International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest

Extract

The fifth ministerial of the World Trade Organization (WTO) took place in Cancun, Mexico, from September 10 to 14, 2003. There were both internal “protests” by government negotiators and external protests by social movements, peoples' organizations, and activists, the combination of which contributed to the dramatic collapse of the ministerial. This was not the first time a WTO ministerial collapsed, the first being the third ministerial in Seattle, US, in 1999 , where developing country negotiators refused the demands of developed countries to move forward with a new set of negotiations while ignoring long-standing demands for an assessment of the impacts of the Uruguay Round. The collapse took place as tens of thousands of protesters blockaded the streets. The WTO, however, quickly recovered from that setback at its fourth ministerial in Doha, Qatar, in 2001 , held shortly after the dramatic events in New York on September 11. At that ministerial, the WTO produced a declaration called the Doha Development Agenda (DDA), which launched a new round of trade negotiations. There were four sets of issues that were highly controversial in the DDA: the so-called “new issues” or “Singapore issues” (see below), agriculture, cotton, and industrial products liberalization. These were to be tackled at the fifth ministerial. As the highest decision-making body of the WTO, the ministerial ... log in or subscribe to read full text