WomenAction (North America and Europe - www.womenaction.org) comments on talks and events of the Peoples' Summit from a feminist point of view.

CONTENT
April 19th:
Women Put Forth Our Demands in the Environment Forum
The role of the state and the role of citizens within it…
A call for democracy !

April 18th:
Opening night of the Peoples Summit of Americas
Mainstream media a giant player…inside the security walls in Quebec

Women Put Forth Our Demands in the Environment Forum

For the last two days, the participants in the Environment Forum presented testimonies on environmental destruction in the Americas due to current free trade agreements, including NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement). They met to discuss responsible consumption, climate change and energy, biodiversity, access to water, and community control in the global economy. Women in each of these workshops stressed that the destruction of the environment through free trade has had particularly harmful effects on women. Women are responsible for providing healthy and clean food and water for their families, they are the majority of sustainable farmers in many areas of the Americas, and indigenous women are the stewards of the Earth's resources. Trade policies that threaten peoples` access to basic services and sustainable development will worsen women`s marginalization. Women stated that the final declaration of the Peoples`Summit must reflect a gender perspective by demanding that nations and international agreements guarantee women`s access to a clean environment. They are calling for environmental and gender assessments of trade agreements and are also calling for the prohibition of Genetically Modified Food and a ban on the patenting of life, including water, plants and indigenous medicines. Women`s groups and environmental groups must work hand in hand to promote just economic policymaking!

Farah Fosse - International Gender and Trade Network - WomenAction

The role of the state and the role of citizens within it…

The women's movement participating in the different activities of the Peoples Summit of the Americas, have specific demands in relation to the state according to Marie Frantz Joachim from Haiti. This is why the women's movement in Haiti is mobilising against the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA). Numerous are the participants at the peoples Summit in Quebec that bring forward the fact that the FTAA agreement would undermine the states' possibilities to address issues of enormous importance for the population, such as education, environmental, and health issues - which has a particular impact on the lives of women. The participants of the two-day workshop on the 'role of the state' declared a firm "no" to the FTAA, on the grounds that the agreement promotes the coming true of a neo-liberal dream - the roll back of the state from public responsibility. The FTAA would include rules that obliges Haiti, and all participating 34 countries in the Americas, to open its markets to not only goods but also services and investment. If a country does not converge with the trade and investment rules of the FTAA, which include no social or environmental objectives, corporations can file law suits against individual governments and/or regions which will be handled behind closed doors away from the public eye. The 'disobedient' countries can then be fined enormous amounts, which is already the case within the NAFTA agreement. National plans, democratically elaborated, on how to address a wide range of issues such as development, education, health, and environmental issues, will be undermined. "This are some of the reasons why we have contacted our government and ministers to let them now, that if they sign the FTAA agreement, that might stand for them, but it does not apply to the people, because the people and in particular women have not been consulted" concludes Marie Frantz.

Malin Bjork - Les Penelopes - WomenAction

A call for democracy !

It is not surprising that while women are largely present as participants at the Peoples Summit of the Americas in Quebec, there is only one woman seated at the main table of the official negotiations. Women’s participation is a fundamental democratic claim, and the FTAA process does not correspond to any basic principles of democracy participation, transparency, consultation, and accountability. Almost during all the discussions held during the Peoples Summit so far, different actors of the social movement take the time to state the non-democratic foundation of the FTAA (Free Trade Agreement of the America) process there is no consultation with civil society (or with the elected Parliamentarians), and if there were, these would most probably be very confusing, because there is no access to the texts being negotiated. In the trade negotiations citizens are not even allowed to know their own governments negotiation positions ! Ignoring fundamental democratic principles of course makes it so much ‘easier’ to move extremely rapidly in the negotiations…And when citizens choose the only process available to them street democracy the responses they get are materialised by higher and higher security walls and the militarisation of the streets. Does it sound like a surrealist caricature of a democratic process ? Well, it is just that …and yet the threats are so concrete the threats to democracy itself, and the threats to sustainable social and economic development.

Malin Bjork - Les Penelopes - WomenAction

Opening night of the Peoples Summit of Americas

On Tuesday night the participants of the alternative peoples summit rallied together and shared their visions for the Americas. In between music and performances, representatives from the social movement - half of them women - took the scene to voice all the reasons for which so many movements have travelled to Quebec: in opposition to the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas - yes, but more importantly in favour of alternative strategies for an integration of the Americas that puts foremost the social and economic development for the all people in society, for access to education and healthcare, for women’s rights, for the sharing of progress in research and technology, for a sustainable agricultural policy, for workers rights, etc…for a different kind of globalisation and integration process of the Americas than the one currently being negotiated by the governments behind closed doors and iron fences.

Malin Bjork Les Penelopes - WomenAction

Mainstream media a giant player…inside the security walls in Quebec

WTO, NAFTA, GATS, FTAA the abbreviations are as difficult to keep up with as the process itself. And the work of mainstream media does all but contribute to a greater understanding of the political stakes and alternatives. Instead of posing the right questions of substance, of democratic process, mainstream media decides to focus so one-sidedly on security issues and simplified images of the process, and reduces the essential criticism of neo-liberal economic integration to another infotainment event. The participants at the Peoples Summit in Quebec are diverse in their claims, and unite here to present their multitude of alternatives to the FTAA process. However, the media choose to create the image that the more aggressive demonstrators are the only agents for a different kind of globalisation, and keep silent about the broad range of civil society movements behind them that present alternative strategies to the current trade liberalisation processes. In this way mainstream media serves to disassociate the different parts of the civil society and social movements from each other - and to transmit to the many citizens opposing neo-liberal trade liberalisation the feeling that Quebec is not their arena to demand social change.

But as was said during yesterdays Forum of Parliamentarians of the Americas in relation to democratic deficit among all the big business who in contrast to civil society have access and influence in the trade liberalisation process, the giant media industry is one of the most powerful… Ever so more important that the communication alternatives, including a feminist perspective, being formulated at the Peoples Summit not only remains a set of brilliant inactive recommendations but are urgently transformed into action !

Malin Bjork Les Penelopes WomenAction