 200 hours of negotiation, the four years’ heaviest negotiations in WHO history to bringing into being the Framework of Engagement with Non-State Actors.”

Rafael Peels, research officer at the International Labor Organization and its IGO representative, noted that one of the current risks for trade unions under global supply chains is the high incidence of non-standard forms of employment.

He said the ILO as a tripartite organisation of labour, government and employers is studying the strong proliferation of bilateral trade negotiations such as the TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership). It is also seeing an increasing concern by the greater public to be involved in decisions.

Jeremy Malcolm, senior global policy analyst for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the San Francisco-based NGO, as an expert in internet governance said the EFF is an online digital liberties’ organisation that works on the intersection between trade and internet governance.

Internet governance is not just rules and laws, but is involved with coordination, market mechanisms and standards development, high-level policy coordination and national legislation which fit into a jigsaw puzzle that creates the internet governance regime, he said.

Analysts have has shown, said Malcolm, that at the moment some of the key organisations such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), and the World Intellectual Property Organization deal with trade and internet governance.

“At the moment, the WTO is shown as not really intersecting with internet governance. That is the kind of the problem we are faced with. The internet governance community and the WTO have been rather divorced from each other.”

Malcolm said trade negotiations have not really adapted to internet governance norms which embrace many more stakeholders and that trade communications can learn from internet practises.

“This has created a real clash where there is a backlash against the trade community because this is seen as a divergence from these best practise norms,” he said.

“I would like you to consider whether better aligning the norms of the trade community with those of the internet governance community wouldn’t actually create better acceptance of trade rules and perhaps also lead to more inclusive and better informed outcome,” he added.

“The point of this talk,” said Malcolm, “is how we can we maybe bring these together and exchange some lessons” in the quest for more inclusion in trade.

 

Image Credits: Peter Kenny