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Asia Pacific Forum on women, law and development

The statement of WTO’s director, Pascal Lamy at the opening of the Ministerial Meeting here in Hong Kong, that the WTO needs to build a better image is obliquely an admission of its failure to improve the lives of the people of the world as it had promised to do. But women from Asia Pacific gathered for the people’s actions against this global trade regime don’t need such a statement to prove their suffering. What differs is the degree of devastation depending on how early their national governments have entered into WTO.

In yesterday’s opening of the Asia Pacific Women’s Village at Victoria Park, and during the Talanoa event, the voices of Asian women against WTO were consolidated.

Talanoa is a Fiji term which means story-telling. This event launched the patches of women’s resistance, a collection of women’s slogans against the WTO which were sewn together resulting in a huge quilt of patches of resistance. The collective sewing of the patches symbolized the building of a stronger unity among Asian women, specifically rural and indigenous women, to resist the WTO and be recognized of their right to land and food and against all forms of violence including hunger and poverty. The patches will be marched by women delegates towards the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center in the afternoon of December 16 after a Women’s Tribunal against WTO.

Bearing in mind that more than 60% of food production in the Asia-Pacific region is carried out by women, we were given opportunities to hear first hand experiences of how agricultural and trade liberalisation have impacted rural and indigenous women. The common denominator is that the last ten years of WTO’s existence has only meant deeper hunger and poverty to many rural women. More and more rural women are subjected to various forms of violence as they are pushed to take up low-paying jobs as farm workers and farmhands of rich land owners, take up low-paying menial jobs, forced to give sexual favors in exchange of rice to eat for the next meal and out-migrate even to foreign lands just to be assured of survival.

Vernie Yocogan-Diano, a Cordillera indigenous peasant woman from the Philippines, shared about the bankruptcy of peasant families engaged in commercial vegetable and rice production in the Cordillera. This is primarily due to the continuous entry of cheap imported rice and vegetables, very small agricultural subsidies for agriculture by government and the expensive cost of production shouldered by peasants themselves. From 2000-2002 alone, imported rice was priced at P9.00 per kilo while locally produced rice was priced at P17.00 per kilo. Imported vegetables had an average price of P7.62 per kilo while locally produced vegetables were priced at P30.00 a kilo. From 2001-2002 alone, vegetable production declined from 35-65% because of the competition with imports. This situation is also becoming a common phenomenon among peasant women raising garlic and chilli in Ban Mai Khi in Chiang Mai , Thailand .

M. Ravathi of the Tamil Nadu Organic Farmers Trust shared of the alarming increase of suicide cases by farmers in 6 southern states of India because of bankruptcy in their production and the high cost of living. Ravathi mentioned that from 1998-2005, 25,000 of suicide cases were documented which is still a conservative figure as many suicide cases remain undocumented. Within the same period, she reported 24,000 cases of starvation deaths and again unreported deaths make the real figure much higher. Women take on the burden in raising their families if their husbands commit suicide. According to her, women are subjected to sexual violence when they become farm workers of landlords and in the process of migration hoping to find a better livelihood.

Yeni Rosa of the Serikat Perempuan Mandiri, a women’s organization in Indonesia shared a similar situation of rural women in Indonesia who are forced to migrate and work abroad because agricultural production has become expensive and peasant women are unable to recoup their expenses because their products are fetching a low prices in the market. In Hong Kong alone, around 100,000 women from Indonesia are working as domestic workers, most of which experience discrimination in wages and ill treatment by their employers.

Carmen Buena, a peasant woman from Pampanga, Philippines and chairperson of Amihan, a national federation of peasant women in the Philippines shared that more and more women peasants become victims of sexual violence as poor peasant women or farm workers are forced to give sexual favours in exchange of a ganta. of rice.

Hearing such stories one after another has fuelled our anger and created stronger resolve for the Asia Pacific women delegates belonging to the network of the Asia-Pacific Women, Law and Development (APWLD) to demand the WTO to get out of agriculture and of our lives. We are convinced that this global trade regime is only pushing women to slavery.

The Talanoa among Asia Pacific women will continue throughout the People’s Action Week and strong cases against the WTO will be presented in tomorrow’s Women’s Tribunal on the WTO. #

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