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| by Emily Freeburg, |
Jan 13, 2006 |
Young people attend many other international processes, as official members of country delegations and with NGOs. Perhaps the most well-known form of international youth participation happens at the United Nations, where young people are Youth Delegates to the U.N. General Assembly every October, and also participate in U.N. processes on HIV/AIDS, status of women and sustainable development. Many countries (excluding the U.S.) have National Youth Councils and Regional Youth Platforms, such as the European Youth Forum.
"Young people participate at the U.N., but those decisions do not have a binding impact. The WTO decisions are so much more immediate. You can just sense from the people here that it's dead serious," said Luis Davila, 23, from Venezuela, Global Youth Action Network (GYAN). GYAN is further exploring just how young people are working on the trade issues that affect them, filming a documentary about the young people at WTO 6.
Like many adults interviewed, Douglas E. Campbell, from Campbell Agri Business Strategists Inc., a Canadian pro-trade lobby, agreed that young people have a place at the WTO if they did their homework. "We can all be well-intentioned but totally ignorant. If you are here, you start separating it out. You can be two steps away from Peter Mandelson [EU trade chief], and you can see if he is a straight-shooter, if he listens. There were some tough lessons from Seattle and Cancun, and the WTO has had to work to become more transparent."
Young people at WTO 6 are working to ensure youth presence at international trade meetings will increase, and that youth are educated at the local level about how trade issues affect them. For youth working on trade to be effective, it takes more than just showing up at one meeting with accreditation. Furthermore, the nuances of trade agreements are hammered out at smaller day-to-day meetings in Geneva, when the eye of the media is elsewhere.
Like Irene from Zambia or Sudy from Nepal, the most important work happens at the local level before coming to the meeting. Ideally, young people affected from "dumping" of chicken in Gambia, West Africa, could form alliances with youth organizations from countries doing the dumping, like the Netherlands, which ships chicken parts that are "unfit for consumption" to sell cheaply in West African markets. In the case of the United States, what would happen if young people from cotton farms were able to have an international exchange with young cotton farmers in Africa unable to sell their products as a result of U.S. subsidies? And what would happen if, after they returned, they met with their congressional representative and formed advocacy groups at their universities?
Achieving trade justice depends on building relationships -- people to people. Before attending WTO 6, Cissy Lui, 25, an Oxfam youth campaigner from Hong Kong, visited rice farms in the Philippines. There she learned about how rice growing is dependent on many factors, including sunshine and rainfall, irrigation, land fertility, seeds, fertilizers and labor, many of which rely heavily on government and import values. She was inspired by the determination of the Philippine groups she met with to preserve their rivers and trees, and was frustrated "by the ridiculousness of farmers giving up their land and practice of farming to earn a living in the dump sites on the outskirts of Manila. Who will be responsible if all the farmers give up their land to be garbage collectors?"
Cissy knows trade issues are not simple, and she takes on more projects every day. First, she is working on a campaign to release the 14 political prisoners arrested in the Hong Kong WTO protests. Then she will import some fair trade chocolate by Valentine's Day.
Coming from a country that employs many factory workers, she is also concerned about her own responsibility as a consumer and citizen. "If some of us take part in the decision-making process of governments or companies, and even of transnational corporations, we may introduce new ideas to the organizational system, and we can change the present situation."
"I think that a focus directly on the global misses the fact that our power as citizens remains to hold our governments accountable for their obligations to our communities and for the decisions that affect them," said May Miller Dawkins, 24, Australia, program coordinator of Oxfam International Youth Parliament.
May is an expert on working with young people concerned with the balance between giving young people the support they need to be effective and the chance to name their priorities. "I think that we can support young people working on trade by bringing them together, providing direct support to their work, skills sharing, and training and opportunities for collective research."
Like many expected, the difficulty of negotiations mean that the WTO will hold another meeting in March 2006. Hopefully, young people will have a presence.
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