Judy Pasimio, APWLD Programme Officer

''Women Resist WTO!” “Women say No to WTO!” These slogans were shouted and sang by a thousand women in purple marching in the streets of Hong Kong leading to the Convention Centre Kong where the 6th WTO (World Trade Organisation) Ministerial Meeting was held.  The Purple March, joined by women from various countries, mostly from the Asia Pacific region, brought the message of women’s resistance against WTO to the Hong Kong public and the WTO ministerial conference.

“WTO Guilty” is the Women’s Tribuna’sl Verdict

As part of the anti-WTO protest events, the Women’s Tribunal was organised by APWLD jointly with AMIHAN (National Peasant Women’s Organisation) and GABRIELA. In a “court” filled with purple-wearing women, the Women’s Tribunal presidium of judges announced that WTO is found guilty for crimes committed against women’s livelihood and lives. Of the 1.3 billion people that get by on less than US$1 per day, seventy per cent are women.  Nearly 800 million people are hungry, majority of these are women and girl-children. Irene Fernandez from Malaysia who has recently received the Rights Livelihood Award (Alternative Nobel Prize 2005), read the verdict, as the head of the presidium of judges. “The WTO has pushed thousands of rural women and their daughters to the flesh trade as they are driven out of the land. Furthermore, the WTO exacerbated the existing discrimination suffered by women producers in the sphere of employment, wages and conditions of work; women have less rates of participation in the labor force, are unpaid, and if they enter paid employment they receive wages lower than men. WTO has worsened this discrimination.”

Irene Fernandez was joined by 5 other anti-WTO women activists from the region: Titi Soentoro, regional coordinator of APWLD; Liza Maza, President of the GABRIELA Women’s Party; Gigi Francisco, Asian representative of International Gender and Trade Network; S.K. Priya, human rights lawyer and educator; and Connie Ledesma, from MAKIBAKA, a revolutionary women’s organisation.

The testimonies came from rural women in six countries: Thailand, Hong Kong, Mongolia, Indonesia, Philippines and India, providing details of the level of destruction the WTO in collusion with the governments has caused on their sources of livelihood and the environment.  “It is clear that the agent responsible for the destruction and desolation in women lives and their communities is the World Trade Organisation,” read Azra Sayeed in her summation of the testimonies.  Azra is director of Roots for Equity, an anti-capitalist organisation in Pakistan. “The testimonies further verify the presence of other pillars of the profit mongering capitalist system such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the ruling elite in the third world countries.

Found guilty also are the co-accused – the national governments who are found guilty for “the neglect of the peasantry’s welfare by the adoption and implementation of the WTO policies clearly inimical to the interest of the peasantry.”  It is further found guilty with the charge of “failure to recognise and break up patriarchal values entrenched in laws and policies that continue to oppress and discriminate against women, and which make them the frontline casualties in the havoc wreaked by the WTO.”

For these crimes, the sentence handed down for the WTO was to “discontinue operating as a world trade body” and for the United States, European Union and other big economies to desist from “bullying” and “arm twisting” small economies into entering bilateral trade agreements with them.

The national governments were likewise handed down a sentence – “All governments that worked in collusion with the WTO, and wreaked havoc on the lives of the producers are judged guilty and should be removed from office, and perpetually banned from public office.” New governments shall be installed in these colluding countries and be ordered to, among others, disregard and renege all commitments with WTO and other multilateral and bilateral agreements entered into; and for them to undertake trade with other countries based on mutual benefit.

Women’s Testimonies

Carmen Buena, Philippines

Carmen Buena is the national chairperson of the AMIHAN, National Federation of Peasant Women in the Philippines. Carmen is 60 years old and has 5 children. She comes from a village called Sepung Ilog in the province of Pampanga, in the island of Luzon in the Philippines.

Carmen is a landless rice and vegetable farmer. The two hectare land she and her family have been working on, is owned by a usurer in her village. She normally remits to the land owner 50% of the net earnings in the farm. She does not have a capital for farming. To raise the money needed for the rice production inputs such as fertiliser, fuel for extracting water underground for irrigation, she gets loans from loan sharks at 8-10% monthly interest. To top it all, the production inputs are getting higher with each planting season because the government is no longer giving subsidy to farmers as dictated by the WTO, of which the Philippine is a member. Recently, the land owner took back the 2 hectare land from her on the ground that the income from the land is getting smaller each year.

Pontamma - Kerala, India

Since the government of India joined the WTO in 1995, Kerala has been one of the areas in India most negatively impacted by the newly introduced trade policies.

Pontamma is a tea plantation worker, and also a trade union leader from Idukki district in Kerala, South India. She has been working in the plantation for 33 years. She has four children. She says that since 1990, situations in the tea industry have changed. Around 500,000 people are employed in the tea plantations in Kerala, of them 80% are women.  Since 1997-98 many of the tea plantations started closing down.  In Pontamma’s area, forty companies are now closed and thousands of workers are displaced. It is mainly because of dumping of tea from outside and it has created problems for the marketing of local tea. Since 1991, their salary is coming down and work is increasing. Management is introducing mechanisation, which again displaces women.

As well as plantation workers, many small farmers are also suffering from trade liberalisation.  Kerela’s economy used to depend largely on the export of agricultural products like spices, tea, coffee and cashew nuts, as well as fisheries.  Domestic markets supported producers of rice, vegetables and fruits.  These small farmers have been badly hit by the unrestricted import of all these products and the resulting fall in price for local produce.  The cost of inputs also increased, leading to greater farmer debt.  Coffee and pepper farmers have stopped harvesting their produce since they are not able to meet even the harvesting costs.  These factors have lead to an explosion in farmer suicides in Kerala.  About 1600 farmers have committed suicide in Kerala since 2001.  Pontamma says that suicides were virtually unknown in the community, and this shows how demoralised farmers are without getting any support and without understanding the policy changes that have lead to their situations.   

Pontamma explains that right now the people living in Kerala are not getting any support, either from the management of the plantations or from the government. They do not get any water, electricity. They have had to stop sending their children to school.  People are dying of starvation and diseases as they cannot afford food or medicines.  Many have migrated to the cities, especially women, causing social disintegration in their local communities.  Up to 40,000 tribal people from Wyanad district alone have had to migrate to cities, where they face exploitation and poor working conditions.   
Privatisation of the public sector and commodification of basic resources like water are the next biggest threats to people in Kerala.  People are fighting, but are confused due to lack of transparency in the process. Once famous for quality education and health care, Kerala is getting ready to open up its doors to the private sector, both national and international.

Yesi Hildayani-bs, Indonesia

In 1981 an British company took land from farming communities in the Bulukumba area of Indonesia. Yesi’s family was one of them. This commercial takeover of the land was supported by the Indonesian government and military. People were forcibly moved out of the villages and violence was used by the military. People were scared of violent tactics used by the military and moved out of the land. They had families to feed and had to make a living by alternate means. The company and military resorted to more violence in 1994, when the communities demanded their land back and their rights. It was during this time that the women were subjected to sexual violence by both the people backed by the company and the military.

People from Bulukumba, on 21 July 2003, in another unified effort tried to reclaim their land and faced the military. Tragically three people, including one woman died in the encounter. The body of the woman has not been recovered after the incident.

Land was given back to the people by the government in 1999. However this joy was short lived and the company took it back in 2002. More terror tactics were employed by the military in 2005, in its effort to squash the people’s demands and rights.

Asia Pacific Women’s Village

Some 150 women representing various women’s organisations in Asia from the ranks of peasants, indigenous, Dalit, herders and fishers gathered in a ceremony to open the Asia Pacific Women’s Village at the Victoria Park in Hong Kong on December 14, 2005. The Asia Pacific Women’s Village was set up as a site where women come together to share their stories on the negative impacts of WTO to their lives and livelihood, express solidarity and draw strength from each other’s struggles and stories, display and share their local products and information materials and talk of common actions while the 6th ministerial meeting of the WTO is taking place. The Asia Pacific Women’s Village was coordinated by APWLD.

“WTO is causing us deeper hunger and poverty”, was the common call of the women. “We demand WTO to get out of agriculture where most of us derive our livelihood, for WTO to get out of our lives”, the women delegates chanted in the opening ceremony of the Asian Women’s Village. The Asia Pacific Women’s Village brought the less-heard voices of Asia Pacific women to the media and groups closely monitoring the development of the 6th ministerial meeting hoping to bring to the public the women’s perspective of the negative impact of the WTO.

Participating Asia Pacific women also held a Talanoa event, a Fiji word for story-telling. This event launched the patches of women's resistance, a collection of women's slogans against the WTO which were sewn together resulting in a huge quilt of patches of resistance. The collective sewing of the patches symbolised the building of a stronger unity among Asian women, specifically rural and indigenous women, to resist the WTO and be recognised of their right to land and food and against all forms of violence including hunger and poverty. The women carried the patches during the Women’s Purple March towards the Hong Kong Convention where the WTO Ministerial Meeting was taking place, chanting “Women resist WTO!”

And this slogan, and the struggle, will be brought back to the communities and our own countries, where we will continue to organise and mobilise among grassroots women.  Then our voices will be louder, and our movements stronger in resisting WTO, and all other forces which hinder our struggle towards women’s liberation, and a just and better and world.