More than 300 participants from the region are expected to attend this year’s Asia-Pacific Peoples’ Assembly (APPA) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on 10-15 November to discuss problems of globalisation and their impacts on human rights.

Since the first Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders’ Meeting in 1993, representatives of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), people’s organisations and social movements have met in parallel gatherings to highlight concerns about the "free trade, free market" model of trade and investment liberalisation that APEC promotes.

What is APEC?

APEC is a regional consultative forum that includes Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and the United States, with Peru, Russia and Vietnam as new members this year. APEC aims for regional free trade by the year 2010 for developed countries and 2020 for developing countries.

"Through APEC, we aim to get governments out of the way, opening the way for business to do business," said U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs Joan Spero. However, APEC is a non-accountable body in which Heads of State meet behind closed doors as "economic leaders": representatives of economies not countries. Participation is limited to government, business and academia, and as a result, APEC fails to address the impact of globalisation on workers, the environment, human rights, women, indigenous peoples, farmers and the poor. APPA refuses to let APEC ignore these issues.

Why Peoples’ Assembly?

All over the world, governments are racing to negotiating tables, eager to sign their sovereignty away for pieces of the economic miracle that globalisation promises. The supposed miracle is tempting: rapid economic growth, rapid development - a gateway to the good life. However, it is also threatening: those who do not join will surely perish in poverty, isolation and backwardness. The simplicity of its message masks the enormity of its effect: globalisation may be the most fundamental redesign of the world’s economic, political and cultural systems ever to take place.

Globalisation, through modern communications, free trade blocs, multilateral agreements such as the World Trade Organisation and global financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, has produced an unprecedented integration of the world economy. Money, as those in Mexico and Southeast Asia certainly understand, can now travel the world in seconds. Proponents of globalisation argue that this integration strengthens competition and ensures the optimum distribution of resources. They claim it will bring rapid economic growth and prosperity for all.

Behind the promises of prosperity, however, there exists a grim reality: the disintegration of social order, increasing inequality and squalor, displacement and landlessness, violence and homelessness, alienation and growing fear of the future. Globalisation has also brought massive damage to the natural world as evidenced by global climate change, ozone depletion, widespread species loss, water crises and numerous forms of pollution.

Globalisation has not even managed to create the so-called level-playing field that it promises; multilateral agreements continue to reflect power imbalances between the North and the South. Few countries of the South possess the technological know-how and capital to compete within the global economy, and multilateral agreements on investments and intellectual property only exacerbate the inequalities among nations. Consequently, competition to attract capital invariably depends on the "environment" for investment; in other words, the cost of labour, the degree of environmental and safety regulations and the level of taxation. This is not development but a race to the bottom.

Proponents of globalisation look beyond the current reality; they speak about how all boats will eventually rise with the tide of economic growth. In the meantime, they acknowledge that some people will have to suffer and shoulder the risks. These people are clearly not from transnational corporations which now control more than 60 percent of all global trade. And, they are certainly not the wealthy who can afford the imported food and the newly privatised services such as health care. They are farmers forced off their lands to make way for large-scale monoculture crops for export. They are workers who have lost jobs to machines and corporate flight. They are women forced to sell their bodies in the tourism industry. They are indigenous peoples forced off their lands for short-term mining profits. And as they wait for globalisation’s unseen rewards, these people are rapidly losing any democratic space that they may have had to voice their opposition to these policies and to seek their rightful dues.

Globalisation has to be scrutinised and exposed. It is a process that concentrates capital and political control in the hands of a few, while offering nothing to those most in need. A vision of a radically reshaped international economic and financial order where economic power, wealth and income are more equitably distributed and the environment is respected should be developed. This is the challenge for APPA.

Reasserting Peoples’ Rights

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Yet, violations of these rights have increased dramatically. The current regional crisis has upset economies, communities and environments and has undermined the economic, social and cultural rights that peoples have struggled hard for. As past meetings of APPA have warned, the crisis is the logical outcome of a model of development that clearly fails to grasp what "human rights" mean.

Labour Rights

Globalisation was supposed to bring more jobs, at least that was what was promised. Instead, workers everywhere are losing work and settling for less as employers, armed with labour-saving technologies and open markets, surf the world picking the best bid from countries desperate for investment. In the name of profit maximisation and efficiency, workers are told to compete globally, creating a vicious downward spiral as wages and benefits fall to the lowest common denominator. Any opposition to these deteriorating conditions is met by smug reminders that jobs can always go elsewhere. And indeed they do.

While resistance to free trade is met with stiff punishments, the demand for common labour standards is given nothing but lip-service. Workers are constantly denied the right of association and the right to bargain collectively. Workers taking industrial action are met with State repression as governments bend to the will of investors. Globalisation binds the hands of labour as it frees the hands of capital.

Women’s Rights

Women suffer most from globalisation. In Asia, where the economic crisis has brought massive unemployment, 60 percent of those retrenched have been women. Increasing poverty and a growing lack of resources have forced women to migrate across borders only to work in harsh and exploitative conditions without rights to organise.

The New World Order has escalated the trade of women for sex and bonded or forced labour. The privatisation of basic services, especially health care, is a further threat to women’s health and reproductive rights.

Right to Food Security

What do the promoters of globalisation envisage for agriculture? They see a world where nations produce what they can produce most efficiently and trade those products for the goods that they need from other nations. In this scenario, some nations may not even need any agriculture, because they can trade industrial goods for food. Small farmers may be forced off their lands, but this is part of industrialisation. And if transnational corporations can bring food to the table more cheaply, then so be it.

But what happens when currency crashes and one is unable to pay for the food or agricultural inputs that his/her country has to import? What happens to the millions whose only access to food comes from their access to land? What happens when most of the world’s food system is controlled by a handful of transnational corporations? What guarantees would there be that the food a person eats and produces is safe and sustainable? And, what kind of free market is there anyway when the average annual subsidy to an American farmer is nearly eight times the annual income of an average Malaysian farmer? Indeed, what happens to food security in the global economy?

All these issues are important and will be discussed at the upcoming APPA in Malaysia. Interested organisations and individuals are encouraged to join in the assembly and exchange their ideas on the issues. Prior registration is strictly required to attend the meeting. The registration fee is US0, which will cover food, accommodation, local transportation to and fro the airport, conference kit and socials. No subsidy will be given to participants. For registration and further information, contact APPA secretariat at:

57 Lorong Kurau,
59100 Luck Gardens,
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Tel: 603-283-6245
Fax: 603-283-3536
E-mail: appasec@tm.net.my
Website: www.geocities.com/ CapitolHill/Senate/8340

(Source: Explanatory leaflet of the Asia-Pacific Peoples’ Assembly.)