Tripping on FTAA Negotiations.

• Author: Dawkins, Kristin
• Position: Free Trade Agreement of the Americas

Negotiations on Intellectual Property Threaten Access to Pharmaceuticals and Seeds, Undermine International Agreements and Human Rights

As negotiators from throughout the Western Hemisphere gathered in Quebec City to push for another free trade deal, representatives of civil society groups gathered their voices in protest. Many groups objected outright to the proposal of hemispheric trade liberalization. Others object to specific terms on the negotiating table, including the US proposal for more stringent intellectual property rights (IPRs) than currently exist.

Generally, most protesters would like to see a vision for cooperation in the region based on the needs of our peoples for a sustainable human development that is democratically participatory and transparent, equitable and respectful of the regenerative capacity of natural ecosystems.

The Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA), however, is premised on the further liberalization of commercial trade and is being negotiated in virtual secrecy. The US negotiating position for FTAA, in fact, is the only one that has been made public. In a modern-day revival of the Monroe Doctrine, in which the rest of the Americas are viewed as the United States' "back yard," the US seeks to drive the negotiating process.

"The FTAA negotiations are fundamentally illegitimate," says Alberto Villareal of REDES (Friends of the Earth Uruguay). "They intend to go further than even the North American Free Trade Agreement or the World Trade Organization in deregulating global corporations. In these secretive meetings, they hope to set new extremes for liberalized trade that will become precedents to reopen the stalled WTO (World Trade Organization) negotiations."

As expected, the US seeks to tighten the protections of the pharmaceutical and agrichemical companies in ways that will slow the development of and access to new varieties of seeds and affordable drugs. The US proposal would allow the transnational private sector to appropriate the resources and knowledge of peoples throughout the world, with severe consequences for food security and health, especially in rural communities and especially for women who make up the majority of the world's farmers and the world's poor.

For instance, the US has argued that policies in Brazil and South Africa to provide free and affordable drugs to AIDS victims are illegal cases of patent-infringement under the World Trade Organization's current IPR rules (known as...